There is one possibility that you missed: If the ship did jump, what's the likelihood that the drive was burned out, and the crew are currently in hibernation akin to the crew of the UNSC Spirit of Fire?
@@AnthonySmith-u2rWell I would like to support your theory, However, there's only one thing that would make a big difference between the UNSC spirit of fire and the UNSC Everest crew, that would be Forerunner technology had to been involved, Spirit of fire crew weren't spared Willy Neely, they destroyed a Shield world Full of Forerunner warships, even then they weren't teleported immediately, they were still a drift number of years before being transported to the ark.
It's possible that he did complete the jump, but that the shock wave in slipspace caused by creating a new star tore the ship apart during the jump. Alternatively it could have caused the ships slipsace engine to burn out mid jump, throwing them out of slipspace into a random unchartered region of space with no way for them to get home
Cole has always had my favorite backstory and final stand, dead or alive his story ends with him detonating the core of a Star against a covenant battlegroup
I think you have forgotten how big space is. The innies amassed a huge fleet and somehow ONI didn’t know about it? That only means they have set up their own colony away from the UNSC controlled space.
Not only was Cortana the first human in-atmosphere slipspace jump, she even beat the Covenant to it. It was only because an AI witnessed her doing it and fed that info back to the Covenant that the Prophet of Regret was able to pull off the same maneuver on Earth
Its not that it can’t be done its just that the UNSC doesn’t do it because the results are catastrophic lol thats why you see a massive shockwave leave the ship when it jumps and sends everything flying in H2
Valid points. Let's not forget that when Coke was stationed on the CMA Season of Plenty, he'd managed to create a new way to calculate slipspace input parameters. Not to mention, he had more than 1 AI with him during the battle. 1 of which had not been activated at that time. Given numerous events in Halo between his disappearance and infinite's campaign, humanity had been stretched thin throughout the galaxy. He also said he wanted to look up at a sky of unknown stars.
It is mentioned that there is still uncertainty in those older drives within subspace, where ships sometimes show up before they left and sometimes months late. I wonder if the gravitation of the planet caused the ship to experience some sort of temporal anomaly and become displaced in time, leading to a situation where Admiral Cole and this ship will reappear at some point in the series.
Cortana being a more advanced AI and only succeeding when using a more advanced Covenant ship isn't convincing me. Cortana did it on the fly, whereas Cole arranged and planned it ahead of time. Imagine it as a game engine - Cortana is a new model that can render things on the fly, but Cole was making do with prerendered cutscenes lol. That only makes me feel more confident that Cole was a forerunner to Cortana in their achievements.
It is possible that ONI has found out about Cole’s survival, but currently doesn’t have the resources to deal with it, and doesn’t want to mobilize anything until they are sure they can do so discreetly. It is in operating procedure for ONI to act this way.
Perhaps because of the complex nature of that particular slipspace jump, it irreparably damaged the engines and some other systems to the point where Cole and his crew were basically stranded at wherever they ended up. Or maybe a causal time dilation event could have happened where Cole ends up skipping a decade or two. Or maybe they found and got trap in one the Forerunner shield worlds that were in slipspace rather than real space. Or a combination of other possibilities that could explain his potential survival yet absence.
If only we could just export straight to the Domain! I do hope the frame rate issue gets sorted soon, and thank you for continuing to cover topics in detail. I've wanted to learn more about Cole as a person.
I got to admit, I tend to think Cole did get his happy ending. However the argument that Installation00 makes is logical. While the odds are long, I think I will hold on to Cole and Lyrenne getting their happy ending. Well done and really enjoyed this video!
Master Chief and Noble 6 are the absolute GOATs when it comes to "boots on the ground" style warfare. Admiral Preston Cole was the absolute GOAT of outright Naval warfare. Change my mind. -and yes, the framerate is also not great on this, but appreciate you addressing it- *Also, another thing to consider: what if ONI knows where Cole and the crew of the UNSC Everest currently are, and decided that letting them settle down was an acceptable loss? The UNSC not only tried to sweep Cole under the rug, but actively decided to use him as a potential scapegoat. Regardless of his prestige as a naval officer, Cole's time was running out. The UNSC wasn't shy about losing ships to the Covenant, and considering Cole's fleet retreated after doling out MASSIVE losses to the Covies, and the fact that Cole DOUBLED that number with a single ship, it stands on merit that they saw the Everest as an acceptable loss, regardless of its final fate or destination. If Cole escaped, ONI knows, and they won't go after Cole. He served his purpose, and it'll honestly be too much trouble to pursue him.I telligence agencies in the real world have done that with less honorable men.*
If ONI went after him and tried to disown him, it would like Stalin trying to get rid of Marshall Zhukov: it would not end well. Cole was a hero of such high regard, High and Nav com especially would welcome him home as one. it would lead to an out right civil war in the branches and ONI itself (mainly everyone vs ONI) if any particular member of decide to try.
Keyes was the absolute beast of small scale naval combat. He's the "Space Spartan" when it comes to accomplishments. Keyes Loop is essentially a shitpost when you try to decypher its insane genius instead of experiencing it. Almost all of those steps could've been a total loss and he kept spinning and somehow he always got his mark. A single destroyer wouldn't match a light frigate from the Covenant, much less two of those, a light destroyer and a carrier. Cole did that by thinking 11 steps ahead, treading the needle with each step and somehow ending up the only vessel remaining in the system. Cole is a great admiral, something Keyes probably would've never lived up to. He excelled at navigation and thinking with the enemy's head. Although many of his "glorious victories" were outright phyrric. That being said during the early Human-Covenant War that 1:3 ratio? Think of 1:10 and hope you won't lose half of your own fleet in return for defeating all Covenant forces. UNSC ships are often described as paper in terms of armor and their weapons are inadequate yet imagine what happens when you have *even less protection* and you have no idea how to breach their shields yet. Several improvements were made to the UNSC ship armor so they *only* get one-shot by the dedicated Covenant anti-ship weapons... instead of being gutted by pulse lasers immediately. The various emergency maneuvering systems and other batshit methods were invented to somewhat equalize speed and maneuverability disparity they experienced early-on. Knowing this, Cole still pulled off a miracle in these engagements yet he wasn't some angry god to the Shipmasters. That's something Jacob Keyes ends up fulfilling...
I think he survived. While the main issue (the Slipspace transition) is immensely complex, beyond the typical capabilities of the Shaw-Fujikawa drive, Cole had time and resources spent on "pre-rendering" for lack of a better word. And, there is evidence for similar, though likely less extreme, occurrences in Lyreen's disappearance. Her's was very similar to Cole's, and likely inspired it in the first place. Lyreen may have had a less complicated situation, but also far less resources to accomplish the goal than Cole (she couldn't exactly go ask a large network of smart AI, after all). As for other problems, they are all fairly mitigable. As the story all this information says, anyone who disagreed with the act could just be indefinitely frozen or killed, and space is absolutely large enough that his ship could go missing without any degree of difficulty. Especially since nobody looked for over a decade.
Personally, I'm still 50/50. But my gut is saying this was all a plan years in the making to potentially save humanity and he made it. Sounds like you're assuming they escaped and just went back to the colonies under their real names, which I agree would be idiotic. But reading the books, it sounds more like he was in contact with his wife the entire time. He learned she was living on a colony FAR outside UNSC control, and, more importantly, FAR outside the Covenant. So he spends a few years fighting his best, seeing the war will likely be lost, and decides to do what he can to save something of the human race. He built a crew who was hand picked to be willing to go out into the void to keep humanity alive. He developed a method for pulling it off, and put himself into a position to pull it off. Then, he pulled it off. Afterwards, he and his crew joined his wife and went out into space to build a colony far enough out that neither the Covenant or UNSC would find them anytime soon. I've actually been expecting for years for a Halo book or game to feature their rediscovery akin to the Clans in Battletech. Just a lost tribe who vanished one day to save humanity and built a culture in the far reaches of the galaxy.
I mean I might agree with this but the belicose had performed the exact same slip space jump in a gas giants atmosphere and it was even older than the tech Cole had when he did it.
I remember reading that story with Cole. Didn't he use a heavily damaged UNSC ship that was supposed to be scraped and had it towed to that campaign and used it as a big mine when the fleet retreated? Also he asked for a new Smart AI for his ship and ask for the transfer of personal that were once most former rebels joining the UNSC to help fight the Covenant?
It's a nice story... One that falls aprt once looked into... Makes you wonder if ONI didn't just make it up so they could say a folk hero was able ride off into the sunset?
I love the armour he has. So often in mil-sci or even just sci-fi, flag officers wear some fancy variant of the primary uniforms. This depiction imo, can reinforce the 'desk jockey' stereotype of higher ranks sitting in their safe comfy rooms while the grunts and lower officers do the real work. In this rendering, Cole has very solid looking sort of chest/groin protection and some pauldrons for some reason. (Looking hard is its own justification,no?😊) This is a man who understands the threats he might face and has every intention of surviving to help his people, while still placing himself in potential danger. And the Cole protocol is named for him, a very hard policy made necessary in the face of anihillation
This is honestly an example of IRL writing conventions outweighing in-universe logic. Cole lived because the possibility was discussed. If the authorial intent was that Cole died, then the story wouldn't have broached the question.
I don't know... the way the source material is written I think he made it. I mean, I don't disagree with anything in particular you've said here, but I've always felt that one of the central themes of Halo is hope in the face of impossible odds. Call it "metagaming" or whatever the more general narritive equivalent might be, but I think he made it. Not that I think we'll ever get a definitive answer, nor should we IMO, but he found a way to give the covenant a serous beating and retire in a way that gave him everything he wanted. Even if the slipspace jump wasn't a guarantee, I'd have taken those odds every time.
One of my favorite short stories from Halo. I'd like to think he's out there somewhere on an Outer Colony planet licking his wounds, gathering forces, and making a militia to protect what he loves.
If you think ONI and the UNSC would admit that the Great War hero Admiral Cole did this in War Time you’re nuts. They would cover it up and never let it be known by anyone because of the massive loss of morale this would cause. Just like it would happen and does happen in real life with heroes of this stature. He’s too important to let this possible truth ruin all that he did and inspired your successors to do. I’m not saying that he actually did it but if he did they would cover it up so fast and thoroughly no one would know it.
I forget how it's worded but the short story does mention that Cole thought of starting over by fleeing earth to start his own colony or abandoning the UNSC to what looked like their inevitable defeat. He would start over in a new far away system or galaxy, basically continuing the human species where the covenant didnt exist or were to far away to be a problem. I think that was his goal, and he planned it out that way. I think he's out there, any even if just one voice objected, though i imagine way more did, they simply couldn't do anything about it. Cole and crew weren't just putting on a fake mustache and hoping no one would recognize them. They were basically a colony ship, leaving earth, colonies, and humanity to start over some place so far away no one could ever go back. As far as the slipspace being impossible, stranger things have happened. For example, when cortana did her first jump in atmosphere like you metioned, where she found out how much more advanced covenant jump tech was. She also discovered that the covenant had a very gross understanding of their own plasma cannons, and she was able to quickly upgrade them to make them much more efficient and lethal. I'm sure if any covenant weapons expert was told that their cannons were half of what they could be, they'd deny that and reafirm that the plasma cannons are as advanced as they could be with the current tech.
Ah happy to see my favorite Halo conspiracy theory getting some love, I posed this question to the Library crew many moon ago and I enjoyed the convo there. I think its a really interesting theory and there could be any number of fun ways to do something with it in the lore if it came to pass.
Personally i enjoy the "ai assisted research" being along the same lines as spartans being MIA not KIA. Cole being one of the most important and well known military personel, i would not be surprised if the unsc or oni wanted to sement his status like other "heroes" as being unkillable
Admiral Cole is up there with the likes of Samantha Carter from the Stargate universe. She made a star go supernova to obliterate an entire Goa'uld fleet 😂🤘
what you are forgeting he may have had the unsc Io and used it as a decoy/fireship remote pilot it into the gas giant gone around the gas giant entered slipspace just before the nukes went off
I think its feasible that there is a difference between pre-planning an in-atmosphere jump and calculating one under unstable conditions on the fly like Cortana did in First Strike. It's important to note that it wasn't the actual slipspace drive that allowed Cortana to do what she did, it was the Covenant sensors that allowed her to plot a path accurately. In fact, the book states that it is possible to mathematically anticipate the distortions caused by the gas giant, the other planets, and even the ship itself. The math is fictional, so who's to say Cole couldn't have gotten that information he needed in advance of the battle?
Well, he could've made it with the crew and crashed on an unknown planet outside the range of an SOS beacon. He very well could be chilling on a planet halfway across the galaxy. Or, he could have made it and it was covered up in some regard, possibly due to Insurrectionist assistance.
I bet he would've been a godsend against the Covies so he had to get written out of the general setting and presumed dead, or at least that's the last I heard about Admiral Cole
There's a third option. The ship was able to make it to slip space, but it broke up from the stress and battle damage, and now it's drifting in pieces in the middle of uncharted space, kinda like the pillar of autumn and spirit of fire.
Even if he and his crew did survive I'm fairly certain it would have resulted in a crash landing shortly after exiting slipspace on some uncharted planet with zero contact from the outside galaxy. There is almost no way you could have calculated a perfect slipspace jump under those conditions especially on a much older ship utilizing older hardware. And even if such a jump was made I doubt the Everest and her crew would have been completely unscathed after the fact.
I feel like we may see the Everest again. What's inside it however may not be so...pleasant given what was noted about the older model Slipspace drive. I'm imagining that one racing ship hitting the ring in The Expanse, but applied to a Valiant class cruiser. Not even the Flood would touch that mess.
If i recall correctly, Cole also had the UNSC Io towed to the battle to be used as a 'fire ship' and since there have been a case to be said of Acendent Justice-Gettysburg, could it have been a possibility that Cole appropriated Io's drive and used it to support a twin drive jump, or an 'enhanced' jump We know Cole ran calculations, maybe he had some that includes this possibility, since it does not seem all that difficult to remove the drive from one ship (UNSC Spirit of Fire, UNSC Savanah being examples) and maybe just adding it to the other.
There's a few possibilities: the ship made the jump, but Cole was KIA during guerilla action against Covenant forces attempting to return to the UNSC, the ship made the jump, and the exit point was outside of UNSC space, or far into the future, or past, or the ship didn't make the jump and he died a hero--but ultimately the Covenant had an obstacle removed for the rest of the war.
The AIs determined that Cole probably survived for the simple reason that it opens up narrative options to have his ship end up somewhere else, probably somewhen else.
Gotta love how it's usually navy guys who got the highest K/D ratios in halo. (Excluding grey team) Cole has the admiration of humanity and had more space victories against the Covenant but Vice Admiral Wittcomb is technically responsible for the deletion of Joyous Excaltation and hundreds of Covenant ships post mortem. All this after his involvement with tricking hundreds of Covenant ships to their doom with Unyielding Heirophant! (Very likely inspired by Cole's last stand) We need some actual lore on the number of deaths on both sides during the war. (Don't count the hunter species since that number could get ridiculous)
Valid theory. Although for me personally I’m uncertain if he did die or not just cause of the fact the slip was possible. However, I doubt if it did happen that it went to plan cause of the exploding star. In fact if the Everest did make it out of slip-space I doubt it’s in one piece or in the intended destination. Although on the point of hiding the Everest, they don’t necessarily have to hide it if they did make it. They could chuck it into a star or just crash it on some random planet and get picked up by the Belacose assuming things went to plan anyway.
Ok ok hear me out. What if he did make the jump but it was random. And when they come out of slip the drive is trashed beyond repair. That puts them in a similar situation as the spirit of fire...and knowing how coincidence works in halo...I would say the odds are high that they meet up after halo wars 2.
He is alive, you forgot the point that Cole brought an extra AI that unbooted aboard the ship so almost Double the AI processing power, the UNSC Valiant went into refit before the battle so they most likely swapped out the drive to a newer model and not just replacing and upgrading the old battle plates to be Tungsten layered.
I also am not a big believer that he survived primarily because of his crew. However i did come up with an idea watching this video how he could have gotten past them. If he pumped up the nitrogen levels and lowered the oxygen in the areas of the ship with crew whose loyalty to him was in question it would put them to sleep, they then could have put those either in cryo or under some kind of arrest. This doesnt get past breathers but the number of people with quick access to those may have been manageable. Its either that or he would have had to evac all the air in those sections and straight up kill his crew. Which given how he managed losses on the battlefield i dont think we can put past him.
One of the questions I've always had about it is whether or not if they did pull it off then what are the possibilities the energy released from the gas giant turning into a brown dwarf possibly accelerated their Transit through slip space and also toasted the drive so what if they actually did survive and they're just stranded trying to make it back on sublight engines
Cole had a great kill ration haha honestly Cole is easily one of my favorite characters. In the end we probably will never get a firm answer but a man as smart as he was I don't see it being far fetched. Also the galaxy is a big place. Also Cortana pulled the same thing off in a covenant ship. So let the man have his happy ending lol.
Is it possible Cole secretly had a covenant slipspace drive installed in the Everest? Or a slightly less invasive method, a stripped down covenant ship in a cargo hold available to open the slipspace rupture? Like how Miranda Keyes hitched a ride with a covenant ship to delta halo, but the other way round.
I’m not the Mike this is for…but I love it nonetheless! Also, you’re not the only Halo UA-camr with the weird frame rate. I watched both an Exhardt’s Ladder and MintBlitz video in the past two days and theirs was also jittery. So, no worries there
Here's a theory. This is based on the "physics" from the Stargate SG-1 universe. In an episode they blow up a star to make it go supernova. This energy propels them ridiculously far outside the known galaxy. What if that's what's happened. They survived but are now adrift. Hoping to be rescued.
@@matthewarcher3024 I suppose, With 89.7 percent possibility, however the only other way Cole would have survived, Just like how the UNSC spirit of fire was slipspace into the ark, Mendicant bias would have teleported the UNSC Everest away, Although they weren't any forerunner Dyson sphere around.
The flash clone children's life story... the species that said hi before the halos fired... now Cole and the brutal truth behind the fantasy? What's next?
What's some of the animated shorts in this video? I have halo legends, but some of these with the spirit of fire and other heavily animated clips look awesome and I'd love to watch them and add to my collection. Edit- I should have been specific, my bad. Like 5:33-5:47, what's that from?
I noticed that on youtube if you use stats for nerds it says the video was only uploaded at 15fps. When I set it to 1080p that's what it says the frame rate is. Perhaps try uploading recordings at 30fps in a 60fps container, maybe that will fix it.
You can’t go around the world in a second but you can go around the world in a year.What if the ship managed to do a jump but is still traveling through slip space
If 343 would have competent writers who know how to write stories. There are many fancy ways Cole could've returned or shown up during the story. With cryro sleep and other shenanigans any kind future fate could await Cole. Alas, neither Bungie nor 343 Industries are up to the task of writing anything that good anymore. The best you could get is a nice book featuring Cole, perhaps as the man separated from the legend.
Oh the jump worked alright. The hit the launch button, fired up the Slipspace drive, and escaped. Now Preston Cole and the crew of the UNSC Everest find themselves in a far flung corner of the cosmos, Lost In Space. Join along on their adventure of laughs, heartbreak, love and revenge as this intrepid crew attempt to survive the Eldritch terror of deep space. Hoping beyond hope that their next jump, . . . will be the jump home.
Cole: gets one of the few happy endings in halo
Installation00: “absolutely not on my watch”
There is one possibility that you missed: If the ship did jump, what's the likelihood that the drive was burned out, and the crew are currently in hibernation akin to the crew of the UNSC Spirit of Fire?
I support this,@Installation00 you should look into this
@@AnthonySmith-u2rWell I would like to support your theory, However, there's only one thing that would make a big difference between the UNSC spirit of fire and the UNSC Everest crew, that would be Forerunner technology had to been involved, Spirit of fire crew weren't spared Willy Neely, they destroyed a Shield world Full of Forerunner warships, even then they weren't teleported immediately, they were still a drift number of years before being transported to the ark.
@@Blitzkrieg23 that could also be a possibility as well
Just as likelihood he jumped into a star and turned into celestial dust.
"1.5km long warship, where do you hide that?" An oort cloud probably, given that the UNSC were able to hide the construction of the Inifinity in one.
It's possible that he did complete the jump, but that the shock wave in slipspace caused by creating a new star tore the ship apart during the jump. Alternatively it could have caused the ships slipsace engine to burn out mid jump, throwing them out of slipspace into a random unchartered region of space with no way for them to get home
Literally anywhere, because space is huge.
@@amdkillaplays so he's floating out there spirit of fire style in cryo? new head canon for me anyway
100% my boy Preston lived
100% bro
Uncontested
He is
Having that ship come back in an infinite dlc would've been cool lol
There could of been a time jump for him to end up at installation 07, which would be something i don't think we get.@CoffeeCrowgasm
Cole has always had my favorite backstory and final stand, dead or alive his story ends with him detonating the core of a Star against a covenant battlegroup
Chekovs gun, it seems unlikely that his wife would randomly show up and disappear if they didnt have something planned
This. He went with his gal
I think you have forgotten how big space is. The innies amassed a huge fleet and somehow ONI didn’t know about it? That only means they have set up their own colony away from the UNSC controlled space.
ONI wasn't aware of the planet of human and former covenant living together either. It's definitely possible.
@@mattstorm360 , which planet, Vanessa or Goa? because Vanessa only got ex Covenant post-war and i am not sure if any ex covenant live on Gao
@17:45 I just realized that it was Cortana’s new slipspace calculations that the prophet of regret used to flee New Mombasa later on.
Cortana :"Oops"
Not only was Cortana the first human in-atmosphere slipspace jump, she even beat the Covenant to it. It was only because an AI witnessed her doing it and fed that info back to the Covenant that the Prophet of Regret was able to pull off the same maneuver on Earth
Its not that it can’t be done its just that the UNSC doesn’t do it because the results are catastrophic lol thats why you see a massive shockwave leave the ship when it jumps and sends everything flying in H2
Valid points.
Let's not forget that when Coke was stationed on the CMA Season of Plenty, he'd managed to create a new way to calculate slipspace input parameters.
Not to mention, he had more than 1 AI with him during the battle. 1 of which had not been activated at that time.
Given numerous events in Halo between his disappearance and infinite's campaign, humanity had been stretched thin throughout the galaxy.
He also said he wanted to look up at a sky of unknown stars.
It is mentioned that there is still uncertainty in those older drives within subspace, where ships sometimes show up before they left and sometimes months late. I wonder if the gravitation of the planet caused the ship to experience some sort of temporal anomaly and become displaced in time, leading to a situation where Admiral Cole and this ship will reappear at some point in the series.
Cortana being a more advanced AI and only succeeding when using a more advanced Covenant ship isn't convincing me. Cortana did it on the fly, whereas Cole arranged and planned it ahead of time. Imagine it as a game engine - Cortana is a new model that can render things on the fly, but Cole was making do with prerendered cutscenes lol.
That only makes me feel more confident that Cole was a forerunner to Cortana in their achievements.
It is possible that ONI has found out about Cole’s survival, but currently doesn’t have the resources to deal with it, and doesn’t want to mobilize anything until they are sure they can do so discreetly. It is in operating procedure for ONI to act this way.
Perhaps because of the complex nature of that particular slipspace jump, it irreparably damaged the engines and some other systems to the point where Cole and his crew were basically stranded at wherever they ended up. Or maybe a causal time dilation event could have happened where Cole ends up skipping a decade or two. Or maybe they found and got trap in one the Forerunner shield worlds that were in slipspace rather than real space. Or a combination of other possibilities that could explain his potential survival yet absence.
If only we could just export straight to the Domain! I do hope the frame rate issue gets sorted soon, and thank you for continuing to cover topics in detail.
I've wanted to learn more about Cole as a person.
Let's be honest here. Cole's fate is the exact same as Noble 6, they're both hanging out in a cave on Reach
Edit: guys, it's a joke calm yourselves
Which means still dead.
Noble 6 is dead, move on
I got to admit, I tend to think Cole did get his happy ending. However the argument that Installation00 makes is logical. While the odds are long, I think I will hold on to Cole and Lyrenne getting their happy ending. Well done and really enjoyed this video!
Master Chief and Noble 6 are the absolute GOATs when it comes to "boots on the ground" style warfare.
Admiral Preston Cole was the absolute GOAT of outright Naval warfare.
Change my mind.
-and yes, the framerate is also not great on this, but appreciate you addressing it-
*Also, another thing to consider: what if ONI knows where Cole and the crew of the UNSC Everest currently are, and decided that letting them settle down was an acceptable loss? The UNSC not only tried to sweep Cole under the rug, but actively decided to use him as a potential scapegoat. Regardless of his prestige as a naval officer, Cole's time was running out. The UNSC wasn't shy about losing ships to the Covenant, and considering Cole's fleet retreated after doling out MASSIVE losses to the Covies, and the fact that Cole DOUBLED that number with a single ship, it stands on merit that they saw the Everest as an acceptable loss, regardless of its final fate or destination. If Cole escaped, ONI knows, and they won't go after Cole. He served his purpose, and it'll honestly be too much trouble to pursue him.I telligence agencies in the real world have done that with less honorable men.*
If ONI went after him and tried to disown him, it would like Stalin trying to get rid of Marshall Zhukov: it would not end well. Cole was a hero of such high regard, High and Nav com especially would welcome him home as one. it would lead to an out right civil war in the branches and ONI itself (mainly everyone vs ONI) if any particular member of decide to try.
Keyes was the absolute beast of small scale naval combat. He's the "Space Spartan" when it comes to accomplishments. Keyes Loop is essentially a shitpost when you try to decypher its insane genius instead of experiencing it. Almost all of those steps could've been a total loss and he kept spinning and somehow he always got his mark. A single destroyer wouldn't match a light frigate from the Covenant, much less two of those, a light destroyer and a carrier. Cole did that by thinking 11 steps ahead, treading the needle with each step and somehow ending up the only vessel remaining in the system.
Cole is a great admiral, something Keyes probably would've never lived up to. He excelled at navigation and thinking with the enemy's head. Although many of his "glorious victories" were outright phyrric. That being said during the early Human-Covenant War that 1:3 ratio? Think of 1:10 and hope you won't lose half of your own fleet in return for defeating all Covenant forces. UNSC ships are often described as paper in terms of armor and their weapons are inadequate yet imagine what happens when you have *even less protection* and you have no idea how to breach their shields yet. Several improvements were made to the UNSC ship armor so they *only* get one-shot by the dedicated Covenant anti-ship weapons... instead of being gutted by pulse lasers immediately. The various emergency maneuvering systems and other batshit methods were invented to somewhat equalize speed and maneuverability disparity they experienced early-on. Knowing this, Cole still pulled off a miracle in these engagements yet he wasn't some angry god to the Shipmasters.
That's something Jacob Keyes ends up fulfilling...
Bro lived, simply built different
I think he survived. While the main issue (the Slipspace transition) is immensely complex, beyond the typical capabilities of the Shaw-Fujikawa drive, Cole had time and resources spent on "pre-rendering" for lack of a better word. And, there is evidence for similar, though likely less extreme, occurrences in Lyreen's disappearance. Her's was very similar to Cole's, and likely inspired it in the first place. Lyreen may have had a less complicated situation, but also far less resources to accomplish the goal than Cole (she couldn't exactly go ask a large network of smart AI, after all). As for other problems, they are all fairly mitigable. As the story all this information says, anyone who disagreed with the act could just be indefinitely frozen or killed, and space is absolutely large enough that his ship could go missing without any degree of difficulty. Especially since nobody looked for over a decade.
Where did he hide the Everest? Psh, that's easy. He's a farmer. It's in the shed where he keeps the tractor.
It's now a "Heavily modified" JOTUN tractor. (In universe name for a line of autonomous combine harvesters in case someone doesn't know)
@@venator-fb7yy The Spirit of Farming
Personally, I'm still 50/50. But my gut is saying this was all a plan years in the making to potentially save humanity and he made it.
Sounds like you're assuming they escaped and just went back to the colonies under their real names, which I agree would be idiotic.
But reading the books, it sounds more like he was in contact with his wife the entire time. He learned she was living on a colony FAR outside UNSC control, and, more importantly, FAR outside the Covenant.
So he spends a few years fighting his best, seeing the war will likely be lost, and decides to do what he can to save something of the human race.
He built a crew who was hand picked to be willing to go out into the void to keep humanity alive. He developed a method for pulling it off, and put himself into a position to pull it off. Then, he pulled it off.
Afterwards, he and his crew joined his wife and went out into space to build a colony far enough out that neither the Covenant or UNSC would find them anytime soon.
I've actually been expecting for years for a Halo book or game to feature their rediscovery akin to the Clans in Battletech. Just a lost tribe who vanished one day to save humanity and built a culture in the far reaches of the galaxy.
Cole is dead... until Eric Nylund writes another Halo book
@@quentinking4351 I enjoyed his books so much. Switching to the author who followed him was jarring.
I mean I might agree with this but the belicose had performed the exact same slip space jump in a gas giants atmosphere and it was even older than the tech Cole had when he did it.
I remember reading that story with Cole. Didn't he use a heavily damaged UNSC ship that was supposed to be scraped and had it towed to that campaign and used it as a big mine when the fleet retreated? Also he asked for a new Smart AI for his ship and ask for the transfer of personal that were once most former rebels joining the UNSC to help fight the Covenant?
It's a nice story... One that falls aprt once looked into... Makes you wonder if ONI didn't just make it up so they could say a folk hero was able ride off into the sunset?
They jumped to Noble Six's cave, that's how they've stayed hidden the whole time.
I love the armour he has. So often in mil-sci or even just sci-fi, flag officers wear some fancy variant of the primary uniforms. This depiction imo, can reinforce the 'desk jockey' stereotype of higher ranks sitting in their safe comfy rooms while the grunts and lower officers do the real work.
In this rendering, Cole has very solid looking sort of chest/groin protection and some pauldrons for some reason. (Looking hard is its own justification,no?😊)
This is a man who understands the threats he might face and has every intention of surviving to help his people, while still placing himself in potential danger.
And the Cole protocol is named for him, a very hard policy made necessary in the face of anihillation
The man was from Missouri. I'm surprised he didn't have a sidearm on him
@@KillerOrca If he was an Alaskan he would have had DMR :D
This is honestly an example of IRL writing conventions outweighing in-universe logic. Cole lived because the possibility was discussed. If the authorial intent was that Cole died, then the story wouldn't have broached the question.
I don't know... the way the source material is written I think he made it. I mean, I don't disagree with anything in particular you've said here, but I've always felt that one of the central themes of Halo is hope in the face of impossible odds. Call it "metagaming" or whatever the more general narritive equivalent might be, but I think he made it. Not that I think we'll ever get a definitive answer, nor should we IMO, but he found a way to give the covenant a serous beating and retire in a way that gave him everything he wanted. Even if the slipspace jump wasn't a guarantee, I'd have taken those odds every time.
Love to see you do a battle breakdown of all the battles of the human covenant war
He survived, he’s on a beach under a different name, I seen it.
One of my favorite short stories from Halo. I'd like to think he's out there somewhere on an Outer Colony planet licking his wounds, gathering forces, and making a militia to protect what he loves.
If you think ONI and the UNSC would admit that the Great War hero Admiral Cole did this in War Time you’re nuts. They would cover it up and never let it be known by anyone because of the massive loss of morale this would cause. Just like it would happen and does happen in real life with heroes of this stature. He’s too important to let this possible truth ruin all that he did and inspired your successors to do.
I’m not saying that he actually did it but if he did they would cover it up so fast and thoroughly no one would know it.
I forget how it's worded but the short story does mention that Cole thought of starting over by fleeing earth to start his own colony or abandoning the UNSC to what looked like their inevitable defeat. He would start over in a new far away system or galaxy, basically continuing the human species where the covenant didnt exist or were to far away to be a problem. I think that was his goal, and he planned it out that way. I think he's out there, any even if just one voice objected, though i imagine way more did, they simply couldn't do anything about it. Cole and crew weren't just putting on a fake mustache and hoping no one would recognize them. They were basically a colony ship, leaving earth, colonies, and humanity to start over some place so far away no one could ever go back. As far as the slipspace being impossible, stranger things have happened. For example, when cortana did her first jump in atmosphere like you metioned, where she found out how much more advanced covenant jump tech was. She also discovered that the covenant had a very gross understanding of their own plasma cannons, and she was able to quickly upgrade them to make them much more efficient and lethal. I'm sure if any covenant weapons expert was told that their cannons were half of what they could be, they'd deny that and reafirm that the plasma cannons are as advanced as they could be with the current tech.
Just listened to this audiobook again, perfect timing!
Ah happy to see my favorite Halo conspiracy theory getting some love, I posed this question to the Library crew many moon ago and I enjoyed the convo there. I think its a really interesting theory and there could be any number of fun ways to do something with it in the lore if it came to pass.
His survival would be a fitting middlefinger to ONI and their distrust.
Even if he's dead, he'll live on!
Personally i enjoy the "ai assisted research" being along the same lines as spartans being MIA not KIA.
Cole being one of the most important and well known military personel, i would not be surprised if the unsc or oni wanted to sement his status like other "heroes" as being unkillable
Oh man I completely forgot about those live action reach trailers. Opened up memories I didn’t know existed.
Admiral Cole is up there with the likes of Samantha Carter from the Stargate universe. She made a star go supernova to obliterate an entire Goa'uld fleet 😂🤘
Nah. There were reports of unusually affective skirmish atttacks against the covenant in the area
Preston’s giant balls of steel would never let him die
what you are forgeting he may have had the unsc Io and used it as a decoy/fireship remote pilot it into the gas giant gone around the gas giant entered slipspace just before the nukes went off
The man is a goddamn war hero.
I think its feasible that there is a difference between pre-planning an in-atmosphere jump and calculating one under unstable conditions on the fly like Cortana did in First Strike. It's important to note that it wasn't the actual slipspace drive that allowed Cortana to do what she did, it was the Covenant sensors that allowed her to plot a path accurately. In fact, the book states that it is possible to mathematically anticipate the distortions caused by the gas giant, the other planets, and even the ship itself. The math is fictional, so who's to say Cole couldn't have gotten that information he needed in advance of the battle?
Well, he could've made it with the crew and crashed on an unknown planet outside the range of an SOS beacon. He very well could be chilling on a planet halfway across the galaxy. Or, he could have made it and it was covered up in some regard, possibly due to Insurrectionist assistance.
When your entire military career is absolute beast-mode 🤌
I bet he would've been a godsend against the Covies so he had to get written out of the general setting and presumed dead, or at least that's the last I heard about Admiral Cole
There's a third option. The ship was able to make it to slip space, but it broke up from the stress and battle damage, and now it's drifting in pieces in the middle of uncharted space, kinda like the pillar of autumn and spirit of fire.
if somebody told me that some of the crew had been spotted or returned and oni had just hidden all of it away, i'd believe it
Even if he and his crew did survive I'm fairly certain it would have resulted in a crash landing shortly after exiting slipspace on some uncharted planet with zero contact from the outside galaxy. There is almost no way you could have calculated a perfect slipspace jump under those conditions especially on a much older ship utilizing older hardware. And even if such a jump was made I doubt the Everest and her crew would have been completely unscathed after the fact.
I feel like we may see the Everest again. What's inside it however may not be so...pleasant given what was noted about the older model Slipspace drive. I'm imagining that one racing ship hitting the ring in The Expanse, but applied to a Valiant class cruiser. Not even the Flood would touch that mess.
I honestly never knew he was born in Missouri. Showing the Covies why we call it the Show Me State.
Heh, this makes me want to go read the story of Joshua "Lagrange" Calvert again. Thanks for your work, bruv. o7
I personally believe the Io assisted in the jump. He effectively synced two slippage drives to double their capability.
If i recall correctly, Cole also had the UNSC Io towed to the battle to be used as a 'fire ship' and since there have been a case to be said of Acendent Justice-Gettysburg, could it have been a possibility that Cole appropriated Io's drive and used it to support a twin drive jump, or an 'enhanced' jump
We know Cole ran calculations, maybe he had some that includes this possibility, since it does not seem all that difficult to remove the drive from one ship (UNSC Spirit of Fire, UNSC Savanah being examples) and maybe just adding it to the other.
Installation: Goes into deep details to reach a logical conclusion.
343: Revive popular character with Deus Ex Alien because hurr durr!
If the crew unanimously defected, that's a great book or game story opportunity
There's a few possibilities: the ship made the jump, but Cole was KIA during guerilla action against Covenant forces attempting to return to the UNSC, the ship made the jump, and the exit point was outside of UNSC space, or far into the future, or past, or the ship didn't make the jump and he died a hero--but ultimately the Covenant had an obstacle removed for the rest of the war.
Idk why, but I always love UNSC uniforms, always looks cool.
Surived to make thr jump, died upon re-entry
You know hearing about what Cole did to that gas giant makes me wonder if it was used as inspiration for the NOVA bombs.
The AIs determined that Cole probably survived for the simple reason that it opens up narrative options to have his ship end up somewhere else, probably somewhen else.
I don’t know about outshining the Spartan II project…
Gotta love how it's usually navy guys who got the highest K/D ratios in halo. (Excluding grey team) Cole has the admiration of humanity and had more space victories against the Covenant but Vice Admiral Wittcomb is technically responsible for the deletion of Joyous Excaltation and hundreds of Covenant ships post mortem. All this after his involvement with tricking hundreds of Covenant ships to their doom with Unyielding Heirophant! (Very likely inspired by Cole's last stand) We need some actual lore on the number of deaths on both sides during the war. (Don't count the hunter species since that number could get ridiculous)
Valid theory. Although for me personally I’m uncertain if he did die or not just cause of the fact the slip was possible. However, I doubt if it did happen that it went to plan cause of the exploding star. In fact if the Everest did make it out of slip-space I doubt it’s in one piece or in the intended destination. Although on the point of hiding the Everest, they don’t necessarily have to hide it if they did make it. They could chuck it into a star or just crash it on some random planet and get picked up by the Belacose assuming things went to plan anyway.
Ok ok hear me out. What if he did make the jump but it was random. And when they come out of slip the drive is trashed beyond repair. That puts them in a similar situation as the spirit of fire...and knowing how coincidence works in halo...I would say the odds are high that they meet up after halo wars 2.
If James Cutter and his crew can come back from 30 years MIA then anything is possible
He is alive, you forgot the point that Cole brought an extra AI that unbooted aboard the ship so almost Double the AI processing power, the UNSC Valiant went into refit before the battle so they most likely swapped out the drive to a newer model and not just replacing and upgrading the old battle plates to be Tungsten layered.
Don't know if it's related but my phone had this video at 480p until you mentioned it and I changed it to 1080p.
I also am not a big believer that he survived primarily because of his crew. However i did come up with an idea watching this video how he could have gotten past them. If he pumped up the nitrogen levels and lowered the oxygen in the areas of the ship with crew whose loyalty to him was in question it would put them to sleep, they then could have put those either in cryo or under some kind of arrest. This doesnt get past breathers but the number of people with quick access to those may have been manageable. Its either that or he would have had to evac all the air in those sections and straight up kill his crew. Which given how he managed losses on the battlefield i dont think we can put past him.
One of the questions I've always had about it is whether or not if they did pull it off then what are the possibilities the energy released from the gas giant turning into a brown dwarf possibly accelerated their Transit through slip space and also toasted the drive so what if they actually did survive and they're just stranded trying to make it back on sublight engines
Cole had a great kill ration haha honestly Cole is easily one of my favorite characters. In the end we probably will never get a firm answer but a man as smart as he was I don't see it being far fetched. Also the galaxy is a big place. Also Cortana pulled the same thing off in a covenant ship. So let the man have his happy ending lol.
Is it possible Cole secretly had a covenant slipspace drive installed in the Everest? Or a slightly less invasive method, a stripped down covenant ship in a cargo hold available to open the slipspace rupture? Like how Miranda Keyes hitched a ride with a covenant ship to delta halo, but the other way round.
I don’t understand how Cole had numerous victories when the UNSC only won a handful, like less than 10 battles against the covenant
Cole:Here comes the sun!
I’m not the Mike this is for…but I love it nonetheless!
Also, you’re not the only Halo UA-camr with the weird frame rate. I watched both an Exhardt’s Ladder and MintBlitz video in the past two days and theirs was also jittery. So, no worries there
What if they got stuck in slipspace? They were able to get an entry but could get an exit?
Here's a theory. This is based on the "physics" from the Stargate SG-1 universe. In an episode they blow up a star to make it go supernova. This energy propels them ridiculously far outside the known galaxy. What if that's what's happened. They survived but are now adrift. Hoping to be rescued.
I can see Cole wanting to be with his wife and child, but the man isn't built to desert in the middle of a war
Preston Cole and his ship traveled back in time and became the Meddlers 🤯🤯🤯
What if it was the Forerunner super AI we seen it happen before with the spirit of Fire
Another settlement needs your help, i'll mark it on your map
Anything is possible. Cole was a genius
Genius level intellect can save you from possibilities, However, impossibilities are not avoidable.
@@Blitzkrieg23 dumb luck then? 😂
@@matthewarcher3024 I suppose, With 89.7 percent possibility, however the only other way Cole would have survived, Just like how the UNSC spirit of fire was slipspace into the ark, Mendicant bias would have teleported the UNSC Everest away, Although they weren't any forerunner Dyson sphere around.
@@Blitzkrieg23 very true
How strange that the framerate lowers like that when it technically shouldn’t.
Also, hell yeah, gimme some Cole!!
1:43 it's a potato not potato
The flash clone children's life story... the species that said hi before the halos fired... now Cole and the brutal truth behind the fantasy?
What's next?
Even if the ship did survive a tragic martyr of a questionable hero is a better story and I'm certain I don't even fix it lol
Can you please make a video detailing the story of intrepid eye. Last I knew she was running multiple things while captive at an oni space station.
Someone should make this in Unreal Engine 5
What's some of the animated shorts in this video? I have halo legends, but some of these with the spirit of fire and other heavily animated clips look awesome and I'd love to watch them and add to my collection.
Edit- I should have been specific, my bad. Like 5:33-5:47, what's that from?
There from the video game halo wars 2 and halo reach (I think)
I noticed that on youtube if you use stats for nerds it says the video was only uploaded at 15fps. When I set it to 1080p that's what it says the frame rate is. Perhaps try uploading recordings at 30fps in a 60fps container, maybe that will fix it.
Admiral Cole went down with his ship.
You can’t go around the world in a second but you can go around the world in a year.What if the ship managed to do a jump but is still traveling through slip space
Immagine the HALO show with the story of Cole
If 343 would have competent writers who know how to write stories. There are many fancy ways Cole could've returned or shown up during the story. With cryro sleep and other shenanigans any kind future fate could await Cole. Alas, neither Bungie nor 343 Industries are up to the task of writing anything that good anymore. The best you could get is a nice book featuring Cole, perhaps as the man separated from the legend.
I think the story is better if he does. Makes the sacrifice feel better.
Oh the jump worked alright. The hit the launch button, fired up the Slipspace drive, and escaped.
Now Preston Cole and the crew of the UNSC Everest find themselves in a far flung corner of the cosmos, Lost In Space.
Join along on their adventure of laughs, heartbreak, love and revenge as this intrepid crew attempt to survive the Eldritch terror of deep space. Hoping beyond hope that their next jump, . . . will be the jump home.