High Ground: The Bungie Guide
A relic of older conflicts, this base was reactivated after the New Mombasa Slipspace Event. An ancient and abandoned beachhead against earlier and simpler enemies, its hasty requisition means a strange mix of crumbling bulwarks and high-tech military equipment.
The long, wide path to the fortress itself is a strategically-chosen deathtrap for attacking troops, but carefully chosen routes into its wrecked exterior mean that the fortress itself is far from impregnable. Although narrow, its length makes it the perfect objective based map, but with plenty of tight spaces for frenetic combat too. In short, the tone of the map will change depending on where you’re standing.
If there’s a prime objective for an attacking team in say, CTF, it’s to open the gate. Stealth entries are possible through:
The Bunker(3)
The broken wall(5)
The pipe(14)
But to use vehicles, or make quick entries and exits into a base, you need to open the gate. Besides the obvious usefulness of a wide open gate is the fact that it adds one more item for the defending team to worry about. It’s possible to make a rapid assault on the gate switch by dropping a Portable Grav Lift (located at the mouth of the Bunker-side cave(4)) at the foot of the wall’s left-hand side and simply leaping up and over. A good defense will be ready for this maneuver, but it’s still a relatively straightforward task.
The most protected routes to the flag are either through the Bunker or across the bridge from the pipe room. There’s two ways into the bunker, the first being the gaping opening which faces the gate, remnants of another battle. The second is via a closed hatch atop the bunker – a simple melee or explosion will pop the hatch. Once inside players will walk down one of two narrow hallways that open into a small room. Between the two hallways rest two highly volatile explosive canisters.
The gate switch in the foreground and the Spartan laser tower in the background.
By taking the stairs up, players will arrive at the Gate Switch(13). A well-executed jump from the Gate Switch will put players at another one of the map’s pieces of equipment, the Power Drain. From either platform – where the Power Drain is or the Gate Switch – players will see a blown apart half of a building – in Single Flag CTF, that’s where the Flag is housed.
While much of the action in High Ground takes place just inside or outside of the gate, there’s an incredible amount of real estate at the back of the base. Behind the Missile Launcher(6) is a pair of dark rooms leading to a parked Mongoose and then a staircase leads to the Pipe Room(14).
The Pipe Room is the second covert way into the base. Players assaulting from the beach will find the Broken Wall(5) leading which reveals an exposed pipe. Silence has a price, though. Players have to crouch through the pipe, so while they won’t appear on motion tracking, they will be traveling considerably slower.
While High Ground is excellent for Slayer gametypes, the asymmetrical map design is ideal for objective-games. One Flag CTF and Assault divide the teams into two groups, Beach and Base. In the beta, both teams have an arsenal at the respective spawn points. In addition to an ample supply of Battle Rifle, Carbines and dual-wieldables, here’s how the allotments are placed in the beta:
Beach spawn – Sniper Rifle, Active Camo, Shotgun, Portable Grav Lift, Rocket Launcher, Bubble Shield, Needler and two Mongooses.
Base spawn – Two Mongooses, Two Brute Shots, Needler, Spartan Laser, Power Drain and a Turret.
Linear Mode
