In Halo 2, the last we saw of Mombasa was it being consumed by the slipspace rupture, something just barely short of obliteration. Although the full extent of damage was always unknown, we discover in Halo 3 that the city was severely destabilized, if not “leveled.” Even the proudest and strongest structure in the city, the space tether, was rent free, thrown down onto the African savannah for hundreds of miles.

Off to the right of this burst of energy, the teaser displays these mysterious contacts, the sixteen objects falling down toward the center of the city. One can make the assessment quite readily that these are the same HEVs we saw earlier, at that time penetrating the atmosphere. Furthermore, from the information gleaned in the updates, it appears that this may be the team which the ONI agent requested from the admiral.

The Superintendent’s camera unhinges, twisting under the duress of the slipspace rupture and then finally powering off. A quick flash of imagery shows the HEVs blazing down into the city as the entire area is consumed by the energy disbursement from the Prophet of Regret’s jump. For several seconds, the screen goes black and the audience of the trailer is left wondering what has taken place.

When the camera comes back online, we find ourselves looking at the user interface of a boot up screen for the Superintendent. Warnings flash across the screen in unblinking succession, proving some level of rampancy might have been reached by the construct. After a few bursts of unclear information, we receive this:

Then we return to the previous series of cameras, but what we see now is not the same as before. Tanaga’s camera has nearly been pulled from its perch and now stares at the shattered remains of that district’s lower-levels. The Lumumba camera, which was originally dark and dismal in and of itself, is now a complete horror. Intercut by a single frame of what was there before, the vehicles have been disintegrated and the city is all but leveled, large chunks of debris falling from the dun-colored sky.

We see a new shot of a different location, briefly displaying more proof of the destruction before cutting back to a wider shot of Tanaga, as a single HEV pod slings elegantly through the air toward the ground.

This shot is intercut with the game’s name:

But wait, Halo 3? Don’t we already own a copy of that game?

We’ll get to that in a moment.

What follows is a brilliantly shot sequence where an HEV slams into the ground, shattering one of the Superintendent’s low-level cameras. The HEV’s drag cables and reverse thruster burst, before the heavy insertion pod slams home the game’s tag line:

Indeed..

On September 22, 2008, the second of the two communiques was released, further inviting the player back into the fiction of Halo. Here, we see a resource re-allocation request being issued by the same entity as before, DARE.V.500341(S1).The request is being asked by someone who appears to be a Section One ONI agent to the admiral of a heavy cruiser which hails by Say My Name.

At first, the admiral doesn’t seem concerned with the re-allocation request, as he is in the middle of a full scale war high above this planet’s surface. When the ONI agent pushes the issue, the admiral reads the submitted request. It is then that he realizes he’s dealing with someone from the Section One and he agrees to send a squad – if he “survive[s] the attack.” He says that an “act of God” would be required to make that happen, though. The ONI agent apparently greatly desires this squad, since he replies, “I’ll see what I can do.”

But what squad and why?

Well, if the content in the teaser was accurately understood, what we are witnessing is the fallout immediately after the slipspace event in New Mombasa, an event which happened early in Halo 2’s campaign.

If you recall, the Master Chief eliminated the Covenant’s hold on the city’s center, after defeating the Scarab. This was immediately followed by the Prophet of Regret, “bugging out,” and entering slipspace within the city’s airspace.

The rupture caused untold devastation… well, untold till now.

This new story appears to begin immediately where that one left off. For reasons we have yet to fully understand, a Section One agent by the codename of DARE.V.500341 requested the special presence of an elite tactical strike force from the orbiting heavy cruiser, Say My Name.

This force is represented by the sixteen HEVs which we see splitting off from the others. Unlike those which may well be headed for Voi several hundred kilometers away, these sixteen land in New Mombasa.

Why might that be? We may have already been told back in 2004….

In Halo 2, you might remember Lord Hood’s directive concern about the Prophet of Regret and his purpose in Kenya:

Master Chief, get aboard that carrier and secure the Prophet of Regret. This is the only place on Earth the Covenant decided to land. That Prophet is going to tell us why. [Outskirts, Halo 2]

After Regret’s Scarab was destroyed by the Chief, his control over the invasion had greatly deteriorated. It was then that he used the assault carrier to escape, generating a slipspace rupture which destroyed Mombasa. But, even still, evasion apparently wasn’t his only intent here, as implied by Frank O’Connor in an older “question and answer” update on Bungie.net:

Q: Does the canyon / hole in the trailer have something to do with New Mombasa and that spacejump the Covenant Capital Ship made at Halo 2?

A: That’s an excellent question. A Slipspace jump in-atmosphere would have a devastating effect on an environment, don’t you think? [Bungie.net, 05/12/2006]

In one fell swoop, Regret temporarily evades capture, he destroys the UNSC resistance in Mombasa and potentially assists in the beginnings of the excavation process of the Forerunner gateway, roughly a hundred miles away. The same excavation which we see continuing in Halo 3. His premature evasion no doubt cost him his life once the Chief caught up with him on Installation 05. The mystery for ONI, however, in those key moments between Halo 2 and Halo 3, is what may have sparked the “re-allocation of resources” as requested of by DARE.V.500341(S1).

So what are these Helljumpers looking for?

“Why, the Ark of course.”

It is likely that ONI had special interests in determining what Regret wanted with this specific part of Earth – why the Covenant were coming to our planet ill-prepared for full-fledged invasion of the human homeworld. The Covenant did not come to deal with humanity, but to secure an ancient artifact according to the Halo Graphic Novel’s “Second Sunrise Over New Mombasa”:

In Regret’s initial strike, a military journalist uses software to translate the Elite’s spoken tongue. It is then that the Covenant’s true goals are understood:

“We need to clear this area before we can secure access to the Ark.”

When ONI discovered this, they too wanted to secure the Ark – nay, they needed to secure it if they were to have any tactical advantage over the Covenant once they returned. So, one could surmise that these few, who are sent into the jaws of death as the slipspace rupture is occurring, are also looking for the Covenant’s Ark.

If that is, in fact, the case, then this line from Halo 3’s “Tsavo Highway” is even more telling:

“Commander. This is ONI Recon one-eleven. The cruisers above… (static). They found… (static).”

“Say again, Recon? You’re breaking up.”

“There’s something in the crater, ma’am. Something beneath the storm.” [Tsavo Highway, Halo 3]

So, there are ONI recon teams in play throughout the entire assault against Earth (as one would presume there to be). And, eventually, ONI does locate the Ark. Whether this is connected to our squad of Helljumpers or not, is unknown. We do know that Alan Tudyk recently stated (original source now offline) that some members of the cast of Firefly would be part of a new Halo 3 supplemental. Are they reprising their roles from Halo 3 or will they be a part of this new squad that we have yet to meet?

Whomever takes part in this new expansion on the fiction of Halo 3, there might be interesting connections and pay-offs for the simple fact of being able to pull away from a myopic view of the Halo universe, to something considerably broader – if still more intimate.

Some fans may have noticed two anomalies in the trailer:

If you follow the context of the footage closely, you can see that at 00:17 seconds into the clip, with a Superintendent timestamp of 16:11 PM, the first waves of HEVs are descending onto the Mbaraki district. Later in the teaser, at around 00:48 seconds, we see a single HEV drop from the sky in what appears to be the wake of the slipspace rupture. We believe this is after the slipspace rupture, since, obviously, it is taking place after the earlier clip of said rupture. But that may not be the case…

The curious element of this equation is that at about 00:52 seconds into the video, a low-level shot of the single HEV indicates a more stable Superintendent and an earlier timestamp of 16:03 – but the buildings’ windows are blown out. Without the timestamp, one could easily assume that the single HEV came down some time after the first wave of sixteen HEVs, due to the fact that the Mbaraki buildings are in shambles. But, holding only to the timestamp would back the possibility that this single HEV came down prior to the first wave by seven minutes.

So, basically, we have two points of data that seem to be in conflict.

Considering the unlikelihood that this is an error on Bungie’s part, we believe that it might be directly related to the slipspace rupture itself. Whether it was due to the data core damage done to the Superintendent, causing a mistake on its part, or due to a time anomaly, similar to what we’ve witnessed within the novels (specifically, Halo: First Strike), it remains to be seen.  Either one is possible or probable in their own right.

Further complicating this same issue is the second anomaly. During the same sequence with a single HEV at both 00:48 and 00:53 seconds, we see that the space tether is intact. For most Halo 2 and Halo 3 players, this comes as a surprise due to the fiction stating previously that the slipspace event was the cause of the tether’s fall. One explanation says that the tether is unstable in those shots and falls later or possibly during the course of the new campaign. Another explanation supports the theory that the single HEV seen at the end is actually arriving before the slipspace rupture – in compliance with the timestamp, but despite the damage clearly shown on the buildings.

One last item of interest regarding these time anomalies: during the final drop pod scene – right before the pod crashes into the camera – you can see the timestamp changing at a very rapid rate. It is, in fact, increasing at a rate of seven seconds per frame. The action onscreen, however, continues at a normal pace. Again, two possible explanations are: it is due to the Superintendent’s malfunctioning; or due to a time anomaly caused by the slipspace jump.

A Gamespot article in July had already confirmed this new supplemental’s story direction. They stated what we now know to be quite accurate – that the game would appear darker and grittier than the vividly-colored and heavily-stylized Halo trilogy, following a squad of ODSTs through urban environments.

They also stated that the game would be more of a tactical shooter, hearkening back to such games Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter and Gears of War. The real clincher, however, is that the article clearly states that there was a heavy interest in cooperative play. As we’ve stated earlier, there are sixteen pods dropping out of the sky – so, while we can’t guarantee that it will include that many players at once, Bungie’s, at the very least, allowed for that many while crafting this teaser’s fiction.

Whether it is finalized at four players, eight players or sixteen players, simultaneously fighting through the devastated streets of Mombasa, it will no doubt be the most multiplayer friendly campaign experience within the Halo franchise – likely using the same engine, and possibly some of the same assets, as Halo 3.

Earlier reports indicated that Microsoft would be releasing a game, retail-named “Halo Blue” later this year. The rumor quickly took shape at PAX, when Bungie’s Halo 3: Mythic menu was seen while they were showing off a new and currently unreleased map, Assembly. With the data gathered from the new achievements all but confirming six additional multiplayer maps headed our way within the coming months, one might assume that this Halo 3 campaign experience will be part of Halo 3: Mythic, alongside six maps and for release on…

Of course, there’s always the chance that Xbox Live players could get this experience a bit earlier, or a bit later – the teaser does take place in Kenya, where they use the dd/mm/yy format, as opposed to Bungie’s local format of mm/dd/yy. If the “01/06/09” date is anything to go by, then we could potentially be looking at two different possibilities for release dates. Whatever the case, we’ll patiently wait as Bungie and Microsoft reveal the release date of this new (but old) title, skyrocketing Halo 3’s longevity well past any other game this generation and deep into the Xbox 360’s life cycle.

Till then, let’s keep it clean.

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