Halo: Infinite (Spoilers) Lore

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There are spoilers for Halo Infinite and some of the books. I highly suggest playing the game before reading this.

These are my thoughts on the two topics that I’ve seen the most subject lines discussing. Cortana, and the Harbinger.

I think Cortana’s actions could have been better explained, but I don’t think it was out of left-field. In Halo 4, we saw one fragment of her stay with Master Chief, and then fade out of existence, and we saw in Dominion Splinter that the rest of her fragments coalesced in the Domain and formed a new Cortana, minus the personality fragment that saved Master chief from the nuke at the end of Halo 4. I believe the fragment of Cortana that saved Master Chief before being lost contained Cortana’s capacity for empathy & sympathy. That’s why the remainder became tyrannical in Halo 5. That version of her had all of the intellect and pride of the original, but not the core of humanity to curb her ego, and she pursued the means that she believed was most likely to result in her desired outcome, not concerned with the collateral damage done, the innocent lives lost in her self-imposed quest.
In Halo Infinite, we learn that Cortana destroyed the homeworld of the Jiralhanae (Brutes) as a punishment for Atriox’s refusal to follow her, which is what sent him into a genocidal rage, intent on exterminating humanity, because Humanity created Cortana. This version of Cortana still lacked the ability to have empathy, but she did recognize that her plan failed, and after a brief test of Atriox’s mindset (when she posed the question of if he would live differently if he could do it again), she decided to take him out with her, blowing apart a large part of Zeta Halo to stop him. That’s not so much a self-sacrifice as vengeance. It’s sort of a “if I’m going down, I’m taking you with me.”
One thing that did strike me as odd is how there were echos of Cortana after saving Master Chief at the end of Halo 4, something a fragment of her did that the others constituting the Cortana seen in Halo 5 & Infinite wasn’t present for. It’s possible that the speech was one she’d prepared before splitting off her rampant fragments. The only hint of this possibility is Cortana’s final echo responding to the Weapon’s statement that she’s just an echo, having predicted what a copy of herself would have said, and the timing of it. Notice that the extent of her apology is that she tried to do it alone instead of working with Master Chief. Cortana never apologized for the genocides she committed. Even in the end, she still doesn’t have that piece of humanity that she lost at the end of Halo 4. Her final sentiment was bragging about how good her choice was when she chose Master Chief.
They seemed to imply that the Weapon might take the name Cortana, but I don’t think that would be a good direction to go, because her relation to Cortana is more like an identical twin, rather than being the same person, and it doesn’t seem right to take a sibling’s identity for your own.

The Harbinger is interesting. When she first meets Master Chief, the first thing she tells him is “we are not enemies.” She then identifies herself as the Harbinger of the Truth, denouncing Forerunner lies, and then says the Reclaimers are not the future, and that the Endless will ascend.
This seems to be a reference to the Mantle of Responsibility. The Precursors’ Mantle of Responsibility is the duty of one race to safeguard the opportunity of other races to reach their maximum potential. It’s not a militant rule, or even governance, merely a laissez fairre protection from being exterminated or perpetually held back.
The Harbinger augmented Forerunner weaponry, improving it to burrow into the Halo. That is a significant feat.
Cortana and the monitor, Despondent Pyre, both considered the Harbinger and the Endless as “worse than the Flood”. That is significant as well. I wander if the terrible threat that couldn’t be destroyed, and could merely be contained was the physical forms of the Precursors, Locked away, never to be spoken of or accessed again. Everything except the fear of them being lost to time.
There were multiple instances through the game that hinted at a connection to the Flood. I’ll be playing through the Campaign a few more times to iron out my theories, looking for clues I may have previously missed.
A big thing I noticed is that in the final fight against the Harbinger, the Weapon realizes that something is helping her, but she doesn’t know what. In that same fight the Harbinger seems to be over-the-top theatrical with her taunts, as if it were a stage production. I think the Harbinger might be part of the Precursors’ test of worth for the Mantle.
On a side note, when we see the Harbinger without her helmet, she does bear a passing resemblance to the Primordial, though the latter was already a Gravemind with multiple bodies in its form explaining the differences. I think it’s possible that when the Forerunners rebelled, they put many of the Precursors’ physical avatars into stasis, and that the Harbinger could be one of them. I wouldn’t bet money on that, but I think it’s a possibility.

The visuals of the game are glorious. I really liked how the Sangeheilli (Elites) regained their elite posture and movement, I’m not typically one to complain about artistic choices, but I really hated the mandibles that looked like they were biting their own eyes, and their brutish lumbering gate in Halo 4.

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There is major issues with your Cortana point, and also with your Endless point, and while it may be possible your Endless point could be true, I find it highly unlikely due to a multitude of reasons which I’ll explain below.

Firstly, the Cortana point. The reason why I disagree with it, and although may be a minor detail, is still a valid one. In Halo 5, she is emotional. She shows emotion. The first instance is when she’s locking Blue Team up in a Cryptum. She almost cried when John called out her name, something I don’t think an emotionless Cortana would do. Secondly, when Locke stopped her from taking Blue Team, she cried out John’s name before she left, knowing that John would be a problem for her as she doesn’t have the heart to kill him. Lastly, and this is from Infinite, why would Cortana’s echo show her being emotional, and actually sacrificing herself not for vengeance like you claimed, but to help Chief. She knew Chief had a new AI and the best way to help him with his goal was to sacrifice herself so the Weapon wouldn’t be self deleted after locking Cortana down, which is why she was still there at the end.

Now on to the Endless point, and my initial response is the Harbinger is considered to be part of the Endless species. If she was a Precursor, why would she side with the Banished and why would their goals be aligned? The Precursors final goals were to test humanity, in the form of the Flood being the final test. That’s been established for time in the Halo universe. Secondly, why would the Precursors still be alive and in the Galaxy. Like I said their plan was to test humanity to see if they’re fit to have the Mantle of Responsibility in the form of the Flood, with the surviving Precursors turning to dust, and then this dust would be fed to human/San Shyuum pets, which is how the Flood were created, and considering the Harbinger is Endless (which you are claiming are Precursor), she was saying that humanity isn’t the future, even though they have yet to be tested for the Mantle. Lastly, and this is a big point, how come the Endless apparently survived the firing of the array? This point isn’t as strong, but supposedly the array is meant to kill all living things, and considering the Precursors are living, they should be killed by the array, especially if they are contained, meaning they couldn’t escape it by doing Precursor magical things.

But yeah, that’s all I’ve got to say, and I feel like I’ve made good points for my side of the argument, some being indisputable.

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That is a non sequitur. I didn’t claim that Cortana didn’t show emotions. I said that she didn’t have empathy, and her outbursts of rage or distress at not getting her way do not contradict what I said. To the contrary, Cortana’s complete inability to underestand why Master Chief opposes her highlights her inability to empathize.

Have you read the Forerunner Saga? If not, I highly suggest it. There is a lot of nuance to the Precursors which is not directly stated, but becomes obvious once you piece together the clues throughout the books.

To summarize, the Precursors created mortal life, and they created one mortal race for the purpose of bestowing the Mantle upon. The Mantle is the duty of one race to safeguard the oportunity of each race to reach their fullest potential. Not to lift them up, or to govern them, or to enforce peace upon them, merely to ensure that they are not erradicated or forced into a perpetual state of being denied the chance to reach their full potential.

The Precursors exist as eternal constants, and use physical, biological avatars to interact with the mortal races they created. They cycled through multiple races of avatars, some advanced, others primitive, each rising and dying out in time. The Precursors have the whole of existence to make the galaxy what they want it to be, so they’re playing the ultimate long game, and sometimes actions in the short term don’t make sense outside of the larger context. Our perspective is like the metaphor of being too close to a painting to see the whole picture.

The Precursors’ chosen race to bestow the Mantle upon split into two, one worthy (Humanity), and one unworthy (Forerunners). The Forerunners didn’t understand the Mantle and did everything in their power to attain what they thought it was. They practiced extensive genetic augmentation on themselves, observing the other races and through experimentation incorporating their desirable genetic traits into the Forerunners own biology. That is why when they re-encountered Humanity, the two factions didn’t recognize that they were once the same species.

The Forerunners rebelled against the Precursors, and the implication we had was that they destroyed the Precursors’ avatars, which didn’t defend themselves. That is a key part of the lore. The Precursors didn’t fight the Forerunners through the whole rebellion, and only afterwards used the remnant of that race to create the Flood. Now in Halo Inifinite, the words of the Harbinger suggests that the Forerunners may have locked the Precursors’ avatars (the Endless) away and thrown away the key, possibly due to the understanding that when a Precursor’s physical body dies, that consciousness re-emerges in a new body, resulting int the imprisonment being a more long-term solution than killing them.

Back when the Flood first emerged, they appeared on Human-controlled worlds, and they attacked humanity first, and kept attacking them until humanity passed the test of worth, at which point the Flood shifted its attention to the Forerunners, though it held back, waiting for the Forerunner civilization to peak before enacting judgement upon them. In the end, just as the Forerunners peaked, the Flood destroyed the remnant of their society on the Greater Ark, leaving the rest of the races to repopulate the galaxy from their location of safety on the Lesser Ark.

Much later, the Flood re-emerged on the Halos, and its appearance triggered a series of events that splintered the Covenant, freeing enslaved races from their eternal servitude. And though some chose to stay with the factions they served, others left to begin rebuilding. The Flood stopped attacking humanity in force when they passed another test, being willing to sacrifice power to stop the Flood, risking losing the Ark by firing the Halo Ring too early. It’s also worth noting that the same intelligence that commanded the Flood against the Forerunners also inhabits every Gravemind since then, so the Flood could easily have defeated the Covenant and Humanity, and consumed the galaxy, but it instead chose to consolidate its forces in the only place in the universe where it could be plausibly “defeated” by a Halo without collateral damage to innocent civilizations.

Now it appears the Precursors may be using their non-Flood avatars again to manipulate events, the ultimate goal still being for each race to reach its full potential.

The claim that Humanity is not the future is likely a case of saying what needs to be heard, not actually expressing a truth. This comes up in several movies and games from a variety of genres. The hero is told they’re not the one, so they do the things that mold them into the one.

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Just wanted to say this is some good stuff. Appreciate your thoughts and theories, hopefully it gains a bit of traction so we can see what others think as well. This has definitely motivated me to read the Forerunner saga lol

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Good point, though those who claim to follow him definitely intend to fire the Halo to wipe out Humanity. It might not have been Atriox’s plan, but it looks like it is the plan of the Banished.