Impressions: Uprising
I've always thought that someone or someones at Bungie had a serious penchant for parallel constructions. Where many other reviewers looked at the reuse of level geometry in Halo 1, I saw narrative purpose. The idea of a journey out from the Pillar of Autumn and then returning there was reinforced by the territories that were crossed twice. Each of the repeated levels undergoes major changes in its repetition.
The spic-and-span Truth & Reconciliation environment in the Covenant cruiser finds its mirror opposite in the leaking, burning, Flood-infested wreckage from which you retrieve Captain Keyes' neural implants. The bright and brisk snowscapes of Assault on the Control Room over which you glide in Warthogs, Scorpions and Banshees along with your marine support troops as you mow down everything the Covenant can throw at you is mirrored perfectly by the dark and bitter cold of Two Betrayals, as you slog through pitched battles between Flood, Covenant and Sentinels without any of your compatriots for assistance. If you thought that the Pillar of Autumn was a bit beat-up when the Covenant blew it out of the sky over Halo, that's nothing compared to what happened when Guilty Spark made it the site of his last effort to stop you from preventing the installation from being activated, while the Flood try to repair the ship to use it to escape and the Covenant try and stop them.
So it is no surprise to me that I see similar patterns at work in Halo 2. Once the Arbiter is introduced, he and the Master Chief alternate starring in levels, first two by two and then one by one. Some of the environments also follow a pattern. The Chief defends a space station, the Arbiter attacks one. Some of the Arbiter levels hark back to levels in Halo 1 that had no parallel there. Quarantine Zone is a good dark parallel for Two Betrayals or Assault on the Control Room, as an outdoor snow level with vehicular combat near an important installation-- in this case, Delta Halo's library. Sacred Icon itself is an improved Library, as a better-lit labyrinth, arranged vertically instead of horizontally.
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