We’re just hours away from the official public launch of the Halo: Reach beta and Bungie have certainly pulled out a lot of stops with the launch. What we’ve got to remember though is that this is still just a beta and there really is a full fledged game coming out this Fall. You can probably put money on at least one more surprise after everyone gets over their healthy portion of beta testing. Keeping this in mind, is it too crazy to suggest that Bungie might plan on putting a user-powered level editor in Reach before launch? Let’s take a look at the evidence:

*Disclaimer* This is just an observation and by no means is any of this information concrete, though I felt it’d be interesting enough to throw it out there anyway.

In the top left corner you’ve got the Game Type (Stockpile), followed by the Map Name (Sword Base), but what’s that in the bottom right corner, Bungie? Yeah sure they make Halo but having the developer name plastered over the image where other metadata lies serves no real purpose – or does it?

The fans have been lighting up the forums for a while. Could Bungie be preparing for a full-fledged map maker? And could that line of data change from “Bungie” depending on the say… the author. User-generated levels anyone? Wouldn’t that be one heck of a surprise!

I could be wrong and I’m probably reading into this a little too much, while doing so I’d love to get your thoughts on the issue – let us know what you think. Either way with E3 coming up I guess we’ll find out sooner than later (preferably the former).