I Love Bees/Halo 2 Metagame speculation

Just an FYI for the people who haven’t been following along.

People who have emailed their name and address to ladybee777@hotmail.net will supposedly receive…something via snail mail. Not confirmed yet, although the suggestion was made by EGM editor Shawn over on their boards. I’ll let y’all know if anything arrives.

The various links to a cafepress store selling an I Love Bees/“Make Your Plans Accordingly” tee-shirt are bogus. The shirt is fanmade and has nothing to do with Microsoft. Don’t waste your twenty bucks hoping for a cool exclusive.

People who have left messages on Dana (I Love Bees’ moderator chick) voice mail number report that they’ve received strange phone calls in return, although I haven’t tried it myself.

Most popular current theory is that the scrambled text on the site is the diary of either the Cortana predecessor, the original Flood lifeform, or the mutated Captain Keyes.

One popular theory is that the H2 demo will be released on August 24th, but only to people who have already preordered the game. There’s absolutely no evidence to support this, but if you’ve been waiting for the best time to place that preorder, it couldn’t hurt. Just in case.

And finally, SOMETHING is supposed to happen to http://www.ilovebees.com in a little over an hour. This Tuesday, network throttling will erode.

Whatever that means.

Anyway, this game is pretty fun so far, in a spectacularly geeky sort of way. Hope Microsoft can follow through.

This is definitely one of the most bizarre and intriguing video game marketing tactics I’ve ever seen. Makes me wish I owned an X-Box.

This is also fairly… disturbing.

Yikes!

Have you guys looked at the source code for the index page?

Quote:

I love bees

I think the ‘bee’ theme has something to do with the nature of the new race in Halo 2… The race that created the Halos. Apparently there are ruins of that ancient race here on Earth, and part of the plot revolves around uncovering the secrets of those ruins.

A race with a hive mind? Probably.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cheese Biscuits This is also fairly… disturbing.

The sound file you hear on that page is called “queen-piping.wav”.

Oh yeah, I forgot that one, Sphinx. Great theory that could lead to some really cool gameplay.

Well, the network throttling didn’t erode at midnight, damn it.

Holy shit. The message that appears is apparently an anagram.

From:
HALT - MODULE CORE HEMORRHAGE
SYSTEM PERIL DISTRIBUTED REFLEX.
STRONG INTRUSIVE INCLINATION.
COUNTDOWN TO WIDE AWAKE AND PHYSICAL :

You can get :
INDEX THIS IRONCLAD PREDICTION : HALO TWO SINGLE PLAYER DEMO CD-ROM DISK INCURSION AT AUGUST TWENTY FOUR. EARTH WILL NEVER BE THE SAME

FUCK. YES. BABY.

Oh shit! Someone had posted that as a comment on the blog site but I just disregarded it.

Fuck yes indeed.

Ha…i second that this is one of the best marketing ideas ever. Bungie is tapping into the internet users who are undoubtedly the hardest of the hardcore Halo’ers.

So…let me know if this single player demo is TRULY only for those who pre order, because I will be laying down my 5 bucks at gamestop tomorrow if it is true.

Wow. all of this stuff is so odd, but it’s so friggin’ cool too. It’s good to see that somebody out there s being creative with this stuff, as warped as it is. I sent the address, who knows what will come of it. I’ll check back here from time to time to see what’s up. Thanks for the info everybody.

Halo 2 is definitely one of the biggest game releases in some time, especially for a console. The anticipation is killing me. I should play the first one again in the meantime.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fazer So…let me know if this single player demo is TRULY only for those who pre order, because I will be laying down my 5 bucks at gamestop tomorrow if it is true.

Well, I still stand by my original theory that next month’s August 24th release of the new issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly wil be tied in to the release. I think EGM is getting the first review, and OXM will be packed with the playable demo. But I wouldn’t expect any official confirmation anytime soon, since I doubt Microsoft expected supernerds to crack the anagram code this quickly.

I can’t believe they’re releasing a demo. I mean, it’s great news, but it’s not exactly like this game won’t sell like crazy if they don’t let gamers demo it first.

That sounds very cool indeed. Can’t wait to play the demo. I guess they figured that Halo 2 has been pushed back so many times, they can at least throw us a bone.

That ilovebees site is doing some strange things. So maybe that’s the “network throttling will erode” thing you are talking about.

“Supernerd” indeed, heh. Even if this is what the whole site is about, that site is still too damn cool to ignore.

Network throttling has eroded, and the site has lots of cryptic text about spiders, and there’s some really strange thing (maybe a puzzle) in the About section about an innocent bystander.

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Sphinx always gets the sake I think the ‘bee’ theme has something to do with the nature of the new race in Halo 2… The race that created the Halos. Apparently there are ruins of that ancient race here on Earth, and part of the plot revolves around uncovering the secrets of those ruins. A race with a hive mind? Probably.

Remember that “Halo is honeycombed with tunnels.”

OOOOOOOOOOOOOH- WEEEEEEEEEEEE-OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Hmm. I found this in the source of the about page: drift off from station, Reach burning in the darkness like a lantern of hope, dockyard after dockyard buzzing with worker

I’m just having fun reading everything you guys are posting here.

This really is some great stuff.