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This topic has moved here: Subject: Unexplainable errors in the Halo canon. (Spoilers)
  • Subject: Unexplainable errors in the Halo canon. (Spoilers)
Subject: Unexplainable errors in the Halo canon. (Spoilers)


Posted by: Jak O Bladez
Read the journal
That was a scouting force that invaded on July 24, oni kept it quiet, thats why everything we know is wrong.

Noble Team was pulled out off alpha company before they all died.

Again, oni kept it quiet Halsey comments on this many times, calling it strange etc.

Read the journal, it fixes a few things, I have no answer to the others.

A Supercarrier is not something you can keep quiet.

  • 09.17.2010 4:16 AM PDT


Posted by: Hysterical Joker

Posted by: Jak O Bladez
Read the journal
That was a scouting force that invaded on July 24, oni kept it quiet, thats why everything we know is wrong.

Noble Team was pulled out off alpha company before they all died.

Again, oni kept it quiet Halsey comments on this many times, calling it strange etc.

Read the journal, it fixes a few things, I have no answer to the others.

A Supercarrier is not something you can keep quiet.

It is when it appears in a completely deserted part of the planet.
And have you read the books?
Oni has a huge amount of control over the media.

  • 09.17.2010 4:24 AM PDT
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“Strange,” mused the Director, as they turned away, “strange to think that even in Our Ford’s day most games were played without more apparatus than a ball or two and a few sticks and perhaps a bit of netting. imagine the folly of allowing people to play elaborate games which do nothing whatever to increase consumption.”

The Black Chapter!

Posted by: Hysterical Joker
A Supercarrier is not something you can keep quiet.
I didn't notice it until it decloaked.

[Edited on 09.17.2010 4:29 AM PDT]

  • 09.17.2010 4:28 AM PDT


Posted by: Telec
Posted by: Hysterical Joker
A Supercarrier is not something you can keep quiet.
I didn't notice it until it decloaked.

Now thats a good point.

  • 09.17.2010 4:29 AM PDT
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Posted by: Telec
Posted by: Hysterical Joker
A Supercarrier is not something you can keep quiet.
I didn't notice it until it decloaked.


I believe the Covenant fleet was there the whole time, but just being cloaked - preparing to attack in a single decisive strike on August 30.

  • 09.17.2010 4:33 AM PDT
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you're naut cookin'

Posted by: manwith

Posted by: John Cage4
I agree. It is sad. There's no good reason they couldn't have just kept everything consistent.

And people who say "The games are canon and can overwrite the other stuff" are missing the point. Why not just have it all fit? It wouldn't have been that difficult.


Because we don't want to play a retelling story of tFoR and First Strike.


I don't know who "we" is, but I know that I sure as hell did want to play through both of those.

Posted by: manwith

Posted by: Telec
Posted by: Hysterical Joker
A Supercarrier is not something you can keep quiet.
I didn't notice it until it decloaked.


I believe the Covenant fleet was there the whole time, but just being cloaked - preparing to attack in a single decisive strike on August 30.


I hope people realise that 'cloaking' doesn't actually involve becoming invisible (read: TFoR, Battle of Sigma Octanus IV). An entire Covenant fleet sitting in Epsilon Eridani for more than 30 minutes, that is no doubt channelling high levels of communication, would be noticed. Whether it be radiological signatures or something simple like actually just being SEEN, they would be noticed.
And keeping an entire system quiet about something like doomsday would be over the head of even ONI.
Even if the fleet were in Slipspace, they would be seen.

  • 09.17.2010 5:39 AM PDT

Dude, it's plain obvious the devs and writers had no idea what the frell they were writing about.

A SuperCarrier exiting slipspace would be immediately pinged by UNSC monitoring stations because the damn thing is 4 kilometers long and thus has enormous tonnage weight

Only the UNSC Trafalgar is that big and heavy, but guess what, it was already in orbit above Reach. Doesn't take a genius to figure out its not a UNSC ship.

Furthermore, I still find it completely stupid that the UNSC fleet allowed the SuperCarrier to float freely for days without any engagement.

[Edited on 09.17.2010 6:10 AM PDT]

  • 09.17.2010 6:09 AM PDT
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"It's not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me"

- Batman

Posted by: privet caboose
Here is a compilation of errors that we, the universe elite, have created in light of Halo: Reach's launch. Note, that this is STILL a work in progress, and will be upgraded as new breaks are located.
While I agree with many, there are some points I think you haven't looked at correctly. Or are not looking at possible explanations.

Error: Reach was invaded on July 24th.

Proof: All Halo media has always stated Reach fell in one day, and that day was August 30th.

Sources:Ghosts of Oynx, First Strike, Fall of Reach.

Fair enough, although Bungie had to do this in order to make the game work. This is a good point by you and I agree with it.

Error: Alpha Company was wiped out completely during Operation: PROMETHEUS in 2537. Carter, Emile, and Jun should not be alive.

Proof: Halo: Ghosts of Onyx goes into quite a bit of detail on Operation: PROMETHEUS. Spartan-III Alpha Company (comprised of 300 Spartans) were sent to K7-49 on a mission to destroy plasma reactors the Covenant were using to liquefy metallurgical components.

The operation was a success, but it is explicitly stated that it cost the lives of every Spartan-III on the asteroid because they got cut off from their Calypso-class Exfiltration crafts and completely lost their unit cohesion.

Halo Reach chooses to ignore this. Carter (A-259), Emile (A-239), and Jun (A-266) are a part of Noble Team when they should have been dead years ago; Bungie have given us no explanation on how they escaped at all.

Sources:
- Ghosts of Onyx, page 83-87.
- Halo Reach

Several Spartan III were not involved or did not die, just because they haven't told you that Noble team was the same, does not mean that that did not happen.

Error: ONI's actions as well as the Cole Protocol.

According to the Cole Protocol, if any Covenant Forces are detected, then all NAV bases and ships should purge their computers of information to protect Earth and the inner colonies.

Proof:If Covenant are detected on Reach on July 23rd, how is it that a month later, there are still computers with information to Earth still active? If ONI hadn't taken more than a month, than Blue team wouldn't have been deployed to the Circumference, and James wouldn't have died, and Linda wouldn't have been in a coma. Infact, they would have been on Reach with Red team.

Sources:

Pg 289 of The Fall of Reach gives information on the purging of Info not complete.
http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/United_Nations_Space_Command_Emerg ency_Priority_Order_098831A-1
I agree with this.

Error: Carter, Emile, and Jun's age.
Carter is born in 2520. He was 11 years old when Alpha Company began their training. This puts him 5 years above the previously stated age, and it makes no sense at all. Why would they have an 11 year old on the same training regime as a 4 year old? It's too large of a difference, and it's an error that can be avoiding by simply changing his birthdate. This same thing goes for Emile and Jun, who are older than 6 years old at Alpha training.

Proof: Page 69(I'm doing this by memory, I may be wrong.) of Ghosts of Oynx states that all of Alpha Company was comprised of 4, 5, and 6 year old children that he was going to have to forge into the best warriors humanity has ever seen.

Source: Ghosts of Oynx, page 69.
Maybe he was one of the first Spartan III's made in secrete. We know Noble team is very special.

Error: Lack of Orbital MAC's.

Proof: Reach had a number of Orbital MAC's that were used in the battle of Reach. They were present on August 30th, so they should have been present during the mission "Long Night of Solace" in Halo: Reach. Had they been present, they Jorge wouldn't have died. Where were they?

Source: Fall of Reach, First Strike, Halo: Reach
Agreed, although I think an easy explanation could be provided by Bungie.

Error: Pillar of Autumn on Reach.

Proof During the final level of Halo: Reach, the Pillar of Autumn is on the planet, and isn't in space, preparing for the Prophet mission. This COMPLETELY destroys much of Halo's canon. If the ship wasn't in space, than the Spartans of Red Team would have never jumped to the planet, meaning that the 4 Spartans who died, would have still been alive. Which could have hanged the outcome of the battle. PLUS, the space op to destroy the Circumference's NAV data wouldn't have happened. So Chief, James, and Linda had no reason to NOT be part of Red team. So the chief wouldn't have been on the Autumn, so Halo: CE wouldn't have happened.

Why schedule a mission to capture a prophet, when there's a full scale invasion of Humanities second most important planet?

Sources: Halo: Reach, Fall of Reach
The ship could have been in space at the start then landed before leaving after being asked to. It is a possibility.

  • 09.17.2010 6:55 AM PDT
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on the whole thing about the piller of autom not on reach when it left at the end of the game it did not space jump to halo right away meaning there was plenty of time for red team to jump to the planet

  • 09.17.2010 7:03 AM PDT

Attention whores piss me off.

Has anyone considered that the whole Slipspace Crystal might have something to do with the date and time inconsistencies? I know that doesn't really explain any of the other canon problems but it could be an explanation to why the dates are so different.

  • 09.17.2010 7:11 AM PDT
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“Strange,” mused the Director, as they turned away, “strange to think that even in Our Ford’s day most games were played without more apparatus than a ball or two and a few sticks and perhaps a bit of netting. imagine the folly of allowing people to play elaborate games which do nothing whatever to increase consumption.”

The Black Chapter!

Posted by: A Puzzled Mind
Dude, it's plain obvious the devs and writers had no idea what the frell they were writing about.
You've got this the wrong way round - the devs define what happened. If you disagree, then it is because you don't know what you're writing about.

Furthermore, I still find it completely stupid that the UNSC fleet allowed the SuperCarrier to float freely for days without any engagement.well, in case you hadn't noticed, but they didn't actually see it there.

A SuperCarrier exiting slipspace would be immediately pinged by UNSC monitoring stations because the damn thing is 4 kilometers long and thus has enormous tonnage weightwe don't actually know anything about its approach. Given that it was capable of sitting above the planet completely undetected, I'm going to wager that it had some awesome prototype stealth system on in. In which case it may well have been able to slip in undetected. Lets say it does the jump to behind a nearby planet and then flies closer under stealth.

  • 09.17.2010 8:58 AM PDT
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Posted by: Jak O Bladez
Read the journal
That was a scouting force that invaded on July 24, oni kept it quiet, thats why everything we know is wrong.

Noble Team was pulled out off alpha company before they all died.

Again, oni kept it quiet Halsey comments on this many times, calling it strange etc.

Read the journal, it fixes a few things, I have no answer to the others.


This.

But yeah PoH can't be explained...

  • 09.17.2010 9:05 AM PDT

Mac OS X > PC Windows 7......wait, everything about a Mac > PC

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but wasn't the PoA outfitted at an orbital space station, and not rated for in atmosphere transition?

  • 09.17.2010 9:11 AM PDT

<3 Auntie Dot

My Two Cents:
Also Games are higher cannon than Novels

Error: Reach was invaded on July 24th.
[Not an Invasion force, merely a Recon/Sabotage (1 A. Carrier and less than 10 Corvettes) and possibly mining mission by the covenant to recover the artifact under Sword Base, Regret did the same thing and reached Earth with merely 15 ships (2 A. Carriers 13 CCS) since he didn´t know it was Human Homeworld; as far as we know the Covenant knew Reach had an Artifact, but they probably did not know it was a Human Fortress hence a Recon team was sent]

Error: Alpha Company was wiped out completely during Operation: PROMETHEUS in 2537. Carter, Emile, and Jun should not be alive.
[The Best candidates of Alpha Company where (or at least implied) pulled out before Operation: PROMETHEUS; pretty much in the same manner B312, B320, B170 (implied) where taken out of Beta before TORPEDO, Note Headhunters got pulled out of their companies too]

Error: Carter, Emile, and Jun's age.
Carter is born in 2520. He was 11 years old when Alpha Company began their training. This puts him 5 years above the previously stated age, and it makes no sense at all. Why would they have an 11 year old on the same training regime as a 4 year old? It's too large of a difference, and it's an error that can be avoiding by simply changing his birthdate. This same thing goes for Emile and Jun, who are older than 6 years old at Alpha training.
[I don´t see the error here, they could have made an exception since this 3 Spartans got the genes to become S-IIs, in order to correctly augment em they had to train em at this age, not older, they just didn´t wanted to waste anymore time, which would also explain why Kurt himself said Noble was made out of possible candidates for S-II program and by this I mean that they got the genetic match and properties of S-IIs]

Error: Lack of Orbital MAC's.
[In game dialogue; Kat do says they got at least 4 ODPs that could easily destroy the Corvette over Sword; Carter tells her that they don´t out of fear they could damage Sword Base (or something like that) and as a matter of fact an Orbital Station do destroy the Corvette over Sword in the end of the mission; the fact that they did not used the ODPs against the Corvettes in atmosphere and the A. Carrier in orbit was perhaps due to the classified nature of the Covenant being on Reach or because ONI wanted to gather more info about the Covenant there, which would explain why they didn´t followed the Cole Protocol]

Error: Pillar of Autumn on Reach.

[Was getting ready in Atmosphere while waiting for Noble to deliver the missing Cortana shard, then went to orbit to link with main Fleet, deployed Red Team to destroy the nav data from the Circumference, etc.]

*As for Halsey not knowing about S-IIIs existance before Onyx (which I had read being said a lot), well in her journal it´s implied she believes that the Spartans from Noble team are actually S-IIs just not "hers"

  • 09.17.2010 9:13 AM PDT

Dianna Agron is the epitome of perfection.

Quinntology.

I'm confused how a Covenant vessel can get into the atmosphere completely undetected with the presence of hundreds of probes, dozens of MAC guns, people and EYESIGHT (it's a huge purple ship...), and dozens of other variables.

[Edited on 09.17.2010 10:31 AM PDT]

  • 09.17.2010 10:28 AM PDT
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agreed

  • 09.17.2010 11:13 AM PDT

Non facete nobis calcitrare vestrum perinaeum

I wish Bungie would give a timeline of the events surrounding Reach, to clarify these canon errors. In the past they said they would explain everything, but I won't get my hopes up yet.


Just give us the Halo Bible please.

  • 09.17.2010 11:17 AM PDT

"Find where the liar hides, so that I may place my boot between his gums!" - Rtas 'Vadum

Posted by: Killed by Pasta
I'm confused how a Covenant vessel can get into the atmosphere completely undetected with the presence of hundreds of probes, dozens of MAC guns, people and EYESIGHT (it's a huge purple ship...), and dozens of other variables.

It was cloaked apparently.

I was not aware that Covenant did that to thier ships. They are portraying the Covenant as being too intuitive now. If the Covenant had that ability, then ship-to-ship battles would be instant loses for the UNSC every time. I mean, the weaponry in Reach does not seem polarized as described by Halsey. Realistically, it would obliterate UNSC forces on the ground easily. Plasma launchers, tactical shield towers, trans-location devices, Radar jammers. It sort of defeats the image of an imitative enemy who cannot create its own ideas for technology and apply them properly, who also rely on brute force to win rather than clever strategy and tactics.

We also have to assume that the Covenant somehow has perfected the process of a silent slipstream transition (Intuition and science that they do not have), otherwise that AC would have been detected.

With this technology, they could cloak an entire Armada, silently slip in-system undetected, use radar jamming to prevent further detection, position themselves and then decisively slit the UNSCs metaphorical throat.

  • 09.17.2010 11:28 AM PDT

Fortune favors the Bold

But here is the thing. Even if the game has rights over canon, which i agree it does, then it screws up almost half of the halo novels. I don;t mind bungie explaining a whole new story of reach, but they are messing with stories that have already been placed down.

For example, Dr. Halsley isn't with the spartan IIs but instead with a Spartan III. Thus she never finds the atifact crystal. Master Chief wouldn't have picked her up too. Also if it wasn't for Master Chief going to Reach, they would have still had the covenant super carrier. So Basically Fall of Reach, First Strike, and Ghosts of Onyx are all non canon. I am glad half of the novels, which are the best, are no longer important. This is awesome

  • 09.17.2010 12:23 PM PDT
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Posted by: Achronos
It isn't our shiznit anymore.

Posted by: anton1792
Posted by: Killed by Pasta
I'm confused how a Covenant vessel can get into the atmosphere completely undetected with the presence of hundreds of probes, dozens of MAC guns, people and EYESIGHT (it's a huge purple ship...), and dozens of other variables.

It was cloaked apparently.

I was not aware that Covenant did that to thier ships. They are portraying the Covenant as being too intuitive now. If the Covenant had that ability, then ship-to-ship battles would be instant loses for the UNSC every time. I mean, the weaponry in Reach does not seem polarized as described by Halsey. Realistically, it would obliterate UNSC forces on the ground easily. Plasma launchers, tactical shield towers, trans-location devices, Radar jammers. It sort of defeats the image of an imitative enemy who cannot create its own ideas for technology and apply them properly, who also rely on brute force to win rather than clever strategy and tactics.

We also have to assume that the Covenant somehow has perfected the process of a silent slipstream transition (Intuition and science that they do not have), otherwise that AC would have been detected.

With this technology, they could cloak an entire Armada, silently slip in-system undetected, use radar jamming to prevent further detection, position themselves and then decisively slit the UNSCs metaphorical throat.

Maybe. Maybe the energy required to cloak a gigantic ship that well does damage to another part of the ship that renders it useless for days until repair or some other reason that wouldn't allow the Covenant to mass produce this technology.

  • 09.17.2010 12:34 PM PDT

Signatures are for squares.

Also, I HAVE read Halsey's Journal, and it does fix quite a few errors.

Infact, it fixes:

How Halsey interacted with Noble before the events at Oynx(There were rival groups to the Spartan project)

The number of Spartan II's who survived augmentation(she looked into surgeries to "repair" them. I believe this is where BLACK TEAM, and other spartans came from.)

How Cortana was on Reach and the Pillar of Autumn at the same time.(She spit her into two parts.)

But, the Journal also solidifies MANY of my previous theories.

1. You CANNOT receive the augmentations if you are in puberty, or finished with it. This caused all the deaths with ORION, and thus, Carter/Emile/Jun's age is solidified as a canon error. As they would have been in puberty when they received the augments.

2. The Spartan II Class II's never existed. Halsey makes no mention of them in her journal, and rather focuses on "repairing" the Washouts of the Spartan II program, like Rene, Kirk, and Fahjad.

But still, the errors in the OP have still gone unexplained.

  • 09.17.2010 12:40 PM PDT

You can't spell 'Slaughter' without 'Laughter'.


Posted by: manwith

Posted by: John Cage4
I agree. It is sad. There's no good reason they couldn't have just kept everything consistent.

And people who say "The games are canon and can overwrite the other stuff" are missing the point. Why not just have it all fit? It wouldn't have been that difficult.


Because we don't want to play a retelling story of tFoR and First Strike.


I'm not saying play through those stories (although that would've been better than Reach was). You could still have the Noble team thing, just change a few glaring errors. Have the Pillar of Autumn in orbit and make a 2nd space mission to deliver Cortana. Halsey's journal does a nice enough job of addressing a lot of the issues, they just could have made a few changes and had things fit better.

  • 09.17.2010 12:50 PM PDT

Dianna Agron is the epitome of perfection.

Quinntology.

Posted by: anton1792

To to sound like a jerk, but none of that is possible. It would destroy what we know about the Covenant, not to mention they could have screwed Earth without a casualty.

  • 09.17.2010 12:53 PM PDT
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It is quite a disappointment to see how things have come out, but I think that we need to wait and see if any explanations will come. Halo Reach was a great game, and I appreciated the story on its' on context.

After all, we did wait in the dark for several years over the discrepancies in the numbers of Spartan 2's due to Halsey's statement in TFOR, and that was easily explained in the journal.

Maybe there is yet to be revealed information on ONI's involvement in keeping the invasion of reach in the dark or "contained" until it's ultimate fall on August 30th, maybe there was more technology the Covenant had just for the battle of reach (transporter tech, cloaking tech, etc) yet was made irrelevant due to the battles of First Strike...Maybe Halsey did a lot more during the days leading up to the fall of reach that could help her travel to and from sword base, chief's AI training, etc.

Maybe the Pillar of Autumn did more than we think on August 30th, and we have only received some stories on it just far.

All things can be explained..just give it time. I have faith that 343 will work to resolve these issues the best they can.

The journal helped. A lot..It could have been a lot worse....

  • 09.17.2010 1:08 PM PDT
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Uh, half of these are explainable with a fair bit of retconning and the occasional bit of thinking.

Hell, the notion of some S-IIIs being pulled out of their company goes back to Halo: Evolutions. Headhunters much?

The MAC guns are probably strewn about the space wreckage you see in the distance during LNos.



The length of the Battle of Reach is a retcon, no doubt about it. Still, longer battles being more epic; the game wins out.

Indeed, the Battle of Reach now has two phases. The first is the initial assault wherein the Reach fleet gets decimated, culminating in LNoS. The second is the bit when Reach falls.

Distribute the events of the latter half of the book Fall of Reach amongst these phases in a way that makes sense to you. Until we get a look at the updated Halo Story Bible, that's all we can do.

  • 09.17.2010 1:23 PM PDT