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Joseph Staten's NU Story Talk
We're still waiting on Joe for our very own copy of the notes (and perhaps accompanying commentary) but the preliminary overviews of his lecture and Q&A session are quite informative.
This one (by HaloFans over on the Team Xbox Forum) serves up a few choice cuts:
1) Out of the realms of underground, hush-hush discussion, Joe comes clean on the levels cut from the end of Halo 2. Three of them to be exact (Alpha Moon? The Ark?). "When it's done" indeed :P
2) The 'Keyes Form' is actually a little form of what Gravemind is. Tantalizing. Gravemind is not necessarily an individual, but an inevitable form the Flood takes. No previous Gravemind on Halo 04 then, I imagine.
3) The movie story is still not complete, and will not be a game adaptation (confirming the rumor that Garland's script is being rewritten). Too bad in a way; Garland's script was fantastic (Err, I mean, I haven't read it! The gaul to suggest it! ;)
More as we hear it.
-Finn
Sure Jillybean already pointed this thread out, but I thought I would highlight one of the all too interesting sub-posts within it.
Yep, time travel gives me The Shivers of the Cliche as much as anyone. But if it was going to happen, this would certainly be one way to got about it.
Schedonnardus writes:
Stay with me here for a moment:
We know that certain there was a crystal in the novels that has shown time warping abilities
Perhaps from all the data Cortana has downloaded from the Halos, she has figured out how to reliably transport herself through time. Much like how in First Strike she was able to make covenant weapons work much more efficiently; maybe she was able to solve the problems of time travel as well, all she needs is a covenant ship and a crystal.
All this data from Halo's control room may have also given her the key to her own sustainability, preventing her demise; in a sense making herself immortal.
Cortana, with possibly the help of half jaw or arby, is able to get into the systems of a Covenant ship and take it back in time. Her love of humanity is so strong, that she waits eons for the covenant to find her. When they do find her, they think she is a gift from the Gods, and so begins her attempts to effectively destroy the covenant.
Perhaps it was Cortana that prevented the Covenant from being innovative. Maybe she intentionally weakened their technology. Perhaps she created the Covenant's AI to be so weak that she herself can crack them when her younger self comes into contact with them in First Strike.
Could it be possible that all of the Covenant's military blunders (albeit only a few) be attributed to Cortana?
Could it also be possible that Cortana stalled the covenant's discovery of the Halos until humanity had the technology (slipspace, MAC guns, Spartans) to possibly stand a chance?
And now, Cortana could be on the Forerunner ship, and will be able to help the MC out in Halo 3?
Well, as eliminating a critical threat goes, she's sure taking the subtle approach.
-Finn
Oni HighCom on Earth connected to the Ark?
Dragonclaws
The humans probably don't know what it is, IF it is, but the fact that ONI has apparently known of the Reach Forerunner installation for an indefinite amount of time should have set off a few more alarms than it did. For the Reach facility to have been built coincidentally over top of those caverns is just that: quite a coincidence. If ONI had some knowledge of Forerunner sites (stemming from an unknown source) it would make sense that their underground facilities would tie into them whenever possible.
Don't mind the forum flak; I think you're definitely onto something. The chances that Castle Base "struck Forerunnner" (Black Gold, Texas T...) accidentally is extremely unlikely. And no matter what, that ONI had known of these tunnels since some indefinite point in the past was a massive revelation in and of itself.
If Castle had been built atop the caverns unintentionally, you can bet that ONI's been scrounging around for more such locations on other worlds ever since (Coral?).
If Castle was strategically positioned on top of the Forerunner relics, this strongly implies that others had been found previously (in a similar fashion/location we might assume) to merit the search and eventual decision to build there.
As Regret said, Humanity has apparently been blocking access to sacred sights (though this doesn't seem to be the whole, real reason for the extermination of Mankind). Previous contact between ONI and the Covenant is looking more and more certain all the time...
UPDATE: With the Halo 3 announcement, and the nigh certainty that the Ark was merely lying beneath New Mombasa (and revealed by the explosion of Regret's Carrier's departure), we may wonder all the more why a city (and a massive space elevator operated by ???) would be built precisely there, of all places...
-Finn
Translation of Covenant (Species) Names
Apparently, this is old news, but as I was independently thinking about this in the last couple of days I found the timing interesting :)
j41m3z (j41m3z@gmail.com) writes:
I typed the covenant species names into google and three names came up with translations frm other languages.
Unggoy (grunt) is "monkey" in tagalog (phillipines) Lekgolo (hunters) is "one hundred" in Tswana Jiralhanae (brutes) is "retarded lunatic" in korean (I'm not so sure on this one but one site had that; probably slang).
And as Rox points out, Yanmee (Drone) is Japanese for "dragonfly".
Neat. Anyone want to correct or finish the list off?
UPDATE: Our own mnemesis let's us know that " 'Kig-Yar' [Jackal]
means 'chicken'... in Breton! Man, I knew there was a good reason to try and learn that silly language back in the day. ;-)"
UPDATE: It's been suggested by Nogard that 'yanmee' doesn't come up in the Japanese dictionary and that 'tonbo' is in fact the translation for dragonfly. Me, I took German - Jillybean
-Finn
Sino-Prophet Relations (id est, Chinese)
This connection seems a little vague but, if true, it's all the more a testament to the keen senses of Walshicus ;)
-Finn
Weekly Update Goodness: An answer to an old, nagging question
opogjijijp asks:
Here is a question that I know several people would like answered:
In the level 343 Guilty Spark the date in the recording from Jenkins helmet says the date is may 27, 2552. The books say that Halo takes place in September. Is the date in the recording a mistake?
Frankie responds:
When the Pillar of Autumn makes a jump, to adjust for normalized Earth time it will recalibrate equipment once position and relative position have been established. However, since the Autumn made a blind jump and straight into combat, no battle or field equipment was recalibrated. For that same reason, "north" on an assault rifle's built-in compass simply defaulted (per instructions from Keyes) to the largest visible source of gravity and magnetism - Threshold. The Earth-normal date was in fact September, in spite of what local equipment displayed. If poor old Jenkins had survived, his equipment would have been reset on the next (deliberate) jump.
Page updated. (Nice cover, guys ;)
There have been a number of other interesting weekly update items in the past months as well. I'll play catch up next time ;)
-Finn
Dave Candland's UI Demo
Here's the interview; here's the demo.
Stop tape. What's this?
Enhance.
Enhance.
"Alpha Moon"?
So, was the Heretic level orginally to be played on Basis rather than the Mining/Lab Facility? Or is this one of the further levels cut from the game (to be visited by the Arbiter on his way back to Earth for the Ark level)? This at least explains the several mentions of a low gravity level and playing amongst "the ruins of the first Halo", showing the corresponding campaign level for the MP map Burial Mounds.
(As well, it removes one of the implications that the Ark is on Earth's moon rather than Earth itself... which saddens me in a way, because it diminishes the importance of the fade from Truth's headdress to Earth's moon, but I'm willing to let that go and just enjoy the beauty of the transition :)
Hmmm.
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-Finn
