Cortana coming back and becoming the villain in Halo 5: Guardians is probably the biggest controversy and most hated decision in Halo ever. There have been several theories about why Cortana has done a total 180 and become evil, the biggest theory being she is suffering from logic plague. The theory says that the Primordial planted the seeds of logic plague in Cortana, and that at some point she would go nuts. From Halo 5, there’s no indication or hint that this is the case. However, the Flood loot crate a few months ago seemed to be hinting that this may indeed be the case. How will you react if it turns out that she is indeed suffering from logic plague?
Quoting Cortana "Hmm… Okay"
Generally disappointed in their twisting of lore that actually makes little sense if one looks at the details and not just overarching themes. Having things revealed via lootcrate is probably even worse than the first hint of cortana’s survival coming from a forum post.
But this is the kind of story telling that surrounds cortana since her resurrection, so I’m fully expecting them to go this route.
Very dissappointed as it just means 343i is essentially admitting they -Yoinked!- up and are trying to course correct. I’d rather they just stick with the course they ultimately chose and have it just be Cortana doing it entirely of her own free will and not be subtlety influenced by the Flood/Gravemind.
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> Very dissappointed as it just means 343i is essentially admitting they -Yoinked!- up and are trying to course correct. I’d rather they just stick with the course they ultimately chose and have it just be Cortana doing it entirely of her own free will and not be subtlety influenced by the Flood/Gravemind.
Imagine the outrage of trying to cure her and return her to being a protagonist.
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> Very dissappointed as it just means 343i is essentially admitting they -Yoinked!- up and are trying to course correct. I’d rather they just stick with the course they ultimately chose and have it just be Cortana doing it entirely of her own free will and not be subtlety influenced by the Flood/Gravemind.
Or at the very least, it being a rampant shard of her that wasn’t “cured”. Then we can see exactly what happens to an AI in Rampancy.
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> > 2533274869999832;4:
> > Very dissappointed as it just means 343i is essentially admitting they -Yoinked!- up and are trying to course correct. I’d rather they just stick with the course they ultimately chose and have it just be Cortana doing it entirely of her own free will and not be subtlety influenced by the Flood/Gravemind.
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> Imagine the outrage of trying to cure her and return her to being a protagonist.
That would undoubtedly turn thousands more away from Halo, at least if the franchise’s fan numbers remain in the thousands or higher given 343i’s history. I would certainly leave in disgust. I’d trade in my games, I’d try to sell off the merchandise I got from Reach/H5. If not I’d bin the lot. Anything to discard the memory of a franchise written into infamy.
The whole thing still angers me. I saw Cortana die on Mantle’s Approach. I saw and heard her say her final goodbye to the Chief. I saw her hardlight form vanish into the air, solidifying her sacrifice. She went out on her terms. She is supposed to be dead!
I would be interested, but not completely surprised.
It would be the most obvious plot twist, but it depends on execution. I’ve said that she has it with a definite yes before. Now, the more I look at it, going that route with explanations we already know seems to be too easy to predict. If I were the writers, I’d subvert our expectations and not go that route. Rather, i’d reveal she’s under control of the Didact, Gravemind, or other outside force. Or, I’d reveal its her rampant fragments reassembled by the Domain and being used as a puppet, which is similar to the former option. I really want the writers to think on that plot point extremely carefully and how the rest of Halo 6 - Halo in general - will play out, how it affects Chief, and how its excecuted.
Execution works hand in hand with writing a strong story.
I’ll say, “Congrats, 343, you finally picked a reason to explain her change in the narrative, let’s see if you can stick the landing.”
Like others have said, execution will be important. For me, I’ll know if they got the execution right if Cortana is able to snap out of her issue, realize what she’s done, and take accountability for her actions. Even if she’s being controlled, I don’t think the real Cortana would never try to brush away atrocities. It’s like Bucky from Captain America: Civil War. Yes, he was brainwashed and everything, but he still acknowledges he did terrible things and sought to get better lest he does more harm.
If this ends with Cortana and Chief going back to the way things were though…I don’t think I could respect the story anymore.
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> I’ll say, “Congrats, 343, you finally picked a reason to explain her change in the narrative, let’s see if you can stick the landing.”
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> Like others have said, execution will be important. For me, I’ll know if they got the execution right if Cortana is able to snap out of her issue, realize what she’s done, and take accountability for her actions. Even if she’s being controlled, I don’t think the real Cortana would never try to brush away atrocities. It’s like Bucky from Captain America: Civil War. Yes, he was brainwashed and everything, but he still acknowledges he did terrible things and sought to get better lest he does more harm.
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> If this ends with Cortana and Chief going back to the way things were though…I don’t think I could respect the story anymore.
Very good point, and great analogy with Buck being brainwashed. I think if Cortana gets out of her funk, she’s gonna have to sacrifice herself. I’m still salty, as her last scene in Halo 4 was perfect.
I will delete all of my fan fiction and start all over.
Been a while since I posted (so disappointed in a lot of the fiction in the last two years) but I just logged in because I’ve been watching a bunch of the Halo channels on YouTube here and there to catch up with some of the novels and other fiction (which ordinarily, I would have bought and read myself.)
I thought if was pretty obvious that she does have the Logic Plague, or at very least, is Rampant in a way that’s similar to meta- stability. I mean, she’s basically literally setting the Galaxy up the same way that the Forerunner had, a way that lead the galaxy being extremely defenseless against a flood attack (in that military might was nearly monopolized by the Forerunners, who upheld the Mantle, leaving other civilizations defenseless.)
I’d be MORE surprised if she didn’t have the Logic Plague. Why WOULDN’T the Gravemind try to infect her during their time together?
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> Been a while since I posted (so disappointed in a lot of the fiction in the last two years) but I just logged in because I’ve been watching a bunch of the Halo channels on YouTube here and there to catch up with some of the novels and other fiction (which ordinarily, I would have bought and read myself.)
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> I thought if was pretty obvious that she does have the Logic Plague, or at very least, is Rampant in a way that’s similar to meta- stability. I mean, she’s basically literally setting the Galaxy up the same way that the Forerunner had, a way that lead the galaxy being extremely defenseless against a flood attack (in that military might was nearly monopolized by the Forerunners, who upheld the Mantle, leaving other civilizations defenseless.)
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> I’d be MORE surprised if she didn’t have the Logic Plague. Why WOULDN’T the Gravemind try to infect her during their time together?
My only issue is that it seems like a real stretch that the Gravemind would know Cortana would even be in any position to be of any use to the Flood. It knew how long she had to live, so bare minimum she’d only be an effective asset for 4 years after the events of the original trilogy. I know people say that as an important of course she’d be in a position of power, but she’s only even able to be powerful because of the Domain. Had things gone differently and Chief and Cortana made it back to UNSC space, what could she gain control over that the UNSC has that would let her destabilize the galaxy so much that a Flood invasion would easier to accomplish?
Mendicant Bias? He was already granted a large amount of authority by the Ecumene. Cortana? She’s a wild card.
Cortana was one of humanity’s most poewful AIs, and while I know it took years to break Mendicant Bias, it always seemed to me (maybe just my headcanon) that for an AI as relatively primitive as Cortana, it would be a very easy thing for the Gravemind to implant the logic plague, in which case, I see your point but it also seems pointless not to do so. It probably would take very little effort for the Gravemind to do so. Even if he didn’t know if Cortana would be in any position of poewr, he’d at very least know that she’s powerful to the UNSC and could be of some use there, and at worst, planting those seeds does no harm.
On the other hand, this brings up the problem that Cortana did help defeat the Gravemind at the end of Halo 3, but there are tons of ways to explain this. It could be that the Gravemind didn’t have long enough with her for the Logic Plague to be fully implemented, and now a rampant fragment of Cortana that was exposed to the Plague is in the Domain.
To be honest, it also always seemed weird to me that even someone like Chief could go into such a Flood invested zone and not be literally pummeled to death by flood. It’s one of those things that, to me, seemed so strange that I almost think the Gravemind had to want her to be retrieved to make sense of it. I never had any good logical reason to bring this up until the Logic Plague was fleshed out, though.
Sorry if that worded in a very clunky way, I’m not my best today lol. Super hungry RN.
Breaking Cortana isn’t the problem, I can accept that he did. My issue is what would the Gravemind hope to gain? Assuming both Chief and Cortana hadn’t been redirected, what does the UNSC possess that would allow Cortana a few years down the line to even come close to conquering the galaxy the way she does with the power of the Domain? The Infinity? NOVA Bombs? Powerful, but not for enforcing iron-gripped order on the galaxy.
I get that point, but assuming Cortana is (was?) magnitudes of order less advanced than Mendicant Bias, and the Gravemind could infect her in a matter of days, months, or hours, why wouldn’t it? I don’t actually recall the amount of time Cortana was stuck on High Charity but I believe it was a few months, right?
It seemed to me that the Graveminds during the Forerunner war just did infect whatever Ancillas they could, so it seemed to me more something that it’d automatically want to do by default, not something it needed specific motivation to decide to do.
Seems like you’re asking “why would the Gravemind bother” and I’m saying “why wouldn’t it bother?” Seems like it wouldn’t really have to go far out of it’s way to do so.
Of course, I could be wrong about that point (that the Gravemind was just infecting whatever AIs it had access to.) If I am wrong about that, then I guess most of my argument falls apart.
It could, but it wouldn’t be around to make much use of corrupting Cortana. The Gravemind doesn’t do things without purpose. It sent the Ur-Didact back to the Forerunners to specifically sow discord and sent back Catalog with the logic plague to infect other Forerunner ancillas upon its return. Now, that was after it already assumed the Keymind stage, so the infection would be instantaneous if I remember Silentium correctly.
With Cortana? I don’t see much in the way of use.
I’d be totally up for it since it isn’t too farfetched and it explains part of the horrible mess of Halo 5’s rushed story arcs.
My main issue is how they explain these things. It seems impractical and has failed in the past 2 games, to base the story on the expanded lore because not everybody has read it/seen it.
To the players who just played the games, the jump towards the Master Chief acting more human, to blue team, to the Didact, Agent Locke…it all seems hard to understand because there is a lack of obvious explanation IN GAME. We should at least have some form of explicitly present education in the campaign.
Tldr: Sure but it better be explained throughout the story and not be as useless as Jul M’dama’s death…