So from Halo 5 (and also kinda Halo Wars 2) we learned to two important things about Cortana: she wants to have the Master Chief back, and she is in control of a Halo. Now we’ve also seen some interesting business from the trailer of Halo Infinite, probably one of the most standing out of them being Master Chief having his old armor. So this is my theory that correlates these two, it isn’t strong but its what I’ve got. Cortana wants to repeat the past:
Installation 04 is basically where all of this began, its the huge adventure of Chief and Cortana where they new it was just getting started. I’ve talked about in a few other theories of mine (“Returning to the Ark Theory”/“No Cortana!!”) about the possibility of Chief trying to recover Cortana’s AI matrix from the Domain, so in his pursuit of this, he finds himself on 04.2. But Cortana, still wanting him back, recreates everything like it was on their first adventure, including Chief’s armor. Basically my theory is that Cortana is simulating most of what occurred/what was present in Halo CE in order to somehow bring Chief back to her side. I know its weird, but if this Halo is following the story after 5, then this could be the case.
With this said, I also have two speculations on the name Halo Infinite, one of them tying into my theory: the first being how its ironic since Halos geologically are infinite, the second being that if Cortana is trying to repeat the past, then she’s going to make this a cycle until she can sway Chief, and cycles are conceptually are infinite.
> 2533274833309866;2:
> Very interesting and original idea, prepare for it to be stolen by youtubers. You shoulda made your own video of this and launch a channel from there.
Meh, I’m sure there are theories similar to this that came out before I posted this, overall, its not a huge concern to me.
I hope this is not the case, but this is also a very interesting theory. I smashed that follow button on this thread just in case you are right, though.
I would play this iteration of the game even if it was a huge throwback.
It’s kind of a mix between Spartan Strike/Assault and the FPS of the main Halo entries?
Though, this is not the game I would prefer. I would hope for something more aligned with what we have already played in the mainline Halo entries, but with a less linear more open world with RPG elements.
None of us know what this game is going to be like yet. Here’s to something unexpected!
It’s not a bad idea, but I think it’s still flawed. We don’t know if Cortana controls the ring we see in Infinite. The prevailing theory is that it is Installation 07, in which case she doesn’t currently control it as far as we know. I’d also question how recreating their first adventure would bring Chief over to her side. She’s still a mass murderer and a tyrant imposing her will on the galaxy, Chief was fiercely opposed to her in Halo 5 because of that.
This would be absolutely insane, very interesting idea but I’m not sure I’d like it. Maybe if that was just part of the game? I don’t know, I’d really have to see it play out.
> 2533274812652989;5:
> It’s not a bad idea, but I think it’s still flawed. We don’t know if Cortana controls the ring we see in Infinite. The prevailing theory is that it is Installation 07, in which case she doesn’t currently control it as far as we know. I’d also question how recreating their first adventure would bring Chief over to her side. She’s still a mass murderer and a tyrant imposing her will on the galaxy, Chief was fiercely opposed to her in Halo 5 because of that.
During Blue Team’s mission through the Domain, Cortana tries to approach Chief with psychological tactics, including reminding him of their adventures. So my theory is that Cortana is trying use a giant, elaborate psychological tactic via simulating those same adventures. Now this is really shooting into this theory, but I’m saying like the game could begin with Chief waking up outta nowhere on the Halo, wearing his old armor, and then it continues on in similar patterns to CE (orchestrated by Cortana), but with some obvious advancements, not to mention the fact that Chief will be trying to figure out what the heck is going on.
Could be flashbacks we play as 117 tries to gather Cortana fragments that are not corrupted Warden Eternal and rampancy. Cortana’s rampancy is different Halsey tells us this in the log found at the start of level Requiem in Halo 4
Transcript:
Unknown voice: “Catherine Halsey Research Excerpt, 11 February 2550.” - Halsey: “The interesting factor here isn’t that H-1 disabled the viral termination code I had implanted in hermatrix. These metrics imply its success wasn’t just unlikely, but that even the accepted 7-year life cycle estimates may not apply.” - Halsey: “Thus far, I’ve determined that the unique circumstances of her creation have triggered what I can only refer to as a recessive variant in the A.I seed.” - Halsey: “As her architect, I’m currently at a loss as to the origin of the development of this rogue element. Very curious.”
> 2535452785098607;7:
> > 2533274812652989;5:
> > It’s not a bad idea, but I think it’s still flawed. We don’t know if Cortana controls the ring we see in Infinite. The prevailing theory is that it is Installation 07, in which case she doesn’t currently control it as far as we know. I’d also question how recreating their first adventure would bring Chief over to her side. She’s still a mass murderer and a tyrant imposing her will on the galaxy, Chief was fiercely opposed to her in Halo 5 because of that.
>
> During Blue Team’s mission through the Domain, Cortana tries to approach Chief with psychological tactics, including reminding him of their adventures. So my theory is that Cortana is trying use a giant, elaborate psychological tactic via simulating those same adventures. Now this is really shooting into this theory, but I’m saying like the game could begin with Chief waking up outta nowhere on the Halo, wearing his old armor, and then it continues on in similar patterns to CE (orchestrated by Cortana), but with some obvious advancements, not to mention the fact that Chief will be trying to figure out what the heck is going on.
The problem is that she saw right through those tactics and called Cortana out on it. Nor do I see him, maybe rightly confused sure, all of the sudden susceptible to Cortana’s tricks.
> 2533274812652989;9:
> > 2535452785098607;7:
> > > 2533274812652989;5:
> > > It’s not a bad idea, but I think it’s still flawed. We don’t know if Cortana controls the ring we see in Infinite. The prevailing theory is that it is Installation 07, in which case she doesn’t currently control it as far as we know. I’d also question how recreating their first adventure would bring Chief over to her side. She’s still a mass murderer and a tyrant imposing her will on the galaxy, Chief was fiercely opposed to her in Halo 5 because of that.
> >
> > During Blue Team’s mission through the Domain, Cortana tries to approach Chief with psychological tactics, including reminding him of their adventures. So my theory is that Cortana is trying use a giant, elaborate psychological tactic via simulating those same adventures. Now this is really shooting into this theory, but I’m saying like the game could begin with Chief waking up outta nowhere on the Halo, wearing his old armor, and then it continues on in similar patterns to CE (orchestrated by Cortana), but with some obvious advancements, not to mention the fact that Chief will be trying to figure out what the heck is going on.
>
> The problem is that she saw right through those tactics and called Cortana out on it. Nor do I see him, maybe rightly confused sure, all of the sudden susceptible to Cortana’s tricks.
I think you meant “he saw right through”.
That aside, I too see problems with this idea. Like you, I don’t think the Chief would fall for Cortana’s tricks, especially not one as obvious as forcing him to relive their first adventure. I also find it unbelievable that between Halo 5 and Infinite, Cortana would have managed to capture the Chief and then set up a closed loop of those events. How would she replicate the prominence of the Elites, or of Guilty Spark, or of the Flood? How would she justify being back in his armor; would he even let her? What would stop him from just staying put and not doing anything? Unless she put him in some kind of simulation, or manipulated his memory, but those would be terrible plot devices akin to “it was all a dream” or “he goes back in time to fix everything”.
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> > 2533274812652989;9:
> > > 2535452785098607;7:
> > > > 2533274812652989;5:
> > > > It’s not a bad idea, but I think it’s still flawed. We don’t know if Cortana controls the ring we see in Infinite. The prevailing theory is that it is Installation 07, in which case she doesn’t currently control it as far as we know. I’d also question how recreating their first adventure would bring Chief over to her side. She’s still a mass murderer and a tyrant imposing her will on the galaxy, Chief was fiercely opposed to her in Halo 5 because of that.
> > >
> > > During Blue Team’s mission through the Domain, Cortana tries to approach Chief with psychological tactics, including reminding him of their adventures. So my theory is that Cortana is trying use a giant, elaborate psychological tactic via simulating those same adventures. Now this is really shooting into this theory, but I’m saying like the game could begin with Chief waking up outta nowhere on the Halo, wearing his old armor, and then it continues on in similar patterns to CE (orchestrated by Cortana), but with some obvious advancements, not to mention the fact that Chief will be trying to figure out what the heck is going on.
> >
> > The problem is that she saw right through those tactics and called Cortana out on it. Nor do I see him, maybe rightly confused sure, all of the sudden susceptible to Cortana’s tricks.
>
> I think you meant “he saw right through”.
>
> That aside, I too see problems with this idea. Like you, I don’t think the Chief would fall for Cortana’s tricks, especially not one as obvious as forcing him to relive their first adventure. I also find it unbelievable that between Halo 5 and Infinite, Cortana would have managed to capture the Chief and then set up a closed loop of those events. How would she replicate the prominence of the Elites, or of Guilty Spark, or of the Flood? How would she justify being back in his armor; would he even let her? What would stop him from just staying put and not doing anything? Unless she put him in some kind of simulation, or manipulated his memory, but those would be terrible plot devices akin to “it was all a dream” or “he goes back in time to fix everything”.
I talked about in other theories of mine that Chief might go after her. Also, though I haven’t looked into the videos regarding them, there are theories that suggest the Covenant will fight for Cortana. And I don’t really how he would get there, but there are also theories that suggest Guilty Spark is still alive, and his memory could likely be altered. And with the Flood confirmed to have survived, I wouldn’t be surprised if a spore escaped the Ark on the new Alpha Halo. And lastly, if Chief were to be captured by Cortana, I don’t see the huge difficulty she would have in getting him into his old armor. But all of these aside, as to why she would do this, this really is going into in different theory, but just seeing all of the sadistic and fanatical characteristics she shows in Halo 5 makes me think she really isn’t in her right mind. So staging something like this seems like something a lunatic would do.
> 2535452785098607;11:
> I talked about in other theories of mine that Chief might go after her. Also, though I haven’t looked into the videos regarding them, there are theories that suggest the Covenant will fight for Cortana. And I don’t really how he would get there, but there are also theories that suggest Guilty Spark is still alive, and his memory could likely be altered. And with the Flood confirmed to have survived, I wouldn’t be surprised if a spore escaped the Ark on the new Alpha Halo. And lastly, if Chief were to be captured by Cortana, I don’t see the huge difficulty she would have in getting him into his old armor. But all of these aside, as to why she would do this, this really is going into in different theory, but just seeing all of the sadistic and fanatical characteristics she shows in Halo 5 makes me think she really isn’t in her right mind. So staging something like this seems like something a lunatic would do.
There seems to be quite a bit of information you don’t know about the current state of Halo lore, leading you to make assumptions to help your idea. But, since some of your “theories” are different that what you think, it actually suggests your idea is less likely to occur:
Certain races of the former Covenant, like the Grunts, have pledge loyalty to Cortana, and benefitted from it. But other races, like the Elites, or at least the Swords of Sanghelios Elites, refuse to submit. Suffice to say, the races of the Covenant do not stand together as they did in Halo CE. - Guilty Spark being alive is more than theory; it’s fact. He survived the events of Halo 3, and more, recovered his memories from when he was the ancient human, Chakas. He now commands a UNSC ship, and was last seen putting its crew into cryosleep and going off into the galaxy to search for the Librarian, who Spark believes to still be alive. - A Flood spore could not have escaped on Installation 04c. The quarantine on the Flood-infested section of the Ark was broken well after Anders and the ring had left through the portal. The Ark’s monitor, 000 Tragic Solitude, went through great lengths to completely seal the Flood remnant to one section of the Ark, before his demise. This section was cut off from the Ark’s Foundry, with both hardlight shields and a perimeter of Sentinels keeping any Flood from escaping the quarantine zone.As for your last point, I don’t think “because she’s crazy” is a good reason for her to try something so hair-brained. She definitely seems a tad obsessed with the Chief, but her demeanor and actions in Halo 5 do not suggest that she wants to return to the glory days of their partnership. She’s concerned with the future, not the past. When Chief told her she’d changed, she replied “It was time.” And after her initial attempts to convert him did not work, she opted to simply imprison him. Chief to her is more of a pet or an object than a partner, now. Trying to relive the past would involve her assuming the role she held in the past, and even with her ability to fragment herself, I doubt she’d devote any processing power to reliving past events, or pretending to be the “old” Cortana. I know this is just an idea you had, but to me it sounds incredible cliche, and I hope it doesn’t end up being the direction they take the story of Infinite.
> 2535452785098607;1:
> So from Halo 5 (and also kinda Halo Wars 2) we learned to two important things about Cortana: she wants to have the Master Chief back, and she is in control of a Halo. Now we’ve also seen some interesting business from the trailer of Halo Infinite, probably one of the most standing out of them being Master Chief having his old armor. So this is my theory that correlates these two, it isn’t strong but its what I’ve got. Cortana wants to repeat the past:
>
> Installation 04 is basically where all of this began, its the huge adventure of Chief and Cortana where they new it was just getting started. I’ve talked about in a few other theories of mine (“Returning to the Ark Theory”/“No Cortana!!”) about the possibility of Chief trying to recover Cortana’s AI matrix from the Domain, so in his pursuit of this, he finds himself on 04.2. But Cortana, still wanting him back, recreates everything like it was on their first adventure, including Chief’s armor. Basically my theory is that Cortana is simulating most of what occurred/what was present in Halo CE in order to somehow bring Chief back to her side. I know its weird, but if this Halo is following the story after 5, then this could be the case.
>
> With this said, I also have two speculations on the name Halo Infinite, one of them tying into my theory: the first being how its ironic since Halos geologically are infinite, the second being that if Cortana is trying to repeat the past, then she’s going to make this a cycle until she can sway Chief, and cycles are conceptually are infinite.
“it’s all starting to make sense, I was also thinking same thing as I kept thinking about it even more and more.”
Sometimes I wonder though if the Legendary ending wasn’t so much as saying ‘hey, Cortana has a LOT of power and controls a ring world’ as it was saying ‘this is where you’re going’.
Because I mean, who’s to say she’s in control of the ring? Maybe that’s just where the Infinity ends up and Chief eventually goes there. Think of the mission where you go after the Infinity in Halo 4 because the Didact was going there too. Maybe Blue Team, Palmer, Halsey, and the Swords rejoin up with the Infinity there.
Now I’m starting think the trailer for Infinite really has nothing to do with the game we’ll get. The teaser was just to excite people with ‘Hey! remember how amazing Halo CE was? Well, it’s back, in Pog form!’. It’s perhaps just a tease about this whole “spiritual reboot” idea. Just like the tease for Halo 5 showed something that didn’t happen in the game, so too does this specific teaser. 343i is trying to say ‘we’re going back to the roots of the series, be excited.’ . So Halo 5 did have Guardians in it, and so Infinite most likely will have a ring, but other then that it was just a nostalgic homage trailer about 343i commitment to get Halo ‘right’.
> 2533274826326833;15:
> Now I’m starting think the trailer for Infinite really has nothing to do with the game we’ll get.
This has always been the case. What we have seen so far is no more than a demonstration of what the Slipspace Engine can do. Sure there may be a few hints here and there, but this was never designed to be representative of the final game. Tech demos never are
> 2533274813317074;16:
> > 2533274826326833;15:
> > Now I’m starting think the trailer for Infinite really has nothing to do with the game we’ll get.
>
> This has always been the case. What we have seen so far is no more than a demonstration of what the Slipspace Engine can do. Sure there may be a few hints here and there, but this was never designed to be representative of the final game. Tech demos never are
right such as what chief to a degree looks like the location the possible year the game takes place as eagle eyed fans saw a date on the crashed pelican which I think was may 2560
> 2533274867591496;17:
> > 2533274813317074;16:
> > > 2533274826326833;15:
> > > Now I’m starting think the trailer for Infinite really has nothing to do with the game we’ll get.
> >
> > This has always been the case. What we have seen so far is no more than a demonstration of what the Slipspace Engine can do. Sure there may be a few hints here and there, but this was never designed to be representative of the final game. Tech demos never are
>
> right such as what chief to a degree looks like the location the possible year the game takes place as eagle eyed fans saw a date on the crashed pelican which I think was may 2560
I guess I was getting caught up with how others are talking about the teaser, treating it like it’s the real thing.
> 2535452785098607;1:
> So from Halo 5 (and also kinda Halo Wars 2) we learned to two important things about Cortana: she wants to have the Master Chief back, and she is in control of a Halo. Now we’ve also seen some interesting business from the trailer of Halo Infinite, probably one of the most standing out of them being Master Chief having his old armor. So this is my theory that correlates these two, it isn’t strong but its what I’ve got. Cortana wants to repeat the past:
>
> Installation 04 is basically where all of this began, its the huge adventure of Chief and Cortana where they new it was just getting started. I’ve talked about in a few other theories of mine (“Returning to the Ark Theory”/“No Cortana!!”) about the possibility of Chief trying to recover Cortana’s AI matrix from the Domain, so in his pursuit of this, he finds himself on 04.2. But Cortana, still wanting him back, recreates everything like it was on their first adventure, including Chief’s armor. Basically my theory is that Cortana is simulating most of what occurred/what was present in Halo CE in order to somehow bring Chief back to her side. I know its weird, but if this Halo is following the story after 5, then this could be the case.
>
> With this said, I also have two speculations on the name Halo Infinite, one of them tying into my theory: the first being how its ironic since Halos geologically are infinite, the second being that if Cortana is trying to repeat the past, then she’s going to make this a cycle until she can sway Chief, and cycles are conceptually are infinite.
My theory on this is that “Infinite” can or could relate to a multitude of things. Of that, the ones that seemingly stick out the most of what the Infinite Title name could imply are:
Open-world gameplay (“infinite” space/planetary travel) - Multi-verse interactions (different timelines) - Time-Travel resulting in re-doing multiple events from past Halo’s that alter the current, future timelines we already know.While I believe Halo Infinite will already end up more open-world with probably most if not all weapons from previous titles, I have a strong feeling about nostalgia from the community having an effect on how the story continues. I’m leaning towards the idea that we’ll see some sort of Time-Travel event that alters the past and Chief reliving and fighting through a couple events from Past Halo titles again that affects each later title’s event that the Chief lives through. For what purpose? I don’t know. But that’s a small theory I’ve had about the story in this one.