The City's location and its roots in the Halo Universe (Destiny)

by Jordan117 , Ala-blam!-a, Friday, April 25, 2014, 11:12 (3875 days ago)

After taking an extended break from pondering Halo/Bungie mysteries in the mildly disappointing wake of Halo 4, I've only just now started paying closer attention to the new material coming out of Destiny. But I think I've pieced together something pretty cool, that I haven't seen discussed anywhere else.

It started while browsing the destination imagery from the new Destiny site.

(click to expand)

Looking at this wide shot of The City, I happened to spot a familiar three-peaked mountain:

The presence of Kilimanjaro not only provides a thematic link to Halo 3's East Africa, but also serves as a geographic anchor point that can contextualize several other areas of the game.

For one thing, the distant core of The City is almost certainly Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, which lies north of the mountain (we see its southern face). This is further backed up by a poster in Halo 3: ODST -- not the infamous "Destiny Awaits," but a list of corporate offices -- that includes Nairobi:

Note the presence of several other locales confirmed to be in Destiny, such as Chicago, Crisium (a plain on the near side of the Moon), Seven Hills (a region of Mars in Halo lore), and Dusar (a Martian kingdom in the Barsoom series, possibly related to the Dust Palace?). Other potential locations this would hint at -- perhaps in future expansions? -- are Chiba (Tokyo), Pelion (a Greek peninsula), Essex Junction (a small town in Vermont), and Sydney.

Identifying the City region as East Africa also sheds light on the mysterious Twilight Gap, described in Destinypedia like so:

Little more is known about the nature or characteristics of the Twilight Gap at this time, except that it contains "war-torn fortresses." In news coverage of the Reveal Press Conference, multiple sources stated that it was described as something visible from the Overwatch District [of The City]. The Twilight Gap was also described as "apparently [representing] a big chunk of mankind’s history in the game."

Within East Africa, the most likely candidate is Olduvai Gorge at the southern edge of the Great Rift Valley. Not only is the Gorge a plausible ancestral namesake for the Gap, but at a distance of 150 miles it would be just visible on the horizon from a Nairobi skyscraper. "War-torn fortresses" recalls the crumbling East African UNSC bases seen in Crow's Nest and Rat's Nest, "built for some 20th century war." And Olduvai definitely fits the description of a historical treasure:

Olduvai Gorge is one of the most important paleoanthropological sites in the world and has been instrumental in furthering the understanding of early human evolution. [...] This site is significant in showing increased developmental and social complexities in hominins. Evidence of this is shown in the production and use of stone tools, which indicates the increase in cognitive capacities. Evidence also indicates the practices of both scavenging and hunting [...] Furthermore, the collection of tools and animal remains in a central area is evidence of increases in social interaction and communal activity.

What better place to anchor your ambitious social FPS than in the cradle of human evolution?

Not to mention there is a sociological theory -- Olduvai Theory -- which deals with the inevitability of societal collapse. As the essay The Twilight of the Modern World puts it:

Sooner or later, all the remains of our existing society will have gone, to become weed-clad ruins to rival those of the Aztecs and Mayans. [...] The world population may have fallen to as few as a thousand million, scattered in oases of agricultural land amongst deserts of buildings, rusting vehicles and forests.

Sound familiar?

(Bonus food-for-thought: The Citadel on Venus both sounds like the Castra (Latin for "military encampment") Arcology and looks a lot like the early vision of a storm-shrouded "Earth City" arcology in New Mombasa.)