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There is a rule in film industry; When a movie makes a $100+ million dollars debut in its opening weekend, you can expect at least a sequel. Well, a similar rule applies for videogames. If a game becomes a million seller you expect a sequel and if that million seller becomes the fastest million-unit seller ever for any next-generation console and the "Video Game of the Year" (across all platforms including the PC) you expect from the developers much much more. Not just a sequel but that the developers once again deliver the best video game ever:

HALO 2: HALO EVOLVED

"Halo 2 is a lot like Halo 1, only it's Halo 1 on fire, going 130 miles per hour through a hospital zone, being chased by helicopters and ninjas," said Jason Jones, Bungie Studios head. "And the ninjas are all on fire, too." That’s how the lead designer of Halo 1 describes its successor.
To break down where improvements over Halo 1 can be made, we should first look at the different parts that make up Halo. Let’s start with the visuals.
Per Pixel Everything

One of the biggest advances in HALO 2 will be the new graphics engine. A radical change in the rendering philosophy makes possible -- as the teaser trailer probed, real-time graphics that are almost undistinguishable from pre-calculated rendering. To better understand why HALO 2 looks as good as DOOM III, the other benchmark in real-time graphics, you have to first understand the change in the rendering method. The trick in Per Pixel Lighting is to use textures as data. These textures, called “normal maps”, contain information about the direction each pixel is facing relative to a light source. And since the lighting information comes from pixels (picture elements) which are the smallest units that can be displayed on the screen, per pixel lighting creates lighting and other custom shading effects at a pixel level. Thus, the quality of per pixel lighting is far superior to previous techniques. You may ask “Why they didn’t do that before?”. Well, the truth is that real-time per-pixel lighting wasn’t possible with previous hardware. Per-pixel shading was first introduced by nVIDIA in 1999 with the GeForce 2’s Nvidia Shading Rasterizer (NSR) but it was with the introduction of GeForce 3 that developers have, for the very first time at their disposal, full control of the rendering process using programmable Pixel Shaders, thanks to nVIDIA nfiniteFX architecture. Now, all the subset features of per pixel lighting became possible. You should keep in mind that the Xbox’s GPU, the nv2A, is a mix of a GeForce 3 and GeForce 4 because of its dual Vertex Shaders unit. Yes, you read well and I’m not crazy. HALO 2 has models with less polygons than the original. And yes, that’s a good thing. In fact is a benefit of per pixel lighting that make models less dense. Less polygons per model simplifies collision, improves physics (which were already amazing in HALO 1), and memory issues. This way, the game will have faster loading times. Another benefit of having less polygons per mesh will be for online functionality. With this new rendering method levels data is smaller and so the info transmitted over internet networks during online games. The improvement in the visuals is now achieved in every Xbox when the rendering process happens and not by having bigger complex data that has to be transmitted when playing online.

The Story

HALO 2 continues the adventure of Master Chief and Cortana after they escaped the first Halo (yes there are more) and return home only to find out that an entire Covenant fleet is attacking Earth. The HALO 2 teaser trailer revealed that the sequel starts on Earth, however the developers hinted that in later levels you will combat on other battlefields.
As the story evolves, Master Chief will take the fight back to the Covenant forces and this will take the player to new worlds including the Covenant homeworld and other planets, where atmosphere will affect gameplay, like low gravity on Earth’s moon will let Master Chief jump several times the distance under normal circumstances and move in slow motion. Visiting the Covenant homeworld will let players meet the Brutes and the Prophets, a new race part of the pact between the Elites featured in HALO 1 and these religious leaders.

The Gameplay

Master Chief is still the pinnacle of military hardware and in HALO 2 he has a new armour with new skills: ‘stealth’, ‘sprint’ and ‘combos’. Using the D-pad, you’ll be able to look around corners. Another improvement will be in the melee attack. This time Master Chief will be able to go on hand-to-hand combat with his enemies using combos and melee attacks that unlike HALO 1, where no matter what weapon you were carrying the attack was the same, depending the weapon Master Chief use the damage will be different.

As an example on the new gameplay elements, imagine the following situation: You are walking down a corridor, look around a corner in MGS style and realize that the next room is full of Covenants. There are some lights, so you decide to shoot them, turning off all the lighting in the room. You switch to the sniper rifle and with night vision on, you start killing them one by one. Well, it won’t be that easy probably, since Bungie promises a great improvement in A.I. Covenants will be smarter and using the interactivity of the world they’ll be capable of manipulating the environment while attacking you. The Master Chief will also be able to interact with the environment, like using objects as cover or real-world physics to kill the enemies.
You can expect new ATVs, including a motorbike and new warthdogs: the Jungle Hog, the Snow Hog and the Troop Hog. Bungie promises new control schemes where your driving skills will be put to test.
HALO 2: First MMFPS?
As videogames evolve, new genres are created. And, with the arrival of online gaming a new genre has emerged. Online Massively Multi-Player (OLMMP) promises to be the next big thing. The MMORPG the first of the many subgenres to emerge. HALO 2 will feature online versions of the multiplayer games found in Halo 1, but this is not the online aspect of HALO 2 that gamers will talk about. Bungie also wants all the elements of the single-player campaign, the weapons, the vehicles, the combat to be brougth over into the multiplayer game. Kind of a massive cooperative mode with more than just two players.

This sequel could be the first Massive Multiplayer First Person Shooter as this quote from Jaime Griesemer, lead designer of HALO 2, suggests:
"I don't want to ruin the surprise, but imagine the essential Halo single-player experience: pitched battles between the humans and the Covenant, massive vehicle and infantry engagements. Now imagine that every combatant is an actual person playing over Xbox Live!"
So it won’t be just capture the flag and other traditional multiplayer games going online. It’s about bringing the single player campaign to a massive online level. Halo: Combat Evolved is a reason to buy an Xbox, a term known in the industry as system seller. HALO 2 could end up being the reason to get Xbox LIVE.
As you can see, Bungie is planning not just a sequel, but a game that goes beyond its predecessor, to once again redefine the genre or create a new one. Improved graphics, A.I., multiplayer and LIVE features and some other surprises will make HALO 2 the new object of desire among gamers.

well...I also know that the game is supposed to come our sep 1, 2004.