Halopedia:Projects/Reach Mapping

The Reach Mapping Project aims to cross-reference both in-game and supplementary material to attempt to make sense of Reach's regional structure. The current pages for Viery Territory, Ütközet, Eposz and Alföld and potentially others do not have a clear or consistent hierarchy of locations, which reflects Halo Reach's lack of a consistent approach to detailing locations.

Current research
Thanks to several sources including the maps included with Dr. Halsey's personal journal, Halo: Outpost Discovery, the Order of Battle seen in the opening cutscene of Tip of the Spear and a Covenant deployment map seen on the bridge of Ardent Prayer, it is possible to begin piecing together a good idea of Reach's landscape and layout.

Official maps
To begin with, here is a full world map of Reach, taken from the in-game texture used for the holotank of the Covenant corvette.

Thanks to the map provided by the Hall of History in Outpost Discovery (left), we can place the cities of Manassas, New Alexandria, Esztergom, Quezon, Sopron and Casimir. The map provided in Halsey's Journal gives us the locations of SWORD Base (marked SWO), CASTLE Base (marked CAS), Visegrád (marked VIS) and several thus-far unidentified sites.

These sources combined allows us to place a number of important locations seen in Halo: Reach and supplementary material (Halo: The Fall of Reach, Halo: First Strike, Halo: Shadows of Reach, Data Drops etc) with a fair degree of accuracy, and begin piecing together the overall geographical structure of Reach.



Thanks to this information, we can begin collating together other sources and references. One key in helping decipher these locales are the location paths usually seen in the cutscenes of Halo: Reach in the camera views, in the bottom right of the screen (these are provided below). Several other resources are collated below.

Primary resources

 * Halo: Reach - Includes a swathe of visual, audio, and narrative information on Reach since it is primarily set on the planet.
 * Halo: First Strike - Includes location hierarchies in chapter headers for sections on Reach.
 * Halo: The Fall of Reach - Includes location hierarchies in chapter headers for sections on Reach.
 * Halo: Fall of Reach - Includes location hierarchies in establishing shots for sections on Reach.
 * Halo: Shadows of Reach - Includes location hierarchies in chapter headers as well as information in the narrative itself.
 * Halo: Outpost Discovery - In person event that ran during 2019.
 * Hall of History - Features some artifacts and information about Reach.

Additional resources

 * Order of battle (Viery, Reach) - with several locations now named, we can reasonably infer what locations the units in this map were attacking/ defending.
 * Covenant deployment hologram - A map shown on the bridge of the Covenant corvette shows a map of Covenant deployments.
 * Data Drops - Many of the data drops include location paths for their sender/receiver addresses.
 * Halo: Reach radio conversations - Includes some descriptions and references to various locations
 * Old Waypoint background image - Contains currently seen Reach locations and previously unmentioned locations also likely on Reach.
 * Defiant to the End - A Defiant Map Pack trailer.
 * Assault on the Stars - A Waypoint video about the Halo: Reach campaign.
 * Remember Reach - A webfilm showing life on Reach prior to the events of Halo: Reach.
 * New Life - One of the shorts part of the film, about a young couple living in Visegrad.
 * Spaceport - One of the shorts of the film, about a family saying goodbyes at a spaceport.
 * Patrol - One of the shorts of the film, about several UNSC troopers on patrol.

Halo: The Fall of Reach chapter heading paths

 * Chapter 3: Epsilon Eridani System, Reach Military Complex, Planet Reach
 * Chapter 4: Epsilon Eridani System, Reach Military Complex, Planet Reach
 * Chapter 5: Epsilon Eridani System, Reach Military Wilderness Training Preserve, Planet Reach
 * Chapter 6: Epsilon Eridani System, Office of Naval Intelligence Medical Facility, in orbit around planet Reach
 * Chapter 8: Epsilon Eridani System, Reach UNSC Military Complex, Planet Reach
 * Chapter 24: Epsilon Eridani System, Reach UNSC Military Complex, Planet Reach, Camp Hathcock
 * Chapter 25: Epsilon Eridani System, Reach UNSC Military Complex, Planet Reach, Omega Wing-Section Three Secure Facility
 * Chapter 26: Epsilon Eridani System, Fleetcom Military Complex, Planet Reach
 * Chapter 27: Epsilon Eridani System, UNSC Military Reservation 01478-B, Planet Reach

Halo: First Strike chapter heading paths

 * Chapter 1: UNSC vessel Pillar of Autumn, Epsilon Eriani System Near Reach Station Gamma
 * Chapter 2: Epsilon Eridani System, Unknown Aerial Position, Planet Reach
 * Chapter 3: Epsilon Eridani System, Orbital Defense Generator Facility A-331, Planet Reach
 * Chapter 4: Epsilon Eridani System, Longhorn Valley, Planet Reach

Halo: Shadows of Reach chapter heading paths

 * Chapter 1: Insertion Run, Continent Eposz, Planet Reach
 * Chapter 2: Vadász Dombok, Continent Eposz, Planet Reach
 * Chapter 3: Vadász Dombok, Continent Eposz, Planet Reach

Confirmed information

 * In Chapter 24 of Halo: The Fall of Reach, the Highland Mountains are located on Reach's northern continent. Camp Hathcock is located among the mountains as metioned in this chapter too.
 * In Chapter 1 of Halo: Shadows of Reach, Big Crater Bay is confirmed to be the large body of water south of the Babd Catha ice shelf/SWORD Base.
 * Chapter 1 also reconfirms that Eposz is a continent.
 * Chapter 1 also confirms that the Arany Basin is east of the Highland Mountains.
 * In Chapter 3 of Halo: Shadows of Reach, Eposz is confirmed to be a supercontinent.
 * Troy Denning on Twitter places Vadász Dombok just south of the crater in the center of the large landmass (what has been theorised as Aszod below). (Link)

Hypothetical location placements

 * Farkas Lake - Upon superimposing the skybox texture from the mission Long Night of Solace over the map of Reach, it appears that Farkas Lake to a lake inlet area between Manassas, Visegrád and New Alexandria.

Other theorizing

 * In the radio conversation for Overlook, the two speakers mention that the Army is moving in to Pálháza and suggests that it is directly connected to Visegrad. The further description of Visegrad's location further suggests that the two are located close together in northern Alfold.
 * In the final Data Drop, the Pillar of Autumn technician says they are holding position over Lábatlan but see activity over Eposz, suggesting that Lábatlan is not connected or a part of Eposz.
 * In the same Data Drop, a different technician suggests that they contact Casimir Station while being over Lábatlan. This suggests two things. One that Casimir Station is in orbit of the city of Casimir and two that Casimir Station (and by proxy, Casimir itself) are part of Lábatlan or close by geographically.
 * In the cutscene/level The Heretic of Halo 2, Reach is briefly seen being glassed. In the original version, Reach had a completely different design. In the Halo 2: Anniversary version of the level, Reach was redesigned and appears to be based on Halo: Reach's version of the planet. This is confirmed by comparing details with terrain maps of the planet. By doing this, it appears the cutscene shows us parts of the sea and bits of land near and west of New Alexandria.

August 12th, 2552
Based on the satellite image provided at the beginning of Tip of the Spear, here are the known UNSC deployments that day. Note, this only includes ones whose rough locations in relation to established locations.
 * 8th Armored Brigade — (APP-6A: AW 8 X)
 * 38th Regiment — (APP-6A: AW 8 ||| 38) - Southeast of CASTLE Base
 * 169th Company — (APP-6A: AW 8 | 169) - South/Southeast of New Alexandria
 * 267th Company — (APP-6A: AW 8 | 267) - Northeast of New Alexandria
 * 352nd Company — (APP-6A: AW 8 | 352) - North of Manassas
 * 371st Company — (APP-6A: AW 8 | 371) - Southeast of Esztergom


 * 34th Infantry Brigade — (APP-6A: INF 34 X)
 * 581st Regiment — (APP-6A: INF 34 ||| 581) - Northwest of Esztergom


 * 124th Infantry Brigade (Mechanized) — (APP-6A: MCH 124 X
 * 6th Regiment — (APP-6A: MCH 124 ||| 6) - Northeast of Visegrád

August 14th, 2552
Based on the hologram seen in on the Ardent Prayer in Long Night of Solace here are known Covenant deployments on this day.
 * SWORD Base
 * New Alexandria
 * An outside of Sopron (this could be the Ardent Prayer's location over Reach as it has a giant red mark beside it)

Locations
Checked boxes indicate articles that have been updated with new info and images.
 * Viery Territory
 * Ütközet
 * Eposz
 * Alföld
 * Ung
 * Asźod
 * Bars
 * Eposz
 * Szurdok Ridge
 * Highland Mountains
 * Menachite Mountain
 * Vanadinite Mountain
 * Omeiite Mountain
 * Visegrád
 * Arany Basin
 * SWORD Base

Other
Double check that locations and location based info is updated on the SPARTAN-II program and SPARTAN-II training pages