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.

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
 * 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.
 * (Unreleased) Halo: Shadows of Reach - Likely to include more info for Reach.
 * Old Waypoint background image - Contains currently seen Reach locations and previously unmentioned locations also likely on Reach.

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 Defiant to the End trailer, there is mentioning of a supercontinent. Based on the fact that the Viery Territory encompasses the continent Eposz, it is likely that Viery itself is the aforementioned supercontinent with Eposz being a subcontinent.
 * 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.

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 completion.
 * Viery Territory
 * Ütközet
 * Eposz
 * Alföld
 * Ung
 * Asźod
 * Bars
 * Eposz
 * Szurdok Ridge
 * Highland Mountains
 * Visegrád