Just over a week ago, Bungie announced that Halo 2 was "basically done." Today came the now-anticlimactic announcement that the game is officially done. "Halo 2 has gone gold," Bungie said in a statement. "We finished every line of code, every pixel of art, every frame of animation, every phoneme of dialogue, 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."

　　For anyone unclear on what "going gold" actually means, the author of the Bungie statement broke it down in detail. "'Gone Gold' is a somewhat archaic expression, since the 'gold discs' are actually digital tapes and eventually silver discs," read the statement. "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."

　　In fact, some of those discs are already in the hands of gamers--at Bungie. "We now have retail versions (test samples) here in the office," read the statement. "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."

　　Speaking of teases, Xbox owners will have to now wait 29 agonizing days until Halo 2's November 9 release. In the meantime, check out GameSpot's previous coverage of the game.