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#Halo

11/8/2012 9:18:30 PM
12

Halo 4 Campaign Cortana (HUGE ENDING SPOILERS)!!

Hi I finished the Halo 4 campaign on Legendary last night and I'm about to spoil the ending so DON'T READ ON IF YOU HAVEN'T FINISHED THE CAMPAIGN YET (Huge Spoilers) ALERT Okay anyway I just wanted to know what everyone's feelings were about Cortana in the game. I liked Cortana in all the other Halo games and in the books. But I can't help but feel like in Halo 4 she was just not the same. She wasn't her quirky self. I also realise that some people will completely disagree with me about this but I found her annoying. The whole rampancy plot was dumb in my opinion I understand the rampancy but the way they went about it was annoying. She would have her sort of fits at the most annoying times and the consistency really wasn't there for me I would of liked to see them add some "fits" when it didn't matter at all and I mean more than a slight voice change or the HUD fluttering there was only a couple instances where she seemed like she was going crazy and it didn't happen at bad moments. At the end of the game when she, for lack of a better word died I didn't really feel sad(which btw a couple of days ago I would have never dreamed of saying). Anyway the ending scene to me just felt cheesy the whole arm touching thing was a bit overboard. (Also it was never explained how Cortana saved John at the end so if anyone knows how that actually worked I would appreciate it) This whole scene sort of reminded me of the Gears of War 3 (SPOILERS FOR GOW3)..... campaign when Dom dies they tried hard to get me to care and didn't allow it to happen naturally and it just ended up being stupid (at least they didn't play Madworld in Halo 4) Also the whole we have to find Halsey part of it didn't particularly need to be there in the end they should have thought of something else in my opinion. If you have read the books then you would already realise how nearly impossible it would be to find her and that where she is being kept is completely over John's head. So at first I didn't think we would find her at all. But then we ended up going to the base Halsey was held in and I sort of got excited thinking this is it but she is no where to be seen!! The only way you can tell she was there is the intel you find in the hunter room and that it was the same research facility mentioned in the books. (If I missed something that actually pieces this together then please tell me lol) Okay last bit sorry for the long post :P I just wanted to make sure people know that I do like Cortana I just have some trouble with how she was portrayed in this game. So I ask everyone here am I the only one who thinks this way and if so.... my bad but I just wanted to know whether I'm alone and a heartless person or whether people agree.

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  • About halsey part, they could have atleast asked, she had to be on infinity because thats the only logical place to put her aswell as that is her last known location by 2554.

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  • (SPOILER ALERT FOR THE NEXT TWO GAMES) EDIT: Cortana is defiantly not dead because... Cortana represents Master Chiefs mind/spirit. Without her he is hollow, that is why he is quite in the last scenes, he is empty. The next two games will be about his quest to regain his mind/spirit by trying to regain Cortana. He will be tested not physically, but mentally/spiritually and find that he can go on without Cortana (whether that is from him or another AI I can't say). But by the end of Halo 6 Master Chief will have learned how to live without Cortana (one way or another) and he will either get Cortana back or be the one to finally killer her. **My only speculation** Cortana will be the villain (or on the villain side) in one or both of the next games. [Edited on 11.09.2012 12:38 AM PST]

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  • Yes well said Adam I can see that now I hope they continue on this and develop it more because at this stage I'm left wanting more. and to Cpl Shepard yes ODSTs! I hadn't even thought of them until know. I would have thought the Infinity would have had ODSTs on it as well as Spartans and if they had ordinary troops then why not helljumpers? Maybe some of the Spartan Ops could have you playing ODSTs even though it's called Spartan Ops I personally wouldn't mind them bending the rules a bit lol

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  • What I meant for Cortana being annoying is that her fits as I called them only really happened at the worst times in the story for instance when trying to trap the Didact with the towers. I would have liked to see her progress more into rampancy because it didn't feel to me as if she was really dying. When an AI gets rampancy it destroys itself and I didn't really catch that. I mean there were the voice changes and at the very end of the campaign she suddenly got pretty bad but I don't see the progression to that state. I see her at the beginning of rampancy and then the next mission (second last mission) she is really bad and starts mouthing off gibberish which would make snese if there was more progression. I agree with you that the Halsey plot made sense it's just that they didn't really do anything with it apart from mention that they need to find her every now and then. I would have enjoyed it more if they had started to at least find out where she was. Then in the second last mission they could have been like oh hey this is where Halsey was being kept lets try and find her. I think it was a good idea I just don't think it was executed well enough for me to believe that they were ever going to find her and by the end couple missions of the campaign I wasn't even thinking about whether or when we would find Halsey. So in that respect I think they failed. I would have enjoyed them finding at least a couple clues and saying okay we need to go here to find Halsey. It didn't seem like John and Cortana even ended up knowing that Halsey was on the research facility on the second last mission. I understand that the base was top secret ONI but I would have liked them to find clues aboard the station and then realised that a secondary objective is to find Halsey. We now end up wondering whether Halsey is alive or dead (haven't read the book after Glasslands please no spoiler for that lol) I agree I do complain a lot without offering alternate story lines and specifics but I figured that I had already written an essay and people wouldn't really want to read more :P. Ask me about a certain story element I complain about and I will gladly try to explain how I think they could have done it better.

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  • ^Well said, Adams. For those of you surprised by Cortana teleporting Chief, remember back in Halo CE she was capable of using Installation 04's grid to teleport him onto a Covvie ship, a similar grid would not be out of the question on the Diadact's ship. Also, while Halo 4 is the start of a new trilogy, take into account that early on we were introduced to the theory of digital/organic ascention. Both Cortana suggesting the flash clone transfer to fix her rampancy early on, and the Librarian revealing the organic-to-digital transcendance that the Forunners delved into; Both of those points introduce a part of the plot which will likely continue in the next two games. This is why I'd deduct that Cortana isn't 'dead' in the traditional sense. The chip was destroyed when the Diadect derezzed her terminal in front of the Chief, however she remained trapped in the system. Be aware also, that the Composer was active in the near vicinity of the warhead, and that it's purpose was not only what we saw on the station prior to the Broadsword flight, but also control and influence over lifeforms and their DNA structure.* (*=I can't go into great detail on this point, someone else might offer a better understanding of the Composer) Following that, we know 343 is exploring the Master Chief's character now, and like the arc in Halo 2 - Halo 3, Cortana is now noticably absent. Building on this sense of loss, a credible plotline for Halo 5 and 6 to follow would be Cortana having reached this next level of being and ghosting the edge of John's conciousness, the aging Spartan wondering if he's hallucinating or breaking down. I say this because Cortana is the second most important character of the series, and a cornerstone of the Chief's own character. Without her a sizable chunk of his personality is gone, and a replacement simply would not measure up. If this were the conclusion of Halo 6, then the character 'death' might be more believeable, but this way it screams 'more to come.' The absence of ODSTs, however, is absolutely unacceptable. The air assault and recruit helmets are not good enough, you'd think they'd keep a design that's been a staple armor permutation since H3. Oh well... Mark VI it is then...

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  • English major coming in, this might get pedantic and technical. The story of the Master Chief so far (before Halo 4) has been a classical Epic Heroes journey. a.k.a A character who represents the best of his people, fights for those people in reality even when fighting monsters, endures tests and trials that challenges him physically, and at the end somehow sacrifices himself to save/redeem/empower his people. (Think Beowulf or Goku) This is unlike the Chivalric Hero. a.k.a A character who starts with no great power, must make a journey far from home to find his powers, fights in a dream like magical world, faces tests and trials that challenge him mentally/spiritually, returns to his people as the master of two worlds. (Think Luke Skywalker or Bilbo Baggins) Now a concerning trend has began in popular culture, which is never killing off Epic Heroes. Instead the authors simply put them into an ambiguous state at the point they are supposed to die. (i.e. The Chief, Commander Shepard) This is because it is easier to market a character that people are already familiar with. This does not make for good storytelling though, because the Epic Heroes trails are physical. So once the Hero has lifted the largest boulder or defeated the strongest fighters in the worlds there is nothing left for them to overcome. That is when you start getting stories like Dragon Ball Z. After Frieza Goku's journey should have ended (and indeed that arc ended with Goku seemingly dead) but the series didn't end and instead played out the same plot over and over again. The problem here is that once you make the Epic Heroes journey once the following journeys seem more and more pointless (i.e. once you reach Super Saiyan 19 it has really lost all meaning.) The writers at 343 know this though, but they still want to be able to put Master Chief in all the commercials. So they had to figure out an answer to this problem. And the answer is quite simple, take Master Chief (An Epic Hero) and turn him into a Chivalric Hero. This requires a lot a tricky writing though. We have to give Master Chief (a character that has always seemed unflappable) mental/spiritual weaknesses. We have to bring him into a dream like/magical world. And we must give him something to leave home to quest after. (i.e. All the sudden talk about Master Chiefs emotions, the "matrix thing" Cortana teleports Master Chief into, and Cortana being gone) TL;DR The reason you don't like how Master Chief/Cortana are portrayed is because they have been changed from Epic Heroes to Chivalric Heroes.

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  • I pretty much disagree with everything you said. If you think Cortana was annoying, then 343i accomplished proper characterization. The whole idea of rampancy is that AIs lose a part of their acquired personality and demonstrate very abnormal or "mischaracterized" behavior. I don't see how "the whole Halsey thing was dumb." If rampancy can be prevented, the only person who could help would be Halsey, be the creator of not only third gen AIs, but Cortana herself. Also, you complain a lot without offering specifics or proposing alternate storytelling or plot elements. That's not very constructive or useful.

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  • did the job for me.. Definitely a tear jerker for me...

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  • I think the ending between cortana and chief was really well done. It showed the emotion chief had towards her and it showed the last little human part of cortana before she died. They also showed her rampancy perfectly IMO

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  • I also think they handled her rampancy well. It's probably the most invested I've been in a Halo game.

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  • Yeah I totally agree. In my opinion, 343 could have done a lot more with Cortana's rampancy, and I felt that they failed to hit the mark when it comes to emotion. BTW, here is some concept art for what 343 were thinking of doing: [url]http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/184iqhlz8h7qcjpg/original.jpg[/url]

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  • I think they portrayed Cortana and her rampancy perfectly. After rampancy is metastability which makes the AI more human and knowing that I can relate to her in Halo 4 because she seems more human.

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