For days many of us have been following Bungie's latest trail of cryptic messages and hints that were meant to lead up to tomorrow's big announcement, timed for 7:07 am, about... well, we dont know.

And now it seems we'll never know.

It seems something colossal happened within the last few hours to effectively kill the buzz surrounding the announcement.

From the page (in case you cant read it):

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

Over 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 out 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

Most outlets are reporting this is real - NeoGAF got the official word on it when Luke Smith pretty much said sorry, its not a joke.

Or is it?

Lets see... The posted time of the notice is 7:00pm, which is NEVER a coincidence for Bungie. The countdown timer is stopped exactly at 12 hours. Why would Luke Smith confirm this announcement on NeoGAF and not on the Halo community forums?

And who is Harold Ryan? He's not Bungie's president. Halopedia says:

Harold Ryan is an American game tester and configuration tester. He has worked on several video games, including the Close Combat series, Crimson Skies, and Halo. He was born and raised in eastern Washington, his father served in the US Navy. He is currently a senior employee of Bungie Studios.

I'm going to call fake on this one. Something smells delightfully fishy.