Bungie's Up to Something...

Slashdot Games is reporting that there is a mysterious URL to www.ilovebees.com that appears at the end of the Halo 2 theatrical trailer. If you go to the site you'll see... weird, bizzare, creepy stuff. Especially when it's 1am when you first come across it. Bungie's up to something, clearly.

And that's not all...

MORE...

The rest of the pages at that domain similarly have weird things on them. Things that appear to be bleed-thru Maydays and SOS's for a female SOMETHING that is stranded somewhere... a Queen. Trapped. References to insects, especially arachnids abound. The site also drops biblical references, other literary references, and references that sound suspiciously-familair to Halo fans (ESPECIALLY if you've actually read the books and know all the backstory). There's also a preponderance of the number "7" that Bungie has always been fascinated with. I also myself found a bunch of references to things relating to the year 1993 if you dug a bit (song lyrics, etc) -- could be coincidence or related...

People at one forum in particular have also begun to recieve jars of honey in the mail, with letters in them that combined spell out www.ilovebees.com Some people at Bungie's own forums have been sufficiently creeped out by it even to drop the subject entirely.

Someone at one of the other forums dubbed it "The Haunted Apiary" and they've similarly dubbed whatever's going on "SPiDeR", while also trying to catch references and decode what's going on. Halo 2's release date is inching closer, and it wouldn't be the first time Bungie's pulled something like this regarding mysterious and cryptic messages as offbeat marketing for a game.

Interestingly enough, someone named Dana (or claiming to be at least) *IS* pulling strings, answering emails to that mystery site and interacting with people via e-mail and the blogspot blog... lots of weird but fascinating stuff. Some people are freaking over this like it's real, but it's just a puzzle, a totally brilliant viral marketing campaign, I'm positive.

I'm left with this after thinking things over and reading a LOT of info and suggestions of various people: August 24th is the date "Earth is invaded". Halo 2 takes place on Earth as they try to fend off Covenant invasion (after they've already glassed over the Reach colony), and is supposed to be several months into the invasion -- so pulling something like this several months before the Halo 2 release makes sense in an odd way...

Also if you read the three Halo books (specifically the 2 Nylund ones), you'll know that a LOT of stuff happened outside of the first game -- for instance, the other SPARTANS and their fates, the myserious artifact of the Ancients (the same people who built the Halo ringworld and that the Covenant revere and fear). The Cole Protocol was not enough to keep the Covenant from finding Earth. They ARE coming... and they possibly are not alone. The Flood (ARGH!) may or may not be making a return in Halo 2, and there are also rumors that while Bungie's gleefully shown off the new Covenant units (the Brutes and Prophets) they may not be telling the whole story and there may be a whole new 3rd party alien race/collective involved yet. And there's serious reason to believe that Guilty Spark (that $##*& "Monitor" from the Library levels) is not entirely written out of the story yet.

Halo is Bungie's 900-lb gorilla though. So it's more-than-likely related to that. Or as someone on Slashdot Games so succinctly stated:

"...probably because the chances of this being the sequel to the AI game (aka "The Beast") are pretty high. The Beast is still the most well-known alternate-reality game (ARG) in history, so the possibility that this Halo game could be "The Hive" (the long-rumored sequel to The Beast) is creating quite a stir in the ARG fandom."

"The Beast" would be Microsoft's real-life "game" relating to the Spielberg movie "A.I." that was a huge success. The game was real-time -- you interacted with real people in many cases via email, IM, and phone, and tried to piece together clues to solve the thing. If you got deep enough in, you could get a phone call from the "game" even, or email to you personally breaking some new news on what was happening.

This game being its successor would place it amongst the annals of internet lore and legend, pretty much. So you can see why this is such a big deal to some people...

This is fun. It's like an alternate sort of RPG or puzzle game, with detective work and everything. And I'm glad I spent part of my night experiencing it while it's still somewhat young. Kudos to Bungie and MS for at least having serious Style in these matters... It's also a good sign that Halo 2 is going to come along and obliterate every other game in its path.

I'm going to bed now, it's late.


-- Primis.

Just a quick, fun Update.

Someone has pointed out that the sites surrounding this whole thing have remained up and working despite the heavy traffic they've been seeing as word gets passed along. So clearly a company is behind this. Fun fact though -- the sites run Apache on Red Hat. Which is... odd... for Bungie and Microsoft to be using...

As I've actually been awake today to think about it some more I am reminded of something from the 3rd Halo book.

In it Cortana replicated herself several times over to handle a ton of tasks, and also was storing so much data from the HALO library that it was interfering with her functionality and constraining her processing ability. It was stupid I forgot about that little fact. In fact, she actually encountered an alien A.I. at one point... and there's no overwhelming proof she actually destroyed it in its entirety.

My point? Things don't look good for Cortana in the Halo-verse. Everyone's favorite A.I. may be on her last legs as we've known her...

All in all still quite intriuging buildup though. There's a lot that's going to go down in Halo 2, and the simple fact we're having to madly speculate on what might happen shoudl be proof positive to just how unpredictable and engrossing they've made the storyline...


-- Primis.