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This topic has moved here: Subject: What exactly WAS Halsey's "latchkey discovery" on Reach?
  • Subject: What exactly WAS Halsey's "latchkey discovery" on Reach?
Subject: What exactly WAS Halsey's "latchkey discovery" on Reach?

I'm sorry if I missed something here, but what was the huge discovery Halsey made on the Reach Forerunner artifact that was on par with the conical bullet and slipspace drive? It couldn't have been the Halo coordinates because that was in the crystal from Cote d' Azur. So what exactly did Halsey find? Or is this just another one of Reach's many plot holes?

I was just curious because she makes such a huge deal out of it, and Carter, Emile, and Six basically died for it, so what's the big deal?

  • 04.07.2011 8:12 PM PDT

Brains beats brawn get used to it

Fear the Red Comet

Variety is the spice of life.
Long live games.
Death to all fanboys.

Presumably some supplementary data that helped Cortana decrypt the Sigma Octanus artifact's coordinates that subsequently led to Halo.

[Edited on 04.07.2011 8:22 PM PDT]

  • 04.07.2011 8:22 PM PDT

Posted by: Changsta inc
Racism isn't wrong if it's funny.

It's how they found Halo.

  • 04.07.2011 8:23 PM PDT

Brains beats brawn get used to it

Fear the Red Comet

Variety is the spice of life.
Long live games.
Death to all fanboys.


Posted by: Dustin 6047
not how they found halo. it says somewhere that cortana accidently and/or randomly popped up there after going into slipspace.


It was no accident. Keyes merely assumed that it was a random accident that they bumped into Halo as a result of a random slipspace jump. In reality Cortana directed the Autumn to Halo's (without knowing what lay there at the time) coordinates on purpose as she was curious what the Sigma Octanus artifact was pointing to.

  • 04.07.2011 8:41 PM PDT

Latchkey.

Essentially, it allowed Halsey/Cortana to 'unlock' the secrets of the artifact under SWORDBASE.

  • 04.07.2011 8:52 PM PDT

Have you seen my mind anywhere? I seem to have lost it...

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I have seen you future

Posted by: A JAR OF PICKLE
Latchkey.

Essentially, it allowed Halsey/Cortana to 'unlock' the secrets of the artifact under SWORDBASE.

Awesome! Now, remind me what that artifact did, or what it contributed to the overall story.

  • 04.07.2011 9:00 PM PDT

Seriously Oak, Ive been doing this -blam!- for 16 years, gimmie my Friggen starter Pokemon and dont call me till im the champion! ¬_¬


Posted by: StealthSlasher2

Posted by: Dustin 6047
not how they found halo. it says somewhere that cortana accidently and/or randomly popped up there after going into slipspace.


It was no accident. Keyes merely assumed that it was a random accident that they bumped into Halo as a result of a random slipspace jump. In reality Cortana directed the Autumn to Halo's (without knowing what lay there at the time) coordinates on purpose as she was curious what the Sigma Octanus artifact was pointing to.


See, i always assumed this, Cortana was the only one who knew where they were going and made it seem like an accident

Like the end of halo 3, perhaps? With the Medicent Bias Fragment claiming to "Show you them for my forgiveness" and the slipspace explosion leading to a mysterious planet :P

  • 04.08.2011 1:49 AM PDT

Bungie Pentathlon - who actually cares ?


Posted by: CTN 0452 9
Posted by: A JAR OF PICKLE
Latchkey.

Essentially, it allowed Halsey/Cortana to 'unlock' the secrets of the artifact under SWORDBASE.

Awesome! Now, remind me what that artifact did, or what it contributed to the overall story.


It allowed an avenue to be created that lead to several characters getting killed.

More I look into Reach's story the more I dislike it :(

  • 04.08.2011 1:51 AM PDT

I was under the impression that it was knowledge which was passed to Cortana, allowing her to activate/use stuff on Halo.

  • 04.08.2011 3:26 AM PDT

Posted by: RadioTubeClock
I was under the impression that it was knowledge which was passed to Cortana, allowing her to activate/use stuff on Halo.


While the nature of the Forerunner installation is never directly revealed, it is likely a part of the overall species redistribution system put in place 100,000 years ago. When questioned, Halsey says the installation contains "Knowledge. A birthright from an ancient civilization." If I were to guess (and this is based purely on supposition), I would say that the installation is some sort of regional indexing center for the Librarian.

The room in which Noble Team finds Halsey and Cortana contains a huge holographic sphere sucking in wisps of something from all angles. The sphere is either Reach or the core planet of the Ark itself. Either way, the wisps are data packets being broadcast from surrounding systems adjacent to Reach. For the Librarian's purposes, the Reach installation acts as a hub from which she could have indexed biological samples from that region of the galaxy.

I hesitate to think it is a direct portal to the Ark, like the installation found beneath New Mombasa on Earth, because of the difference in geological composition between the two planets. Whereas the western Africa site was covered in relatively soft red sandstone and flat desert, Sword Base was located in a much more primordial terrain of hard granite mountains. This would certainly not be an ideal location for a massive portal, especially if it required excavation first.

Again, this is just supposition but it's the best explanation I can come up with.

Also, in more direct response to your comment, Cortana never utilized anything on Halo until she was placed directly into the Control Room (just before the Master Chief was telported to the Library by 343 Guilty Spark). While its possible she was able to interface with Halo more easily because of her previous interaction with the Reach installation, it was the Chief who did all the button-pushing early on.

[Edited on 04.08.2011 4:37 AM PDT]

  • 04.08.2011 4:33 AM PDT
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"Time was your ally human. But now it has abandoned you. The Forerunners....have returned. And this tomb... is now yours". - The Didact

Maybe some Forerunner data that the UNSC are going to use to imrove their tech.

  • 04.08.2011 4:51 AM PDT

See my vids on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/user/Chronicler177

It was obviously something Forerunner. I think it had to do with the technology that was used to rebuild Reach 30 years later.

  • 04.08.2011 5:08 AM PDT

The ending directly states that the discovery caused the PoA to find Halo.

Compared to the rest of the game, this contradicts practically nothing in FoR.

  • 04.08.2011 5:31 AM PDT


Posted by: Mutoid Log
The ending directly states that the discovery caused the PoA to find Halo.



RAAAAAGGGEEEEE

  • 04.08.2011 5:42 AM PDT
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Deva Path


Posted by: DecepticonCobra

We are all going to get banned aren't we?


Posted by: ROBERTO jh

Posted by: Mutoid Log
The ending directly states that the discovery caused the PoA to find Halo.



RAAAAAGGGEEEEE



For some reason that doesn't add up to me.

seeing how that whole section didn't happen in the book i was under the imperssion that the coordnates were the part cortana could easily translate but the other information she couldn't.

When you put both the game and book into context it doesn't add up.

Im going to have to read that part of the book again later on today.

  • 04.08.2011 6:33 AM PDT

If you're passionate about the thing you're talking about, I'll always lend an ear.

Posted by: Mutoid Log
The ending directly states that the discovery caused the PoA to find Halo.

Compared to the rest of the game, this contradicts practically nothing in FoR.


SO erm..............

Instead of Cortana making a last minute save, using her extensive knowledge of hieroglyphs from the Covenant. To extract co-ordinates from the artifact found by Chief.

We got a pre-mediated plan in which cortana knew some sort of "forerunner" treasure were at this location.

Knowing this, the covenant will obviously pursue the POA.

So she intentionally led the covenant to "information that could change the tide of the war". Which was Halo. Knowing that a single cruiser against a covenant armada would be ineffective. They did so anyways.

While at least in the novels Cortana had indirectly led them, giving a reason that it was any territory not in UNSC space so the covenant wouldn't find another human planet and they had not suspected it would lead to a glorified weapon in which the covenant could take advantage of.

So changing a last ditch effort from escaping the covenant into the game's version of: lead the covenant enemies to the galaxy's most devastating super-weapon plot.

After-all, their were no doubts that the covies were gonna follow them. It's been mention in the novels and in the intro to Halo:CE.

Hmm... Fair trade?

*sigh. Why change something that worked into something more complex and quite frankly, stupid.

  • 04.08.2011 6:42 AM PDT

I think it's something that would allow them to get full access to forerunner computer systems.

  • 04.08.2011 1:33 PM PDT

The artifact on Reach ended up being a star map that led to Halo.

This retcons the previous implication that the star map on sigma octanus led to Halo.

It can be assumed that the sigma octanus map led to reach instead, perhaps.

  • 04.09.2011 1:21 AM PDT

Actually, Cortana didn't make a 'last minute save' using her knowledge of the Covenant language.

When examining the crystal, she noticed the glyphs matched star constellations, and knowing the Covenant were interested in it figured there was something very important there. So, when they had to make a 'blind jump' she input those coordinates instead.

That's what I remember.


Posted by: Wazooty
The artifact on Reach ended up being a star map that led to Halo.

This retcons the previous implication that the star map on sigma octanus led to Halo.

It can be assumed that the sigma octanus map led to reach instead, perhaps.


Um, it never states that. Maybe the structure on Reach provided some information about halo, but it doesn't retcon the crystal having the starmap.

I'm not getting where you get that wild assumption from.

[Edited on 04.09.2011 1:45 AM PDT]

  • 04.09.2011 1:43 AM PDT

Spartans never die... they just revert to last checkpoint.

Something to do with Onyx?

  • 04.09.2011 2:57 AM PDT

Posted by: Cmdr DaeFaron
Actually, Cortana didn't make a 'last minute save' using her knowledge of the Covenant language.

When examining the crystal, she noticed the glyphs matched star constellations, and knowing the Covenant were interested in it figured there was something very important there. So, when they had to make a 'blind jump' she input those coordinates instead.

That's what I remember.


Posted by: Wazooty
The artifact on Reach ended up being a star map that led to Halo.

This retcons the previous implication that the star map on sigma octanus led to Halo.

It can be assumed that the sigma octanus map led to reach instead, perhaps.


Um, it never states that. Maybe the structure on Reach provided some information about halo, but it doesn't retcon the crystal having the starmap.

I'm not getting where you get that wild assumption from.


Wild? Do you even know what "wild" means?

Go play the game again and tell me it doesn't support that "wild" assumption.

  • 04.09.2011 9:24 AM PDT