So I was thinking about Halo 6 and Cortana and then I remembered Cortana’s “siblings” mentioned in the Halsey journal. Halsey created 4 clones of herself turning 1 into Cortana and saving the other 3. What happened to those 3. Is this just a loose plot thread that never got expanded on, something going to be utilized in Halo 6 or should we just assume they were destroyed by ONI or the Covenant?
They most likely got destroyed because they have been ill suited to be turned into A.Is.
Oooh, now that is interesting.
I’m sure @Edgehedgehog has it right, but it’s still something worth thinking about. There’s another thread here about cloning John to have an “evil” Masterchief. While I didn’t like that idea for a few reasons, most of those reasons don’t apply to having a clone of an A.I.
Besides, we’ve already seen multiple Cortanas. She split herself at the end of 4 to stop the Didact. What makes using another of Halsey’s flash clones different is that this “new” Cortana would not be the same Cortana as before. She may have the same personality initially, but she would experience and learn things at different levels of her development than the original Cortana. Eventually she would become a very different persona, despite looking and sounding like Cortana.
It would be interesting to have this Neo-Cortana join with John. There’s a lot to explore in what this new relationship would look like because Neo-Cortana would be very aware of what she could become in Reclaimer-Cortana, and John, for his part, would be very aware that the Cortana he is now partnered with is not the Cortana that he is trying to save/ stop, nor is she the one he came to trust and care for over his adventures in the first 4 Halo games.
I don’t think it’s very likely that the three specimens Halsey put on ice can be salvaged. They were on Reach and likely stored at CASTLE Base, which was destroyed by Halsey to deny the Covenant any assets. Even then, there is no guarantee they’d even be viable for making a new AI as Halsey had plans for them once technology evolved for whatever purposes she had.