Why Not Greenland? (Destiny)

by roland , Monday, April 28, 2014, 08:45 (3871 days ago) @ JDQuackers

Although the geography is similar to modern day Earth, as others have said, this graphic got me thinking...

Why not Greenland?

If the City were in Greenland, that would explain the subtle evidence for high latitudes, but it also has a few other benefits. Much of the land surface in modern Greenland lies below a large ice sheet, and we don't really know what it looks like because the ice is too thick in most places to acquire data on the rocks below. You have to use radar, and it's been a long process of mapping the ground underneath. In fact, scientists recently discovered a "mega-canyon" under the ice using radar.

At some point in the future Greenland's ice sheets will completely/partially melt away, making much more of the land habitable for people, but we really have very little idea of what that landscape will look like, or what the geography will even be (rivers, streams, mountains, etc.). A location like this would allow environment artists a large amount of creative freedom, even for a well-mapped planet like Earth. Maps of inland locations could effectively be invented creatively. Coastal geography would be pretty fixed but anything inland would be fair game. A semi/completely ice-free Greenland would also be a nice way to get player's heads around the fact that this is a different Earth, and for that matter, a different solar system from the one you are familiar with.

This still doesn't explain Puerto Princessa, but the more I think about it the more I like Greenland as a possible location for the City.