Halo 3 Easter Egg finally unearthed after 7 years

At long last, archaeologists can finally put down their tools and the ghosts of the past can be finally put to rest. One chapter of gaming history can finally be closed and all the questions of that bygone era have finally been answered. The last remaining Halo 3 Easter Egg has been found!

Easter Eggs in games have come from a long tradition of hiding messages or jokes, whether funny for everyone or just the creators, inside games. It has turned into an international pasttime and has given birth to a new gaming culture. A game within a game, some would call it, referring to those gamers who find joy in playing a game over and over again until every last egg has been discovered.

In 2012, around the time of Halo 4's birth, Bungie's Jon Cable revealed that there was one Easter egg in Halo 3 that was never found. The reason? It is only activated during a single day of the year. Cable, of course, was able to come across this knowledge through the game's source code. The gaming community, who doesn't have that access level, naturally scrambled to find this fabled beast. Now, in 2014, seven years after Halo 3 was published, that Easter Egg is hidden no more.

Credit, at least of the disclosure, goes to Halo explorers Teambeyond.net. According to the discoverers, the Easter Egg can only be seen on December 25, by pressing down the two thumbsticks during a loading screen. This will cause a wider version of the iconic Halo ring to be shown, with the words "Happy Birthday Lauren!" very lightly inscribed on the ring's surface.

This would match what Halo programmer Adrian Perez hinted in one Bungie Q&A, where he shared that he had an Easter Egg made for his wife that no one has so far found. If this is truly it, Ms. Lauren should probably be proud to have indirectly instigated one of the longest Easter Egg hunts in history. And now we can all go on with our lives in peace. Except for the fact that Bungie left one final cryptic note: You will never find them all.

SOURCE: IGN, Bungie