Origen Xbox 360 site is counting down Halo 3 release? ..

As was recently reported, there is a school of thought that believes the Origen Xbox 360 site is counting down to an announcement regarding Halo 3 for the Xbox 360.



Some Latin text (below) on the website has been linked to the city in which Master Chief (the hero of the game) grew up in. The text reads:

"in hoc spatio arbor noster floruit, fecundus pomies Elysii ignoti, qui in loco ludent electi, ab Originis angelis circumdati."

Which translates to English as:

"In this space our tree has flourished abundant with the unknown fruits of Elysium, who will play in the chosen place, surrounded by the angels of Origen."

Well apparently Bungie (makers of the Halo series) have been getting a lot of emails about this, because they felt the need to post the following in their Weekly Update dated 9 September:

"I got a lot of mail from folks about www.origenxbox360.com which as far as I can tell, is some kind of viral marketing thing, and maybe even an ilovebees style ARG. Thing is, that's all I know about it. I got the same info as you – six plums (that's what they look like to me) a stick man, an MSN Messenger icon and two rabbits. I think they might be hares. The only thing I've noticed is that if you switch between .org and .com, the image pops to the right a couple of pixels. I'm helping! And I swear, I really DON'T know what this is."

So are Bungie just playing stupid, or is everyone way off track with the Halo 3 announcement theory?

For those of you who aren't aware, the "ilovebees" referred to above was another mystery website used to promote Halo 2 last year.