I would have, or at least should have, been pretty easy to just remove it, so yeah, I think so.

: Who's to say there aren't a million other things besides mp functionality
: they need months and months to polish? Maybe they just want to stick
: to the fall release tradition. Maybe they're evil and enjoy hanging the
: carrot in front of our noses as they wring their hands and smile.
: Plus we have a great mega-Halo to keep the average Halo fan busy
: for a year and the super fan busy for years.

: I also think 343 should give access to the a handful of the top Halo forgers
: beforehand to forge maps in H5.

The chances of this happening are really small, but it could be a cool thing for them to do.

: They should do this not to have more pre-forged maps available at
: launch (ala Uncaged), but to make original maps based off the forgers' ideas.

This will never, ever happen. I would have doubts about them even including the Forged maps in the game.