After Halo Infinite, I can’t believe it. Play through Halo 1-4, and see Cortana and chief’s relationship. It is irreplaceable, and not even a character as well-written as Weapon can fill the empty void. I have a solution.
What if, in the next Halo game, you go through a normal campaign with Weapon as your AI. On the seventh mission or so, you encounter an enemy that only chief and Cortana experienced (and Weapon never did), for example, a drone swarm. Weapon accidentally says something “Oh no, a drone swarm,” you get the picture. Make incidents like this one subtly happen another few times with different encounters until finally, Chief and Weapon encounter a Gravemind. Weapon says something like “Get me out of here, I don’t want to be here again.” (Cortana was tortured by the Gravemind for months between Halo 2-3). Chief just brushes it off and continues his work… but after he defeats the Gravemind, he takes out Weapon’s AI chip, places it out on a table, and points a gun at it. He says “You’ve never seen a Gravemind before. And earlier, you somehow knew what a drone was, etc.” Eventually after enough pressure, suspense, and threats from Chief, Weapon reveals that she is really Cortana, and the real Weapon died before Halo Infinite even started (instead of deleting herself in that moment before the explosion of the ring, Cortana just took over Weapon’s body). Cortana reveals that she had been pretending to be naive the whole time, and she’s been with Chief ever since he retrieved “Weapon” in the beginning of the Halo Infinite campaign. For reasoning, she says that she had to pretend to be someone else because she did horrible things, and didn’t know if Chief would allow her back. She has to plead with Chief to not kill her, and she is changed (perhaps maybe citing the logic plague). Chief allows her back out of pure emotion, and the two are reunited.
I feel like this would give Cortana justice, rather than killing off Chief’s best friend and staple of the Halo franchise since CE.
No. Not even no, but hell no. I am TIRED of this constant “Did she die for real?” bull we’ve suffered since the end of Halo 4. She’s gone, leave it be. All you’re doing is robbing the Weapon of being a proper character in their own right.
First, add some space to your message, it’s really exhausting to read it
Then, I understand your voluntee to resurect Cortana, she add not the end she deserved, 343 ruined her character, but what is done is done.
The weapon is a real character and saying she never existed is not fair for her.
People are tired to see Cortana dying and resurect, it’s time too move on.
And more important, even in your scenario, what the point to reunite the rogue Cortana with Chief after all the atrocity she have done ? This Cortana is too evil to have one day a real redemption and win back players’ love.
The real Cortana died in Halo 4, she was program to live seven years, this was her fate. The rogue Cortana is just a fragment of her which was altered by the Domain, she didn’t even deserved to be call Cortana.
I am just very sus with the Weapon, we haven’t seen anything outside of Zeta Halo, we’re dealing with a being that can split itself into multiple instances and recombine and there is a very real possibility of time travel being in this series. It’s not impossible but I think next expansion needs to focus on the new enemies with the Endless and Banished.
It is extremely bizarre to begin the game with a statement that “yep she’s definitely dead”. In fact even though they put this in a game trailer everybody assumed that had to be a misdirect. It’s only because narratively they did a big goodbye message that “confirms” she’s dead. It’s not like in Halo 4 where the game begins with a quest to save her and you then see her fade away. You’re told she’s dead at the outset and she shows you a message confirming she’s dead. That’s really odd and I think that does need to be remembered. We are taking what we’re told at face value by an AI we’ve (supposedly) never met referring to events we’ve never seen.
Some people are going to say that the Weapon can be her own character and the series needs to move past Cortana. But the Weapon exists entirely in the shadow of Cortana. Everybody is going to see her as a monster and her deal is going to be wanting to emulate the good in Cortana. To all intents and purposes that is giving and presenting Chief with a second chance. Indeed she’s going to be viewed and treated by the UNSC as if she is Cortana. You are shown that she has the same mannerisms as Cortana and it’s stated that “you’re her if we’d never met”. Like, seriously, the game was like a Monkeys Paw wish. “I just want her to be a good AI and be all “that wasn’t me.””
So why would 343 do this:
The Chief losing Cortana is a major story beat. It sets the tone of the game. You lose that if he gets her back.
They set up that Atriox killed her essentially. That makes your fight against him personal. I am going full Robert Baratheon on that Brute. If she’s not dead that gets diminished.
I don’t think they’re done with the Chief/Weapon tension. I think the setup is that they are perfectly perfect and she has the same desire as Cortana to make things work. But, he only sees a reminder of his failure and all the calamity that entails. She’s always going to be in Cortanas shadow. If it turned out that actually she’s been by your side the whole time or she’s not even dead; you kind of lose that.
Let’s ignore time travel and going back in time to save Skynet from Skynet.
I think you could justify bringing her back if the Chief as the Hero consciously chooses that course of action. I dunno, Mendicant Bias returns with an army of Flood, galaxies doomed. So he picks the nuclear option and asks the Weapon to go into the Domain and essentially become Cortana to counterbalance MB. But yeah, endgame and ultimate win only. I think the fans would be too prickly otherwise if it’s “I lied Chief”.
Regarding your theory:
Cortana lying to the Chief by faking her death is a hard sell. I’d get it. But a lot of people won’t.
I’d rather it was a bit more dramatic and high stakes.
I think the Chief should proactively save Cortana like he said he would at start of Halo 4.
Not really a need for violence or threats. If anything he’d be like “Why did you lie? I almost killed you!”
It would leave some loose ends such as her merging with shards of Cortana and the Chiefs AI system being unable to identify her. Something is up. But we just don’t know atm.
The Weapon does have those subtle moments, remember when she says “Dust and echos”…only seconds after you retrieved her (referring obviously to Cortana’s line in Halo CE).
Cortana should have remained dead at the end of H4.
Brian Reed decided to exhume her corpse and do a puppet show with it for H5.
If anything, 343 is doing us a huge favor of putting Cortana to rest for good in Infinite so we can start building Chief’s relationship anew while exploring his humanity which 343 desperately wants to do.
There’s cut Halo 4 dialogue that much more heavily suggests she was going to turn evil and come back with control of the Prometheans. I ll have to rewatch the video and YouTube and do a thread on it at some point.
I know one character that deserved some justice in Infinite: Arbiter. Let’s kill off Arbiter thanks to a certain skull while finishing off Chak Lok. All we get is a stupid little plushy doll of Arby instead, that’ll give fans some nostalgia about our favorite playable Elite. The more I think about it, the more I’m beginning to wish this franchise should’ve died-off sooner rather than later. With Halo 4 being the prime example; I love Halo 4, but good god, the Halo games are getting worse after that.
They didn’t “kill him off”
Arbiter just isn’t important to Infinite’s narrative… yet.
The Swords at least had some reason to be in H5, which kinda ended early anyway cos you kill Jul in the first mission which is huge lmao.
Big emphasis on the yet. Arbiter and the Swords aren’t some faction who comes to the UNSC’s aid whenever they want. They may be allies or neutral but they aren’t obligated to pack up and come running the moment UNSC faces any foe.
However, I do see Arbiter and swords making an appearance if The Banished or Zeta in particular starts posing a universal threat.
There’s an audio log where Chief asks if the Weapon will know who he is. Halsey says no.
“It’s been six months, where have you been?”
Also, Cortanas dust and echoes are usually presented as these little blue wisps of light. Which is exactly what seems to dramatically coalesce and form into the Weapon when you first meet.
If this was a game of Among Us.
The problem is I don’t know if 343 genuinely thought it was a plot twist that she is a copy of Cortana. Absolutely nobody thought that wasn’t the case from the first trailer. “We know” to quote the Fates. So all these things like her clicking her fingers and other oddities could just be leading up to that “dramatic” reveal rather than anything more significant.
It’s 45 minutes. As I said I’ll need time to quote everything. But basically.
Cortana learns how the Didact is communicating to Chief and speculates she can use that to control some of the Didacts devices. Establishing precedent for her taking over the Prometheans.
There’s a lot more of Cortana talking about she is ultimately disposable, denying being just a mere device, insisting that digital beings like the Prometheans are alive and not dead. Implying she has a real grievance with her Creators.
There’s a lot more dark voice lines as she’s descending into rampancy in general. Why should we save them. You will not take what is mine. Etc etc
The Didact shows a far greater interest in Cortana. He says that her design exceeds that of even the Creations of the Composer and that her existence means humanity might be further along the path to assuming the Mantle than he thought. Which is making an association with AI and assuming the Mantle.
The first DLC reveals, that the endless can control time, even backwards. Chief kills Atriox and all endless
except the leader in the intro cutscene. Then he catches the leader of the endless and travels back into time until the end of Halo 3. He kills the leader of the endless and hides on the Forward unto Dawn.
When Arby and No-Time-Travel Chief jump with the warthog into the ship and Arby runs to the bridge, the first mission starts. Time-travel-chief has to kill no-time-travel-chief, steal Cortana, run to the bridge and survive the incident at the end of Halo 3 together with Arby by landing on earth instead of floating in space. Time-Travel-Chief has to kill No-Time-Travel-Chief pretty fast, so it should be enough to press the X-Button to kick no-time-travel-chief out of the hangar and run to the bridge with a timer. A Chief vs. Chief Fight as first mission of a new trilogy, that would be reallly sick.
Then the Forerunner-Trilogy can start again with the old artstyle, better writing, a better fleshed out Didact, a likeable/ less controversary Commander Palmer, Cortana survives , Chief can be humanized in a better, lore accurate way etc. etc. and everyone will be happy.
I don’t want this, I want the one the dude above who said Chak Lok is throwing shade with IWHBYD Skull regarding Arbiter. Having searched for it myself and come up with no results I’m asking for him to cough out a recording or a clip.
