- mike120593
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- Fabled Legendary Member
Without me, it's just "Aweso".
Posted by: Carnage Boy
Given what we know about the geography of locations in the games, I find this theory very unlikely, interesting as it may be. The ONI Alpha Site is in downtown New Mombasa, literally just down the street from the city center.
The Ark Portal, on the other hand, is buried under the town of Voi. While Voi is relatively close to New Mombasa, there is definitely still some distance between the two cities. The road signs on the Tsavo Highway really illustrate this point, as they point out New Mombasa is 114 kilometers away. You can clearly see the entire portal from the highway, so as big as it may be, it's definitely not large enough to stretch all the way to New Mombasa and encompass the ONI Site. Furthermore, the article about New Mombasa on ODST's product page mentions that everything within 74 kilometers of Mombasa Island is referred to as "Old Mombasa", so while Mombasa has definitely grown tremendously, Voi and the Portal are still outside of what can properly be considered part of the city.
The environment is also an indicator that they aren't the same location. New Mombasa, as shown in Halo 2 and ODST, is a huge city, and even if it was destroyed to uncover the Portal, there would still be some signs around the crater that there was once a large metropolis there. In Halo 3, however, the area around the Portal is depicted largely as rural savanna. The one area around the Portal that we could think of calling urban is the factory complex in the level The Storm, but that area is part of what was once the small town of Voi, not New Mombasa.
It's an interesting theory, but the evidence seems to be against it from what I can tell.
According to this picture, you can see that one side of the Portal is clearly covered in ruins, and you can tell how large it is.
Also, this excerpt confirms that it was once under water:
"The Portal was originally both underground and submerged, lying under a massive human-made lake. By the events of Halo 3, the entire lake and the earth below had been vaporized by Covenant cruisers to unveil the Portal. "
[Edited on 06.21.2009 10:09 AM PDT]