> She has left an amazing legacy in the fiction, and we couldn’t make a game where we didn’t at least acknowledge that…” - Frankie prior to Halo 5’s release about Cortana’s "ghost and its impact.
This will probably be the last Cortana-centric post I make, I’m not trying to be a broken record. But I’ve been stewing on that statement for a while now and I’ve wondered how what was done with Cortana in Halo 5 necessarily honors her legacy. We know Cortana is still around, activating Guardians and is going to try and force peace on the galaxy. Yet prior to Halo 4, Cortana was a character whose purpose was to help the Chief. She was made by Dr. Halsey to help the Spartans with Operation: RED FLAG, the daring, yet aborted, mission to try and capture a Covenant Prophet to broker a truce with the Covenant. She aided Chief on Installation 04 by providing him intel, stopping him from activating the Halo by accident and stopped him from being infected by an Infection Form (Halo: The Flood). She helped take control of the Covenant ship called the Ascendant Justice shortly after the rings destruction and helped bring Chief back to Earth. Even when she was trapped on High Charity and in the clutches of the Gravemind she tenaciously resisted the Gravemind’s influence and managed to overcome that monster bringing her to the brink of rampancy, a feat even Mendicant Bias during the time of the Forerunners could not do. And while she did suffer the effects of rampancy in Halo 4, she still did the best she could for Chief and helped bring the Didact’s threat to an end by actively helping Chief take him down. She sacrificed herself on her own terms and I wouldn’t expect someone like her to do anything less.
But we learn she is still alive. I opposed her revival before Halo 5 released, but towards the end I found myself being okay with her coming back under very specific circumstances that mattered. The above quote gave me some hope, but I do not see Cortana’s legacy as a guardian to Chief was honored in Halo 5. Which is a shame since they could have easily done so with the story elements and lore that have accumulated over the years. Consider just what Chief and Cortana represented. They were two minds in one body and essentially equals. Chief initially saw her as equipment, but over time he did not believe he could sacrifice her if the need arose and saw her as a person. The fact he trusted her so much after her message to Earth was received in Halo 3 and that he would storm the Flood-infested High Charity is a testament to that bond. Bungie teased this in the Halo: Reach datapads with the Assembly seeing Cortana and Chief together as the ideal way for AIs and humanity to come together as equals, not with the Assembly guiding humanity themselves (sorry people who see the Assembly as justification for Cortana controlling the galaxy). I’d argue that both AIs and organic humans are both human with the only difference being that one is digital and the other flesh and blood.
Yet this bond goes so much deeper in the lore. The Librarian explains in Halo 4 that their kind of relationship was planned as the next step for humanities development. What they have improves upon what the Forerunners had with their ancillas. Forerunners had powerful armor with ancillas in them that helped them with day to day activities, but ancillas were never really more than servants to the Forerunners. At worst, they were also pretty much just weapons of war as we see with the Promethean Soldiers. Their pursuit with the Composer tried to find a path to immortality through the digital realm, but when that failed we saw that the digital realm was used as a punishment on ancient humanity for their war against the Forerunners. The Didact found a solution for warriors with the Composer that led to yet more humans being turned, painfully, into Promethean Knights. I think most people forget that fact, the Knights are fellow humans and the ones we kill may very well be more recent ones. Mothers, fathers, children, all turned into war machines. And out in the depths of space, 343 Guilty Spark/Chakas, the human companion of the Iso-Didact, carries within him the millions of dying “spirits” of ancient humanity Composed by the Didact that were not turned into Promethean Knights. Suffice to say, the Forerunners were not kind to digital life.
The Covenant dealt very rarely with digital life. Mendicant Bias served as a warning against having artificial intelligence within their ranks. But they did dabble in AI-creation, but they had sour results. Their AIs were made from captured human Smart-AIs that were copied over and over again that they became corrupted. We saw the sad state of one such AI in the CEA terminals almost hoping the Covenant would active the Halos so they’d be free. Cortana even got her copying ability from deleting one of those AIs in First Strike.
So Cortana’s concern for other AIs makes sense to me. I see the logic of bringing AIs into the Domain to cure them of their rampancy before or after it has begun. But her plan doesn’t honor her legacy as a guardian. She is essentially just using the other AIs as agents of chaos that are disabling colonies and making it easier for her to bring her rule over the galaxy. Obey her or die, those are her rules.
But I don’t see why Cortana doesn’t try to develop a personal relationship between the digital and organic like she and Chief had, just on a galactic scale. That would be a much better and long-lasting plan AND honor her guardian role that she has had all these years. Imagine the Domain filled with AIs cultivated from every known species that can then be used by organic individuals to better themselves. Imagine what a Sangheili may learn from an Unggoy or a human from a San 'Shyuum. You may laugh, but having such a wide range of experiences and beliefs has the capacity to expand the horizons of individuals. The Domain did something like this by keeping echos of Forerunners who visited it, but they were hollows of those Forerunners, not the full thing. Cortana could better that system by putting digital forms of individuals in it that perfect them and allow them to live forever. It could initially be a human AI only, but I see no reason it can’t apply to other species. If she had a Composer, she would use it painlessly on those who volunteer to live on in the digital realm. Everyone could avoid dying by being able to live on forever in the Domain. Just imagine future generations being able to learn from figures like the Arbiter, Halsey or the Librarian directly thousands of years after they die and better than the echos of a personality the Domain originally kept. Cortana could also liberate Covenant AIs from their pain as well as bring peace to the humans Composed by the Forerunners. That seems like it would build a lasting peace rather with threats of destruction. Rather than death, Cortana could have worked to build the foundations for a peaceful future and act as the guardian for that process. Halsey was the mother of the Spartans, the Librarian of humans. Cortana could have been the mother of artificial intelligence and facilitator of peace based on understanding and lessons all could learn from each other be they physical or digital.
But I suppose that doesn’t make for a dramatic twist and enemies for future games.