It looks like Halo Infinite is finally going to say goodbye to Cortana. You know, the artificial intelligence programme who technically died in Halo 4, but came back in Halo 5 and threatened to wipe out the entire galaxy. Instead of relying on her as a narrative foundation for yet another campaign, 343 Industries is wiping the slate clean with a small, intimate cast of characters who all have a worthwhile story to tell. It isn’t about saving the galaxy anymore.

You can read my full thoughts of Halo Infinite’s campaign in my extensive preview, which delves into the story, gunplay, characters, and more. But for this piece I want to focus on The Weapon, a new character who steals the show and recontextualizes our relationship with Master Chief and Cortana. Introduced in the game’s opening hours, The Weapon is a construct built to replicate Cortana in every conceivable way. She has the same knowledge, experience, and capabilities, yet none of the history that led her progenitor onto a path of genocide. She’s innocent, and this disposition is executed upon immaculately. She’s less artificial intelligence and more artificial ingénue.

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She expects to be deleted, reflecting on her own demise with a cheery expression on her face as she clicks her fingers to hack into terminals and unlock doors for our hardened protagonist. When the tables turn and Master Chief takes her on his journey, she starts to learn what it means to be human, recognising the positive and negative traits of those around her as she works with Chief to uncover what exactly brought the UNSC to its knees. You and her are alone in this adventure with few exceptions, and her voice carries so much of the game’s emotional resonance that it really shouldn’t work, but it does.

Halo Infinite

Halo Infinite is a game about loss, a strangely personal journey that follows Master Chief as he reflects on decades of saving the galaxy. For the first time ever, he’s awoken in a world where humanity has lost. The Banished bested them six months ago, but he’s still determined to finish the fight even if that victory is fruitless. He’ll beat his enemies back and potentially find a way home, but he’s clearly immersing himself in violence to bury his own failures. Master Chief talks a surprising amount in Halo Infinite, replying to The Weapon’s jabes with stoic bluntness and occasional moments of sarcasm, but he’s seldom honest with his emotions, either clamming up or resorting to passive aggression whenever his companion broaches on a subject he isn’t comfortable with.

One moment sticks out to me. Master Chief and The Weapon are atop a massive tower, and upon activating a terminal the entire structure enters a self-destruct sequence. Our troubled space marine berates his companion as she lambasts his lack of trust, the duo desperately searching for a way out until Chief decides to just yeet himself out of the window, asking for immediate extraction as the Pelican swoops in to pick him up. It’s classic Halo, but it isn’t the explosive set piece that stands out here, it’s the subtle interactions between characters that express a dynamic the series hasn’t explored before. It’s personal, layered, and begging to be analysed, our space marine a bucket full of trauma that can only be deconstructed by lines of code that are slowly beginning to understand everything he’s been through.

Halo Infinite

Halo has always been about saving the galaxy and fighting battles amidst the stars, but Halo Infinite is subdued even with a setting that adopts modern open world conventions. The narrative focuses on such a small cast of characters that 343 Industries has ample time to make them matter and carve a future for this series that doesn’t rely on everything we’ve seen before. Master Chief is there obviously, but he’s a changed, more sympathetic man who is coming to terms with his own failings, and how it’s okay to be a little sad sometimes. Guardians demonstrated his failure to protect those who mean the most to him, and thus far Infinite is a confrontation of those circumstances and how it’s hard to say goodbye to something you have spent your entire life relying on. It’s some heavy shit, yo.

I’m so excited to delve further into this campaign upon its release and to see how the community reacts. I’m not sure it’s what many will be expecting, but it takes so many bold steps forward that I can’t help but look to the future with optimism. The Weapon feels like an extension of that ethos, an innocent, carefree manifestation of our nostalgia that isn’t held down by anything that came before.

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