unforum

[Freelance]

While I admire your true conspiracy theorist spirits, I doubt a book that came out a year before this game would have a secret clue in it to help us... Also, I don't think the puppet masters could anticipate us actually finding the clue if it were part of the game...

But that's just me being a typical nay-sayer. Don't let me hold you back.

[klobbermeister]

Not a year, only about six months...first printing of "First StriKe" (at least in paperback) was 12/03.

That begs the question from me: How much planning goes into something like an ARG? Do they not plan six months to a year in advance of something like this, to coordinate the basic premises? Not having had ARG experience prior to this, I don't have the background to know.

In any case, like I mentioned in my prior post, I don't know if this is just a completely unrelated coincidental event or not. Just thought it was interesting that the bars all had alphabetic representation in the Morse Code alphabet, which I don't know that they would if it were just random bars...

FWIW...

[bubbleentity]

is there any reasion why the puppetmasters cannot make use of pre existing phenomina,
so for example those marks may be used but they may have also orginaly been random and caused by a printer missalignment....


nm

[rob]

Re: password

[illuminati_dk]

The "Artifacts" you are refering to sounds like a scancode made when they bind the books normally these are cut of but somtimes the are there by some sort of error (I work in a bookstore and we have people complaining about it all the time aprox 1 out of 30 books)

[klobbermeister]

Okay, so this is just a request for those who've seen these markings before in books: if possible, would you compare/contrast the symbols/bars from "First Strike" with the symbols/bars in other books to see if they are similar? (I've looked casually at my books, and not been able to spot anything similar).

Again, not even sure that this whole topic is in-game or relevant, but it's still darned curious (at least to me ).

[Danzilla76]

My book only has the barcode on page 123.
I looked at the book for about 30 minutes and couldn't find anymore. I believe this is a dead end. Since someone has seen it in other books, it most likely is not part of this game.

[DownloadTHIS]

As I recall, there were two printings of First Strike to correct a few errors such as two Spartans having the same number and such. I believe that the second printing has the word Halo in more of a purple than a blue on the side. I have the first run, apparently, and I see no bar code, so those of you with books check and then check the color of the word Halo on the side.

[d3adcell]

Mine has the marking on pg 123, but not on 219 or any others. Must just be a printing error. There is no where on the site that mentions anything about the halo books having some 'code' in them does it?

[guest]

I used to work for a book printer. Pages of books are printed in sections usually in 8, 16 and 32 page spreads. Basically you have a flat web of paper that then gets cut and folded to make the section. Most of these sections are numbered or coded so that if you grab a book before it is bound you can see that all of the sections are there. Then they chop the spine and the cover gets glued in place. The the three knife chops the face and the two ends. You now have a book.

Each printer makes up their own codes for the spine, it is nothing that is industry standard. The are burned into the film before the plates get burned. Ocassionally the codes bleed out into a live area, or if you pull the book open wide enough you will see them. I doubt this is any "code" for the ARG

[AlCaponeXB]

Just so you know, as soon as I looked at the barcode and what it meant, I thought of morse code. What I was surprised to find that the lines and dots actually represent letters, scrambled at that though.


Here's what I got for the only page with the lines and dots on 123

In morse code(from top to bottom):.-.. -. -- . ..-- -.. .-. - ....
Uncoded letters(same order): L N M E Ŭ D R T H

I really don't know what you could make of those, or if this whole thing has any real relevence to the game, so take it for what you will. Also, that Ŭ(named u-breve) took me a while to find in the morse code alphabet, but that's what the code represented.

Have fun placing those letter in some sort of readable form.

[CorSorei]

In my personal opinion, these marks have absolutely nothing to do wiyh this game. I have seen marks like this in other books, does that mean a ten year old book has something to do with this, no, they are marks from the press. It has also been stated that not everyone has the same marks on the same pages, any marks on the same pages, or any marks on any pages at all. This just seems to be people reaching for me, I mean really, using marks in a book that was published belore all of this started. Oh, I also found marks similar to these in the first 2 books, more evidence to say this is just a printing/binding mistake.

[AlCaponeXB]

[CoffeeJedi]

i've been thinking about this... but i realized something:

the books don't exist

none of the characters could hide a barcode in a book that doesn't exist to them... the books exist in real life of course, but they detail events that occur in-game, hundreds of years from now, so the books can't exist to the characters

i guess that means that to them, the url never showed up in a video game trailer, because in the world of i love bees, there is no game called Halo at all