HALO 4, 5 & INFINITE: THE SAME STORY CONTINUES?

Games Halo Infinite
1

Many are asking how 343i will dig themselves out of the hole Halo 5 left the story in. So many theories, and so many questions about whether they’ve changed the story or not. But try following through my theory and predictions of how the parts of the Reclaimer Saga plot fit together and reveal Cortana’s innocence…

THE HIDDEN MYSTERY SET-UP.

Alongside Halo 5, 343i launched The Fall Of Reach animated movie. In it, Master Chief asks Blue Team “Will you trust me? Will you follow me?” into Halo 5.

Why? Well, we were given two points of view to believe in Halo 5. But did you trust “new kid on the block” Locke’s point of view with his “Cortana is behind the Guardians, as per Dr. Halsey’s theory”? Or will you trust and follow Chief and his viewpoint from his experience in Halo 4? “Who is right? Locke or Chief?” (XBox Halo 5 website, original advert questions). Let’s see which path to choose through Halo 4, 5 and Infinite’s plot.

(1) Halo 5’s “The Cost” trailer: Chief asks us "This [we see Chief’s point of view through Chief’s visor]. Is this what you [the player] wanted? Is this what you were looking for [Chief’s point of view]?".

Well, have they changed the story? Let’s see what 343i’s Pictionary style “Hunt the truth” Story in the Halo Infinite “Become” trailer reveals:

(2) Now watch the times below in “Step Inside - Become [Master Chief]”, to see Chief’s point of view about Halo 5.

(a) Time 1.17: Seeing through Chief’s visor, we can now “re-boot” the Halo 5 story, as we’re asked “Initialise?” Click “Yes!” to start looking at Halo 5 again, same story, but from a different point of view - Chief’s!

(b) 1.29: with “older, wiser eyes” that are “looking for what is right (to their right)”, we “look ahead” to Halo Infinite, but in seeing Chief on a circle putting his armour on, we’re also see a “reverse” or mirror picture of Chief taking his armour off at the end of Halo 4.

(c) 1.30: remembering “knowledge is power”, something will finally “click” into place for you…

(d) 1.31: Then your little “face will light up” with the light that is “gold / buried treasure”, having now “FOUND the truth!” - when you BECOME Master Chief in Halo 5, and see the story from Chief’s point of view. But what was it?

(e) 1.42: Chief’s viewpoint in Halo 5 revealed! But will you trust Chief and follow him? For we now come full-circle (round space station), back to where “high above the planet” like the end of Halo 4, where we heard these piano tones before (sure your inner Master Chief is ready to “get back in touch with his feelings and humanity?”), because from Chief’s point of view, the end of Halo 4 was when Chief thought “R.I.P. Cortana, another fallen Hero of Reach” because “I… watched… her… DIE!”.

So, in Halo 5, if instead of Locke, you now trust what Master Chief believes he saw happen, then we must ask “If Cortana is dead - including ALL her fragments - how could that be Cortana behind the Guardians in Halo 5?” Cortana must be innocent, and the supposed “Cortana” in the Cryptum must be an imposter set up by a hidden enemy as part of a sinister plot. Then we also don’t have to “work out ‘how Cortana turned evil’”, but only need to ask “Where is this AI getting her information about Cortana from to do this [poor] impersonation of her?” Oh, and “Who is the hidden enemy she serves?” Since it’s about reclaiming the Forerunner superweapons, surely, as Master Chief, your first suspect would probably be the Didact…

DISCOVER HOPE IN HALO INFINITE.

In trusting Chief, we also have to wonder what kind of “death” Cortana died. Was a death like Sgt. Johnson or Miranda Keyes? Or was it a “Memories of Reach” death - you know, where around the age of six or seven, Spartan II’s like seven year old Cortana “appeared to die”, but in reality, they’d been “abducted and replaced with an identical clone”?

One means Cortana is gone forever, but the other means she could still be out there, waiting to be found in “the greatest hunt in gaming history”…

So, having uncovered the truth about the imposter in Halo 5, we can now ask that as Chief’s famous “luck” would have it, did Chief get the answer about the imposter right, but for the wrong reason?

For when the chips are down, and we’re wondering how we’re going to defeat the hidden enemy of Halo 5, the fake Cortana’s hacked AI Army and the Banished, then perhaps “as Chief’s luck would have it”, as we look up for hope into the starry night sky of Zeta Halo, we finally see the remains of the Didact’s ship from the end of Halo 4 - still carrying the last surviving fragment of the real Cortana onboard - as it finally crash lands on Zeta Halo, so that the real Cortana returns to help Chief “Finish the fight” in Halo Infinite, looking something like this?

BACK TO THE HUNT.

So, there it is: if true, the keys to unlock the Mystery Story in Halo 5 are “Chief’s point of view”, with his “Memories of Cortana” and his “Memories of Reach”…

But if now know where to start by investigating the imposter “Cortana” for any mistakes she makes in impersonating Cortana, can we finish solving the “Hunt The Truth” Mystery Story in Halo 5, and find out:

(a) if the AI’s were tricked into an “AI revolution”, or hacked and being remotely controllled for use as Cyberweapons?

(b) help Chief uncover the hidden enemy behimd the Guardians as we travel to investigate the suspects from:

  • Kamchatka (a plot by the Didact?).
  • Argent Moon (ONI’s Argent Moon Plan, because they’re certainly trying to cover something up in Halo 5?).
  • Meridian (Insurrectionists?).
  • Sanghelios (a Covenant faction?).
  • Genesis (Forerunner again, as if to double-check “Are you sure it isn’t the Didact behind it all?”).

This could keep us busy as we wait for the climax of “the greatest hunt in gaming history”, when Halo Infinite finally, slowly, reveals “the truth” for which we were hunting all along…

After all, as the new trailer asks, was Cortana framed with “the hallucinations of an aging Spartan and his malfunctioning AI”, or was it more just "Did you hit your head or something?".

After all, “Don’t you remember?” Captain Del Rio’s Orders in Halo 4?

So whilst The Weapon’s purpose is supposedly “to help clean up this mess” by “getting Cortana back into the chip”, it’s Chief who’s still supposed to obey Captain Del Rio’s orders from Halo 4 and take Cortana back to the Infinity for final DELETION.

And if that happens, ONI can finally bury the truth permanently, and by blaming Chief for disobeying Del Rio and running off with Cortana in Halo 4, Chief and Cortana will carry the blame for Halo 5 forever!

Now, like Master Chief, we’re not just going to stand by and let that happen, are we? Even if it does means going a little “rogue” like Chief… :wink:

Hey, at the very least, even if this isn’t the story 343 are following in Halo Infinite, it tells you how I’d have written it, and, well, it’s at least a good theory, isn’t it? That the real Cortana is innocent, and when Chief reclaims her like he did from High Charity in Halo 3, they’ll reunite to finish the fight in Halo Infinite, even as Chief faces what happened to him and the Spartan-II’s as a child, so reclaims his humanity from his past to become the human Reclaimer of his future.… :slight_smile:

“For the seeds of our future are sown in his past” (Arbiter, H5 trailer E3 2014).

2

> 2535466834539387;1:
> then we must ask “If Cortana is dead - including ALL her fragments - how could that be Cortana behind the Guardians in Halo 5?”

Why would we ask this question when it’s not even a factor? While there is some ambiguity, what we have encountered in Halo 5 is Cortana or it’s her fragments. I say there is some ambigiuity because she has been refered to as Cortana without any real differentiation across the games and expanded universe and we’ve got the article about Genesis here on Waypoint saying her matrix was forced into the Domain. Meanwhile, we have comics like Dominion Splinter clearly showing Cortana fragments actively entering the Domain (though given Cortana’s penchent for lying in 5 her claim to just be only a fragment to the Warden Eternal could simply have been deceptive). So, there’s nothing to indicate there is an imposter pretending to be Cortana.

3

I mean, I am pretty much a broken record at this point condemning how 343I treated Cortana in 5 while also defending her plan.

I am frankly not sure how they get out of this one. If they say syke, that wasn’t the real cortana I will be incredibly disappointed. If you -Yoinked!- up, the biggest mistake is pretending it never happened or that it wasn’t actually a -Yoink- up. I see where a lot of your points can point towards the conclusion you suggest but… man they could have handled it a lot better.

4

> 2533274812652989;2:
> > 2535466834539387;1:
> > then we must ask “If Cortana is dead - including ALL her fragments - how could that be Cortana behind the Guardians in Halo 5?”
>
> Why would we ask this question when it’s not even a factor? While there is some ambiguity, what we have encountered in Halo 5 is Cortana or it’s her fragments. I say there is some ambigiuity because she has been refered to as Cortana without any real differentiation across the games and expanded universe and we’ve got the article about Genesis here on Waypoint saying her matrix was forced into the Domain. Meanwhile, we have comics like Dominion Splinter clearly showing Cortana fragments actively entering the Domain (though given Cortana’s penchent for lying in 5 her claim to just be only a fragment to the Warden Eternal could simply have been deceptive). So, there’s nothing to indicate there is an imposter pretending to be Cortana.

To be clear, 343i are not Bungie, because 343i are Mystery Story writers, as per the 343i website which states “Wonder: We believe in the power of mystery and the thrill found by searching for answers. We believe in astounding the senses and delivering the freedom to explore, question, and experiment.”.

THE SET-UP.

Yes, Cortana’s apparent death scene is ambiguous, but the central logic puzzle for Halo 5’s mystery story is not.

Locke plays the role of someone who believes Cortana survived but then has to explain how she “turned evil”. Chief plays the role of the one who believes Cortana died. So, Locke and Chief disagree about whether Cortana is alive or dead, which has direct bearing on whether she could be behind the Guardians or not.

If we “become” Master Chief, and think like “a human who thinks like a machine”, we can use Machine Logic (Boolean Logic like computers use) to “Hunt the truth” and solve the Mystery in the form of “Either A OR B is true, else both A AND B are true, else NOT A NOR B are true”, as follows:

FOUR LOGIC OUTCOMES.

(1) Only Locke is right: Cortana is alive and behind the Guardians, but now the player has to “work out how Cortana turned evil”.

(2) OR Only Chief is right: Cortana is dead, so cannot be behind the Guardians, and that must be an imposter, and now the player only has to work out where the imposter is getting her information from to impersonate Cortana at least well enough to fool someone that doesn’t know her.

(3) Locke AND Chief are both partly right: Cortana did die, but her remains have been “resurrected”, but has she been tampered with, or reprogrammed to work by remote control (e.g. by the Didact, a hidden Gravemind, the Covenant/Banished, or even ONI).

(4) NOT Locke NOR Chief are wholly right: Locke is wrong because that is NOT Cortana, and Chief is wrong because the real Cortana isn’t dead - and there are two Cortanas revealed in Halo 5.

ONE CLUE.

343i now only need give us ONE clue, as indeed they did: “Hunt the truth in Halo 5 where the truth isn’t what it seems”. So, if it “seems” that “Cortana is behind the Guardians”, then that is NOT “the truth” for which we are to “hunt”. Therefore, Logic Outcome (1) above is false, and Halsey/Locke’s accusation is wrong.

Of the three remaining Logic Outcomes (2, 3, 4) above:

3/3 (100%) agree Cortana is innocent.
3/3 (100%) agree there must be a hidden enemy in Halo 5 (by implication).
2/3 (67%) agree (2+4) there is an imposter AI in Halo 5.
2/3 (67%) agree (3+4) the real Cortana is still alive.

Therefore, by Logic, Clue and Probability, the most likely solution for Halo 5’s Mystery Story involves an imposter AI who is framing Cortana for the Guardian attacks as part of covering up a sinister plot by a hidden enemy, and one way to expose all this is for Master Chief to find the real Cortana if she survived Halo 4!.

So, 343i’s Halo 5 is a Mystery Story for the player to solve by “Spot the lies and hunt the truth”, by exploring, observing, questioning what we’re told and see, and using logic to solve the puzzles.

Meanwhile, on the subject of Dominion Splinter…

“You have deceived me!” says Warden Eternal, as he realises this “Cortana” was already in the Domain and sent a fragment outside to distract him with made-up stories and lies (i.e. distraction as a form of “Social Engineering” technique, as often used by Hackers to gain access to a computer or network).

Meanwhile, her story of likening herself to Durendal is fake, as shown by Marcus Rudy’s artwork using the image of the “alleged fragment of Durendal” which is properly “the sword of Rocamadour”, complete with “the chains with which my makers have shackled me”: but it’s actually a replica of Durendal that goes with the made-up story that “Cortana” uses in Dominion Splinter. Roland hid the real Durendal beneath him as he lay dying, and it has been missing until this day - by extension, like the real Cortana is “MIA”…

Hope this clarifies and helps.:slight_smile:

5

Halo 5’s story was so bad I thought Halo could never recover from it, until I saw The Last Jedi and realized Halo was still in good shape for recovery lol.

At this point I’m just along for the ride, but I’m hopeful that Joe Staten was able to clean up the story direction and character development. Stop making Chief a military robot, stop making Cortana a nutty romantic villain, and please leave the Forerunners alone, our imagination did a better job and the mystery was awesome.

6

Halo 5’s story ain’t that deep. Locke nor Chief really question whether or not Cortana is alive. Chief might wonder at the how, but he clearly connects her survival with the Didact’s ship going to Genesis. This ain’t some grand mystery. The only real mystery is the why, but it isn’t because 343 crafted an intriguing storyline here. They just had no idea what they were doing between putting ideas in forum posts and Loot Crates.

7

I truly feel that infinite is going to be more or less a clean break from 5. I think there is a very good reason it’s not called Halo 6. I mean they still haven’t and probably won’t ever release Halo 5 on PC and it doesn’t have an X/S optimization on the new consoles. You would think they would want it prettied up for all the new people playing through halo to catch up with the story. MCC has the optimization why wouldn’t 5? Hunt the truth friends, Halo 5 might be the black sheep from now on.

8

> 2535466834539387;1:
> So, in Halo 5, if instead of Locke, you now trust what Master Chief believes he saw happen, then we must ask “If Cortana is dead - including ALL her fragments - how could that be Cortana behind the Guardians in Halo 5?” Cortana must be innocent, and the supposed “Cortana” in the Cryptum must be an imposter set up by a hidden enemy as part of a sinister plot. Then we also don’t have to “work out ‘how Cortana turned evil’”, but only need to ask “Where is this AI getting her information about Cortana from to do this [poor] impersonation of her?” Oh, and “Who is the hidden enemy she serves?” Since it’s about reclaiming the Forerunner superweapons, surely, as Master Chief, your first suspect would probably be the Didact…
>
> DISCOVER HOPE IN HALO INFINITE.
>
> In trusting Chief, we also have to wonder what kind of “death” Cortana died. Was a death like Sgt. Johnson or Miranda Keyes? Or was it a “Memories of Reach” death - you know, where around the age of six or seven, Spartan II’s like seven year old Cortana “appeared to die”, but in reality, they’d been “abducted and replaced with an identical clone”?
>
> One means Cortana is gone forever, but the other means she could still be out there, waiting to be found in “the greatest hunt in gaming history”…
>
> So, having uncovered the truth about the imposter in Halo 5, we can now ask that as Chief’s famous “luck” would have it, did Chief get the answer about the imposter right, but for the wrong reason?
>
> For when the chips are down, and we’re wondering how we’re going to defeat the hidden enemy of Halo 5, the fake Cortana’s hacked AI Army and the Banished, then perhaps “as Chief’s luck would have it”, as we look up for hope into the starry night sky of Zeta Halo, we finally see the remains of the Didact’s ship from the end of Halo 4 - still carrying the last surviving fragment of the real Cortana onboard - as it finally crash lands on Zeta Halo, so that the real Cortana returns to help Chief “Finish the fight” in Halo Infinite, looking something like this?

There is no impostor Cortana, Didact ship fragment will not crash on Zeta Halo. The answers to your speculations and questions as Dr.HalseyFan has said are in the comics Dominion splinter as well as Escalation.

In escalation the majority of Didact ship remains landed over Installation 03, in Domnion splinter the rest go to Genesis. There her remains got “cured” in the Domain, tricked, subdued, and reprogram the Warden Eternal to serve her and the Created. That’s the Cortana in 5, no impostor.

9

> 2535469609708123;3:
> I am frankly not sure how they get out of this one.

I have an idea. After H5’s final scene plays, immediately show post-H4 Master Chief waking up, wondering what was this weird dream he just had.

Yeah I disliked H5 that much lol.

10

Finished Halo 5 campaign again (legendary) only a couple of weeks ago. It was much better now that the pre-game hype wasn’t in the background. Not fantastic… but not as bad / jarring as I remembered. And some of the banter between the characters was cringe worthy.

As for Infinite, I reckon… the campaign will be a retelling of Halo:CE (in a similar vein to The Force Awakens). Chief vs the Banished for the control of a Ring. The dialogue with the Pilot will make it easy to reintroduce all the Halo tropes for new players; the ring, monitors, library, index, and maybe even the Flood! Later in the game he will pair up with new-Cortana… which will set up the continuation of the Cortana/Guardians in the next Campaign (DLC).

11

Halo 5 was a really bad game. The characters were forced (lol Lock) and they even punched the Chief in the face. Very cringe. No one would care if H5 is quietly forgotten.

12

> 2535454747525049;9:
> > 2535469609708123;3:
> > I am frankly not sure how they get out of this one.
>
> I have an idea. After H5’s final scene plays, immediately show post-H4 Master Chief waking up, wondering what was this weird dream he just had.
>
> Yeah I disliked H5 that much lol.

Scene opens to a view from inside the chiefs helmet, a dirty Nord looks at you from across the rickety wagon.

Hey, you. You’re finally awake. You were trying to cross the border,
right? Walked right into that Imperial ambush, same as us, and that
thief over there.