- Halo 1 - Halo 2 - Halo 3 - Halo 4 - Halo 5
I like Cortana in Halo 4 'cause we can see another facet of her, more sentimental, in halo 2 i think we can see a little sarcastic and funny Cortana, so I like it too.
Talking about Cortana in Halo 5 his design is great, but his personality is annoying, something justified for the circumstances but she’s not my favorite.
Halo 4, I’m in love of that version, the others…well she kinda annoys me in all halo games, but she’s essential to the plot
Artistic Design: Gonna have to give that to Halo 2.
Ranking: Halo 2>Halo CE>Halo 3>Halo 4>Halo Reach>Halo 5 Guardians
Reasoning: Now while the og Cortana in Halo CE will always be second best. The new updated look she recieved in Halo 2 became my favorite as I’ve always liked girls with shoulder length or longer hair (even if they are pixels on a screen). Halo 3 is alright and Halo 4 was… interesting, but I still find myself liking the og and remastered graphics of Halo 2’s Cortana over the others. I’m not going to even talk about Halo 5.
Character: My vote goes to Halo 3.
Ranking: Halo 3>Halo 2>Halo 4>Halo CE>Halo 5 Guardians>Halo Reach (Shouldn’t really count personally)
Reasoning: Now while I know many will disagree with me seeing as Halo 4 wanted to “humanize” Chief and Cortana. I simply wasn’t feeling it as for some reason it felt like a “forced” kind of love story. Chief wants to save Cortana because reasons even though an A.I.'s lifespan is 7 years. One would think after having seen many of his brothers and sisters die, he would be capable of letting go.
Johnson is the best example in recent memory as while the Chief wanted to get him out of there. Johnson knew he was at the end of his road and accepted his inevitable end. If 343i really wanted to “humanize” Chief and Cortana. It should have been Cortana trying to convince him to let go as she had already gone well above her natural life span. Any longer would be danger to herself and more importantly fhe Chief.
The reason I like Halo 3 Cortana so much though is because we knew she wouldn’t be the same. Halo CE introduced us to a character who we would come to cherish and occasionally the Chief would mess with her. The banshee crash when they returned to the PoA is an example. Halo 2 then expanded on her and after being forced to leave her behind. She was literally trapped with the greatest intelligence in the galaxy.
Cortana wasn’t going to be the same and maybe she would be broken and upon there reunion. I could feel that emotion in the scene even though I was hyped up on caffine at the time. Late night picking up Halo 3 at the midnight release so that may have effected my opinion. Never liked the drama of Halo 4 Cortana and again I won’t go into the topic of Halo 5 Guardians Cortana.
With the right nuance, Cortana’s tale through the games is pretty coherent, and is actually quite tragic. She rises to unprecedented heights, achieving a sense of humanity that no other human-made AI had, and everything she values is taken away from her for reasons outside of her control, and what’s left of her after her humanity is stripped away, becomes the antithesis of all she stood for.
I prefer Halo 2’s Cortana. She was snarky and helpful all at the same time and showed great personality. She had potential to be just as snarky and helpful in Halo 3, but really wasn’t in that game a whole lot if you don’t count the annoying light shows sprinkled throughout the campaign. In H4, she was certainly more interesting, but her cockiness was all gone, and I LOVED her cockiness. I also like her H2A portrayal the best, but that’s just a design preference.
Her famous quote “Don’t make a girl a promise, if you know you can’t keep it” came from Halo 2, and is one of my favorite Cortana lines, if not my absolute favorite.
There’s an active topic for this in the General Discussion forums right now