Forum:Cortana after Halo 4

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Since the Didact apparently survived, it's quite possible that he could have snatched a fragment of Cortana away with him in order to gain some leverage over the Master Chief. Thoughts, anyone? - Sor 18:49, 11 November 2012 (EST)

Cortana was already melting from rampancy. She'd be dead in a matter of days. What would he even do with a breaking AI? There'd be little point. And it's contested as to whether or not the Didact survived. Tuckerscreator^(stalk) 19:06, 11 November 2012 (EST)

There is a "log" at the beginning of mission two from Halsey, that speculated that she could exceed the seven year lifespan, due to the unique nature of her creation. There's also the enhancements the Librarian gave the Chief - we don't know that the Librarian didn't trigger something in Cortana while she was off having her own conversation with her. Lastly, there's the unusual nature of the Composer, storing organic matter virtually and restoring it like it did the Didact - who knows, the next time we see Cortana she might just have a real body? -- Qura 'Morhek ^{The Autocrat of Morheka} 19:36, 11 November 2012 (EST)

Didn't the Composer essentially destroy the minds of those who were composed? Missing Mandible 21:09, 11 November 2012 (EST)

I think she'll be back in the next game, but as a flashback, or a different Cortana model, like she said in the Composer level. Col. Snipes450 23:07, 11 November 2012 (EST)

Or maybe as hallucinations, like Cortana's moments in Halo 3 --Dr Mutran 23:09, 11 November 2012 (EST)

"Didn't the Composer essentially destroy the minds of those who were composed?"

— Missing Mandible

Exactly the opposite. The Composer destroys everything BUT the mind. The scientists on Ivanoff Station were "composed", archives to be implanted in Promethean bodies. The same happened to the people hit in New Phoenix. Since the Didact fell into it, and Cortana "died" near it, there remains the possibility that they exist digitally somewhere, ready and waiting for new bodies in Halo 5 or 6. -- Qura 'Morhek ^{The Autocrat of Morheka} 07:24, 12 November 2012 (EST)

I know that it destroys the body, but didn't the Librarian say that the minds of the composed fracture to the point that they are a shell of their former selves? It would have been to the point that they could no longer be considered anything BUT a knight. Doesn't matter if they were Human when composed, they are, ignoring the pun, a machine when they come out. Missing Mandible 23:55, 13 November 2012 (EST)

I think the Librarian might've been leaving out facts or was exaggerating to make the threat of the Didact seem more pressing, because in The Forerunner Saga, we have people processed by the Composer and they have mostly retained their identity and personality. Case in point, Forthencho, who after 9,000 years of storage is implanted in Chakas' genetic material and seems to be fine for the most part aside from some expected disorientation. This even seems to negate the Librarian's claim that the Composed personalities couldn't be restored to biological form - the Forerunner Saga novels have her doing exactly this herself, storing the archived personalities in the humans on Earth. Not only that, but as seen with Chakas and Riser/Forthencho and Yprin Yprikushma, she could actually make the stored personalities control biological bodies. There is some evidence as to the Composer's detrimental effects, with 343 Guilty Spark who's clearly not entirely sane and even displays signs of the "fragmentation" mentioned by the Librarian, but that was after a hundred millennia of isolation. Perhaps the Didact just didn't know how to properly use the Composer or maybe that wasn't even his goal, but I don't think it's entirely far-fetched that the Librarian may have been coloring the truth to manipulate the Chief. --Jugus (Talk | Contribs) 01:21, 14 November 2012 (EST)

In one of the terminal doesn't the Didact say that the Composer will not work on his new form? As for him falling into the Composer, I thought it was a slipspace portal, perhaps transporting him and what is left of Cortana to a forerunner planet or installation, where the Didact or forerunner machines could rpair and indoctrinate cortana for use against humanity? "IrrationalSound 10:09, 14 November 2012 (EST)"

I think what the Librarian was referring to was restoring the Composed individuals to their original forms. Apparently, it's much easier for the Forerunners to download personalities into existing minds (I'm guessing it has to do with their shared connection to the Domain), with the process being roughly analogous to partitioning a hard disk. They've evidently been doing this in one form or another for ages, as evidenced by BornDact's accidental genesis via the brevet mutation he received in Cryptum. The Composer was supposed to be the next logical step in that process, harvesting the mind of the living individual, along with their biological components, (minus the carbon, as evidenced by the piles of ash it left in its wake) and storing the whole individual digitally, in order to restore them at a later date. This stored "whole" individual is apparently what fragments, preventing restoration. This doesn't necessarily mean that the fragments couldn't prove useful in other ways. Evidence of the fragmentation to which she refers can, in fact, be seen in Chakas himself, whom we know fragmented into at least 1 iteration: that of 343GS. I suspect that the other Installation Monitors may have also been fragments of his original stred pattern. The fact that it took a hundred thousand years for the fragment known as 343GS to go completely rampant is more likely due to the Forerunners' far superior facility for creating Smart AIs, as opposed to the UNSC who are, by comparison, still at the "punch card" stage of AI development: creating AIs from cloned brains, but still running up against that 7-year limit... Still, it then begs the question of why they simply didn't clone the body of the individual and download the Composed mind back into it. I'm guessing that the Forerunners still hadn't quite figured out the metaphysical connection between the mind and body, having assumed that it simply boils down to electrical impulses and chemical reactions. Because of this, their imperfect understanding of how the two parts come together prevented the Forerunners from being able to reintegrate them back into a coherent whole. In other words, the problem wasn't with the technology behind the Composer, but rather with the Forerunners' flawed perception of what they were Composing. Either way, the result was the same: A one-way ticket onto a hard drive. - DJenser 11:08, 14 November 2012 (EST)

@IrrationalSound: Whether or not the Didact survived, I think that the next 2 games will see a return of Cortana in one form or another... Your contention that she will be turned against Humanity raises several intriguing possibilities as to the direction the next game(s) will go... It would pose a moral dilemma for the Chief unlike anything he's faced before... He's always had it pretty easy in that regard... His role in the previous games has been quite simple: that of a soldier... You drop him into the area, give him a gun & tell him to lay waste to any bad guys in the zone... He's managed to save the Human Race twice now, by doing just that. What if he must now go against the one being in the galaxy who knows him better than he knows himself? The one friend he has repeatedly risked everything for? What would he do? What if it looks like he has no hope of saving her... from herself? O'Connor & the rest have said numerous times (As has Steve Downes) that the Reclaimer Saga will show a side of the Chief we've never seen & challenge him in ways he's never faced before, & that it will get a lot darker before it gets better... It makes perfect sense that Cortana will factor into that scenario in some way... - DJenser 13:07, 14 November 2012 (EST)

I don't think there's a chance to see her returning at some point. The Didact doesn't know the relationship between Cortana and the Chief (afaik) and even if he did, she was way too damaged to be used in such a way. Not only she deteriorated extremely fast throughout the campaign, she also had to divide herself multiple times to lower down Didact's shield. As TC said above, the Didact could do nothing with a rampart part of Cortana.ShadowDancer ^|contribs| 12:22, 25 November 2012 (EST)

Not that I'm debating your point, but we don't know what the Forerunner's are completely capable of when it comes to AI. Personally, I think anymore appearances for her are going to be in flashback form.Col. Snipes450 13:42, 25 November 2012 (EST)