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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)

There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it

If I'm not mistaken, Halo First Strike covers Red team's ground op, and also, makes no mention of the PoA.

  • 10.05.2010 11:16 AM PDT

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.

  • 10.05.2010 11:32 AM PDT

On hiding dead bodies:
Posted by: Psuedo
Posted by: teh Chaz
Inside another dead body. It's the last place they'll look
A 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]

  • 10.05.2010 11:41 AM PDT

Yes I'm aware but I just don't see how it's possible. Plus, take into account Carter's words during the beginning cutscene of Long Night of Solace. "So all we need is orbit-capable transport and the single most expensive piece of equipment made by man?" They wouldn't have even needed the Sabre in the first place if they could have just hopped aboard the nearest Pelican and blasted off into orbit.

  • 10.05.2010 11:54 AM PDT

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I hope that somehow the writes can accept the new canon and adapt it into their books, however some of fall of reach was encorporated

  • 10.05.2010 11:59 AM PDT

There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it

I would think that a Longsword could break atmosphere, it did in Halo CE

  • 10.05.2010 12:20 PM PDT

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Posted by: ExO_EPIC
If I'm not mistaken, Halo First Strike covers Red team's ground op, and also, makes no mention of the PoA.


That's because it got rectoned. Essentially the last third of The Fall of Reach pertaining to the actual battle along with the first chapter of First Strike prior to the Red team remnants reaching Castle Base have been overwritten by Halo:Reach.

The greater significance of the middle third of The Fall of Reach has also been greatly reduced (keyword: significance, the battle of Sigma Octanus IV can be safely assumed to have progressed the same way) thanks to the plot device installed in Halo:Reach that credits the Forerunner Artifact under Sword Base as the primarily source of Halo's coordinates.

[Edited on 10.05.2010 12:25 PM PDT]

  • 10.05.2010 12:24 PM PDT

The PoA, Master Chief and cortana were never on Reach while the Plant was under attack period.

Bungie made a good game and Eric Nylund made great books. They are two different stories all together and no matter how hard you try to make them fit you can't period.

  • 10.05.2010 12:24 PM PDT

There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it


Posted by: JARHEAD POOLEE
The PoA, Master Chief and cortana were never on Reach while the Plant was under attack period.

Bungie made a good game and Eric Nylund made great books. They are two different stories all together and no matter how hard you try to make them fit you can't period.


Thanks to Bungie.

This is my major complaint with Hollywood and how they butcher written works of art. They "base" a movie on a book, only to make a 180, and go a completely different direction than the book. Yeah, done for time purposes, and supposedly for entertainment, but still.

Yeah they are two tales of the same story, and the events dont line up at all, like I said, lazy on Bungie's part. Esp. since they wouldn't have had to change the game much to make it line up with the book.

[Edited on 10.05.2010 12:33 PM PDT]

  • 10.05.2010 12:33 PM PDT

On hiding dead bodies:
Posted by: Psuedo
Posted by: teh Chaz
Inside another dead body. It's the last place they'll look
A corpse within a corpse.
CORPSEPTION.
Win.


Posted by: trapezoid
Yes I'm aware but I just don't see how it's possible. Plus, take into account Carter's words during the beginning cutscene of Long Night of Solace. "So all we need is orbit-capable transport and the single most expensive piece of equipment made by man?" They wouldn't have even needed the Sabre in the first place if they could have just hopped aboard the nearest Pelican and blasted off into orbit.
The value for escape velocity (on Earth is 17,500mph) is derived from the fact that by the time it makes orbit, it now longer powers itself, and that ridiculously high speed is in order to overcome the decelerating forces produced by gravity and the friction of the atmosphere.

Pelicans and other aircraft in the Haloverse presumably are able to keep engines fired throughout the orbit-breaking sequence - the tiniest amount of acceleration, even 0.000001ms^-2, means that all decelerating forces have been overcome, meaning a much lower velocity is required. It has also been described that (at least Pelicans) escape orbit by flying in spirals, instead of straight up, easing their ascent.

As for 'orbit capable transport', not sure why he bothered saying that. Poor setup for the 'need' for a Sabre, a Pelican would have suited their purposes just fine. Sabre was required probably because they were taking on a supercarrier, and needed firepower.

[Edited on 10.05.2010 12:42 PM PDT]

  • 10.05.2010 12:41 PM PDT

Banned and proud of it.

-9/14/10. The day Bungie ruined the Halo canon.

9/14/10. The day Nobody gave a -blam!-.

  • 10.05.2010 1:53 PM PDT


Posted by: anton1792
Posted by: PendragonE01
Just because they base all of their technology off the forerunners tech doesn't mean they lack either intuition or science.

Yes, it does. Your statement is also a paradox.

They are mentioned everywhere as being imitative, which is the polar opposite of intuition. They are mutually exclusive ideals!

As for what you said, it is a paradox in that sense. You say they base all thier technology off of Forerunner, and then say that they have intuition. Despite the lore saying otherwise to what you have just said (but ignoreing even that for now), if they base everything off of Forerunner, where, exactly, have they had to think for themselves? That is what intuition is, thinking for yourself. They have not had to think for themselves, therefore have not intuition. The fact that they have adopted no such practice for over 3000 years suggests that they have no proper scientific foundation.

Also, the Huragok do most of the work behind closed doors. Contact Harvest tells you this. The Covenant species do not and need not know how anything works exactly because they have the Huragok for that. Also, in all that awareness, you would not say what you say if you knew just how complicated the Mathematics is for certain phenomenon mentioned in Halo that also happen to exist in real life. You do not just pull this stuff out your ass.


In Contact:Harvest when Lighter than Some (or was it Lighter than Most, I forget) created a chopper out of a Spirit (he thought he was making a plow), just who exactly was he imitating? And don't forget, no one told him to make a plow. He was told to fix the Spirit. He had been thinking (A Hugarok thinking?) about the plight of the humans on Harvest and decided they needed plows. I'm not aware of a single instance in the Halo Universe where Forunner technology is used for plows.

When the Brutes decided the chopper would work better as a weapon than a plow, who were they imitating?

We here in America said the same things about the Japanese and the Chinese for decades, yet that was never true. To say that all the species that contrived the Covenant never had a single intuitive thought in 3000 years is preposterous. I believe it is fair to say that, as a whole, the Covenant is imitative, but to say that there was never an individual that had the capacity to come up with a new idea is just insane.

This strict interpretation of established Halo Canon is the heart of the debate here, in my opinion. The "writings" say that the Covenant are imitative, therefore intuition is simply not possible for any individual in the Covenant?

When the strong wind comes, the Oak tree will break and die, and the Willow tree will bend and live.

I understand that tripping Bungie up using their own words is fun and exciting, but inflexibility is not always the best solution.

  • 10.05.2010 2:01 PM PDT


Posted by: Computerexpert3
-9/14/10. The day Bungie ruined the Halo canon.

9/14/10. The day Nobody gave a -blam!-.


People discussing this subject don't care what you think.

Back on topic, Simple reiteration WHEN the PoA was on Reach is the issue not IF it was.

The books do not discuss Cortana ever being removed from Chief, not to say she couldn't have been, since PoA was already gone it doesn't help support the break. Order of plot points.

1) Training
2) PoA Departure
3) Attack on Reach
4) PoA Returns

I've missed alot of content, and I remember a subject of missing MAC guns. Was there a solid theory for this or just that perhaps we didn't see them? Wasn't the Corvette at the end of Sword Base taken out by an orbital MAC gun?

  • 10.05.2010 2:02 PM PDT

On hiding dead bodies:
Posted by: Psuedo
Posted by: teh Chaz
Inside another dead body. It's the last place they'll look
A corpse within a corpse.
CORPSEPTION.
Win.

Posted by: Stardriver 1
In Contact:Harvest when Lighter than Some (or was it Lighter than Most, I forget) created a chopper out of a Spirit (he thought he was making a plow), just who exactly was he imitating? And don't forget, no one told him to make a plow. He was told to fix the Spirit. He had been thinking (A Hugarok thinking?) about the plight of the humans on Harvest and decided they needed plows. I'm not aware of a single instance in the Halo Universe where Forunner technology is used for plows.
He was imitating JOTUN Heavy Industries. He knew humans had/used machines such as the one he built, which was a peace offering after he killed a human to save Dabab. Let's not forget that like the Brutes below, Engineers are not Covenant proper.

When the Brutes decided the chopper would work better as a weapon than a plow, who were they imitating?You're being a bit fervent in your definition of 'imitative' - this is a minor innovation, but Tartarus merely noted how the wheel was made of sharp blades, and would make a 'fearsome steed'. It's also wise to point out Brutes aren't true Covenant. Brutes had only very recently been accepted into the Covenant by 2525, and still had much of their original society.

[Edited on 10.05.2010 3:07 PM PDT]

  • 10.05.2010 2:26 PM PDT

I started up the heated debate on whether the SPARTAN-II in the cryo tube near the end of Reach is really Linda.
I created the Moa XING avatar pic.
Also I earned the All Star nameplate with this submission to Week 14 All Stars http://www.bungie.net/images/News/Inline11/bwu_0415/art/likea boss.jpg

The Fall of Reach was rereleased earlier this year with just 20+ pages of new content and no changes at all. But yet those new changes are talking about Halo: Reach, and Halo Legends.
I'm confused with Halo: Reach right now. Bungie can change the canon up but it seems like they only changed up the evens surrounding Reach.
Hopefully the Fall of Reach comic will fix up the canon.

  • 10.05.2010 3:52 PM PDT

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

Posted by: Stardriver 1
I do not doubt that occasionally someone may have an idea, such as "Make our ships invisible." However, who actually does that? I could say "We need to make an FTL drive." However, just because I have said that does not make it so. Someone has to develop it.

The Covenant are described as not having successful reversed-engineered their discoveries due to a lack of knowledge of how the technology works. As a result, it takes them centuries to make technological advancements. The Huragok do most of the work, and are still largely imitative. Lighter than Some built the choppers using parts that already existed and using a design that he had already seen. He did not purely invent the idea in his head. Therefore, making these ideas a reality is difficult and time consuming for them because they have nothing to copy. Sometimes it may even be impossible, because the scientific knowledge required does not exist. If it did, then nothing would stop them, and they would have won.

That is how "silent slipspace drives", if that is how they got into Epsilon Eridani, does not fit with the Covenant theme because how do they understand what goes on during slipspace transitions. So how did they do this?

Reach has multiple advancements that appear to be very sophisticated occur simultaneously. Halsey comments in her journal saying that she doubts the Covenants superior intelligence, and we know this; we are told that and it is a believable theme.

If the Covenant could just pull endgame technology and ideas out their asses then how did Humanity win? If there is one Supercarrier there, then what is to stop there from being 100 other Covenant vessels hiding there, on multiple Human core worlds? What is to stop them from sitting there for weeks spying on communications to find out the location of every colony and then strike decisively using those methods?

  • 10.05.2010 4:01 PM PDT
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CoD is a good game, even if the Halo series are better in some aspects. Anyone who insults either is just bad in that game. Grow up.

Adding to Anton: The Covenant are imitative, partly because they believed any alterations made to the Forerunner technology is heresy. Hell, they were even reluctant at first to study the Dreadnought because they were afraid the Oracle would consider it a heresy like they did.

Also, in First Strike, it is described the the Covenant DID NOT know how to perform slipspace jumps in/out of the orbit of a planet. In fact, Cortana was the first to use such a technique. A Covenant AI "copied" it and sent it to the Covenant fleet. Btw, the AI was also constructed weirdly, not the way that human AIs were. It was in a way more rampant and...dumb.

  • 10.05.2010 6:25 PM PDT

how can the POA not be on reach? it could of gone down to reach after the spartans Dropped off, and cheif off go to azod pick the second half of COrtana up, Jump back into space, which apparently bungie looked into to see how it would actually lift off, all you need to do is connect that up to the books, POA picks chief and linda up they jump, Red team jumps to reach and there we go, anyway if ou dont like how theyve treated canon, just believe how you want it. and about the ODP on reach, there was 20 of them, we were on the other half of reach, and reach is massive, also chances are the giant super carrier destroyed some or some covenant destroyed some, before we were in space.

[Edited on 10.05.2010 6:41 PM PDT]

  • 10.05.2010 6:36 PM PDT

Signatures are for squares.

Speaking of the comic, when is the Hardback supposed to be released? Anything the comic fixes should be addressed in this thread. And any further breaks should also belong here because it pertains to Reach.

  • 10.05.2010 8:19 PM PDT
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Posted by: privet caboose
Speaking of the comic, when is the Hardback supposed to be released? Anything the comic fixes should be addressed in this thread. And any further breaks should also belong here because it pertains to Reach.
Amazon.com has it listed for March.

  • 10.05.2010 8:40 PM PDT

@JosephBiwald
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Great to know, Does anyone know when 343i is releasing their new Halo books?
Posted by: xXFatal v1
Posted by: privet caboose
Speaking of the comic, when is the Hardback supposed to be released? Anything the comic fixes should be addressed in this thread. And any further breaks should also belong here because it pertains to Reach.
Amazon.com has it listed for March.

  • 10.05.2010 9:00 PM PDT
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^ I don't, no.

  • 10.05.2010 9:13 PM PDT

ok, game canon> book canon.
The argument about the SPARTAN III's ages is a micro-error. The MAC Cannons may have been offline/different orbital pattern/destroyed or whatever.
The idea of reach falling in a day, well, thats difficult. I guess you could consider the first waves faced like a recon force, and the planets "1 day fall" being a reference to when the main covenant forces arrived, pwned some noobs, and glassed the planet.

  • 10.05.2010 9:34 PM PDT
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  • Exalted Legendary Member

Not that I disagree with you necessarily here, but to play devil's advocate and keep the gears grinding on this to maybe come up with workable ideas. Suppose the Covenant couldn't come up with this game ending tech as some are calling it, but got it from Forerunner tech. If they are as dumb as people are saying (which is a little racist to paint them all that way :)... Also the civil war the Prophets had over wether or not to mess with their sacred technologies were lost due to forerunner tech being superior in space. The ones NOT reverse engineering the tech did have space travel and probably weren't totally stupid, anywho, not my main wheel turner here) maybe they just never had the idea to use it in this way until now. Reach was a big deal to them evidentally, and the Covenant don't USUALLY like to take the sneaky way of doing things, although clearly when the Prophets deman, the Elites will disregard their honor. Another possibility is that they either didn't have the tech engineered for this until now at this late into the war, thanks to more forerunner discoveries, OR they only had enough forerunner tech to create this one amazon spire cloaking thing that was this good and they were saving it for a very important task(perhaps they thought Reach could be our home world and decided here was the place to use it. Perhaps these don't fit so well, just trying to throw out some constructive possibilities here.

Posted by: anton1792
Posted by: Stardriver 1
I do not doubt that occasionally someone may have an idea, such as "Make our ships invisible." However, who actually does that? I could say "We need to make an FTL drive." However, just because I have said that does not make it so. Someone has to develop it.

The Covenant are described as not having successful reversed-engineered their discoveries due to a lack of knowledge of how the technology works. As a result, it takes them centuries to make technological advancements. The Huragok do most of the work, and are still largely imitative. Lighter than Some built the choppers using parts that already existed and using a design that he had already seen. He did not purely invent the idea in his head. Therefore, making these ideas a reality is difficult and time consuming for them because they have nothing to copy. Sometimes it may even be impossible, because the scientific knowledge required does not exist. If it did, then nothing would stop them, and they would have won.

That is how "silent slipspace drives", if that is how they got into Epsilon Eridani, does not fit with the Covenant theme because how do they understand what goes on during slipspace transitions. So how did they do this?

Reach has multiple advancements that appear to be very sophisticated occur simultaneously. Halsey comments in her journal saying that she doubts the Covenants superior intelligence, and we know this; we are told that and it is a believable theme.

If the Covenant could just pull endgame technology and ideas out their asses then how did Humanity win? If there is one Supercarrier there, then what is to stop there from being 100 other Covenant vessels hiding there, on multiple Human core worlds? What is to stop them from sitting there for weeks spying on communications to find out the location of every colony and then strike decisively using those methods?


[Edited on 10.05.2010 10:01 PM PDT]

  • 10.05.2010 9:54 PM PDT
  • gamertag: An0nz
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CoD is a good game, even if the Halo series are better in some aspects. Anyone who insults either is just bad in that game. Grow up.


Posted by: like 20 wizards
ok, game canon> book canon.
The argument about the SPARTAN III's ages is a micro-error. The MAC Cannons may have been offline/different orbital pattern/destroyed or whatever.
The idea of reach falling in a day, well, thats difficult. I guess you could consider the first waves faced like a recon force, and the planets "1 day fall" being a reference to when the main covenant forces arrived, pwned some noobs, and glassed the planet.

99% of people who would say game canon> book canon have not read the books. What you don't realize is that up until now, all the books fit in perfectly with the previous installments of games. Some unanswered questions, but definitely fits. Halo Reach bludgeoned its way in and just left a gaping hole in the entire story line. But that's another story.
Your first 2 arguments are valid, albeit the second being less so. However, Reach was described to have been destroyed and glassed in one day in the book. Halo Reach dragged out the entire event to a few weeks, which raises MANY questions. For example...where the hell were the other Spartan IIs? They were defending the generators in the books, but the story in the books lasted one single day. So if Bungie want to stretch the entire battle, what exactly were these Spartan IIs doing?

Spartan IIs were just as capable as Noble Team, if not more, and not to mention there was at least 20 of them on Reach. So why would you give the mission exclusively to the team of 5 Spartan IIIs+1 spartan II if you have 20 other Spartan IIs?

And that's just one question that now goes unanswered.

  • 10.05.2010 11:06 PM PDT