October 11^th, 2004 (9:34pm) - As if eternity had come to an end today, Bungie’s live-in weekly columnist Frankie had this to drop on an unsuspecting, foaming at the mouth community:

They said it couldn’t be done! Actually, they didn’t say that, but if they had, we’d have proved them all (the fake people who didn’t say anything) wrong! Halo 2 has gone gold. We finished every line of code, every pixel of art, every frame of animation, every phoneme of dialog and every note of music. We finished it when we said we would (when it was done) and shipped that baby right on time to make its November launch date. And we’re kinda proud of it. We think it’s "fun."

"Gone Gold" is a somewhat archaic expression, since the "gold discs" are actually digital tapes and eventually silver discs. But it certainly feels golden. This basically means that the game has been shipped to retail manufacture. Somewhere in the world, a gigantic DVD pressing factory has started making Xbox game discs with the utterly complete version of Halo 2. Maybe there IS a gold disc somewhere. Perhaps it’s time for an epic quest!

We now have retail versions (test samples) here in the office. In fact, one sharp, and presumably jealous-eyed reader saw the following legend appear in his Live-linked MSN Instant Messenger window: "Anm8erJB is now playing HALO 2 on Xbox Live." Now THAT’S a tease.

It’s been a long, hard road though. When you’re playing it, and we hope you enjoy it, think of the 116 hour work weeks, the long nights, the bad food, the really long corridor to the bathroom (people use scooters to get there) and the utter lack of places to curl up and sleep.

Halo 2 in 4 weeks. Somebody pinch me.