Is Halo: Reach "Realistic"? - A Space Engineer's Review
209K views · Jan 17, 2026 · Gaming
Comments · 384
@kutless45 · 8 months ago
To clarify Glassing: in the original Fall of Reach novel, it is established that the Covenant glass the poles of planets with a few select targets and let ecological collapse do the rest. Later writers expanded it to the Covenant glass each planet whole.
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@joelbrown1951 · 8 months ago
The video is 343 long? I see you. I respect you.
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@brennercarlson2863 · 8 months ago
Not even 4 hours long? What am I supposed to do with the other 20 hours of my day?
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@riefaduee · 8 months ago
About the Covenant Battlecruisers seemengly infinite energy: If I understood it correctly Covenant Pinch Fusion Reactors (one of the things that are actually not reverse-engineered from Forerunner tech but rather native Sangheili/Elite tech refined by the San´shyuum/Prophets) essentially create a star contained by strong gravitional fields in the middle of the reactor. These artifical stars are also where the Covenant ships get their plasma supply from.<br><br>The CCS Battlecruiser has one of this reactors in each of it´s three bulbous sections (the far bigger on in the middle section being the one used primarily to supply the ships weaponry with energy and plasma). In other words your typical Covenat ship has the power of three artificial stars at it´s disposal...
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@Destroyer_V0 · 8 months ago
Also, fun fact regarding covenant ships.<br><br>They are propelled via gravitic tech. As allmost of their tech is badly reverse engineered forerunner tech, its perhaps not surprising given the halo rings, while rotating ring worlds, rotate slower than they should to have earth like gravity.<br><br>But also... that in later games. Something important comes up. The spartan laser. Is closer to the effects of forerunner sentinal beams than any covenant weapon was in terms of compareable power.<br><br>Humanity... was creating new tech, which often mimiced that which the forerunners had devised. The covenant... imitated. Even more curious when you compare some of the halo 2 new mombasa skyline to forerunner asthetics, or the stone ruins on that games halo ring to similar ancient structures we built here on earth.
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@ianhoyt3426 · 8 months ago (edited)
From a halo lore nerd.<br><br><b>Edited the first paragraph, i had it as tungsten.</b><br>The primary resource out of the planet reach is titanium. Just about all human military tech has titanium in one way or another. Spartan armor? Titanium. Ship armor? Tutanium. The list goes on and on.<br>The other output and major infrastructure was all military. Research and development, training, spec ops, command, office of naval intelligence, ship production, etc.<br><br>The fuel used is based on either methane or hydrogen depending on aplication<br><br>The tires are made for a wide variety of terrain, that way they can be mass produced and also you may be using the same vehicle in a swamp one day and an arctic tundra the next. So having a tire that can handle both is very helpful, cost, and time saving. I should note this isnt stated anywhere but given how the universe works it makes the most sense to me. I also used to sell and install tires so i can add in my own experience to this.<br><br>The smaller scale farming seen is likely made fairly recently and out of desperation. We had entire planets specifically for food. Harvest being a major example, this was an entire world where with the exception of a i believe one city if i recall correctly, it was one giant series of farms. The loss of these planets made food scarce across the human held worlds, and resources in general got more and more scarce as the war went on.<br><br>The reason alot but not all people went to space to colonize was partially to get away from the government control of earth. This didnt work, there were alot of legitimate and not so legitimate reasons to then start a rebellion. Which because we then got experience in space combat may actually have saved us from extinction.<br><br>The active camo is light bending technology. The covenant posess the ability to use. I cant remember why spartans can use it, i suspect it has to do with their energy shields. The tech does make a lot of heat so its like a roadflare in infrared.<br><br>As far as the covenant anti air turret. The covenant were justifiably over confident, but also gave absolutely no effs whatsoever to their own troops surviving. <br><br>As far as the unsc ships being able to hover in atmosphere. I got nothin. Humanity does get anti gravity AFTER the war. But at this point in the war we do not have this tech. This is also an issue in later games where youre on a ship but it has gravity. <br>In the games, we have this tech. In the deeper lore we do not.<br>This baisicly boils down to "rule of cool" in game.<br><br>This lack of gravity control is further proved in the next level where a multi stage rocket is needed to hit orbit with a smaller fighter.<br><br>I do know certain ships like some pelicans can hit orbit unassisted. So i assume the specific impulse of the fuel in this world is much more powerful<br><br>The tanks outside of anchor 9 have always driven me nuts. "We're in a war against an enemy that shoots extreme temperature plasma. Lets strap giant 'please shoot me' tanks on the exterior of our station!"<br>I suspect theyre for water or oxygen replenishment on ships that dock with it.<br><br>Spartan suits have 90 minutes of air in vacuum, odst and marine have 15 minutes. Unless specifically equipped for longer duration missions.<br><br>Slipspace in a nutshell: the drive makes a lot of.micro black holes that almost instantly "dissolve" away with hawking radiation. This make a hole into an alternate dimension where faster than light travel is doable.the ships drive makes a "bubble" of safety during traversal. Human tech is more brute force so it "punches" its way into slipspace, covenant tech is more accurate and allows faster traversal, and "cuts" its way in. Forefunner was pinpoint accurate. Human tech also isnt as good on exit and drift of up to several million kilometers is possible. Slipspace is also not instant. It takes amywhere from days to years to travel to your destination, the cutscene in halo 2 where you leave earth and end up at another halo was a journey of 2 weeks, and that was with the human ship piggybacking on the covenant slipspace bundle. It likely would have been at least a few months with human tech. This is why cryo sleep is used. Why keep everyone awake when even your ftl journey is going to take 6 months.<br><br>Its never explained how the mspec reentry pack actually works.<br><br>The entire war was pretty much "mission changed to evacuate civilians" we were getting absolutely destroyed.<br><br>If you want a detailed breakdowm with the math to back it up on how powerful covenant and human ship weapons are, check out the channel installation00. <br>Short version. Apocalyptic.<br><br>The covenant may also have found the cavern with a "luminary" which i will fail to explain, but it kinda highlights covenant artifacts on their maps.<br><br>Dont fuck with oni. Theyre one of the most horrifying things in the halo universe.<br><br>They do use mass accelerators to get cargo into orbit, the design is more of a rail system kinda similar to what you see in the first level of space marine 2 if i recall correctly.<br><br>The mass accelerator cannons on the unsc ships are mind blowingly overpowered. One of the numbers given was i believe a 160 ton feros tungsten alloy slug fired at .04% the speed of light. This has been misquoted as 4% the speed of light but people kinda rolled with that number. The unsc infinty the flagship in halo 4 5 and infinite laughs in the face of physics and fires a 3,000 ton slug at a quarter of the speed of light. The recoil of these alone would realistically probably kill everyone on the ship if not destroy the ship outright. <br>But its cool.<br><br>This also puts into perspective the overwhelming technological gap between humanity and the covenant. Using the 160 ton at .04% speed of light projectile, it took an average of 3 rounds to take out an equivalent ship of the covenant fleet. (Frigate on frigate in this case) Meanwhile one round from them can gut any of our ships from stem to stern. <br>For us to have a 50% chance of victory in orbit we had to have 3-1 odds in our favor. <br>We could hold the line on the ground, even win. But it was irrelevant when the fleet overhead was gone and the covenant starts burning the world you stand on to glass. <br>The popluataions able to be evacuated in time were generally tiny in comparison to what the planet had. A world with 15 million people would be lucky to get 15,000 off planet. And likely wouldnt come close to that number.<br><br>Any other lore nerd corrects me if i got anything wrong, or share some lore of your own<br><br>Thank you for covering halo. this is my favorite lore universe and i hope to see more of it from you. Awesome work as always!
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@bonair-o3q · 8 months ago
GIVE ME Is Prey (2017) "realistic"? AND MY LIFE IS YOURS!!
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@Mr.Dinosalt · 8 months ago (edited)
About the cloaking device, the problem with the bending of light around the user is that it would also make anyone using that not able to see, as it would not allow light to reach the person's eyes. I understand that the game would not want to show that even if it was the method the device used, for gameplay reasons, but even then. So I think your guess of it being more advanced and theoretical physics is probably more in the ballpark. The holograms are also a full can of worms, that I agree when the endpoint is that its just not realistic. Love the video man.
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@TahmaAhma · 8 months ago
Yessss, my favorite game in my favorite franchise being picked apart in my favorite way that i don't understand half of it but i know i like it. Let's go!
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@drewpocernich2540 · 8 months ago
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXdEjNkO2-I&t=2974">49:34</a><br>Goated RVB reference.
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@r.alexandercorbitt1554 · 8 months ago
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXdEjNkO2-I&t=3615">1:00:15</a> I always thought that the idea with the Longswords was that they were meant to force the ship away from the base ("ready to push"), so that the orbital MAC round wouldn't cause any collateral damage. The "target designator" explanation makes sense as well, though.
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@donotreadthis26 · 8 months ago
As seen in the opening cutscene of the halo 3 level "the ark", the pelican is indeed capable of atmospheric re-enty.
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