PLEASE REMAIN CALM

*EDIT- 10 mins. later...*
Wow, where have I been? So much for all that stuff. Or are they still pulling our leg about telling the tru7h?

Anyone visiting Bungie's homepage this morning was in for a surprise. Late last night, exactly 12 hours before the countdown was to stop, at exactly 7 PM, the countdown froze and a message appeared.

From: Harold Ryan
Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2008 7:00 PM
Subject: E3 Announce

For the last several months, we've been building toward a reveal of something exciting that Bungie is working on. We were looking forward to sharing that with our fan community during the week of E3. However, those plans were just changed by our publisher.

We realize that many of our fans are disappointed by this turn of events; members of the Bungie team share that disappointment.

When the right time comes, we look forward to sharing this exciting announcement with you. Until then, we appreciate your continued support and patience.

Harold Ryan
President
Bungie LLC

Needless to say, I, the rest of the Bungie fan community, was pretty upset. Then I realized there were numerous things that just didn't add up. First and foremost, Harold Ryan is not president of Bungie, but in fact one of their testers. Fishy. Second, Bungie loves the number seven. The original message is exactly seven lines and was posted at exactly seven PM. Third, the homepage has not returned to normal. If Bungie's announcement were really suddenly canceled, one would assume they would revert back to their original homepage with an apology announcement. Instead, they post a "letter" exactly twelve hours before on the homepage and never take it down. The message is actually simply pasted on top of the image that was already there. The entire page, for that matter, has been replaced with one giant image instead of the flash page that was previously there. If you investigate the page source on your internet browser, you'll find two hidden text boxes. One is blank and the other contains some nonsense code that starts with H4sI. Halo 4 Superintendent? If you paste it into your address bar, it brings you back to the same page. The background itself has changed as well. Looking closely, you can see that some of the text in the background has changed, further supporting the claim that original page was replaced with a single image. Some people have reported seeing the countdown in the corner (now frozen at 12) to have changed to display the word "rebooting...". There has been strange activity at the Bungie webcams as well. Yesterday afternoon, they were filled with images of superintendents. Now, only one remains and Master Chief looks angrily into the camera.

Bungie also refused to call its publisher (that many assumed to be Microsoft) by name, leading many to believe it to be EA or even Nintendo. The message actually makes no mention of a cancellation of the big announcement. It says it was postponed. Both Gamespot and IGN have live streaming coverage of E3 online. Gamespot has a slot at 4:30 (4+3=7) today for a "new Xbox game" and IGN has a TBA for both 4 PM and 10:30 AM tomorrow. Many have jokingly thought of TBA as "The Bungie Announcement". The 10:30 slot could also make sense, as the superintendent left a code behind that adds up to 10:30 (on 7/17... hmmm... 117?). So the announcement could have just been postponed until later today (7 PM, perhaps? 12 hours later?) or maybe even the last day of E3.

Though several Bungie employees have come forward saying that the message is indeed true, they could either be lying or telling the truth. Bungie says they don't joke like this, but the reality is they do. So much so, that I've come to believe that they might be lying about telling the truth just to throw everyone off and they won't expect the announcement when it comes. Or, they are telling the truth and this was all planned from the beginning. The set up with the superintendents telling everyone to "KEEP IT CLEAN", "REMAIN CALM" and "EXPECT DELAYS" was just for this occasion. Bungie planned to stop that countdown at 12 hours just to mess with us, but we were warned ahead of time. With the Bungie community up in arms we must listen to the words of the superintendent who, I believe, was created just for this occasion and has nothing to do with their upcoming game. Finally, in last week's Bungie Weekly Update, Luke Smith told Bungie fans the following:

Future Tense
As a reader, I can only imagine just how frustrating it is to not have any new information just yet. Rest assured, dear vengeful, hypertense reader many things are in motion. Many things. These numerous things include the following:

• Major changes to the Halo 3 Online experience
• Sweet Announcements
• Poignant Clarifications
• Certain-point-of-view Truths
• Things you will love
• Things you will argue about
• Things you will make angry videos about

Indeed there are things we are arguing about and things we will make angry videos about, perhaps even point-of-view-truths. This is just phase one. We must wait for the clarifications, the announcements, and of course the things we will love. So I say, do not worry. The announcement is indeed coming, just when you least expect it. It's all been a part of the plan all along. Bungie has fooled a lot of people, but they can't fool me... or my readers. So just hang tight because something big is coming soon. I can feel it.

Be sure to check back regularly for the latest updates on this and other important stories. And keep your eyes pealed to bungie.net in case anything develops.