I Love Bees Definitive Edition and Podcast Review - Now Available

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I Love BeesI Love Bees is one of the best stories we've ever experienced. If you're a gamer who professes a love for story, you need to check this out. It's not a game per se, but it's a tale woven expertly into the Halo universe.

It's also damned long. To make things easier, we've compiled all of the little files - 52 in all, not counting bonus features - back into the 12 chapters its creators collected onto DVD for the lucky few who received one.

You can download I Love Bees Definitive Edition directly from our RSS Feed or get it from iTunes. We recommend using a podcast app since these keep your place in long-form audio better than most music players.

We've also released our full podcast audio review here and on iTunes. It opens with the audio trailer (which you may have already heard if you checked out our teasers) and tells several of the I Love Bees stories, including some fascinating highlights from an alternate reality game panel discussion shared by Story Forward Podcast (details in the show notes below).

I Love Bees Definitive Edition features three small but important changes to the story structure:

  • Chapter 5: We switched Rani and Jersey's sections. There's an announcement at the wedding Rani attends that delivers a piece of dramatic news, which is mentioned much more matter-of-factly when Jersey learns of it.
  • Chapter 10: It didn't make sense for the heroes to plan their plans before we're introduced to how Rani got involved. So once again, we put Rani before Jersey.
  • Chapter 12: The ending just doesn't feel right with Rani. This is Jersey and Durga's moment, and there is much revealed in their segment. This is how the story should end.

In addition, we added the Operator's Epilogue, where Melissa talks to the people who participated in the viral marketing scavenger hunt that revealed - piece by piece - the story of I Love Bees. And there are four deleted scenes that were rightfully cut, but still add some interesting details for fans of the series.

We spent years conceiving of this Definitive Edition, but once we had a plan it came together fast. We took the best audio we could find and remastered it to a higher bit rate than 2004's Internet pipes could readily handle. You'll hear things you couldn't before (unless you had the DVD), and we packed it into a podcast feed so you could more easily enjoy it and keep your place while exploring its depths.

Our hope in doing this is that we will reinvigorate interest in I Love Bees as a tale worth experiencing in the best form we could make it. Perhaps its creators will dust off the source files and make us a 5.1 mix with even more bonus materials. Until that day, we hope this Definitive Edition will suffice, pleasing your earholes with a tale of a makeshift family, thrust together by circumstance, defying odds and betrayals, peppered with humor and pathos, to reach an inevitable and unforgettable conclusion.

Show notes

All credit for I Love Bees goes to 42 Entertainment and Microsoft.

Action music in the audio trailer is from free-loops.com.

ARG conference audio with I Love Bees creators Elan Lee, Kristen Rutherford, Sean Stewart, and Jim Stewartson is courtesy of Story Forward Podcast. Check out their full segments with I Love Bees creators and I Love Bees players.

2 Comments

1.

Excellent work providing another compilation and continuing to bring the spotlight to I Love Bees! This story definitely needs to stay known in the Halo universe :) Maybe one day 343 Industries will decide to continue the saga of the 1.1's...

Good job with the podcast documentary about ILB too. Good summary and info.

I'd like to add that the two prior sources for audio compilations are still available, via Halo.bungie.org, and creepy.thebruce.net (you even decided to make the same scene alterations for a better narrative ordering).

I am curious how you 'remastered' the audio, however. Were you fortunate to get a hold of higher quality audio sources than offered via the website or DVD?

Finally as a side note, there IS still a mirror of the original website, located at ilovebees.co. The original site now redirects to 42 Entertainment's project website.

Keep ILB alive! ;D

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