[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] tjal [quote][b]Posted by:[/b] Wolverfrog [quote][b]Posted by:[/b] grey101 That isn't true whatsoever they had a hard time finding strategic locations not actual planets.[/quote] [i]Conversations from the Universe[/i] says otherwise; "We do not know where their homeworld is. Their pattern of retreat is either hopelessly random, or brilliantly conceived." It's implied they don't even know our homeworld is called 'Earth,' which attests to the deviousness of the executors of the Cole Protocol. It made more sense when there were only believed to be a handful of human colonies; a thirty-long year game of cat and mouse. With the new canon/preference for an old contradiction that there are hundreds of planets, it means they must have been skipping loads or tearing through them impossibly quickly. I'm not too fond of it, myself. "Earth is all we have left" should mean Earth is all that's left. 343i have really lessened the atmosphere of the original trilogy in that way, and others such as the reveal that [i]Infinity[/i] could have beat down the Covenant if Earth fell or the revelation that 'glassing' is mostly ONI propaganda, rarely being done in truth. Eh, it just feels like they've retroactively tried to preserve a universe we all thought in tatters. I remember before 343i, everyone thought it'd take decades for humans to rebuild and repopulate. Now we're all hunky-dory a few minutes after Truth died. I'm not a fan of that caveat of the new canon.[/quote] Actually that last part isn't entirely true. In one of the books (the fall of reach probably) there was a tracker device attached to a ship and they tracked the ship to reach. They skipped a lot of human-occupied space to get to reach and subsequently to earth. This wasn't conceived by 343i. Bungie already made that canon.[/quote] Well sure, but if I remember right there was once only something like seventeen colonies? It was contradicted a few times in the books and such and then confirmed again in others, but the general consensus was that there weren't many (not positive on that, so don't yell if I'm wrong). Then the Encyclopedia came out and told us there were, indeed, hundreds. [quote]Also the phrase "earth is all that we have left" is not to be taken literally. It was (after reach) one of the last "strongholds". Ofcourse there are other planets, but the fall of earth would have been the end for humanity as they would know it.[/quote] I don't know, mate. The Halo 3 Bestarium claims only 200 million humans are alive; I can't imagine there being planets full of people with a population like that. Comparatively, the Sangheili are 8 billion-strong, and yet in the K5 trilogy they're portrayed as being worse off than we are. I inferred Hood's remark as literal - Earth really was all they had left. [quote]Infinity wasn't about beating down the covenant, it was about flying as far away as possible (at least that's what I thought it was about)[/quote] I'm fairly sure the [i]Glasslands[/i] says it was to 'beat back the Covenant' if Earth was lost. I haven't got a copy to hand so I can't verify it, but as far as I know that's what it says. And it apparently outstrips anything the Covenant had. [Edited on 09.23.2012 2:15 PM PDT]