I honestly really like Agryna, she’s cool with jokes but is much more of a “warm” kind of character as opposed to Sgt. Johnson’s “perpetually on fire from how cool he is” vibe. Honestly we’re not ever gonna be able to get a 2.0 of him though, Johnson is irreplaceable.
The best we can hope for is that they bring back his Sangheili counterpart Rtas 'Vadum- cuz Shipmaster was just as hype to me, he was the hype man for the Elites the same way Johnson was for marines.
Pilot’s a precious boi, he can stay. He’s trying his best, he’s just dealing with a lot of guilt and fear and just needs more hugs from Chief.
Or we could get a Sgt Johnson A.I. companion for multiplayer.
*player obtains a Thruster Pack
“Now we will see who beats the dog over the fence!”
Honestly, only if the OG voice actor comes back cuz that would make it worth it instantly
The Weapons a terrible “character”. She’s very obviously only in the story because of an embarrassing retcon, which undercuts every scene she’s in and there’s zero reason to have any more concern or interest than another AI. The “character” only really works as a prop for Chief as he deals with the off screen fridging of Cortana. If you decide to kill Cortana off then 343 does not get to continue the love story or redemption arc by proxy with another character. It’s bad and I think it will get worse if they go where I think the ending suggests.
But onto Agryna. Well they aren’t doing themselves any favours if that is the grand plan. It would have made a lot more sense to have the first introduction be shared with Chief. Instead of making a very underwhelming side story about, some Banished AI, which is important because reasons. Which may or may not be told in oh about six months time. 
CoD sells its multiplayer season characters by having cool cutscenes where they do interesting things. We don’t see that with Agryna. I certainly don’t think she’s a fan favourite character.
Say what you will about Osiris, people actually talk about them and have opinions on them. I don’t consider apathy and disinterest to be a huge improvement.
What Retcon?
If I recall correctly, Cortana was but a single individual version of Dr. Halsey’s attempt at making an A.I. of herself.
There is a reason why in Halo 4, Cortana says “They’ll pair you with another A.I. . . . maybe even another Cortana Model if Halsey lets them.”
She knows that she is only one version, one iteration of herself. Dr. Halsey copied herself TWENTY times.
And then in Halo: Shadows of Reach - SPOILERS BY THE WAY - Blue Team is sent to Reach back to retrieve one of those copies and have it become another Cortana Model. They were honestly lucky the research survived the Fall of Reach and its subsequent Glassing.
Well for one, Characters are just that. Props for other characters. You have to use certain props at the right time. Cortina, as I like to call her, is something akin to Kratos’ interactions with his son Atreus in God of War PS4.
Kratos is the God of War. He has known violence and vengeance all of his life. And now he has to raise a son, but he is uncertain of if he can given the atrocities he has committed. He is hesitant and unsure of how to approach the situation at first but eventually warms up to the idea of it all. There is a lot going on inside his head and heart.
Master Chief is a Spartan-II, raised up to be a soldier and views himself as nothing more. Cortana asked him the question of “which of us is the machine” in Halo 4. Losing Cortana was immensely breaking for him and he didn’t know how to handle it. And now he has a more naive version of Cortana to care for and call his companion. How difficult would it be to have to essentially speak with the past version of someone you knew who died, and have to be secretive about their own origin and what that potentially means they could become? Chief has difficulty with treating Cortina as Cortana, he almost doesn’t want to accept it. But eventually he does.
Are they fridging old Cortana a bit? Yeah. And I for one am okay with that considering the festering abyss that Brian Reed wrote them into. They came up with an interesting way to undo that whole “Cortana is the BBEG” mess and came up with a way to still have it give an Impact to Chief.
Imagine if you were tasked with eliminating your friend who became the world’s biggest threat, only to find out that six months have passed, your friend is gone, and you never really got your chance to possibly say goodbye?
The original plan was for Cortina to imitate the Halo’s systems, lock down Cortana for retrieval, and then delete herself. Chief was probably planning for that to be the case so before they could get rid of Cortana; he could say his last goodbye.
And then for most of the game he is lamenting that this did not happen in the back of his mind.
But then, at the tail end of the first act of Halo Infinite’s story; we got this scene -
SPOILERS AGAIN
* * * * * * * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob4sZ39IdJQ
“Are you alright?” is The Weapon’s response because she has spent time and empathized with Chief about all of this during their short adventure thus far.
The Weapon is a great character.
Especially when you consider the fact that each of our three main protagonists bounce off of one another really well thanks to their personalities.
Fernando is the Pessimist, who looks to all that is possibly going to go wrong and is anxious about larger decisions than he thinks he can handle.
The Weapon is the Optimist, due to her youth and inexperience she has no reference point, so she is like a child that develops a reference point over time.
John is the Pragmatist, who from his years of experience and knowing his capabilities tries to stay headstrong on the goals he makes for himself. Though he is difficult to approach and has troubles reading the room; which allows him to be the anchor that both Fernando and Cortina need. Fernando needs him to be the strong figure to stabilize things, while Cortina needs John to grow from.
And John subsequently needs both of them as anchors as well.
Fernando shows John that not everyone he is alongside is capable of the feats he sets himself towards. “I’m not you!” is a good line to directly hammer that to both the Player and to John, which gets John to open up a bit more to Esparza and not just simply look at him as another pilot.
Cortina shows similar concern for John’s well-being that Cortana had. Though he resists her curiosities at first, hesitant to open up because he fears that their interactions would lead to another failed companionship and that their interactions could potentially spiral out of control and lead to another crazed AI. But with how Cortina acts differently enough when compared to Cortana, John realizes that the past is not likely to repeat and learns to trust on that level again.
I think this side-story starring Agryna will eventually develop into possibly a mini-campaign, or at the very least, a novel. After all, Agryna is focused on finding the UNSC Infinity and what happened to it. What information could this Banished A.I. have in its databanks that could be useful in finding the wreckage of the UNSC Infinity?
Who knows what Season 3’s cinematic will unveil?
*player picks up a Ravager
“Someone get the grill, we about to have a Barbeque!”
It’s a retcon because Halo 5 ended with a big cliffhanger and the Weapon is a vehicle to write themselves out of the games consequences whilst still keeping the golden goose of the Chief/Cortana thing alive. Terrible writing and it means they have no integrity. That colours everything they do with the Weapon.
That’s a misquote that 343 is perpetuating in Halo Infinite. The purpose of “they’ll pair with another AI” isn’t that oh you’ll be happy and have a second chance with this other AI. No, it’s what failure looks like. It’s an accusation that it would be terrible if you did try to replace Cortana with somebody who looks and sounds like her.
I don’t need the Weapons encouragement to kill Xenos. Vengeance is a perfectly fine motivation to keep Chief going and put Atriox and the rest of the Brute species in the ground. How is killing Cortana offscreen meant to inspire Hope exactly? Killing off Cortana should mean pivoting the game back towards being more of a sci fi military shooter. Instead 343 is blatantly trying to keep the whole love story thing going but with the Weapon, a character without any of the context which made Halo 4 work. That’s based of the massive presumption people won’t make a distinction between the two characters and they clearly have.
She tells a few bad jokes, that doesn’t really endear me to the character and given that the character presence is a walking retcon being forced on you; that kind of murders any attempt. Literally, any other AI or character could fill this role much better and with far more integrity than the walking retcon. Why would you want to be haunted by somebody like that?
What drama they have falls flat and makes no sense. Why does the Weapon feel any responsibility for what Cortana did. It’s melodramatic and dumb. Different person, no responsibility and she has seven years before she goes mad; or are we just forgetting that now because it’s adds “drama” to the scene. It came across as the character being self important and presumptive.
Plus, there’s no narrative tension in the “I might become like her” if 343 have retconned Cortana out the story. That means you’re just doing the bare minimum to address this and just be the MCU joke machine.
You’ll be waiting a long time. All the rumours are saying 2025 for campaign DLC. I am not expecting anything beyond the six monthly cutscenes we’re getting and if this is the stakes of “oh the AI is turning the lights on and off; ohhhh” I am not exactly impressed. That reflects poorly on Agryna introduction and it’s just more of 343 wasting potential.
Terrible Writing was what Brian Reed did.
NO ONE WANTED THIS STORY
EVERYONE HATED HALO 5 GORBIANS’ STORY
So the right thing to do is find a way out.
THANKFULLY
Dr. Halsey had made twenty copies of her mind and made a few A.I.s out of them. Most notably were Kalmiya and Cortana.
So they had a reasonable way out of this corner that Brian Reed had forced them into.
Gonna edit later because I gotta go and will log in at home to discuss further. BRB.
EDIT - I am back.
Let’s continue.
So.
You do not understand what a Retcon is.
A Retcon is short for “Retroactive Continuity”, which means new information has been added in to change the previously established facts of in-universe lore or events.
For example -
The Death of Johnson
Retconned
Halo CE, Johnson was just an NPC Sniper Marine.
But he was so well liked, both by fans and by Bungie staff, that they made him into a main character.
So they introduced a short Comic in the Halo: Graphic Novel on how he survived the initial encounter with the Flood, and later in the events of Halo: First Strike had Cortana explain how he was not infected.
The Humans are Forerunners
Retconned
Halo CE through Halo Reach, it was definitive that Humanity and the Forerunners are the very same species.
BUT THEN
343 Industries took over and Frank O’Connor had that detail changed.
Now Humans and Forerunners are not the same species.
And to solidify this fact, Frank O’Connor re-released the 2009 Halo Encyclopedia in 2011 to alter some established facts, had Greg Bear write a Trilogy of books to show us the NEW history of the Forerunners and Humans, and had the Librarian and the Terminals outright say it in Halo 4.
Prior to 343’s assumption of the franchise at the close of 2010; Humans were Forerunners.
Now they are not.
They did not retcon Halo 5’s ending.
They decided to take the story in an entirely separate direction than the ending had proposed.
And 343 does this OFTEN.
Did you know that The Didact was supposed to survive and then come back in Halo 5?
Well guess what? A comic book was written to change the direction by having the Ur-Didact die off all so Brian Reed could make room for a new villain that no one wanted to be the villain.
And since no one liked THAT, they decided to change course again and didn’t have Master Chief vs Cortana be a thing.
Misquote?
Did you play Halo 4?
This scene was to show how defeated and hopeless Cortana was and how stubborn & in denial that John was of the inevitable.
Cortana said this also as a means of reassuring Chief. Saying that if he wanted to, he could see if they would approve of making a replacement of her. Another copy.
Which 343 ended up following up with actually doing and showing just how difficult it would be for Chief to adapt to that concept.
You don’t.
But storywise, John and The Weapon needed each other.
The Weapon needed someone to help her evolve into something other than a program that wanted to delete itself and become her own person so-to-speak.
Meanwhile John needed her input, along with those Whispers of Cortana, to realize that this was not the end that he wanted but one that he could learn to accept.
Where did you get that idea?
Tell me you don’t have a sense of humor without telling me the exact words “I don’t have a sense of humor”.
Again, not a Retcon.
Because it adds drama? Makes the story interesting in more ways than one? Adds conflict that is actually believable rather than being forced drama conflict like you see on “reality” TV and soap operahs?
Well lets see . . .
Ah gee, I wonder if you might get the idea that since you are essentially a copy/paste of that Individual; you wonder if you would be tempted to go down the same path? Is fate real? Is nature more powerful than nurture? So many questions that need answers and the answers themselves tend to be complicated.
Its not a feel of responsibility that The Weapon feels towards Cortana’s actions, it is a fear that she might become the very thing that she has seen become a genocidal megalomaniac.
Again, Cortana wasn’t retconned out of the story.
And there is narrative tension, because we might very well see in the following Arcs how Cortina might end up doing some things that Cortana might have done.
Again, lets bring up Kratos and Atraeus.
Kratos sees that his son has a rage inside him, and being that he is part God of WAR; Kratos knows that he must temper his son’s rage and ensure that he doesn’t follow his past mistakes.
I wonder what GoW: Ragnarok will do to possibly make Atraeus repeat some of the mistakes that Kratos had made? Because in GoW PS4 - SPOILERS - Atreaus kills one of the Sons of Thor after finding out that he is part God and, well, has a God Complex about it. And Kratos scolds him for that action. Atraeus rejects his teachings until later on when in Helheim that he sees a shadow of what he did and is terrified now that he sees how he acted and regrets his decision.
I wonder what in Parts 2 and 3 of Halo Infinite that Cortina might do that would make her feel as if she might become a danger to those around her. That might make her fearful that she is following a similar path to Cortana?
Certainly a possible plot-point to develop.
Ooh boy you are jaded.
Lets see.
A Banished A.I. was developed.
It has a Spartan Incapacitated.
And it had temporary control of the base’s systems.
A base that if discovered would probably mean the death of what they on said base believe might be the last of the Spartans.
Stakes are high from their perspective.
And if that Banished A.I. relays the location of the base, I am willing to bet that the Johnson Academy has MJOLNIR R&D knowledge on hand for power armor repairs.
Imagine if the Banished got their hands on that?
Brutes with their strength increased by a factor of five.
We would be doomed.
Also, seasonal cutscenes are a thing that EVERY game does now.
You’re getting mad that you are getting a slowly developing side-story?
Did they now? Nobody wanted the story to be about Chief saving Cortana?
They liked Halo 4 where Cortana started going rampant and Chief was trying to save her. You know, that thing that makes AI have “god like delusions” after 7 years. Game that put Terminator robots in. Gee I wonder where they were going with that? I called Cortana was going to go Skynet before Halo 4 even came out. I think Frank O Connor has far more to do with that than Brian Reed.
Halo 5 is mostly killing Storm Covenant and the Warden Eternal. Cortana is in a few missions. Most of the backlash was art style and Osiris. The complaint was they didn’t want her to be a monster. So surely the logical thing is a story in which Chief gets her back and oh it was all the Gravemind etc etc. Not kill her off before the game starts.
The mature thing to do is to see the missteps and correct them. Which, funnily enough, Halo Infinite manages to do fine in its flashbacks. I didn’t hear all these complaints when they did that then. It says something where the cliff notes for the game you didn’t make are better than purging Orks and random squid people.
Silent majority were fine with the story and the retcon you are hand waving is far more damaging to 343 reputation and integrity. I ve seen a fair few videos express this sentiment and even HiddenXperia acknowledged the campaign had received backlash for this.
Plus, Halo Infinite asks you to forgive Cortana and you get given a copy. So mechanically there’s no difference between that and the obvious end point of “Chief saves Cortana and gets her back”. They just decided to cut out any of the drama, set pieces and you know cool stuff that you could do with that. As well as, you know, it’s not Cortana which means none of the drama carries over. 343 seem to be the only people on the planet who think the Weapon is Cortana given how much they slip up in interviews on that.
The Weapon is the worst of all possible outcomes. A new AI could have her role of dealing with loss with integrity. Actual Cortana could bear responsibility and have the trust issues. But the Weapon is neither. Making a character that embodies the retcon only taints the character by association.
So yeah, I don’t like the Weapon and just to head you off; I ain’t changing my mind on that.
I can’t speak for others. But I think there’s a lot of apathy with the Weapon; much like the multiplayer story. Reviewers tended to see her just as a chirpy MCU joke machine and not as a central component of the narrative. Not as something to be excited to see and speculate on. Plus, she became a bit of a meme and not in a good way. Which means they aren’t interested in NotCortana drama and worse aren’t even acknowledging it.
He’s doing great tbh.
Saving Cortana?
Master Chief was far more likely to be killing Cortana with how the story was set up.
She was now the BBEG of the franchise, Master Chief was betrayed by her, and he would have had an angsty story of his difficulty in hunting her down and taking her out.
The earlier alt-builds of Halo Infinite show this to be the case. (Halo Infinite had 4 builds until we got the final version we have now, just in case you were wondering why a game with a $500,000,000 budget is only 1/8 complete)
Actually no.
Halo 4 showed Cortana breaking down and becoming broken by what was essentially Schizophrenia meets Dementia. Frank even compared it to how his mother was going through Dementia and how he found it hard for him to write Cortana’s scenes in the game since he felt a personal connection.
But Halo 5 Gorbians was written by Brian Reed, who decided that Cortana found her way to the long lost Domain and was reconstructed by it, restored by it, and then went mad because now she viewed herself as a perfect creation; which according to the Mantle of Responsibility, puts her and other A.I.s now as the true masters of caretakers of the Galaxy. Hence why she went full on megalomaniac and tyrannical.
Which is what they did with Halo Infinite.
For the first time, 343 actually listened to fan’s feedback and realized “Oh we dun goofed, lets fix it.”
And thus, they did away with the plot line of Master Chief vs. Cortana.
Thankfully Halo Wars 2 introduced a new faction that could be interesting - The Banished.
And Halo Infinite makes them the pawns of another new faction - The Endless.
Silent majority?
Whenever I see a poll about Halo 5 Gorbians being a good or bad story, polls which are anonymous in who votes for what, I always see quite the majority voting in favor of Halo 5 Gorbs being undesired.
False.
You are given a copy of Cortana that grows to be her own individual; a sister of Cortana if you would. You know, like Kalmiya?
And Chief didn’t forgive her.
Cortana realized herself that what she was doing was wrong, offed herself, and left behind those Whispers explaining her reasons before and her reasons for offing herself.
She didn’t ask for forgiveness.
She wished John good luck with her little sister, hoping that this time around things would be different.
New A.I.s tend to be like children, inexperienced and naive.
Which The Weapon was. She was inately curious, childish, naive, and perky. Optimistic because she lacked full context or experience of the events at hand. Even when looking at the devastating power of the Halo Ring, she admires its creation and the methods it repairs itself; while Chief reminds her that “All I see is a problem”.
Chief has repeatedly experienced the Halos and their impact on the Galaxy.
The Weapon hasn’t.
Chief is wary and wants it stopped.
The Weapon is curious and wanting to understand, needing guidance.
Ahh . . . the closed mind is the worst kind of mind bruv.
Also, again, NOT a retcon.
No, the Chief promises to save Cortana in Halo 4. Halo 5 is just an escalation of that. Halo Infinite even has lines of dialogue like “if anyone could have saved me it would have been you”. So, the only detail that’s changed from that expectation I had is that 343 kind of forgot about journey before destination and decided to kill Cortana off and replace her with a clone.
Indeed, since we are talking about early builds, there’s a cutscene of Chief with a broken fragment of Cortana that he’s a little angsty with. So presumably at that point the idea was that the Chief is with a broken shard of Cortana rather than a self important and melodramatic Clone. Which makes a lot more sense as a story but here we are.
You’re way off the mark suggesting the Weapon is her own character and that 343 treat her as a distinct AI. For one thing 343 Devs keep referring to her as Cortana in interviews and commentary; so that’s their opinion. But also the whole perfectly perfect thing is Cortana saying this is her replacement.
It’s silly to make drama about Chiefs greatest failure being unable to save Cortana. He can’t exactly be blamed for Halo 5 haters demanding Cortana be killed off. So there’s no drama here. Just more retcon and stuff happening offscreen.
So the Weapon tells a few bad jokes and is a little chirpy so suddenly it’s all perfectly perfect? No, Halo 4 works because Cortana is a long established character that you went on all these adventures with. Why they put all the quotes in and why people accept the absurd notion of investing in saving Siri. There’s a key line where 343 tell us “this isn’t an end” and I think people do see it as an end. Nothing the Weapon does will change that and it might cause a backlash if they try to push that love story thing. “You don’t think it’s wrong…” to quote Wanda.
Yeah, I am sorry but it’s a little creepy having the young AI needing guidance from Chief as you say.
“She looked like you Khaleesi” 
Hey, as long as I get to rip and tear Atrioxs head off and hurl it onto the mountain of skulls that used to be Banished; there’s still hope. 
And logically, Chief would have come to the conclusion that Cortana would need to be destroyed. A conclusion that he would have fought and struggled with coming to all throughout what would’ve been the early drafts of Halo 6.
We all want to save those that are dear to us.
Chief thought he got that opporitunity to do so in Halo 5 until he saw that Cortana was not able to be reasoned with.
So logically he would have to spend the next game coming to terms with killing her.
Instead they decided to have him instead come to terms with how he failed her, because once again, EVERYONE WAS UNHAPPY WITH THE STORY WE GOT FOR HALO 5.
Interestingly enough, the early drafts of Halo 5 had a rampant fragment of Cortana in Chief’s head since he constantly kept her A.I. chip plugged in. And eventually the rampant fragment would awaken and bring to mind the means of restoring her by seeking Medicant Bias; a Forerunner A.I. that recovered from his own insanity.
A - Yeah. She is her own character. She is the personification of “little sister to Cortana”. Even when Jen Taylor voices her, she makes sure that The Weapon’s voice is different from Cortana’s. So now Jen has a more perky and excited version of her voice for The Weapon, a more stern and experienced voice for Cortana, and an elderly & annoyed voice for Dr. Halsey. Each of them are three separate characters.
B - The reason 343 devs call her Cortana is likely due to this scene at the end of Act I of Infinite, where The Weapon gets to choose her own name and she asks for Chief’s approval; likely because she is going to call herself Cortana from now on.
Honestly tho, I am hoping she calls herself “Catherine” or “Cathy” instead.
C - Cortana left a final message for John, one that was with the intention of being caring and heartfelt; reassuring him of what she predicted would happen. What, would you rather Cortana say something like “She’s not much. She’s Blue and I am purple again.” That is just empty of narrative.
Lets see -
Gee, I wonder why Chief might feel as if he failed her and might feel as if he is responsible for all the death she has caused? I mean, he didn’t stop her or change her mind when they met. He fell for her trap, got saved by the team sent to hunt him down, had to retreat, and was now tasked with fixing this mess.
Wait, so I take it that you got infuriated when Halo CE came out and Cortana was cracking jokes left-and-right?
You know, on account of being a new character that we had yet to go on a single adventure with in any videogames ever before 2001?
So it is creepy to be a mentor figure to someone?
Wow.
Glad you aren’t a teacher, role model, or have kids . . . I hope.
What does this even mean? How does this relate?
Now I see.
You don’t actually want story.
You just want to skip all the cutscenes and get straight to the gameplay?
Immediate gratification.
I take it that you also buy every tier in the Battle Pass rather than play-to-earn it?
Holdup who’s Tanaka?
That’s a joke btw, but that’s the whole deal with H5 and Osiris: we literally know only 1/4 of these characters and they expected us to care.
If you gave Osiris an entire campaign narrative to get to know them before throwing them in alongside legends the sorts of Blue Team and Arbiter, people would have received them better.
You know, even if they were interacting with important figures, it doesn’t matter too much, it’s that 343 or Brian Reed decided off the bat WE MUST like Osiris.
This same experience can be felt in Star Wars sequel trilogy where we are forced to like Rey even if we don’t. The narrative dictates how the audience should feel and that sucks.
Heck I’ve seen Spartan Miller get more fans than Osiris in general and it’s telling how a bad writer can make you hate a character.
100% !
Which is why I have a little project I am doing on the side where I rewrite Spartan-Ops as a spin-off between H4 and H5 where each Season introduces Thorne, Vale, and Locke to the players before H5 assembles the team together.
My first game was Halo 2 and I remember being intrigued by the stuff with the Gravemind at the end. But yes, it’s more interesting when Chief was saving Cortana and you had her going The Culture instead of just being joke machine 2000. Like that’s another issue with the Weapon, she’s just there to open doors and is a passive character. There’s a reason the Bungie quotes which leant into that love story thing keep coming back.
I am not surprised you haven’t read Song of Ice and Fire. Even the show should give you insight into what the quote means. Join the dots, I am not the only one who thinks Chief/Weapon is creepy.
Saving and forgiving Cortana would have been a much better story than purging the Xenos vermin. Which is all the story amounts to at the minute and all I can expect from it. Fortunately Brutes can’t survive decapitation like Orks from 40k so budget Ghasghull ain’t walking away. I mean really Escharum is way off the mark with who the prey is here. Zeta Halo is littered with dead Orks heaped up and blown unceremoniously to bits. Hey, guilt free Exterminatus for the win. 343 has a funny idea about what Hope looks like.
Because Joseph Staten is part of the team and is helping writing the story?
Because he is putting his old quotes in.
Just to annoy you, I didn’t watch a single episode of GoT either.
Knew it was going to flop in the end because the story was not fully written yet and the show writers would doof it up.
So you are relying on outside material to tarnish your judgement on how the interaction of the two characters is meant to be portrayed? Got it.
I disagree.
Considering that everyone was mad at the story direction, you think that if they knew the story was going to be Chief vs. Cortana was going to sell anything? Even if the twist later on would be that she would be forgiven.
But then again, Cortana became Space Adolfus; so you want for Chief to be an apologist to intergalactic genocide?
Not exactly something that people would call a good story or a good development for Chief’s character.
Joe came in very late. As an aside Joe could well throw out a lot of this junk with the Banished and Endless. It’s not his story at all. Plus there’s quotes in Halo 4 “don’t make a girl a promise” etc etc
It’s not external material. It is what it is and there’s an obvious parallel with Jorah creeping on Daenerys because she looks like his lost love. The whole premise is that I am meant to like the Weapon because she reminds me of Cortana. You really don’t see an issue with that premise?
Because he does forgive her in Halo Infinite and they did give her a redemption arc? That’s the whole point of the visions and why her ghost is asking you to forgive her. Why Chief hears her out at the end.
For the same reason Elsa from Frozen isn’t a mass murderer who should be killed. She’s rampant or under the effect of the Logic Plague. Which the Encyclopedia even confirms she is.
If you want a character who’s a fascist it’s Atriox. Literally has audio logs talking about the supremacy of the Brute species and seizing their destiny. Will to power. The fact that, he’s only ever won because he has more men and has taken 100 to 1 losses seems to have flown over his head. But he is a Brute. They can’t count past ten. So unless he’s a meat puppet for Mendicant Bias the Logic Plague/Rampancy isn’t an excuse for him.
You could have sold them it by introducing the Flood and Banished as external threats. Make it so that Chief has to save Cortana so that they can beat those things together. Simple. Instead we have killing self important Xenos who can’t even manage to fix their own super weapon.
Also you could have. Oh I don’t know. Maybe push this new art style change. Have some trailers with Cortana in reminding you of good old days. Be a bit vague on the story details. You know, like they actually did. Few people thought Cortana was actually dead in run up to game and they repeatedly said they weren’t retconning Halo 5. Which was an egregious lie in the end.
Around middle of build-No.4 if I recall correctly.
Build 4 became the final build FYI.
How is it junk?
Yes. Quotes come from all parts of the series, but never before has 343 done so many classic Bungie quotes. They even do ones from the books.
Yeah I don’t, because their relation is mutual respect and friendship, not a deep-love relationship.
Chief is not trying to get into The Weapon’s holographic pants.
You are needlessly inserting unrelated context to a situation that lacks that added context.
Where does John say he forgives Cortana?
And she didn’t really have a redemption arc; because there was no happy ending for Cortana.
She realized she dun-goofed and then offed herself; suicide note and all.
That is not a redemption arc.
That is a corrective arc.
They are not fascist tho?
Fascism is unity through nationality, which taken to the extreme leads to a lot of death as it is patriotism taken to the extremes.
Atriox has a dedication to his species.
Which literally every other species has in Halo.
Unggoy prefer working with and cooperating with fellow Unggoy.
Kig-Yar build pirate groups led by fellow Kig-Yar.
And so on and so on.
Humans look out for humanity, and though we have good rapport with a faction of Sangehili; ONI still sought to genetically modify the most abundant food source the Sangheili had to cripple their chances of snuffing out Humanity in a potential future war.
Cortana meanwhile decided to become the self-appointed inter-galactic dictator and threatened everyone to comply or suffer severe death. She blew up all who resisted her ruling and even destroyed at least one entire planet.
Atriox just wants to ensure that his species has a place to settle for home and blames Humanity for Cortana’s creation, so Humans are on his top-threats list.
You severely underestimate the Jiralhanae.
Did you know that when the Covenant found them, they were going through their second Industrial Age?
That is because without outside assistance, the Jiralhanae had advanced in Science just like Humanity.
However when they made nuclear bombs, they actually used them on each-other and gave Doisac a nuclear winter.
The aliens of Halo are all based of the aspects of Humanity but turned up to 11.
Prophets are religious false-prophets and masters of manipulation to survive.
Elites are honor-bound warriors who are a merger between various codes of honor that we have had in the past on Earth plus some inspiration from Sparta to throw into the mix.
Grunts are feeble yet powerful in a pack.
Brutes are just Humans if they were more like Gorillas instead of HomoSapiens, prone to bouts of aggression and violence while still having intellect.
Likely reserved for Act II or Act III to add more tension and such.
Don’t play all your cards on the first Act. The rest of the story would diminish in quality then.
What do you mean by this? The art style is a sort of slight remix of the classic style; which is a welcome change to the kids-drawings we got in Halo 4 and Halo 5.
THEY
DIDN’T
RETCON
HALO 5 GORBIANS
EVEN
THOUGH
THAT
WOULD
BE
A
GOOD
THING
TO
DO