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

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Sunday, April 27, 2014, 01:52 (3873 days ago) @ Jordan117
edited by Ragashingo, Sunday, April 27, 2014, 01:58

Looking at your city overview again I think the scale is way off for it to be Kilimanjaro and Nairobi. Up close we're seeing individual trees, buildings, and bridges. In the distance it appears those skyscrapers are beyond the Kilimanjaro-ish mountain. The problem is that would stretch the city for well over 100 miles north/south since Kilimanjaro to Nairobi alone is around 100 miles. I feel, based especially on the trees in the foreground that we're closer to the digital equivalent of this:

Now that's Vancouver not Nairobi, but the nearby island is only a couple of miles long, and even the most distant point is probably less than 20 miles away. Compare that shot to another Destiny shot and things become even more clear:

We're possibly looking across generations of concept art and in game assets between this shot and the one you posted in your initial post, but in my older image we are very very clearly not looking at a several hundred square mile city that stretches north and south of Kilimanjaro. Here the city is nestled among a much smaller set of mountains / high hills... much like you get at the supposed site near Puerto Princesa:

Other than that I suppose I find it harder to dismiss the topographical map as personal preference / unrelated when it was one of the first anything of Destiny we saw, is in the background of the mini-arg desktop background that first clued us in on the Travaler's terrafroming of the solar system. The same desktop background that connected directly with The Music of the Spheres. I would much prefer that the map was a studio wide choice meant to point us to something than one artist making something up.

And finally, while Bungie does indeed love making past references across games, Halo is the series they gave up and walked away from to create Destiny. Putting the Last Safe City in Kenya when Halos 2 through ODST were just feels wrong to me for some reason. Too much retreading the past I suppose. I guess I feel like Bungie is building Destiny as something new with its own history and its own locations instead of placing us back in the "same place" we were before.

From an in-story perspective I really like the idea that most major cities on Earth were wiped out, but the Traveler managed to settle over a small island city that over time grew into a powerhouse of a tightly packed metropolis capable of supporting mankind's war effort against its powerful enemies...

P.S. I really hope the above doesn't come off as argumentative because it's not meant to be. Disagreement on location, yes, but friendly disagreement. I think you did a great job on coming up with your theory and I'm not entirely convinced that you're wrong and I'm right. :)