Ok, let's see if I'm following this. My post is kind of long, so I'll stick it in a spoiler. [spoiler]The Marathon trilogy alluded to the story of Roland and his sword, Durendal. One of your best buds in those games is Durandal, an A.I. The Halo trilogy alluded to Ogier and his sword, Curtana. In Halo your constant companion is Cortana, an A.I. In Destiny there appear to be allusions to the story of Charlemagne and his sword, Joyeuse. [<speculation starts here>] In Destiny, Charlemagne is the name of a Warmind, a construct of the Traveler. During the Golden Age, humanity modeled it's own A.I.s on Charlemagne, building small floating A.I.s that, in the game so far, are known as a "Ghosts". If Destiny is true to form, your constant A.I. companion would be Joyeuse, as Cortana was in Halo and Durandal was in Marathon. Now, according to one legend, the swords Joyeuse, Durendal, and Curtana were actually all the same blade, just reforged throughout history, or they were at least all forged by the same man, Wayland the Smith. ("My name is Cortana, of the same steel and temper as Joyeuse and Durendal." was the inscription Curtana bore.) The legend of the sword(s) seems to begin with Charlemagne, and then it went to Roland, who was a military leader under Charlemagne. Upon Roland's death in 778 a.d., it was passed on to Ogier, who was originally an enemy of Charlemagne. They became allies, however, fighting the Saracens together, and Ogier was eventually knighted by Charlemagne. (I got all this off Wikipedia, and left out several details. It's actually quite an interesting story if you care to piece it together from the Wikipedia articles.) What I noticed: the historical progression of the sword(s) goes Joyeuse, Durendal, Curtana. The progression of A.I.s in Bungie games goes Durandal, Cortana, *Joyeuse*. Why didn't Bungie start at the beginning of the historical progression in the first place? Was that just the way it worked out, or did they have a plan? Why are they going back to the beginning now? Is it a parallel of the Destiny plot, starting again and reclaiming what once was lost? Argh... before I started this post I was wondering if you guys weren't overthinking this whole thing... and now here I am...[/spoiler]