Talk:Five Long Years

Unknown Covenant starship

did anyone notice it look differant from the few ships we know?VanFlyhight 21:59, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Five Years?

In case you didn't notice, "five years" contradicts all established canon, including the timeline on the Halo Wars website! 2531 minus 2525 does not equal 5! So, evidently the UNSC didn't actually get forces to the Epsilon Indi system until later in the year, which is probable, due to slipspace travel speed, but the trailer might be in error. However, an interview with Graeme Devine at 360 Gamer UK states that Harvest was glassed in 2526; I hate canon inconsistencies. Percieve it as you will.--Braidenvl 23:29, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Update: Actually, the Arabia, Vostok, and Heracles didn't get to Harvest until later in the year, so now: Why does Cap'n Cutter present Harvest as being fought over for years, when the Battle of Harvest went on during 2531? Maybe he meant that's just the time that elapsed from the UNSC's discovery of the fate of Harvest (from the Heracles' report) until its recapture, which was about 5 years. A lot of you know I'm nitpicky about these things, but come on, we've known the timeline of Harvest for a long time.--Braidenvl 00:31, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, Ensemble Studios doesn't have the real information regarding the timeline. So, I'm guessing this Halo Wars is based on their presumption rather than real canon facts...File:Cortana Gif.gif|24px]] - Artificial | Intelligence 09:28, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

-The Second Battle of Harvest DID most likely take five years. Here's why:

-The Battle of Chi Ceti V occurred in 2525. That's canon from Fall of Reach; it's even directly stated in the wiki on the Human-Covenant War page. That said battle also took place after the Spartan II's learned of the Covenant and the fall of Harvest to what we now know to the brute warship operating under Maccabeus. The destroyer Herecles had returned and Verandi had filed his report with the UNSC admiralty by then; when the Spartan II's were briefed before being taken to the Chi Ceti powered armor testing facility, they were specifically told that Admiral Cole was mobilizing his battle fleet even as they spoke. Thus, the fact that the Harvest Campaign lasted five (long!) years actually makes sense canon-wise.

-The issue has long been a source of contention among Halo fans in forums who read the Expanded universe books. Cole's fleet formed in 2525, but didn't leave Harvest having won the battle until 2531.

-Huh?!

-Until this new information came out, it was generally accepted in the forums due to lake of other sources that Cole's fleet had simply taken a long time (5 years) to get to Harvest, and that a single battle was fought in 2531. This view had a lot of problems, mainly that even primitive human slipspace drives aren't even close to being that slow. Ensemble now says (backed up, apparently, by the exalted Bungie Halo story Bible) that the campaign for Harvest itself lasted five years, with the battle mentioned in tFoR being only the culminating struggle in a much larger and longer series of engagements.

-To some Halo fans, this new information may not at first make sense. Most battles in the Human-Covenant War had barely lasted a day, a week, or rarely for epic struggles like the Battles for Earth, a month. A battle lasting five years simply seems preposterous. But, consider a few things:

-The Covenant may not have yet established their doctrine of glassing every square inch of human planets (as the cinematic, in fact, shows at the beginning, during the street-to-street fighting in the ruins of a city which was obviously not molten lava and glass). They might have originally preferred a more direct method of extermination, a.k.a. actually going down to the planet with overwhelming numbers of crusading soldiers and wiping human presences out face-to-maw. It was always said that the UNSC had a better chance on the ground then in space;it might have been during Harvest's five long, costly years that the Covenant learned it was more prudent and cost effective to simply glass the troublesome humans from high orbit.

-This might be a hard concept to wrap your heads around, but Harvest is an entire PLANET. As demonstrated quite well by present day Earth and our own decidedly limited viewpoints, planets, even ones generally around the size of Earth, are BIG, as in HUGE, as in MASSIVE. If the Covenant and the UNSC had fought a massive ground war, it would have taken place across the entire planet's surface. Like ALL of World War Two's ground engagements, fought with Halo weapons and tactics. If enough troops had been committed by both sides (and most likely they were) the surface war would have lasted years.

-Then there's space engagements to be taken into consideration. As a bridgehead into UNSC space (remember, Harvest was ideally placed on the interstellar shipping routes to supply many other human colonies with extra produce) Harvest was valuable to the Covenant as a supply line and resupply station, and valuable to the UNSC also, as they needed to force the Covenant out at all costs to prevent said aliens from using the system for stated reasons, and for the obvious propaganda boost (look, we just defeated a technologically superior alien race! Go Humanity!). Because of it's stellar position, both sides would according to this line of reasoning have been fighting for possession of the ENTIRE SYSTEM. It would have taken a while for either side to totally clear the other one out before new forces were built or trained. It was during this campaign that the Covenant and UNSC were creating on-the-fly the strategies and tactics that would be used for the rest of the war, and subsequently in the games and novels that Halo fans love to quote as absolute canon.

-Point, people: this is canon. Everything in the game that Ensemble puts in and thus adds to the Halo universe is canon. This disgust over events that don't conform to fan's Halo storyline views is wrong. For instance, the Cyclops "mech" is derided as none-Halo; however, since Ensemble added it, and they are backed by Bungie on this one, it now is as much apart of Halo as everything else. Don't struggle against these new changes, accept them. More change will obviously come with more Halo games. It makes the Halo universe bigger and better.

-OKAY, now I'm done ranting.

Good point. I had already assumed that the UNSC fought throughout Epsilon Indi and perhaps adjacent systems on their way to the ultimate goal: Harvest. It's just that, while your planetary ground war is admirable (and believeable), I believe that "five years" refers to the entire regional campaign (e.g. nearby Arcadia), rather than just the (Second) Battle of Harvest. But, in response to Subtank's comment, Ensemble has the almighty HSB, so it's no so much large-scale timeline issues I'm concerned about as the inclusion of elements from Contact Harvest, such as the Tiara, Bifrost, Utgard, the oceans, the mass driver, etc.--Braidenvl 17:11, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

If nothing else, the space battle taking "five long years" might make sense: the entire human fleet is taking on a small Covenant force. That would result in a temporary human victory due to sheer numbers, but then the Covvies come back in force.

Transcript

We have a transcript for this trailer, but we don't have a transcript for any of the other trailers, like Field Trip to Harvest, or 2006 announcment trailer. Should we create a transcript for these too?Tuckerscreator 21:06, October 14, 2009 (UTC)