Halopedia:Projects/Mombasa Mapping

From Halopedia, the Halo wiki

The Mombasa Mapping Project aims to cross-reference both in-game and supplementary material to attempt to make sense of Mombasa's regional structure.

Goals

Current research

Because their have been many sources, both visually and written, describing and showing off the real world inspired Mombasa area, it is now possible to begin placing, collating and theorising about the landscape of Mombasa.

Official and IRL maps

To begin, Mombasa is actually a real world city with a specific geography. As such, here is an IRL overview of the city. North is up in this image.

Google Earth image of Mombasa for Mombasa Mapping project.

The Halo universe has revisited the city several times, in several styles with numerous locations. Here is a collection of various maps, and overhead images from around the city.

With all the available information given, rough maps of the city can be constructed.

Resources

Primary resources

  • Halo 2 - Includes a swathe a lot of visual and narrative information on Mombasa.
  • Palace Hotel - A retelling of some Halo 2 events, providing even more details.
  • Halo 3: ODST - Includes a vast amount of Mombasa related information, that comes in audio, visual, and narrative form.
  • Halo: Spartan Strike - A new experience providing some new visual information.

Additional resources

Confirmed information

  • Palace Hotel confirms that (at least the tunnel Master Chief enters) at the end island end of the long suspension bridge is the Mtangwe Underpass.
  • Halo Waypoint confirms that Headlong/Section 14 is on the mainland and a monitoring outpost for Nyali, Tudor and New Mombasa island.[1]
    • Halo Waypoint also confirms that the Prophet of Regret's ship entered slipspace north-east of the city.[1]
  • ODST confirms that Uplift Reserve is the landing site of Solemn Penance.
  • Sadie's Story confirms there is a bridge on the other side of the island connecting Tononoka with Obote (the mainland).
    • Sadie's Story also repeatedly refers to locations visited across ODST's gameplay as part of the City center, meaning that the locations seen in the various levels including Mombasa Streets are part of the City center.

Discrepancies

  • Mombasa - The entire city has been quite radically redesigned several times with the island portion of the city being seen in different configurations and designs. See the above collection of overheads and maps to see these drastic design differences
  • New Mombasa 105 E Bridge - The large cable-stayed bridge seen in Halo 2/Halo 2: Anniversary is slightly different in design from the one seen in Spartan Strike. Notable issues include width and and differences in median (the one in Halo 2/Halo 2: Anniversary features a metal median while the one in Spartan Strike is glass).
  • Mombasa Tether - Mombasa Tether has been shown to be on it's own island, shown to be a part of either the mainland, or part of Mombasa island itself. The tether itself has varied quite a bit.
  • Section 21 - Many details of Section 21 are quite inconsistent with other incarnations of the city. For one, what is supposed to be Uplift Reserve is incredibly close. The skyline's orientation also doesn't quite make sense relative to the compass.

Locational hierarchy

Theorycrafting

Hypothetical location placements

  • Spartan Strike "On Top of the World" building - Although there are significant design and placement differences, there are number of similarities with this multi-towered building in Halo 2 and Halo 2: Anniversary and the one used as the backdrop for the Spartan Strike level "On Top of the World".
  • Section 21 - Though there are some differences, when accounting for landmark placement and similar levels of building density, it does appear that Section 21 and the built up district with elephant horns might be the same.

Cleanup

Locations

Checked boxes indicate articles that have been updated with new info and images.

Characters

Double check that locations and location based info is updated on various character related pages.

Battles

See also

Sources