I was initally a bit confused about *which* suggestion you were referring to a few posts up - but yes: Distancing Eternal from the Halo universe is indeed an good thing. For the benefit of those who aren't Forrest and myself:
I suggested some time ago, [after fiddling around with possibilities of excluding the Flood from Eternal's final chapters] a interesting alternative.
By creating parallel events that were only *similar* in the Marathon universe(s) to those in the Halo time line (Flood=Joshua's Organics, etc) Forrest could avoid stepping on Bungie's toes, story wise.
There's nothing worse than putting work into something, just to have an official source make your work redundant.
Steve, I really like your idea about Joshua (W'rkr, PiD's sleeping god)'s asteroid impact in the Yucatan causing the extinction of the Dinosaur.
If there was an struggle between two time lines, once of an Saurian-like species (I'd imagine an Covenant Elite-like species in appearance) and the Humans - it not only summons interesting storyline possibilities, but also tricky moral quandaries as well.
The marine's choice has always been pretty mundane in the cosmic scale of things, but usually have wide spanning and different results depending upon the path taken. To have an choice effect an UESC officer eating peanut butter in one time line, over an officer not being human, and eating jelly... now that's huge. Huge in an cool sense.
Forrest, don't get bogged down in trying to create five different scenarios. I like the Dinosaur idea, but that truly does seem like an RED:2 concept. Having an Sphere-fortress world, Joshua being on Earth, etc (all that you mentioned in your post above) I feel is very cool for the final chapters of Eternal. I look forward to an revised outline :D
Best of luck with all of it. My offer to assist in a "choose your own adventure" style MaraFF for Eternal still stands. That way, at least you could touch on some HUGE, wide spanning ideas (the Saurian-earth time line, for one) without having to create an texture set for it.
