Three extra Marines and a hog
Posted July 21st 2006, expanded later
The basic idea
By using a descent trick off the first bridge, it's possible to trick the game into giving you two or three extra Marines in the first snow battle, plus an extra Warthog if you want it. Moreover you can be entering the battle in a manned hog, which gives you the opportunity to clean up quick! Or if you prefer, you can enjoy the novelty of running into battle with Marines by your side. All very nice!
Your extras won't be limited to this first area either. When you trigger the battle in the next area, usually four Marines will go running over the step, while the rest stay where they are. However, you can always ferry any reluctant Marines over. Once over the step, all Marines should follow you about as normal.
Some advantages over seven extras
Although it's actually possible to go four better and get seven extra Marines and an extra hog, this three-extras trick has some potential advantages in regard to the immediate battle. Firstly, you won't have any inactive Marines standing around spoiling the realism - not that that's always the case with the seven-extras trick. Secondly, there's no effort needed to get a convenient battle start checkpoint via checkpoint delaying; you'll have the usual checkpoint the game intends.
Two extra Marines
First here's how to get two extra Marines and optionally an extra hog. This is a lot easier than getting three, and shows the basic principle.
Do a descent trick and pick up two Marines in the hog. Back it into the indoor passage, all the way down the long middle section, or at least past where the loading point will be when you're coming back out later (it'll be at the end of the middle black stripe in that section as you head out). Dismount and go up in the lift after bringing it down. Go through the room and into the passage beyond, far enough to trigger enemies in the room. You can go far enough to get a checkpoint too if you want one. Now resume normal play, coming back down. When you get back to the hog, drive into battle.
Crucially, you're in the hog as you cross the loading point (located at the end of the second black stripe in the passage as you drive out), so the game doesn't move it into the desired overturned position outside; it creates a new one for that instead. It also creates two new Marines to replace the ones you took!
You don't actually have to have the two Marines aboard as you drive out. You could make them dismount first (where they are) then drive off alone, leaving them to run out and head for their buddies.
Running into battle, no extra hog
If you don't want an extra hog, or prefer to be running into battle, you can modify the set-up work by backing up the hog in the passage until diagonally across the second corner you reach. Make the passengers dismount. Because of the hog's position, neither of them will be able to get past it to run back outside (which they want to). Or at least, that's what you hope, but I did have at least one occasion when the Marine from the side seat was gone when I returned; he may have managed to squeeze past the nose.
When you return having resumed normal play, you'll see the hog vanish as you cross the loading point. The game is effectively moving it to the overturned position outside (perhaps it's actually removing it entirely and creating a new one). But the Marines remain and become free to run out. You can let them lead the charge, or take point yourself. It's quite a novelty to have company when running out here, but three Marines would be even better of course!
It was crucial that the Marines weren't closer to the exit than the end of the long middle section, else they'd have vanished when you crossed the loading point. Or at any rate, that's what I found. See my later section trying to explain why the trick works. I think the Marines had to be within your current loading zone at the time the game wanted to remove them - and that stopped their removal.
An alternative to that diagonal placement of the hog is simply to use the original placement I described, leaving the Marines aboard until you get back. Get them dismounted, then run across the loading point. Again, the hog will disappear and the Marines will be free to run out into battle. This way however, they'll just take a bit longer to reach the exit.
Three extra Marines
As for getting three extra Marines and optionally an extra hog, you just need to modify things a bit so there are three in the passage. Here's what I came up with for arranging that.
Pick up a gunner and back into the passage, almost all the way down the long middle section. Make the gunner dismount, having left him just enough room. Run to a Ghost (there's one in the area containing the crashed Pelican) and bring it to this long middle section of the passage. Dismount and get behind the hog. Whack it maybe twenty or more times to open up a decent gap from the Marine, then drive the Ghost up over the hog and into the gap, so it blocks him. Drive the hog outside and get the other two active Marines. Back up part way into the middle section of the passage then get the Ghost out of the way, either by driving it up and over the hog and then outside, or by moving it the other way.
If you want an extra hog, finish the arrangement by backing up the hog so it's well back from the loading point you're going to cross on your way out later. If the Marine hasn't closed in on the hog, it's safe to do this by reversing; otherwise it's safer to repeatedly whack the front of the hog, which will also gradually push the Marine back (doesn't take long).
If you don't need the extra hog, you could finish the arrangement by driving the hog forward into the diagonal position mentioned earlier and making the passengers dismount. Normally this works fine, but one time the Marine on foot managed to hop past on the left side before I'd finished getting into my diagonal position. If you don't want to risk any escapes, you could instead do the backing up mentioned above, then leave the Marines where they are and make the two passengers dismount when you return later. Either way, running into battle with three bozos can be good fun, though I have to say that they do an amazingly poor job of trying to frag the nearby Shade. Like, they either miss by a mile or try to bounce one off the gunner's head. But landing one on the ground just nearby? Fat chance - and their shooting isn't much better! But hey, they make a bit of noise and jump around a lot, so who's complaining?
Why does it work?
How come you ended up with extra Marines? Here's my understanding of the situation.
Normal play
In normal play, Marines get removed when you come down in the lift and trigger the ground floor enemies. When you cross the loading point as you head out into battle, three fresh Marines are created, ensuring that you've actually got some decently healthy ones to save (bearing in mind that the originals could have been killed or badly weakened in the Banshee attack).
Trick play
In your trick play however, you've moved Marines into an area that will be part of the current loading zone, at the time when the game would normally be wanting to remove them. This apparently prevents the game removing them. It's as if the relevant computer code (at the bottom of the lift) said "Remove all Marines outside the current loading zone", or something like that. Your guys aren't outside it, so they're unexpectedly left alone. Nevertheless the game still creates three fresh Marines later, having assumed that the original ones will have been removed by now.
History
A few words on how all this came about. Back on July 9th 2006, fellow cyborg Boris alerted me to how he was sometimes getting four extra Marines in the first snow battle. That grabbed my attention pronto! But it was unreliable (as Boris had noted), so I started investigating.
An old trick
In the course of that, I checked through a few tricks pages to see if there was already something about getting extra Marines. I didn't find anything, but I did notice a trick for getting an extra hog. It was on a tricks compilation assembled by Kyle Barr (Halo Tricks, Version 1.4.4). I hadn't actually heard of getting an extra hog before (ok so I was behind the times by a couple of years), so I checked it out. The description involved moving the hog all the way into the ground floor room (after doing a descent trick off the bridge), and it also included a lot of other stuff involving a Banshee and checkpoints. Most of that turned out to be unnecessary. The only important thing, I eventually realized, was that you be in the original hog when the game tries to commandeer it for the snow battle; which is normally just after you cross the loading point in the passage (very fractionally after).
Two extra Marines, then three
Having got to the root of that trick, I started experimenting with a couple of Marines in the hog to see what would happen, and that's how I ended up with two extras. Later I managed a third when I figured out a way of foiling the Marine desire to run out of the passage.
Seven extra Marines!
While exploring this new trick, I tried something quirky and triggered enemies in the second room before getting down off the bridge, just to see what would happen. When I did that and went through the door below, I was mightily surprised when a battle started up behind me. And wow, there were ten Marines over yonder! I was pretty amazed. I'd stumbled into a method of getting seven extra Marines and an extra hog.