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  • Subject: Why did we need to deliver Cortana in 'Reach'
Subject: Why did we need to deliver Cortana in 'Reach'

Posted by: ROBERTO jh

Posted by: Rolling Flame
Posted by: ajw34307
We don't know any details about what information Cortana and Halsey decrypted fom the Latchkey Artefact, other than that it was going to be a "gamechanger" in the H/C war... What an awful unfulfilled plot point...


At the end of Reach, Halsey said that with Six's help, they found Halo. I still don't know how that is a game changer. I mean, showing a genocidal group of zealots an ancient superweapon seems somewhat counterproductive in my eyes.


You, good sir, have therefore missed the entire point of the Halo Trilogy story.

If we had not found Halo, the Covenant would not have questioned its religious beliefs and thus not broken into civil war and the Elites would never have joined, and we would not have discovered our role in the universe as humans.

The entire uiverse revolves around the creation and rediscovery of the Halo Rings.


The thing is, though, that it all could've gone horribly wrong for humanity. What would've happened if the Chief was killed and the Covies recovered Cortana? What would've happened if the Covies worked out how to activate Halo, and did so? And it wasn't just the discovery of Halo that caused the Civil War. The Brute Uprising, Regret's death, and Thel being made the Arbiter were what caused it, not the discovery of a superweapon.

  • 01.21.2011 7:26 PM PDT

Perhaps the "data" from the excavation at Sword Base was just coordinates to an area of space? And instead of telling anyone that it wasn't a random jump, she went to the coordinates and told everyone it was random.

But it clearly states in The Fall of Reach that Cortana used the coordinates found on the rock that John aquired on Sigma Octanus IV.

The book slows down time when Keyes tells Cortana to initiate a jump, since AIs can run hundreds of thousands of processes in a matter of seconds. Durning this time, Cortana nonchalantly recalls the glyphs on the rock (which she allocated a small amount of processing to analyzing this rock earlyer in the book), compares them to constellations, and checks it against the Cole Protocol. She then uses the coordinates for The Pillar of Autum's presumably 'blind jump,' without even the slightest prediction that there could be some Forerunner presence upon their exit.


[Edited on 01.21.2011 11:06 PM PST]

  • 01.21.2011 11:05 PM PDT

Brains beats brawn get used to it

Fear the Red Comet

Variety is the spice of life.
Long live games.
Death to all fanboys.


Posted by: Rolling Flame
Posted by: ROBERTO jh

Posted by: Rolling Flame
Posted by: ajw34307
We don't know any details about what information Cortana and Halsey decrypted fom the Latchkey Artefact, other than that it was going to be a "gamechanger" in the H/C war... What an awful unfulfilled plot point...


At the end of Reach, Halsey said that with Six's help, they found Halo. I still don't know how that is a game changer. I mean, showing a genocidal group of zealots an ancient superweapon seems somewhat counterproductive in my eyes.


You, good sir, have therefore missed the entire point of the Halo Trilogy story.

If we had not found Halo, the Covenant would not have questioned its religious beliefs and thus not broken into civil war and the Elites would never have joined, and we would not have discovered our role in the universe as humans.

The entire uiverse revolves around the creation and rediscovery of the Halo Rings.


The thing is, though, that it all could've gone horribly wrong for humanity. What would've happened if the Chief was killed and the Covies recovered Cortana? What would've happened if the Covies worked out how to activate Halo, and did so? And it wasn't just the discovery of Halo that caused the Civil War. The Brute Uprising, Regret's death, and Thel being made the Arbiter were what caused it, not the discovery of a superweapon.


Um you realize that The Brute Uprising/Covie Civil War, Regret's death, and Thel being made the Arbiter all essentially stemmed from the aftermath of Alpha Halo being destroyed right?

Chief blows up Halo.

Monitor is forced to leave Halo. Ends up being picked up by impressionable Elites.

Thel becomes shammed as a result. Becomes Arbiter. Assigned to kill the now Heretics whom the Monitor enlightened. Seeds of doubt are planted in the Arbiter. Monitor sent to High Charity.

Chief's unorthodox flight back to Earth leads to Unyielding Hierophant. Leads to Operation First Strike. Leads to the 300+ Covenant Fleet en route to Earth being demolished. Leaves Regret with a measly 15 Covenant ships to take to Earth.

Regret invades Earth. Due to weak forces is forced to retreat. Chief and friends follow Regret as he retreats. It becomes their mission to kill Regret. They succeed.

Elsewhere on Delta Halo the Arbiter is sent to find the Index after Spark is interrogated. Leads to the Arbiter being isolated in the Library from Elite forces. Is "assassinated" by Tartarus. Ends up in the hands of the Gravemind. Finally acknowledges the truth about Halo.

Back in High Charity Regret's death is the straw to break the camels back. Brutes now usurp Elites. Covie Civil war soon follows. Covenant is vastly weakened on High Charity as a result. Gravemind takes the opportunity to use the chaos by the Civil War and Chief's personal attack to infiltrate the city and make it his concentrated hive.

Everyone heads to Earth in a concentrated mass of weakened forces. Key figures head to Ark with weakened rag tag forces left. Key figures are killed or go MIA on the Ark. War is over yada yada yada.

Point is, the events of Halo CE was the turning point of the war and completely changed everything despite the overwhelming momentum the Covenant had.

  • 01.21.2011 11:33 PM PDT

There is just something epic about pistols.

▀▄Halo 2 Strategy complete, Halo 3 Strategy in progress...▄▀
▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀MJOLNIR BATTLE TACTICS▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄

The reason was because Bungie thought that it would make a nice wrap up and nostalgic purpose to the story. In my opinion it would have been better if the story had been more about the fall of Reach (not necessarily the book) and less about canon.

  • 01.21.2011 11:40 PM PDT

I didn't like the Cortana fragment story, personally. I felt it a bit contrived.

  • 01.22.2011 11:37 AM PDT

Yawn.

Fall of Reach has been 'retconned.' You can discard any information from that book, because Reach the game contradicts it. The reason being that sometimes to tell a story you need to change some details to make the story satisfying, just like any other time a book is adapted into something else. Reach the game replaces Fall of Reach as far as canon is concerned, and you just need to deal with that.

And you also need to accept that Reach the game provides NEW information and mystereries - if you think Bungie would tell a whole story without adding anything to what we already know, you're an idiot.

So anyway, forget this 'fragment of Cortana' nonsense. Cortana was, the whole Cortana, down there with Halsey, and then Noble team escorted her to MasterChief so that for the first time an AI could be merged with a Spartan. This was what she learned from the buried Forerunner tech she was studying, and it was what was 'gamechanging.' (she also would have learned the coordinates of the Halo but there was no way to know that would be gamechanging in advance)

The datapads talk about a subject who has managed to map an AI onto a human brain, along with doing other research like constructing higher-dimension fractals in slipspace, and how this will change the course of the war. This person is obviously Halsey. Go read the datapads again and apply some common sense.

Now, I don't have the patience to argue with someone who's obsessed with the size of their vocabulary and with editing their posts for typos. And no doubt you do have a sizeable vocabulary. For a fourteen year-old. You're henceforth ignored. Run along.

Posted by: forthnback

Posted by: Traxus 04
She'd used Forerunner science to allow an AI be mapped onto a human brain, which would allow the Spartans to be vastly more effective, leading to an upper hand over the covenant. See: Masterchief

The data pads tell you this


No.

No they don't. They don't say anything remotely resembling your imbecilic fan fiction. We've been over this in another topic. The Assembly has nothing to do with Halsey in this manner.

The datapads certainly do not say that Halsey used Forerunner tech to allow an A.I. to map onto a human brain. Which Cortana was doing anyway from when she first linked up with John.

Go to bed already.

  • 01.22.2011 2:00 PM PDT

""We meet again, young one. I am the last of those who gave you breath and shape and form, millions of years ago. I am the last of those your kind rose up and ruthlessly destroyed. And our answer is at hand."


Posted by: Traxus 04
Yawn.

Fall of Reach has been 'retconned.' You can discard any information from that book, because Reach the game contradicts it. The reason being that sometimes to tell a story you need to change some details to make the story satisfying, just like any other time a book is adapted into something else. Reach the game replaces Fall of Reach as far as canon is concerned, and you just need to deal with that.

And you also need to accept that Reach the game provides NEW information and mystereries - if you think Bungie would tell a whole story without adding anything to what we already know, you're an idiot.

So anyway, forget this 'fragment of Cortana' nonsense. Cortana was, the whole Cortana, down there with Halsey, and then Noble team escorted her to MasterChief so that for the first time an AI could be merged with a Spartan. This was what she learned from the buried Forerunner tech she was studying, and it was what was 'gamechanging.' (she also would have learned the coordinates of the Halo but there was no way to know that would be gamechanging in advance)

The datapads talk about a subject who has managed to map an AI onto a human brain, along with doing other research like constructing higher-dimension fractals in slipspace, and how this will change the course of the war. This person is obviously Halsey. Go read the datapads again and apply some common sense.

Now, I don't have the patience to argue with someone who's obsessed with the size of their vocabulary and with editing their posts for typos. And no doubt you do have a sizeable vocabulary. For a fourteen year-old. You're henceforth ignored. Run along.

Posted by: forthnback

Posted by: Traxus 04
She'd used Forerunner science to allow an AI be mapped onto a human brain, which would allow the Spartans to be vastly more effective, leading to an upper hand over the covenant. See: Masterchief

The data pads tell you this


No.

No they don't. They don't say anything remotely resembling your imbecilic fan fiction. We've been over this in another topic. The Assembly has nothing to do with Halsey in this manner.

The datapads certainly do not say that Halsey used Forerunner tech to allow an A.I. to map onto a human brain. Which Cortana was doing anyway from when she first linked up with John.

Go to bed already.


Oh more than TFOR was retconned good sir, if TFOR is retconned then so is First Strike and Ghosts of Oynx. Oh yeah and wait what is this? Isn't First Strike about how "da Chief", you know the main character of the Halo games got back to Earth? Well seeing how TFOR is now retconned, can anyone explain to me how the -blam!- did the chief get back to earth?

Halo: Reach destroyed more than one man's book.

And again, Cortana and the Chief had run simulations together (They were pretty familiar with each other in Halo 1, that's canon!). So this invalidates that whole "Dr. Hasley discovered how to map an AI to a human" nonsense.

But then again that was TFOR so that's retconned and so is Halo 1

  • 01.22.2011 6:52 PM PDT

What?

First Strike is about how Chief gets back to Earth after the battle on Alpha Halo. He got to Halo by jumping in the Pillar of Autumn after the attack on Reach, which is what happens in the game. So there may have been a few Spartan characters retconned, who cares.

The simulations occur in Fall of Reach if i'm not mistaken, so that bit is retconned. Or, they didn't involve any humna-AI mind mapping.

in case the datapads still mean nothing to you:


Incredible. 10141026SRB4695, with minimal influence from this Assembly, has attempted to build an abstract fractal structure within Shaw-Fujikawa Space. Although her first attempt was a failure, success could finally remove our dependence on biological systems altogether! If our Minds could somehow achieve freedom of expansion within eleven-dimensional space, immortality might be within reach.

Perhaps, in the end, flight not fight is the answer?


This bit refers to a prominent researcher into AI... obviously Dr Halsey. Dated 2547

then in the very next entry, a few years of research later, and the exact year that Reach was attacked and MC-Cortana combined to fight Covies:


Each of us represents a single trans-human mind. Each of us is an undrawn map ñ not a mere physical reconstruction of an object as it was in life ñ but full, human potential realized in crystal and thinking at the speed of light!

But now that map has, for the first time, been superimposed on one of our creators. The path has been reversed, and we are re-made as one!

Can you not see? Our debate has no meaning. We no longer have a choice whether or not to serve as active participants in the current ongoing hostilities ñ

  • 01.23.2011 5:10 PM PDT

"What do you hear?"
"Nothing but the rain."
"Then grab your gun and bring in the cat."
"Boom, boom, boom!"

Posted by: Traxus 04
So anyway, forget this 'fragment of Cortana' nonsense. Cortana was, the whole Cortana, down there with Halsey, and then Noble team escorted her to MasterChief so that for the first time an AI could be merged with a Spartan. This was what she learned from the buried Forerunner tech she was studying, and it was what was 'gamechanging.'


And that is where you're wrong. Both the book and the journal prove it.

Cortana and I have discussed this at length, and she concurs it is the only logical procedure. SPARTAN-117 and his team require her expertise for their mission, which I believe will be our last real opportunity at finding an end to the war. She will be invaluable to them in their mission to penetrate Covenant territory and deliver a decapitating blow to their hierarchy.

Cortana, however, is also the best-suited AI on Reach to analyze the symbols and operating systems in Professor Sorvad's site. The Solomonic solution that we arrived at independently is to DIVIDE her.

I'll copy most of her IEP translation routines to an independent module. Meanwhile, the incarnate Cortana will continue with John and Blue Team.


Shot that idea out the water. Also followed by an earlier entry in the journal dated March 24th, 2549 completely shatters you theory. The Forerunner structure didn't teach Halsey how to LINK an AI-Human mind together, she figured it out herself.

Also...John and Cortana met on August 29th, 2552 to run simulations on how well the link would work. A full day before Noble Team delivered her to Chief. That kills your "first time meeting" idea too.

Your datapads are correct, they mention the "mapping" of an AI to a human brain. But in no way does it prove that the Forerunner structure helped with it.

The game changer was Halo, plain and simple.

[Edited on 01.23.2011 6:44 PM PST]

  • 01.23.2011 6:32 PM PDT


Posted by: kit_103
And that is where you're wrong. Both the book and the journal prove it.

Cortana and I have discussed this at length, and she concurs it is the only logical procedure. SPARTAN-117 and his team require her expertise for their mission, which I believe will be our last real opportunity at finding an end to the war. She will be invaluable to them in their mission to penetrate Covenant territory and deliver a decapitating blow to their hierarchy.

Cortana, however, is also the best-suited AI on Reach to analyze the symbols and operating systems in Professor Sorvad's site. The Solomonic solution that we arrived at independently is to DIVIDE her.

I'll copy most of her IEP translation routines to an independent module. Meanwhile, the incarnate Cortana will continue with John and Blue Team.


Shot that idea out the water. Also followed by an earlier entry in the journal dated March 24th, 2549 completely shatters you theory. The Forerunner structure didn't teach Halsey how to LINK an AI-Human mind together, she figured it out herself.

Also...John and Cortana had met a day before to run simulations on how well the link would work.

Your datapads are correct, they mention the "mapping" of an AI to a human brain. But in no way does it prove that the Forerunner structure helped with it.


Good, a little common sense here on the forum. That try-hard has been touting his ridiculous fan fiction as fact for a while now, despite Fall of Reach, Halsey's Journal, and the game Reach itself quite clearly contradicting most of the ****ing -blam!- he verbally fellates over and over to gain attention.

  • 01.23.2011 6:42 PM PDT

The coords on the rock from sigma octanus led to reach, which eventually led to halo as shown in the game. This is mentioned in first strike.

  • 01.23.2011 8:36 PM PDT

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Old GTs; RebelRobot, Flamedude

Posted by: Traxus 04
because Halsey had figured out how to plug an AI back into a human brain (Master Chief's, who obviously had been augmented for the purpose), and this would be 'game changing' for the war

Spartan + AI ( + Assembly) = unstoppable force

proof? the games themselves are proof. you take down the Covenant and Flood pretty much singlehandedly, with Cortana


Huh? That's not right. Before the Fall of Reach there was a field test with John 117 in Mjolnir with Cortana helping him survive several extremely dangerous tests.

The fragment of Cortana that Noble delivers to PoA held key Forerunner information.

  • 01.23.2011 9:33 PM PDT


Posted by: flamedude
Posted by: Traxus 04
because Halsey had figured out how to plug an AI back into a human brain (Master Chief's, who obviously had been augmented for the purpose), and this would be 'game changing' for the war

Spartan + AI ( + Assembly) = unstoppable force

proof? the games themselves are proof. you take down the Covenant and Flood pretty much singlehandedly, with Cortana


Huh? That's not right. Before the Fall of Reach there was a field test with John 117 in Mjolnir with Cortana helping him survive several extremely dangerous tests.

The fragment of Cortana that Noble delivers to PoA held key Forerunner information.


Obviously he isn't right. He rarely is. He has this elaborate theory drawing heavily from Cryptum, too......which is really funny, because the book itself flat out destroys his main points and he cites other things from Cryptum that don't exist and/or never happened. Like how the Humans hid the Flood from the Forerunner (they didn't), how the humans are Forerunner (they aren't), etc etc.

He's basically a troll.

  • 01.23.2011 11:46 PM PDT

Yes I am British, I like tea, I like crumpets, and I am going to kick your ass!

Because Bungie told us to.

  • 01.24.2011 1:45 AM PDT

Think before you post


Posted by: privet caboose
What I find hilarious is Bungie breaking their own canon. GAME canon for that matter.

Halo CE: First spoken line:
"We made a blind jump...." - Captain Keyes



Reach has told us otherwise, nice job there Bungie.
I think it was blind. Cortana didn't necessarily know where she was going, she just needed coordinates for a destination and used the ones off of the artifact.

[Edited on 01.24.2011 4:44 AM PST]

  • 01.24.2011 4:41 AM PDT

OK look folk. Ignore the minor details for a minute. Think about the story Bungie decided to tell with reach

1. Masterchief is given Cortana just before the jump to Halo, who just gleaned vital info from studying the Forerunners (who we know were masters of building AIs and connecting them to human brains)
2. We find out about an 'Assembly' of AI who
a) plant 'inspiration' in data to drive human discoveries
b) called the Covenant into contact with humanity, so technology would develop faster in wartime
c) started monitoring the progress of Halsey in developing AI technology a few years before the attack on Reach
d) found out that it was possible to map an AI onto a human brain, and thus 'enter the hostilities' -- in the year that all the Bungie Halo games took place

the above are 100% fact, there's no point arguing over those bits

so what you guys are saying is that
a) we don't know what data Cortana had in 'the package'. (according to the books, the Halo coordinates were discovered elsewhere. you either count the books or you don't, can't have it both ways)
b) the datapad revelations with the AIs mapping onto brains is of no consequence to anything that actually happened in any of the books or games

so what you guys are saying then is the whole storytelling effort of Reach culminated in
a) a McGuffin ('this data is important, but it doesn't matter what it actually is')
and
b) a massive red herring ('we're telling you about these AI dudes, but they have no bearing on the rest of the story whatsoever. we might as well have left them out completely, no difference')

do you really really think that's what Bungie were trying to do? cause that's what you're saying. if you think you know what's going on, but you disagree with me, then you need to explain the POINT of the datapads and the 'package.' As in why Bungie would bother

cause my explanation covers those things dandily:
- the datapads set up how if the AIs enter the war directly, they could turn things around
- the package provides the necessary instructions/whatever for combining Cortana and MasterChief, ie. allowing AIs to 'enter the hostilities'
- they go to Halo, they kick ass

note that merely going to Halo is not a 'gamechanger'. without the Spartan/AI combination, the Covies would simply have wiped out the PoA forces and taken control of the relic. the gamechanger was that humanity now had the right tool to stop them

also note that simply pairing a human with an AI is not necessarily the same as 'reversing the path' as mentioned in the final datapad. reversing the path is likely to involve access to higher-dimensional space in which the AI can develop endlessly, which Cryptum confirms that (Forerunner) brains can do, as well as AIs, or a combination of both (they call it The Domain)

  • 01.24.2011 6:35 AM PDT

@accordingto343

Your one stop shop for all of 343's fabulous errors and ridiculous notions in the Halo lore.

Seems to me the glyphs on the rock from Sigma Octanus and the Reach Forerunner complex's data pointed towards Halo. Maybe they were two pieces of an incomplete map?

  • 01.24.2011 9:41 AM PDT

"What do you hear?"
"Nothing but the rain."
"Then grab your gun and bring in the cat."
"Boom, boom, boom!"

Posted by: Traxus 04
Think about the story Bungie decided to tell with reach


They told the story about the fall of Reach and the sacrifice Noble Team had to make. Any simpleton would see that. Hell, they even said it themselves. Only reason we had to deliver Cortana was to give a sense of connection between Reach and the first game! Sketch said it himself before release!

"It fits in rather well with the first game."

Terribly paraphrased yes but that's why.

Posted by: Traxus 04
a) we don't know what data Cortana had in 'the package'. (according to the books, the Halo coordinates were discovered elsewhere. you either count the books or you don't, can't have it both ways)


Uh...we can. Bits and pieces of a treasure map if you will. Throw in a little bit of retcon and you're good to go.

Posted by: Traxus 04
so what you guys are saying then is the whole storytelling effort of Reach culminated in
a) a McGuffin ('this data is important, but it doesn't matter what it actually is')
and
b) a massive red herring ('we're telling you about these AI dudes, but they have no bearing on the rest of the story whatsoever. we might as well have left them out completely, no difference')


A) Halo. It was Halo. They mention it at the end of Lone Wolf.

"For you had already passed the torch. And because of you, WE FOUND HALO, UNLOCKED ITS SECRETS, SHATTERED OUR ENEMY'S RESOLVE. Our victory - your victory - was so close... I wish you could have lived to see it."

B) Pretty much. Think of 'em as terminals. Something neat that adds to the lore but bears no actual meaning on the story.

Posted by: Traxus 04
- the package provides the necessary instructions/whatever for combining Cortana and MasterChief, ie. allowing AIs to 'enter the hostilities'


/facepalm

No. Just...no.

We have successfully used OUR hardware and algorithms to scan and imprint neural networks from human brains to AI seeds. At much lower intensities, we imprint ephemeral low-order structure (ie, short-term memories) between two participant intellects.

This is NOT telepathy as Dr. Foster calls it. Rather it imparts the same neural network imprint as audio, scent, visual and similar stimulations, minus the sensory input part, of course.

The result is a direct human-to-AI neural linkage. (Field tests pending. Must get those done soon.)

This is the final Mark V upgrade we need...my final gift to the Spartans; a gift that will make them ferociously effective against the technology of the adversary - the last thing I can offer to help them survive.

Why then do I feel that by combining Spartan and AI...I lose both?

Is there any choice left?


That journal entry was dated March 24th, 2549 a full three years, five months and six days before your supposed joining. Not only that, but they used HUMAN tech do it, no Forerunner information was used.

Posted by: Traxus 04
note that merely going to Halo is not a 'gamechanger'. without the Spartan/AI combination, the Covies would simply have wiped out the PoA forces and taken control of the relic. the gamechanger was that humanity now had the right tool to stop them


GAH!

The discovery and destruction of Halo and every event after it was the bloody game-changer! StealthSlasher even pointed it out!

And the funny thing is...it was all a gamble. It went right for humanity and it saved them. A game changer. Why is that so hard to see?

Master Chief was just extremely lucky. Hell, even without Cortana (pretty much from the end of Halo 2 to the end of Halo 3) he still tore through Covenant ranks like they were nothing.

  • 01.24.2011 4:22 PM PDT

The terminals didn't add any meaning to the story of Halo 3? lawl. They introduced the main character of the entire saga (Mendicant Bias). Who, btw, was able to help Master Chief once they reached the Ark, even though Cortana wasn't there. Halo 3 in general was a much more even fight, as only Truth's small force represented the Covies, totally outnumbered on Earth, and even fewer of them made it through the portal.

So, let's imagine for a second that Halsey's grand plan was just to send one ship to Alpha Halo, which is what the package was for. What a terrible plan. How is that gamechanging? They didn't even know what it was. The plan would amount to 'leading a massive covenant force to somewhere important, then praying we somehow defeat them once we get there.' No, the plan was to send a human/AI hybrid, which was what the package was for, which is what would change the whole complexion of the scenario. Noble team obviously enabled this to happen. Without them, the story would go 'we found Halo, got our asses kicked, then lost the war even quicker than we expected.'

Now, 'linking' is clearly different from 'reversing the path' of Human brain to AI mind. Linking, although no doubt it led to further research, essentially just means the AI can talk directly to the Spartan, perhaps feeding him the knowledge necessary to use unfamiliar systems etc. What the datapads talk about is something much more significant: using a human brain (an almost infinitely complex object) to HOUSE an AI (which needs to expand almost infinitely to avoid rampancy). Figures that would take another few years of research, but once it arrived, it would be 'the gamechanger'

Obviously the real reason MC was so devastating against the Cov was that it's a video game and you are controlling him and you have infinite lives/attempts. But this was bungie's way of reconciling that with a story. Ie. explaining how this is possible in the game world, for one fighter to overcome such odds. They've done it before, in Marathon Infinity, where the Mjolnir/cyborg merges with a human AI and an Jjaro AI, and the end screen says 'You ... are destiny.' Meaning you are an all powerful being who can decide anything (including choosing between branching timelines), but also that you are the dude playing the computer game and determines whether events continue.

It's telling to me that you just rule out the datapads as irrelevant. Shows you're not really interested in understanding the story from a higher perspective. Yeah Reach was the story of a big, lost battle, but the climax revolved around 'the package' and the EXTRA story they added (the stuff we didn't know about before) culminated in the mapping of AI to human brain in the year the game took place. Of course, if you want to close your eyes and ignore that, pretend that Reach contained nothing new, that's your prerogative.

  • 01.24.2011 5:35 PM PDT
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Rawr Im a dino!

Psssssst.


New canon overrides old canon.

Fall of Reach is still partially canon it has just been edited.

  • 01.24.2011 6:07 PM PDT
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Gamertag: J7XD
New BNET: J7XD

Posted by: Traxus 04
It's not unfilled, you just need to dig a but for the answer

She'd used Forerunner science to allow an AI be mapped onto a human brain, which would allow the Spartans to be vastly more effective, leading to an upper hand over the covenant. See: Masterchief

The data pads tell you this


An AI is basically like a Forerunner Ancilla

  • 01.24.2011 6:46 PM PDT

Don't worry, you're still your mom's favorite Bnet member.

Well assuming Cortana found Halo from the coordinates at Sigma IV, then perhaps the information Cortana contained from the Forerunner structure on Reach has yet to be revealed. Halo 4?

  • 01.24.2011 7:01 PM PDT

If the package was merely the coordinates to Halo, Halsey would have said so rather than just something ridiculously vague like 'this is knowledge, a birthright from an ancient civilisation'

So yeah the real use for the package either is set to be revealed in a future game or it was a puzzle bungie set for us (bungie are renowned for puzzles)

  • 01.24.2011 7:33 PM PDT

"What do you hear?"
"Nothing but the rain."
"Then grab your gun and bring in the cat."
"Boom, boom, boom!"

Posted by: Traxus 04
No, the plan was to send a human/AI hybrid, which was what the package was for, which is what would change the whole complexion of the scenario.


I'm seriously not even gonna bother with this. Proof is in the pudding.

Posted by: Traxus 04
How is that gamechanging?


It was a gamble...

"Do you? Mankind is outmatched. When Reach falls - and it will fall - our annihilation is all but certain. Unless...we can glean from this artifact a defense against the Covenant. A game-changer. On the level of the conical bullet in nineteenth century, or faster-than-light travel in the twenty-third."

"And what if we can't?"

"An apt question if there were somewhere else to place our hope. There is not."

Halsey had no idea where she was sending them or what kind of data the structure held. All she knew was that it was a potential game-changer.

Posted by: Traxus 04
But this was bungie's way of reconciling that with a story. Ie. explaining how this is possible in the game world, for one fighter to overcome such odds.


They already did that. In Halo 3. Cortana pretty much explains it. He was lucky.

Posted by: Traxus 04
Shows you're not really interested in understanding the story from a higher perspective.


Because there is none. The "mapping an AI to a human-mind" theory was knocked out of the water when the journal entries were posted, followed by the end game dialog.

Posted by: Traxus 04
Yeah Reach was the story of a big, lost battle, but the climax revolved around 'the package' and the EXTRA story they added (the stuff we didn't know about before) culminated in the mapping of AI to human brain in the year the game took place.


But there was no mapping going on. Just a neural link between a human and an AI. It linked Reach and Halo: CE together, that's it.

Could the linking of an AI to a human-mind lead to mapping it there? I won't doubt that one bit. But it never happened, not in the time-frame. The Assembly knew that and even mention it. It would take time for an idea like that to come to fruition.

Posted by: Traxus 04
Of course, if you want to close your eyes and ignore that, pretend that Reach contained nothing new, that's your prerogative.


And if you don't want to see the fact that there was nothing new and that Reach was nothing more then a tie-in to the first game, that is fine as well.

Honestly, I'm fine to agree to disagree. It was a rather civil debate and I think we both argued our views pretty well. It was fun my good sir.

[Edited on 01.25.2011 3:50 AM PST]

  • 01.24.2011 9:14 PM PDT