> 2533274824466008;1:
> Is there a possibility that Cortana could be reconstructed as she was and returned to us? What’s going to happen next?
I really hope not, at least not for the whole game. As much as I love Cortana it would completely kill the drama if she came back immediately. Maybe that’s actually a theme? I’m gonna take this idea and run with it, if you don’t mind…
They have said that Halo 5 is among the darkest in tone of this Reclaimer Saga. That could be the absence of Cortana, with Chief lost without her, and he quests to reclaim her? Throughout the whole game Chief could be increasingly desperate, and following an encounter with Locke aboard a Forerunner Internet-Data station, perhaps Chief’s last lead for Cortana’s location, he is beaten by Locke, left disarmed and helpless. Infinity calls Locke. They plan to destroy the station (it could be the relay for Promethean AI’s from Composers or some other tactical advantage to the Prometheans?)
“Has the objective been recovered?” Laskey asks, referring to John-117
“No,” Locke says, looking at John, who is lying on the floor, frozen and/or sobbing in despair
“The Master Chief is gone.”
“sigh, understood. We’re sending an extraction Pelican.”
Locke moves away without another word, leaving John to die with the station. John lays there sobbing, going, “No…”
The scene is from John’s first-person perspective, as he kneels, curled up on the floor, crying. Then a pair of blue, hard-light feet step into view.
“Uh, is this a bad time?”
John looks up, to see Cortana standing over him, his savior. She extends a hand and helps John to his feet.
“Cortana…?”
She smiles, and reaches a hand around the back of his head, almost as if to kiss him, and is absorbed into the implant in his head.
Her face appears translucent (like a watermark) in the HUD.
“Come, on, John, don’t go shaky on me.”
Immediately, John is back to his old self. He kicks up and grabs his rifle.
“Welcome back.” he says
“Exit’s to your 4 o’clock, no need to be polite.”
Proper cutscene now, he sprints through doorways that open for him automatically. Any prometheans that get in his way are destroyed or distracted by blue-lit Sentinels. The final door opens, and leads to a hangar devoid of ships.
“Keep running, you’ll be fine.”
“What?”
“Jump. You should be able to get on the Arbiter’s ship.”
John stops at the edge, looking over. Nothing is visible through the thick gas layer.
“And if you’ve miscalculated?”
“I’m gonna pretend you didn’t say that.”
John steps back to get a running start, sprints, jumps and plummets.
Note you will notice that in every game he’s appeared in, John plummets from the sky early on. On the lifeboat to Installation 04, giving the Covenant back their bomb, falling from the forerunner dreadnought, and falling with the Forward unto Dawn’s debris into requiem. This trick should not be repeated for Halo 5, instead wait till the very end (the scene described above) so you know that John-117 is back.
Second note I figure people will object to John’s complete breakdown (and for all I know that could be contradicted in a book I’ve not read) but I think it would show how much he needs Cortana.