- JDYeash937 MkII
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- Exalted Legendary Member
On hiding dead bodies:
Posted by: Psuedo
Posted by: teh Chaz
Inside another dead body. It's the last place they'll lookA corpse within a corpse.
CORPSEPTION.Win.
Posted by: StealthSlasher2
Just going on a assumption filled theory side here, but I believe the Autumn on the ground and the events surrounding the Pillar of Autumn level fill in the blanks as to what happened to the remainder of the Spartan IIs aside from Red Beta team given the new canon space. The expanding of battle to an entire month makes the generator defense and space op illogical given the time frame of the battle's progression, the date of Operation Red Flag's briefing, and the Autumn's launch.
For a long while I wondered what the remainder of the Spartan IIs were doing from the time the briefing was over up until the Autumn launch. Now of course there was the Lone Wolf mission that takes place after PoA that has several dead Spartans about along with the Spartan II in cryo on the Autumn both of which I've dismissed as just simply as easter eggs of no consequence. While I still take up the stance that at this time there is no current relevant concrete canon proof that confirms if the Spartan II in cryo aboard the Autumn is Chief or Linda, the appearance of Spartans in Lone Wolf makes sense to me now. They are the Spartan IIs (along with any additional unknown Spartan III members), and they were there to protect the Autumn on the ground and were unable to extract themselves.
As I was playing through PoA I noticed that literally right under the Autumn there is a massive battle raging on. Inversely once Lone Wolf started, a simple look behind and upwards shows the now empty dry dock where the Autumn once was.
Given how the Autumn was stuck in that drydock and vulnerable to ground forces from that angle, it makes perfect logical sense to send out the Spartan IIs along with whatever additional forces were available to stop the Covenant from establishing a position from which to bombard the Autumn from. The task of defending the SMAC generators from the books has become switched over to defending the Autumn. It's a much more relevant objective at this point in the battle. How they would be left behind was also explained in the PoA level. Keyes had started the launch sequence for the Autumn and there was no abort. It created a viable scenario that prevented the Spartans from being extracted (assuming they could be in the first place) and aboard the Autumn as it lifted off. We already know that the Autumn launched too quickly for an additional Pelican to be sent out to attempt retrieval for Noble 6, so it could be assumed the same could be said of the others below.
Now the battle goes from being a defensive hold out to pure survival, and after all is said and done the remainder of Red team that managed to disengage from that skirmish eventually reached Castle Base (another wild assumption is that the towering mountain in the distance from where the battle took place and where Noble 6's helmet rests could be Menachite Mountain) thus all we know is back on track.
Of course it doesn't quite explain the discrepancy as to how/why the Chief was onboard the Autumn along with Linda's "dead" body. There is the possibility that after the Chief delivered Cortana to Keyes the battle to defend the Autumn was already raging, and Keyes may have felt that the Chief would not have made much of a difference in the battle or that it was too risky for him to deploy with the launch countdown already started and the defense teams still too busy for an extraction....
Anyway that's my two cents...This idea is fine (I myself wondered about the battle under the PoA, and never saw for myself the dead SPARTANS in Lone Wolf randomly).
But still, PoA needn't be on Reach. If it wasn't and you just had to hold out for two pelicans, I would have been A-OK with that canon-wise, because it fits.
I can't remember if they gave a reason for its presence, but the Pelican that gets shot down could be the Pelican sent to extract the splinter of Red Team defending the orbital generators.
Seriously, just edit out PoA and leave in the Pelicans, and the level 'PoA' makes sense. Even the Battlecruiser can stay in, it's the one that glassed the ODP generators in the prologue of First Strike.
I too once thought that the mountain was Menachite Mountain, but there are two good reasons why not. MM was near the equator, but Aszod (and the rest of that random Island where Noble Team fought) was nearer to one of the poles. Also, the only place Halsey could really have gone with Jun would be to CASTLE base (under MM) - Carter flies directly to Aszod, which is where the mountain in the Reach ending is, and Halsey's Pelican flies in a totally different direction.
IMO, having the PoA in Reach was a cheap reason to include 4 CE references as easter eggs (SPARTAN in a cryotube, Keyes, Cortana, and the PoA itself).
Edit the PoA visually out of the level, leave everything else alone, and it works canonically.
EDIT:Posted by: trapezoid
I think that the Pillar of Autumn could have been used to explain how Keyes got Cortana's fragment star-side, considering a Pelican or other singleship can't produce enough thrust to break atmosphere, there were no conveniently-placed orbital elevators close to the ship-breaking yards, and I doubt the UNSC had any top-secret Sabre Program launch facilities left to use as plot devices. Yes I know it breaks canon, but they wanted a cool way to explain how Keyes and Cortana made it off Reach.Pelicans can and consistently do make orbit from atmosphere, across dozens of different sources of canon. Halo 1 (well, First Strike, but it was from Halo 1) 2, 3, Reach, Wars, all of the books, and also the "Birth of a SPARTAN" ViDoc.
[Edited on 10.05.2010 11:43 AM PDT]