Ok so last time I did this a fellow Spartan by the name of MinecraftMan087 commented a request for a Cortana related DLC idea for Infinite. I’ll be honest I couldn’t tell if they were joking or not…but I’m doing it anyway!
I’ve thought on it for a while, went back to rewatch the 8min reveal trailer with Escharum and relistened to his speech as well as good ol’ HiddenXperia’s analysis of it and one thing stuck out to me: the Harbinger. What we know is that the Banished wishes to take the Auditorium and that this ‘Harbinger’ share the same goals (obviously gotta end up with some twist of ‘psych I tricked ya’). So going with that the am I thought of something:
Base game is done, we kill Escharum and defeat the Banished and wait for next update since this is supposed to be a 10 year or so game. In that time a steady trickle of updates here and there of Prometheans appearing; not majorly just yet. A boss Knight Captain here, a Warden body there (assuming free-roam bosses are a thing) and then finally to basically yell at everyone ‘A NEW DLC IS COMING’ have a Guardian appear over any and all places we could go to assuming there are different places besides Zeta Halo. At the same time the Harbinger finally revealed themselves: the heavily messed up Didact we’ve seen in the leaked concept arts way back when. However…he doesn’t welcome the created and Cortana. After basically being either a) crusher by a ring of thats canon or b) being Halo 4 canon ended (doesn’t matter which ever because he’s composed as is); he finally sees what the Librarian wanted him to see and helps us. US! Not the Created or Cortana or even his long dead empire, but Humans. He’s overcome the Logic Plague he got while in the cryptum and leads us to this Auditorium which will help us fight back against the Guardians!
So the Didcat gets us there and we now have an NPC in one specific area that helps us fight back the Created and free them from any control they may have; the next thing is Cortana’s coming. She wouldn’t come until we’ve made strong headway so this is an opportunity to add more areas into the travel menu if we have planets to go to. She pops up with the rings she’s gathered and us, now free to fight her because all that’s left to deal with is Banished Remnants (for now). The Chief gets the chip we saw in the Pelican Guy’s trailer ending and a copy of Cortana made with the help of the Didact and Halsey so she doesn’t fall victim to the Domain again and use her to overload the bad Cortana. With everything done the Guardians are taken back under the Didact’s control who as a Domain construct uses his last bit of power to return or destroy them.
So we stopped her…now what? Well it can go a few directions. Either they can start doing their own thing and get new factions from the novels into the game, follow us rebuilding the universe, maybe even follow a new main character because we know canonically Chief dies in the 2560 (or maybe I misread). Or…It’s then revealed that why we speculated for so long, so many MANY years was true; Cortana had the Logic Plague. And now the threat of the Flood from my last DLC idea looms on the horizon…
Ok! I liked doing that! Huge shoutout to MinecraftMan087 even if you were joking! Thanks for reading if anyone did!
-Spartan-007 of Erebus Team (because Fireteam Erebus was taken)