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

by Jordan117 , Ala-blam!-a, Saturday, April 26, 2014, 00:39 (3661 days ago) @ Claude Errera

I've been out of the loop for awhile, so I totally missed the Puerto Princesa speculation. But from what I can see, it's all based on the historic map texture used in the backgrounds of the website, ARG, and promo material.

While it does refer to a more concrete location, I think it's also not as likely to be directly connected to The City. As B.net forum ninja xFoman123x put it:

The relative obscurity of this map and seeming insignificance of a small city in the Philippines to a game presumably based wholly or partly in outer space (judging from the numerous references to stars, moons, and planets both in the Destiny Map and other Destiny-related teasers) makes me honestly wonder whether Puerto Princesa was chosen at random because Bungie's artists wanted to use a topographical map of an interesting place for source material for concept art.

Let's not forget, folks, that the Destiny Map is concept art created by Bungie Senior Graphic Designer Lorraine McLees (reference: art credits given to Lorraine at the bottom of the 2012 official Bungie Christmas Card). Lorraine is from the Philippines. I've never inquired of her exactly which part of the Philippines she is from, but it certainly seems possible that she has a personal connection to Puerto Princesa.

Before we start looking TOO deep for connections, it might be good to temper our searches with the possibility that Lorraine used a topographical map of Puerto Princesa solely because it was a place she was familiar with, was readily at hand, and was obscure enough to make for useful concept art. For all we know, the reason we see some differences in the Wikipedia topographical map and the Destiny Map are because Lorraine used her OWN topographical map pulled off her wall or something as source material, not one pulled off the internet. In fact, my dad has an extremely similar topographical map of his hometown in Maine framed and hung on the wall of his house. It's not uncommon.

The Nairobi theory, OTOH, is more circumstantial but also more in keeping with Bungie tradition and their penchant for callbacks, spiritual successors, and mythological significance. There's such a nexus of meaning and history in the region -- it would be powerful to look out over The City and know that humanity first arose in that gulch, The Librarian buried The Ark in the shadow of that mountain, you battled in Master Chief's shoes through that jungles and that savannah and that forgotten ruin of a coastal city, that that hillside is where Lord Hood and the Arbiter laid the original Halo trilogy to rest. It wouldn't have to be explicit (for the sake of subtlety and for copyright reasons), but simply setting it there is a huge implied reference to everything that's come before.

(Of course, considering my very first HBO post was a grand pronouncement involving Kilimanjaro and Google Earth that turned out to be mistaken, maybe we should just wait and see... :P)