This conversation isn’t moving forward because we’re repeating ourselves.
Halo 5’s Cortana wasn’t sane, she believed what she was saying. Cortana wasn’t trying to deceive John, even though objectively what she believed was wrong.
Halo Infinite’s Cortana is as I said, most likely glimpses of her from before the explosion (the holograms), and after (the disembodied echo voices). Cortana’s not pretending to be dead, she knows she’s irreparably broken, and she’s doing what she can to help Master Chief succeed.
Atriox confronted Cortana shortly after destroying the infinity. He showed her images of the defeated Spartan floating in space and reminded her of her destruction of his homeworld.
Cortana, being locked down, was unable to fight back, but sacrificed herself to disable the ring so the Banished couldn’t use it against humanity.
The Weapon was not deleted because the team that delivered her would have been dead by the hands of The Banished.
Chief floated around in space for six months before the Pilot grew a beard and picked him up.
In the farewell scene at the end of the game, Cortana mentions she only had a couple of milliseconds to pull together the memories and traces left behind throughout the campaign. Essentially left as breadcrumbs for the chief.
She is dead. As dead as any fictional character can be.
But then again, she kind-of died in the end of Halo 4 too so…
My theory: Offensive bias saved her before the explosion and she is in the domain but before she left she told him to give her messages to John, I mean if guilty spark gets a redemption ark but gets to kill one of halos most iconic characters like Sgt Johnson and get away with it then by golly she should to
Cortana is the Weapon with amnesia. Deliberate or otherwise.
Cortana was sent back in time and merged with Zeta Halo. She’s the one who created the stone Rings with their message. Those messages and data clusters have actually waited for a few million years.
Cortana hasn’t been defeated at all or even changed her ways and is using the dynamic perfectly perfect duo to defeat her enemies on Zeta Halo and get the power of the Endless. Before at some point stepping out from the curtain.
Cortana is fractured and broken like the ring. But is slowly reforming either through the Weapon or as an inevitable process.
The Weapon is outright lying to you about being Cortana. Either because she wants a fresh start or a variant of theory 3.
The Silent Auditorium granted Cortana access to the Multiverse and every instance of the Domain across all time. Basically God.
I’d love to see Cortana and The Weapon fuse at some point. I’m not really interested in a brand new IA that looks like Cortana, acts like Cortana but is not Cortana.
Despite HW2 not doing well, its art style and the banished were highly praised by the community. While I personally found its story extremely barebones, boring, and part of the trend of “supposed underdogs curbstomping superior forces”, I think a lot of fans saw the promotional material and saw the promise the banished brought.
HW2’s failure has more to do with it being a bare bones, dumbed down RTS, which didn’t appeal to the vast majority of halo players, while not offering much to RTS fans that wasn’t covered more extensively in other offerings. Balance was generally a disaster, and the season pass promises vs the expansion also annoyed a lot of people.
Furthermore, I think 343 thought halo needed a new, yet familiar villain after we’d effectively defeated the covenant twice, with halo 3 and halo 5. The banished get to be something new, but are also very ‘safe’ since its still the same species and generally same technology. Heck the banished even look more ‘red covenant’ than they did in HW2. After two attempts the prometheans were still widely hated by the fanbase, trying a 100% new enemy would be a mess.
Now, Infinite does a horrible job properly setting them up, but thats kind of the norm of 343’s storytelling at this point. I dont get how this was supposed to be a spiritual reboot and draw in new people at all, given its stories is almost entirely just filling you in on events of past stories that don’t even matter to the now.
It’s hardly proof the Banished can carry a game on their own. The Banished and even Flood DLC didn’t bring in the interest they wanted. All that was in the games marketing and if it doesn’t translate into sales that suggests people weren’t all that fussed. More Covenant Remnants.
With the Created, IMO, they had two options.
Make them like UNSC Geth. So they have human weaponry and robotic bodies. Play down the Forerunner aspect entirely beyond what Cortana does with the Guardians. Make it obvious this is a human civil war.
In the Endless Space video game series there’s a species that are digital being that wear robotic armour. But less mangled abomination/terminator and more that kind of regal Eldar style look. Funnily enough there is concept art of Cortana which is literally that. It’s not a huge leap that other Smart AI would do the same.
But basically they could have redone the look and theme of the Prometheans/Created.
The Banished and Atriox suffer from being aggressively pushed as being badass and powerful. Despite having less ships and soldiers than Jul M Dama did. Never mind the actual Covenant. Never mind having them defeat the UNSC and Cortana.
An easier sell would be to either go with what Divine Wind set up with actual Covenant remnants led by the Prophets. Alternatively, have some Covenant think that Cortana/Created are these machine Gods and retain that religious element.
But more generally. If you cut a faction there’s usually an expectation it be replaced by something else. They didn’t do that.
Also, the religious element was the most interesting aspect of the Covenant. The Banished don’t really make sense as a faction since Atriox is clearly a Brute nationalist. On the towers he talks about their destiny as a species and he doesn’t use the word but basically claiming the Mantle. Why would any other species support him? Much less Elites and humans with whom there are seriously bad blood between them and his kind.
You’re right they are being very coy with the factions motivation and goals. My guess is there’s some twist coming with that. Possibly because they want the movement to be based on a lie like the Covenant was. But don’t want this to be immediately spelt out. However I think they should still have a stated goal and motive. Then you tell me Mendicant Bias created the Banished to serve the will of the Precursors and that’s why his face is their symbol.
Except games sell on more than just their antagonists.
The covenant remnant, and elites leadership, was continuously lambasted by the player base for making the original trilogy seem pointless. On the flip side, enemies outside of the covenant have never been terribly well received.
The prometheans and created were both not received well. The prometheans already got a revamp between 4 and 5 and were still not well liked. Giving them yet another coat of paint and hoping this time people liked them would have been an immense gamble.
This is consistently a problem with banished writing, especially since it constantly happens off screen, and when they are on screen they get absolutely bodied by the underdogs. I’m not going to defend this at all because i agree with you.
I’m honestly glad they didn’t. Infinite feels too safe to me as is, going back to just ‘hey its the prophet lead covenant’ would have completely lost me.
That said, I prefer halo when its factions are in conflict, if the created were kept i’d have liked them to oppose the covenant too.
I believe thats the role of the Endless, but infinite botched their introduction, what with them being brainless squid monkeys and a monologue lady who just dies with no story to her.
I’d actually say the religious element is the least interesting aspect of the Covenant, and that the covenant is one of the least developed religious factions in a major franchise. Their belief in the forerunners has been completely proven to be false, and outside of that their religion seems to have no real tenets or beliefs. The covenant doesnt stand for anything except for the pursuit of transcendance which has been proven wrong. The fact we know so little about them as a religious organization, despite the franchise being over 20 years old,
I still think the banished were a good idea to create something ‘new’ without removing enemies and weapons that people enjoy fighting. But I will agree the banished in execution has been rather botched.
Oh yeah, it was cringe when Cortana says they’re more dangerous than the Flood. Coming from somebody who conquered the Galaxy in a day and destroy planets on a whim. Then these little squids float lazily down and you immediately swat five of them. Yes, I am shaking with terror.
If they aren’t Precursors or their agents I think they’ll be a very tough sell.
Halo 5 didn’t radically change the Prometheans though. Some mechanics did but the look and theme of the faction didn’t. Making them more obviously a UNSC spin off robot faction is a drastic visual and gameplay change. Alternatively making them like the Vodyani from Endless Space is still close to the Prometheans but less weird skull things screeching at you.
Plus, there are still Sentinels and Forerunner robot enemies in the game. They even set up Offensive Bias entering and with those red eyes I’d say he’s likely a villain. It’s an arbitrary distinction to say that’s really cool and okay but Created/Promethean bad. If the next DLC includes an evil AI trying to take over a Halo ring with an army of Forerunner robots because Logic Plague. The only difference is I have no qualms about destroying Offensive Bias.
Halo isn’t 40k. There’s not that many factions and conflicts going around. Arbitrarily removing two factions (Created/Promethean) and committing to avoiding addressing any Humans/AI tension is kind of limiting the scope of the story and game. You say it’s a gamble making these things work. But so is a new faction with the Endless. It makes the world smaller and that there’s less story to tell.
I think the Storm Covenant was too mixed up in the art style discussion. Almost all discussion on them comes back to that. It was less the specifics of the storyline.
