Bungie Universe
This topic has moved here: Subject: Time Discrepancy Between Novel and Game
  • Subject: Time Discrepancy Between Novel and Game
Subject: Time Discrepancy Between Novel and Game

Expressing my strong liberal views without shame. Favorite quotes below:

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe."
"One starts to live when he can live outside himself."

- Albert Einstein

This thread is about the Fall of Reach. It's to be noted that this was not my idea, I'm just starting a discussion on it. I've seen this idea as early as October on the Halopedia Talk Page.

Moving on to the subject at hand.

At first sight, there seemed to be major canonical errors with Halo: Reach in comparison to the novel. I tried to reconcile these errors with a timeline, and to that extent, it works out fairly well. However, there is still a nagging point left to be made which is too significant to be ignored.

The novel The Fall of Reach makes use of the Military Calender. This is based off the 365 day Earth Year (EY), and since each planet has its own orbit speed and rotation speed, the respective year times and day times would be significantly different. For example, Reach has a day of 27 hours (the hour is the uniform measurement of time), and has a year of 390 Reach days (RD).

Taking this into account, this must mean that the dates in the game and the book are based on different calenders. The Reach calender is used throughout the game. So let's do some math.

390 RD x 27 Hours = 10,530 Hours
10,530 Hours / 24 Hours = 438.75 ED

438.75 ED - 365 ED = 73.75 ED

So, assuming that Reach uses the same 12 month year (which it obviously does because of the dates in the book and game), there would be about 6.14 more Earth days per month on Reach (73.75/12).

As you can see, this still doesn't add up. Perhaps my method of calculation is flawed, or maybe I've failed to consider another factor.

The point is that, if we assume the invasion force of August 14 was the same as the one depicted on August 30 in the novel (which I didn't assume in my other thread), then we should find about a 15 day difference in the times of Earth and Reach.

But I digress. At this point, discussion from the community is the only thing that will possibly lead to something. What do you think? If you have your ideas of calculation or analysis, please share them.

  • 07.15.2011 9:15 AM PDT