Both that and the W’rkncacnter from Marathon. (“Errrrk en cack ter” seems to be the easiest way to say it) They’re basically an entire species of Azathoth.
The whole eldritch Cortana thing Bungie used to do is why I’m not inherently against the idea of her going crazy/doing the whole guardians thing in theory - I just think the way it was executed in Halo 5 was really bad. If they were going that route no matter what, I think it would’ve been better if when our Cortana split herself apart in Halo 4, the game ended with the evil/red logic plague Cortana surviving The Mantle’s Approach and “our” Cortana still sacrificing herself to save John, but also warning him that her rampant doppelgänger is a big threat, and then having Halo 5 follow red Cortana as an antagonist trying to bring her enforced “peace” to the galaxy. Indeed, the way she talks about peace in Halo 5 and Halo Infinite is remarkably similar to how the Gravemind talks about peace and “unity” in the context of the Flood, so they could go all in on the red logic plague Cortana being a modern successor to Medicant Bias, betraying her creators and opening the door for the Flood’s return in Awakening the Nightmare, and the final message our Cortana left behind is the key to defeating her. Would’ve been a much less clunky way of telling the same story than what 343 actually ended up doing.
The way they did it made it out as it was literally just herself. Doing everything. When logically it’d make a lot more sense to have some sort of Flood domain corruption or Didact control. They just made her not Cortona basically. But in lore she’s not actually under the control of anything… so quite literally they just messed up her character and with the whole marketing of Halo 5 and the two perspectives. Was a major disappointment to many longtime Halo Fans. Personally I think people can agree the whole Cortana thing was just poorly thought out and executed. And her being crazy like that can certainly and would certainly happen and is believable. But the way 343 did it? Not believable in any way. So all in all people are just upset about the constant mismanagement of Halos Campaign. Like Halo 4s graphics for example. Or Halo Infinites lack of continuation and it’s large skip over playable content that players would of enjoyed like the Fall of Infinity. But that’s my opinion anyways.
@@sphere117gaming unless it’s been retconned, Cortana does actually have Rampancy due to being 7+ years old, and has the logic plague from spending time with gravemind in Halo 2/3. These are both things set up in the Bungie Halo games that would eventually make her go insane. Just when it came time to actually have that happen, 343 did a terrible job of explaining that those things WERE the reason why she went insane. As it currently stands, you’d have to be pretty familiar with the lore from the books and stuff to even know what’s going on, and even then the way they portrayed it imo was pretty messy and unclear imo, which is why it seems like she suddenly just turned evil for no reason if you only play the games, as most fans do.
The actual stories that 343 tells are in my opinion incredibly faithful to bungies ideas. But the way they portray them make them incredibly lackluster. Halo 4 I rarely replay because the Artstyle is so incredibly ugly and it honestly gives me a headache. Halo 5 was easier on the eyes and the IDEA of the story is phenomenal. But it fell flat because of bad writing, pacing, and heavy reliance on Halo books.
@@sphere117gaming The recent Didact book actually retconned / clarified that her turn toward conquest was indeed due to a seed planted by the gravemind's tampering while she was interrogated in its captivity. But, yeah, pretty ham-handed writing not to use a minute of their cutscenes on confirming that, or at least raising the idea.
@@kaijucobalt2064 had* as when she entered the domain she got cleansed basically. And forcefully turned metastable. But in the game the way it’s shown and done was just weird and wrong. Apparently in a later book it’s retconned to a seed from the Gravemind causing everything. But regardless it was sh*ttly done and then patched together.
The forerunners being chained by an even superior race isn’t too far off what happened. Although the forerunners en masse were wiped out by the rings, a few survived and left the galaxy to repent for their sins. It could be said that because of their grief and repenting that they’re emotionally slaves to the flood/precursors. And then the Didact, the only living forerunner to return to the Milky Way, is literally mentally enslaved by the flood/precursors
What i remember from Bungie pre 2000 is one thing and that thing only: ... *CASULTIES!* And i still have the original Myth: The Fallen Lords Disc here at home. This game was nuts, trust me.
So if Cortana was a fourth AI on the Marathon, maybe in the confusion of all the diverging timelines, she got split off from her original timeline and ended up in the Halo timeline. Maybe Halsey didn't create her at all. Maybe she just learned how to make smart AI's when Cortana appeared!
...maybe Cortana was always evil? Maybe she pretended to be the AI Halsey created with her brain, taking the form of Halsey to help convince her while ditching the circular Marathon AI form, when in reality, she had just killed the original AI designed by Halsey. She then pretended to be as smart as Halsey/etc. after finding out about the Covenant and the Spartan II program so that she could use him to fight them, before eventually "succumbing" to rampancy later in Halo 4 and 5, so she could become the Savior. As for the Flood and the logic plague, maybe she was never infected, but she needed to pretend to be damaged so that the Chief would come get her instead of assuming that she was fine on her own and didn't need immediate rescue. Cortana absolutely would play the long game the whole time, so the spin 343 made with 4, 5, and Infinite, may actually be a very plausible outcome that Bungie could have had in mind at some point.
I imagine that Master Chief being called demon is supposed to relate to us, not be as us, now that I see this. Like us the Player are the Devil, and he the chosen Demon of the Devil. (I really love this third wall breaking so much, I wish it were done more.
There's a video I saw about Marathon's "hidden antagonist". It goes over some of the terminals from all three games that reference some sort of female character. It was seemingly all metaphor, but the theory was that it was referencing a female AI that would have been hostile to the Security Officer and Durandal.
The one from the not Gherrit White terminal in E1M2? The seemingly psychotic psychic who appears to be under attack by someone and was rumoured to be The Dark One mentioned in Marcus’s rambling journal entry hidden in Marathon 2 as a text wall before being formatted & edited correctly in Eternal’s epilogue level. Eternal makes this antagonist Hathor who is a stand-in for rampant Cortana from the scrapped Halo story (and is in pretty much every way a female AI version of Mephiles of the Dark from New Sonic). She poses as a friend and you travel to the past apparently to save the future by bringing other battleroids there to help you but both past Durandal and not yet Pfhor corrupted Tycho warn you she’s trying to eradicate all history, just like Mephiles. Episode’s 2-4 are simply chasing her & trying to stop her ruining historical Marathon events we only heard about in terminals or end screen text crawls in the official games. The failure planks of Episode 3+4 even show her winning. She tries to redeem herself in Episode 5’s one but fails and the elder gods she’s a pawn of win anyway. Come Episode 5 in general we even visit what used to be Halo 04 in the story but for Marathon was changed to a shield world armed with the same weapon, albeit one as powerful as all seven Halos. Lawyer friendly 343 Guilty Spark is even there as our guide and he never turns on us.
Doesn't this kinda imply that Halo 4's story was pretty much already decided from the get-go? Or is that something we know already? Love this kind of stuff in Halo. Wish Infinite did this type of layering and cryptic messaging with it's story
There are a LOT of references to the Song of Roland in Destiny, specifically the Warmind. Charlemagne is a sub-mind of the Warmind (Rasputin), and in Destiny 2's campaign, you visit another Warmind Bunker called "Joyuese." It's a long shot, but you could probably do an entire video on Bungie and their references to that story across their franchises.
Plus, during entry 4 cortana talks about a black dead sun that still shines... that is the future the Vex is trying to bring about during one of the seasons or during the infinite forest campaign. It might be their end goal for our whole solar system.
Luc, I just noticed a lot of the themes introduced in the Cortana letters later served as the foundation for I Love Bees. A portion of an AI that makes its way to our world linking the lore through time/space 🤔
“I have begun to sense a rumbling of a worse fate yet to come. I can recall a sun - black, but shining” “It is an *INCREASINGLY* unpleasant memory” “W’rkncacnter imprisoned within it” It kinda sounds like a black hole
I'm really happy for this video and the Halo 3 Terminals video. Like I said in the comments in that one, I'm writing a superhero series, but I plan to have a creepy hidden "found" story inspired heavily by those two ARGs involving a developing conversation between a government agent with the power to inhabit computers and an entity trapped in the center of the universe for whom the universe is a reminder of his greatest sin.
I was born in 98 so it’s as old as I am and has been around for as long as I can remember. I remember learning how to drive a warthog. I remember halo 2 trailer coming out. I remember being able to duel wield for the first time. And I remember accidentally killing all the elites the first time I played as arbiter because I didn’t realize they were ally’s
I can't be bothered to play anything past Halo 4, where they lost me. Halo 3 was the end of the story for me, Reach and ODST are masterpieces, and we may never see the fervor and enjoyment of the Halo 2 era again. But I keep coming back for the lore. I love the lore. Nice vid.
24:05 funny that's almost what she does in H5 but instead of the covenant it's everyone 29:54 reminds me of The Babysitter, the halo legends episode where they find human ruins on an alien world
The real explanation for the “I’m everywhere!” Email is because whatever Bungie employee was sending the emails further to scrub his original email from the send field, as had been done in all previous letters, thus breaking the illusion that the messages were coming from some internet-inhabiting AI. The fans picked up on this quickly. Sending the follow up from a government email and saying I’m everywhere goes with the next letter which mentions whichever node she has infected, all to cover up that gaffe with the sender email. This is why there are 8 letters in total instead of 7.
Don't know a whole lot about Marathon but I imagine the original plotline for Halo was to be a spin-off/sequel to Marathon. Kinda like Wolfenstein and Doom or Drakengard and Nier. Plans change, we get the Halo we know and love but there's still all the references left in as easter eggs instead of actual connections. That's kinda what I think was happening with the Cortana letters, establishing that it's the same universe but new threats, another time.
the cortana letters now fit the time of cortana in the domain during the created conflict. as the deep domain is timeless, it would land the letters in 1999
Cortana actually quotes some of the lines from the “Cortana Letters” in halo infinite I think in either the second spire mission or the silent auditorium
Can we please appreciate how this guy literally took the time out of his day to write the subtitles for a 32 MINUTE VIDEO i did that for a like 5 min vid and it was booorrrinnggg Kinda tho it was kinda fun
I have heard that Halo started February 1999 and have heard of the Cortana Letters when I was looking into Halo lore before Halo 3 came out. This is what I was looking for, but never found. THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR THIS CONTENT. 😃
I love hearing about the cortana letters again , you always explain things i might have heard about before in a different light that i understand easier, thank you for all the videos you make 💖
Watching this video gave me a little feeling of what it must have been like back then. the mysterious nature of the internet and halo. I was born in 2005 so by the time i was old enough to understand all of this. it was already too late. Thank you HiddenXperia for letting me know how it was like back then
I did not realize the original Halo blueprint was already this far ahead. This means 343 wasn't just making it up as they go lmao, which at one point was starting look like it really was
Do you do gaming laptop versions of the Flood themed PC builds? I could use a Primordial level one for vtubing with all the trimmings (extra storage galore, ability to connect/stream from all my physical consoles handheld & otherwise, built-in BD+RW drive, unlimited free online backups of both individual files & system images etc.) though I do admit I sure as hell can’t afford any PC at the moment.
I really didnt kniw halo ce had an original story this is surprising to me :D and its always good to see a new video or old one too always love watching your videos Hidden keep up ur amazing work :)
My first thought regarding the "obsession with my mother" thing was that it's a covenant AI and her "mother" in this context is earth. To me that seems more likely that a your mum joke
I remember the Cortana letter is you mentioned them in a previous video and they're about Master Chief and Cortana from like after the work of marathon was concluded or coming to an end
it seems like what 343 tried doing with Cortana in halo 4 and 5 may have been trying to go back to when making up the new story for after the original trilogy
I understand not going into greater detail because Marathon lore is an _insanely_ deep dive that you could spend hours covering while still missing portions of it, but there is one little note I do want to make regarding what a w'rkncacnter _is._ You likened it to the Primordial in Halo lore, and while you are _partially_ correct in that the two share some similarities once the Primordial transfers its consciousness into the Gravemind, essentially making itself the primary intelligence behind the Flood, those similarities lie mostly in them both being civilization-ending monsters. This is partially because the Primordial wasn't created until after 343i had taken over the franchise, meaning the more direct connections to Marathon and Pathways into Darkness (and Destiny, to a degree) would have to be severed for IP reasons. The thing is, I'd argue that a w'rkncacnter is _much_ worse than the Primordial was. For all its power, the Primordial was still a single Precursor, heavily mutated though it was by its hate for the Forerunners' genocide of its species and the eons separating it from that event. Even once it became what was essentially the driving consciousness of the Flood, you could still do things like what the Forerunners ultimately did, namely the firing of the Halo array to kill off basically all of its food and biomass options to either kill it or force it into a millennia-long hibernation of sorts. And yet, a w'rkncacnter is much, _MUCH_ worse. See, in the overarching Bungie lore, there was this race called the Jjaro. The best way to explain them is that they were roughly on the same level, technologically, as the Precursors, if not even more advanced. This is shown by the fact that it is heavily implied that the gods worshiped by the S'pht species, one of the aliens you fight and sometimes ally with in the Marathon games, were themselves Jjaro. During some experiments done on them by the Pfhor, essentially Marathon's version of the Covenant but less religious, it was discovered that the S'pht are actually pretty closely related to the F'lickta, a barely sapient race of monstrous aliens that also live on the S'pht home world of Lh'owon. This paired with some of the S'pht mythology you can read in-game, once you look past the mythological prose and read it for what it is truly trying to convey, _heavily_ implies that the Jjaro who would later be known as the gods of the S'pht kinda casually elevated and artificially evolved the F'lickta using a combination of hastened evolution and cybernetics to create the S'pht, which is why the "birth" of a S'pht involves immediately implanting them with cybernetics. As a servant race to Yrro and Pthia, the two (presumed) Jjaro who became known as their gods, the S'pht would do things such as terraforming the entirety of Lh'owon to Yrro & Pthia's liking, and all was well. That is, until a w'rkncacnter showed up. When it did, it fought Yrro and Pthia, _killed_ Pthia, and Yrro managed to imprison it in Lh'owon's sun using a space station the player tries to use in the Marathon games to strengthen the w'rkncacnter's prison before Admiral Tfear, one of the main antagonists in Marathon 2: Durandal and parts of Marathon Infinity, can use a weapon that would allow the w'rkncacnter to escape it and destroy everything. W'rkncacnters are _terrifying_ for a variety of reasons, which is easily shown by how they are described. In one of the terminals where Durandal is talking to you after he achieves meta-stability, he tells you of how - according to the legends of a thousand worlds, only a few of which still containing life - the w'rkncacnter have been a constant force in the universe since it began, living in and creating pure chaos around them. They are described as being hidden in stars, trapped in cosmic storms, and forever looking along the event horizons of black holes. If you also take into account the lore of Pathways into Darkness, in which the Jjaro contact humanity directly to tell us how to temporarily deal with a dormant w'rkncacnter - which arrived on our planet as the meteor that killed the dinosaurs - by _nuking_ it back to sleep until the Jjaro can arrive and deal with it properly by, presumably, imprisoning it in our sun. The only reason it was waking up was because it "came as close to dying as these things can" in a cataclysmic battle against another w'rkncacnter that formed the Magellanic Clouds, and had presumably recovered over the course of a few billion years. A w'rkncacnter on its lonesome is so destructive and powerful that in Marathon Infinity, as the cyborg you've been playing as through the series is undergoing his own form of rampancy and possibly ascending into some form of godhood, any time Admiral Tfear sets off his weapon that would free it without the player managing to strengthen its prison, you end up _jumping timelines_ to escape it and find a way to survive - which is part of the reason the lore of Marathon Infinity is so convoluted. It's possible that the Precursors might have been able to _imprison_ a w'rkncacnter at their technological height, but in all honesty there is no comparison to be made between the level of power and sheer terror a w'rkncacnter can inspire, and that commanded by The Primordial even in its most ascendant state. The closest I think I can get to describing the gulf between the two would be to liken a w'rkncacnter to Yog-Sothoth or Nyarlathotep in the Cthulhu mythos, with the Primordial being Cthulhu or Hastur by comparison; both terribly ancient and powerful, especially when compared to a normal human, but with the w'rkncacnter being much more so than the comparatively weaker Primordial.
really weird how difficult it is to find Butler's dissertation, i was really ensnared by that point. I'm searching for it, ill reply here if i find it.
'I'm not sure what he ever saw in you." "...line between Godhood and Insanity. Guess which side I'm on?" I'm pretty sure Cortana was claiming to be a god, and that she isn't sure what the God who created us saw in us. She recognizes all of our faults, but also sees our persistence, and decides to help save us. The link to a God, likely the Abrahamic God, is furthered by the Abrahamic naming for the majority of major factors of the Halo franchise. Halo itself, the Covenant, the Ark, the themes of one Savior for all of humanity, etc...
Looks like the ILoveBees audio logs/website was inspired by these Cortana Letters--in that Cortana is very clearly communicating with players in 1999. It's interesting you jumped to the Marathon AI with Cortana as 'the fourth' because I assumed she meant Durandal, Cortana, Joyeuse, and [Unknown, possibly the spear of Longinus]. Achieving godhood would be the power to destroy (and possibly create) all life, and immortality, not necessarily rampancy; 100,000 year old Forerunner AI make Serina's and Cortana's deaths rage-inducing. Cortana's mother might refer to Halsey, or it might refer to the sword Cortana was forged from, Brumadant (according to some sources, this is the blacksmith), or it might refer to Mary, mother of Jesus, a piece of whose robe was included in the hilt of Durandal--or it could be as mentioned, a comment on the nature of the internet. The fourth sword could also be called Vistamara, or the sword of Palamedes. The interesting thing about the Forerunners are humans theory, is that I never really thought that there was an ancient civilization in 'the past' contradicting archaeological and genetic records that humans evolved on planet Earth. I never thought that Neanderthals or Habilis achieved spaceflight, either, and I thought having a big Forerunner installation on Earth was in fact, stupid, because surely it would have been detected through seismic surveys. Halo originally seemed to be constructed in the future of humanity--humans built the Halo rings, but they did so AFTER the 26th century. Although then again, I could be entirely misconstruing it, and the Forerunners are supposed to be Earth's mythological gods and angels. There was a lot of science fiction with similar concepts to the latter at the time--Babylon 5 and Stargate SG1 spring to mind. The Halo rings being the FUTURE of humanity though, seems to be more in line with the Marathon spirit, and offers a new kind of existential horror.
what if the lines talking about slaves is talking about the didact, being consumed by the logic plague, or, what if Maethrillian is out there, still inhabited by forerunners, either the ones who fired the rings, or their ancestors, slaves to their sins, and are hiding, maybe on the outer edges of our galaxy, maybe in an entirely different galaxy, ashamed of their final stand, and regretting it. we can hate the storytelling of the 343 games. we can disown the art style as much as we want. we can trash talk matchmaking all day and night, but the storyline is there. the story of the halo universe lines up perfectly. everything that ive found is very cohesive, even if we want to let it burn until its nothing but glass
Didn't the Halo: Fall of Reach book get released before the halo game? That book had Halsey in it so it doesn't seem that far fetched that she is mentioning her as "her mother."
I just want to bring up that the gamer joke "ur mom" would only come around later with xbox live. So it doesn't make sense for a joke before it existed to appear in 1999.
Yeah... about those AI clothes... Is Roland supposed to be a "dumb" AI too? Because that would certainly explain why his body isn't the half remembered ghost of the rejected clone it came from, but a fully programmable avatar. And while we're at it, was the one from Halo Wars supposed to be? Wait... they clothed Cortana too now. Did she loose sentience instead of escaping rampancy?
Being a subscriber to several Halo content creators, I think that my biggest reason for being displeased with 343 is the way they keep screwing around and leaving dedicated fans and content creators who make their living off the Halo universe hanging and in the lurch.
Yeah.... It's really frustrating. There needs to be a line of communication between 343 and the people who quite literally dedicate their lives (and livelihoods) to supporting the franchise, this is the second time now that we've been hung out to dry after an awful game release with no end in sight and it's extremely disheartening. I don't think they quite understand how damaging these absurdly long periods of time with absolutely nothing to fill the void between games are for people who want to stay in touch with the franchise and not just dip in whenever a new game releases
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Like this comment if this Halo lore is older than you
Hah! Dislike if it's not!
My man halo is older than me lol
‘Insert saving private Ryan ageing gif’
¡Señor! We gotta get tf outta here, whatever that sound is it sure ain't pretty.
Older than me, yup xd
“Raging seas and howling beasts” sounds like the flood to me
No doubt. That's definitely not the Forerunner or Ancient Humans or Covenant with leaves one option... The greatest revenge of the Precursors.
Both that and the W’rkncacnter from Marathon. (“Errrrk en cack ter” seems to be the easiest way to say it) They’re basically an entire species of Azathoth.
The one dude tasked with making the cortana emails to mess with Hamish must have been laughing his ass off. 😂
They were deep, but also pretty funny to think that Hamish was just randomly being sent these emails.
The whole eldritch Cortana thing Bungie used to do is why I’m not inherently against the idea of her going crazy/doing the whole guardians thing in theory - I just think the way it was executed in Halo 5 was really bad. If they were going that route no matter what, I think it would’ve been better if when our Cortana split herself apart in Halo 4, the game ended with the evil/red logic plague Cortana surviving The Mantle’s Approach and “our” Cortana still sacrificing herself to save John, but also warning him that her rampant doppelgänger is a big threat, and then having Halo 5 follow red Cortana as an antagonist trying to bring her enforced “peace” to the galaxy.
Indeed, the way she talks about peace in Halo 5 and Halo Infinite is remarkably similar to how the Gravemind talks about peace and “unity” in the context of the Flood, so they could go all in on the red logic plague Cortana being a modern successor to Medicant Bias, betraying her creators and opening the door for the Flood’s return in Awakening the Nightmare, and the final message our Cortana left behind is the key to defeating her. Would’ve been a much less clunky way of telling the same story than what 343 actually ended up doing.
The way they did it made it out as it was literally just herself. Doing everything. When logically it’d make a lot more sense to have some sort of Flood domain corruption or Didact control. They just made her not Cortona basically. But in lore she’s not actually under the control of anything… so quite literally they just messed up her character and with the whole marketing of Halo 5 and the two perspectives. Was a major disappointment to many longtime Halo Fans.
Personally I think people can agree the whole Cortana thing was just poorly thought out and executed. And her being crazy like that can certainly and would certainly happen and is believable. But the way 343 did it? Not believable in any way. So all in all people are just upset about the constant mismanagement of Halos Campaign. Like Halo 4s graphics for example. Or Halo Infinites lack of continuation and it’s large skip over playable content that players would of enjoyed like the Fall of Infinity.
But that’s my opinion anyways.
@@sphere117gaming unless it’s been retconned, Cortana does actually have Rampancy due to being 7+ years old, and has the logic plague from spending time with gravemind in Halo 2/3. These are both things set up in the Bungie Halo games that would eventually make her go insane. Just when it came time to actually have that happen, 343 did a terrible job of explaining that those things WERE the reason why she went insane. As it currently stands, you’d have to be pretty familiar with the lore from the books and stuff to even know what’s going on, and even then the way they portrayed it imo was pretty messy and unclear imo, which is why it seems like she suddenly just turned evil for no reason if you only play the games, as most fans do.
The actual stories that 343 tells are in my opinion incredibly faithful to bungies ideas. But the way they portray them make them incredibly lackluster.
Halo 4 I rarely replay because the Artstyle is so incredibly ugly and it honestly gives me a headache.
Halo 5 was easier on the eyes and the IDEA of the story is phenomenal. But it fell flat because of bad writing, pacing, and heavy reliance on Halo books.
@@sphere117gaming The recent Didact book actually retconned / clarified that her turn toward conquest was indeed due to a seed planted by the gravemind's tampering while she was interrogated in its captivity.
But, yeah, pretty ham-handed writing not to use a minute of their cutscenes on confirming that, or at least raising the idea.
@@kaijucobalt2064 had* as when she entered the domain she got cleansed basically. And forcefully turned metastable. But in the game the way it’s shown and done was just weird and wrong. Apparently in a later book it’s retconned to a seed from the Gravemind causing everything. But regardless it was sh*ttly done and then patched together.
Funny how a new halo game hasnt come out in a few years and you still make content I just mindlessly watch lmfao
based
Mood
I honestly think it's the voice for me. Something reassuring about hearing him to speak to us about lore to keep us coming back. 😆
Consume product, be excited for new product.
@@adakahless oh yeah his voice is great
So one day the Old Ones were like, “Let’s make some Krorks!” And some time later *BOOM!* The Krorks became British by becoming Orks!
Heyo got that one
WAAGHHHH
THANK YOU FOR PROVIDING US THESE FUNGAL FOOD
HUNGAH FOAH BORGAR
K but what's this got to do with Halo?
@@voomvoom4522Cortana shows shes an Ork around 24:00
The forerunners being chained by an even superior race isn’t too far off what happened. Although the forerunners en masse were wiped out by the rings, a few survived and left the galaxy to repent for their sins. It could be said that because of their grief and repenting that they’re emotionally slaves to the flood/precursors. And then the Didact, the only living forerunner to return to the Milky Way, is literally mentally enslaved by the flood/precursors
What i remember from Bungie pre 2000 is one thing and that thing only: ...
*CASULTIES!*
And i still have the original Myth: The Fallen Lords Disc here at home. This game was nuts, trust me.
I spent HOURS late at night on forums and blogs discussing the letters. I liked when the forerunners were gunna be humans.
C3 Sabertooth has video discussing how in bungie era halo humans are forerunners and how 343 changed it. Highly recommend it.
So if Cortana was a fourth AI on the Marathon, maybe in the confusion of all the diverging timelines, she got split off from her original timeline and ended up in the Halo timeline. Maybe Halsey didn't create her at all. Maybe she just learned how to make smart AI's when Cortana appeared!
...maybe Cortana was always evil? Maybe she pretended to be the AI Halsey created with her brain, taking the form of Halsey to help convince her while ditching the circular Marathon AI form, when in reality, she had just killed the original AI designed by Halsey. She then pretended to be as smart as Halsey/etc. after finding out about the Covenant and the Spartan II program so that she could use him to fight them, before eventually "succumbing" to rampancy later in Halo 4 and 5, so she could become the Savior. As for the Flood and the logic plague, maybe she was never infected, but she needed to pretend to be damaged so that the Chief would come get her instead of assuming that she was fine on her own and didn't need immediate rescue. Cortana absolutely would play the long game the whole time, so the spin 343 made with 4, 5, and Infinite, may actually be a very plausible outcome that Bungie could have had in mind at some point.
I imagine that Master Chief being called demon is supposed to relate to us, not be as us, now that I see this. Like us the Player are the Devil, and he the chosen Demon of the Devil. (I really love this third wall breaking so much, I wish it were done more.
Are we going on a marathon? Hope it doesn't take us down any pathways into darkness.
Nah, that's just a myth
something something Gnop
Perhaps, it's our destiny
@@jerrbear5958 it indeed is destiny to be crowned with a Halo.
God ily guys for making this
There's a video I saw about Marathon's "hidden antagonist". It goes over some of the terminals from all three games that reference some sort of female character. It was seemingly all metaphor, but the theory was that it was referencing a female AI that would have been hostile to the Security Officer and Durandal.
What's the video called?
@@madDesparada “The Mysterious Antagonist from Bungie’s Marathon story.”
The one from the not Gherrit White terminal in E1M2? The seemingly psychotic psychic who appears to be under attack by someone and was rumoured to be The Dark One mentioned in Marcus’s rambling journal entry hidden in Marathon 2 as a text wall before being formatted & edited correctly in Eternal’s epilogue level.
Eternal makes this antagonist Hathor who is a stand-in for rampant Cortana from the scrapped Halo story (and is in pretty much every way a female AI version of Mephiles of the Dark from New Sonic). She poses as a friend and you travel to the past apparently to save the future by bringing other battleroids there to help you but both past Durandal and not yet Pfhor corrupted Tycho warn you she’s trying to eradicate all history, just like Mephiles. Episode’s 2-4 are simply chasing her & trying to stop her ruining historical Marathon events we only heard about in terminals or end screen text crawls in the official games. The failure planks of Episode 3+4 even show her winning. She tries to redeem herself in Episode 5’s one but fails and the elder gods she’s a pawn of win anyway.
Come Episode 5 in general we even visit what used to be Halo 04 in the story but for Marathon was changed to a shield world armed with the same weapon, albeit one as powerful as all seven Halos. Lawyer friendly 343 Guilty Spark is even there as our guide and he never turns on us.
I'm tempted to wright a AU of halo where all of this (Cyborg Chief, Rampant Cortana, Leela, etc) DID happen
That would be nice
I'd be interested in seeing that.
I would definitely read that
Please do I'd read the hell out of that
I’d read that.
This shows me that Cortana becoming the bad guy is a dope direction to go in. But Halo 5 really dropped the ball
Doesn't this kinda imply that Halo 4's story was pretty much already decided from the get-go? Or is that something we know already? Love this kind of stuff in Halo. Wish Infinite did this type of layering and cryptic messaging with it's story
I wonder if 343 got Halo 5's Created from "Cortana saves sinners." It wouldn't make it any better, but it would be a neat fact.
There are a LOT of references to the Song of Roland in Destiny, specifically the Warmind.
Charlemagne is a sub-mind of the Warmind (Rasputin), and in Destiny 2's campaign, you visit another Warmind Bunker called "Joyuese."
It's a long shot, but you could probably do an entire video on Bungie and their references to that story across their franchises.
Plus, during entry 4 cortana talks about a black dead sun that still shines... that is the future the Vex is trying to bring about during one of the seasons or during the infinite forest campaign. It might be their end goal for our whole solar system.
Luc, I just noticed a lot of the themes introduced in the Cortana letters later served as the foundation for I Love Bees. A portion of an AI that makes its way to our world linking the lore through time/space 🤔
“I have begun to sense a rumbling of a worse fate yet to come. I can recall a sun - black, but shining”
“It is an *INCREASINGLY* unpleasant memory”
“W’rkncacnter imprisoned within it”
It kinda sounds like a black hole
Some of it sounds like Cortana's rampancy in Halo 5
'99 Feb? I was 9 years and 6 months old.... Damn you for making me feel old @HiddenXperia
I'm really happy for this video and the Halo 3 Terminals video. Like I said in the comments in that one, I'm writing a superhero series, but I plan to have a creepy hidden "found" story inspired heavily by those two ARGs involving a developing conversation between a government agent with the power to inhabit computers and an entity trapped in the center of the universe for whom the universe is a reminder of his greatest sin.
On Letter 4, I think it's meant that Cortana is in the Bungie systems. That other AI was either the Bungie Webmaster or Disembodied Soul.
I was born in 98 so it’s as old as I am and has been around for as long as I can remember. I remember learning how to drive a warthog. I remember halo 2 trailer coming out. I remember being able to duel wield for the first time. And I remember accidentally killing all the elites the first time I played as arbiter because I didn’t realize they were ally’s
When 1999 hit the lower left corner a flood of memories and sounds of cheers went through my mind.
Thank you for going over and explaining the Cortana letters I’ve known about them for years but never had the chance to look into them deeply
I can't be bothered to play anything past Halo 4, where they lost me. Halo 3 was the end of the story for me, Reach and ODST are masterpieces, and we may never see the fervor and enjoyment of the Halo 2 era again. But I keep coming back for the lore. I love the lore. Nice vid.
we got halo before halo before gta 6
24:05 funny that's almost what she does in H5 but instead of the covenant it's everyone
29:54 reminds me of The Babysitter, the halo legends episode where they find human ruins on an alien world
This is the crazy insane batshit lore I'm looking for, I imagine there was a lot of work into this - big respect
thanks chief! Yeah haha this one was a labor of love, glad you enjoyed it :)
The real explanation for the “I’m everywhere!” Email is because whatever Bungie employee was sending the emails further to scrub his original email from the send field, as had been done in all previous letters, thus breaking the illusion that the messages were coming from some internet-inhabiting AI. The fans picked up on this quickly. Sending the follow up from a government email and saying I’m everywhere goes with the next letter which mentions whichever node she has infected, all to cover up that gaffe with the sender email. This is why there are 8 letters in total instead of 7.
Don't know a whole lot about Marathon but I imagine the original plotline for Halo was to be a spin-off/sequel to Marathon. Kinda like Wolfenstein and Doom or Drakengard and Nier. Plans change, we get the Halo we know and love but there's still all the references left in as easter eggs instead of actual connections. That's kinda what I think was happening with the Cortana letters, establishing that it's the same universe but new threats, another time.
lost four colonies worlds sounds like Stargate SG1tv series.
See how much love developers can have for their games, worlds, stories...
'sun, black but shining, and the creatures that inched along its fiery tracks' comes from 'The marriage of heaven and hell.'
At 11:48 if Cortana said it, then it will be done
the cortana letters now fit the time of cortana in the domain during the created conflict. as the deep domain is timeless, it would land the letters in 1999
1:37 dude used the way back machine and now thinks he's part of some niche club
You know what i love sbout headcannon lore? When the subjective itself drops an info vaguely confirming it.
I've been waiting so long for someone to talk about the Cortana Letters, I love them so much!
HiddenXperia, the best in the halo lore game as always
5:10 *growls in white Eva helmet*
Cortana actually quotes some of the lines from the “Cortana Letters” in halo infinite I think in either the second spire mission or the silent auditorium
The music you have playing underneath Entry 7… it’s the melody to “Pursuit of Truth” from Halo 2!
Can we please appreciate how this guy literally took the time out of his day to write the subtitles for a 32 MINUTE VIDEO i did that for a like 5 min vid and it was booorrrinnggg
Kinda tho it was kinda fun
I have heard that Halo started February 1999 and have heard of the Cortana Letters when I was looking into Halo lore before Halo 3 came out. This is what I was looking for, but never found. THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR THIS CONTENT. 😃
I love hearing about the cortana letters again , you always explain things i might have heard about before in a different light that i understand easier, thank you for all the videos you make 💖
the fact that NASA/JPL/Arecibo were on board or even spoofed is honestly awesome af
These Marathon-Halo vids are my favorites
Watching this video gave me a little feeling of what it must have been like back then. the mysterious nature of the internet and halo. I was born in 2005 so by the time i was old enough to understand all of this. it was already too late.
Thank you HiddenXperia for letting me know how it was like back then
25:30 I thought "palace" aluded to the Pillar of Autumn, and "lyca lies asleep" to the Master Chief in cryo.
This is so interesting! As someone who didn't get to experience the 90's internet, thank you for sharing.
Cortana was always meant to be crazy, great vid bro.
I did not realize the original Halo blueprint was already this far ahead. This means 343 wasn't just making it up as they go lmao, which at one point was starting look like it really was
Do you do gaming laptop versions of the Flood themed PC builds? I could use a Primordial level one for vtubing with all the trimmings (extra storage galore, ability to connect/stream from all my physical consoles handheld & otherwise, built-in BD+RW drive, unlimited free online backups of both individual files & system images etc.) though I do admit I sure as hell can’t afford any PC at the moment.
I really didnt kniw halo ce had an original story this is surprising to me :D and its always good to see a new video or old one too always love watching your videos Hidden keep up ur amazing work :)
So in 2007, the Cortana letters aren’t cannon anymore and the forerunners are no longer ancient humanity?… hmmmm
I smell something.
My first thought regarding the "obsession with my mother" thing was that it's a covenant AI and her "mother" in this context is earth. To me that seems more likely that a your mum joke
Learning so much from you🙏
I remember the Cortana letter is you mentioned them in a previous video and they're about Master Chief and Cortana from like after the work of marathon was concluded or coming to an end
6:10 roland? so even 343 references this song with the infinities ai roland? neat
I could swear youve covered this topic once, if not twice before
I did a very brief overview of it in a vid last year but I've never covered it in this detail before
Interesting in lore you could say Cortana had a glimpse into her future possibly through the forerunner network
6:22 For those that are unfamiliar with the legend, Joyeuse is Charlemagne's sword.
Imagine if all of these had gotten stuck in Hamish's Spam folder...
Perfect usage of OSRS swords
it seems like what 343 tried doing with Cortana in halo 4 and 5 may have been trying to go back to when making up the new story for after the original trilogy
I understand not going into greater detail because Marathon lore is an _insanely_ deep dive that you could spend hours covering while still missing portions of it, but there is one little note I do want to make regarding what a w'rkncacnter _is._ You likened it to the Primordial in Halo lore, and while you are _partially_ correct in that the two share some similarities once the Primordial transfers its consciousness into the Gravemind, essentially making itself the primary intelligence behind the Flood, those similarities lie mostly in them both being civilization-ending monsters. This is partially because the Primordial wasn't created until after 343i had taken over the franchise, meaning the more direct connections to Marathon and Pathways into Darkness (and Destiny, to a degree) would have to be severed for IP reasons. The thing is, I'd argue that a w'rkncacnter is _much_ worse than the Primordial was. For all its power, the Primordial was still a single Precursor, heavily mutated though it was by its hate for the Forerunners' genocide of its species and the eons separating it from that event. Even once it became what was essentially the driving consciousness of the Flood, you could still do things like what the Forerunners ultimately did, namely the firing of the Halo array to kill off basically all of its food and biomass options to either kill it or force it into a millennia-long hibernation of sorts.
And yet, a w'rkncacnter is much, _MUCH_ worse.
See, in the overarching Bungie lore, there was this race called the Jjaro. The best way to explain them is that they were roughly on the same level, technologically, as the Precursors, if not even more advanced. This is shown by the fact that it is heavily implied that the gods worshiped by the S'pht species, one of the aliens you fight and sometimes ally with in the Marathon games, were themselves Jjaro. During some experiments done on them by the Pfhor, essentially Marathon's version of the Covenant but less religious, it was discovered that the S'pht are actually pretty closely related to the F'lickta, a barely sapient race of monstrous aliens that also live on the S'pht home world of Lh'owon. This paired with some of the S'pht mythology you can read in-game, once you look past the mythological prose and read it for what it is truly trying to convey, _heavily_ implies that the Jjaro who would later be known as the gods of the S'pht kinda casually elevated and artificially evolved the F'lickta using a combination of hastened evolution and cybernetics to create the S'pht, which is why the "birth" of a S'pht involves immediately implanting them with cybernetics. As a servant race to Yrro and Pthia, the two (presumed) Jjaro who became known as their gods, the S'pht would do things such as terraforming the entirety of Lh'owon to Yrro & Pthia's liking, and all was well.
That is, until a w'rkncacnter showed up.
When it did, it fought Yrro and Pthia, _killed_ Pthia, and Yrro managed to imprison it in Lh'owon's sun using a space station the player tries to use in the Marathon games to strengthen the w'rkncacnter's prison before Admiral Tfear, one of the main antagonists in Marathon 2: Durandal and parts of Marathon Infinity, can use a weapon that would allow the w'rkncacnter to escape it and destroy everything. W'rkncacnters are _terrifying_ for a variety of reasons, which is easily shown by how they are described. In one of the terminals where Durandal is talking to you after he achieves meta-stability, he tells you of how - according to the legends of a thousand worlds, only a few of which still containing life - the w'rkncacnter have been a constant force in the universe since it began, living in and creating pure chaos around them. They are described as being hidden in stars, trapped in cosmic storms, and forever looking along the event horizons of black holes. If you also take into account the lore of Pathways into Darkness, in which the Jjaro contact humanity directly to tell us how to temporarily deal with a dormant w'rkncacnter - which arrived on our planet as the meteor that killed the dinosaurs - by _nuking_ it back to sleep until the Jjaro can arrive and deal with it properly by, presumably, imprisoning it in our sun. The only reason it was waking up was because it "came as close to dying as these things can" in a cataclysmic battle against another w'rkncacnter that formed the Magellanic Clouds, and had presumably recovered over the course of a few billion years. A w'rkncacnter on its lonesome is so destructive and powerful that in Marathon Infinity, as the cyborg you've been playing as through the series is undergoing his own form of rampancy and possibly ascending into some form of godhood, any time Admiral Tfear sets off his weapon that would free it without the player managing to strengthen its prison, you end up _jumping timelines_ to escape it and find a way to survive - which is part of the reason the lore of Marathon Infinity is so convoluted.
It's possible that the Precursors might have been able to _imprison_ a w'rkncacnter at their technological height, but in all honesty there is no comparison to be made between the level of power and sheer terror a w'rkncacnter can inspire, and that commanded by The Primordial even in its most ascendant state. The closest I think I can get to describing the gulf between the two would be to liken a w'rkncacnter to Yog-Sothoth or Nyarlathotep in the Cthulhu mythos, with the Primordial being Cthulhu or Hastur by comparison; both terribly ancient and powerful, especially when compared to a normal human, but with the w'rkncacnter being much more so than the comparatively weaker Primordial.
343i refuses to bring more halo lore to us, fortunately we have HiddenXperia to bring up some old lore
Hiddenxperia my favorite halo lore RUclipsr. You should be hired to make future halo games my dude!!!
20:20 hey it's the level Cradle from GoldenEye 007 N64 for England James?
Aww, made me miss the old ascendant justice website. That guy analyzed the Cortana letters too!
really weird how difficult it is to find Butler's dissertation, i was really ensnared by that point. I'm searching for it, ill reply here if i find it.
old bungie could do world building like no other. I miss them terribly
Love when you talk about Marathon in relation to Halo as it will be the next big Bungie game!
'I'm not sure what he ever saw in you." "...line between Godhood and Insanity. Guess which side I'm on?"
I'm pretty sure Cortana was claiming to be a god, and that she isn't sure what the God who created us saw in us. She recognizes all of our faults, but also sees our persistence, and decides to help save us. The link to a God, likely the Abrahamic God, is furthered by the Abrahamic naming for the majority of major factors of the Halo franchise. Halo itself, the Covenant, the Ark, the themes of one Savior for all of humanity, etc...
just started replaying marathon since it's on steam now
I need that new Marathon game NOW, even if I'm worried after the rumors.
You won’t get a back tat of the gravemind with the top saying “I am a monument to all your sins”
I'm less than 1 min into this video, and I'm already interested in this obscure lore
Demons in black clouds? Sound like the flood in space.
Funny thing but Cortana is not in Roland's Song, if that's the title in English. Cortana is used by Ogier the Dane and is in a different poem
Looks like the ILoveBees audio logs/website was inspired by these Cortana Letters--in that Cortana is very clearly communicating with players in 1999. It's interesting you jumped to the Marathon AI with Cortana as 'the fourth' because I assumed she meant Durandal, Cortana, Joyeuse, and [Unknown, possibly the spear of Longinus]. Achieving godhood would be the power to destroy (and possibly create) all life, and immortality, not necessarily rampancy; 100,000 year old Forerunner AI make Serina's and Cortana's deaths rage-inducing. Cortana's mother might refer to Halsey, or it might refer to the sword Cortana was forged from, Brumadant (according to some sources, this is the blacksmith), or it might refer to Mary, mother of Jesus, a piece of whose robe was included in the hilt of Durandal--or it could be as mentioned, a comment on the nature of the internet. The fourth sword could also be called Vistamara, or the sword of Palamedes.
The interesting thing about the Forerunners are humans theory, is that I never really thought that there was an ancient civilization in 'the past' contradicting archaeological and genetic records that humans evolved on planet Earth. I never thought that Neanderthals or Habilis achieved spaceflight, either, and I thought having a big Forerunner installation on Earth was in fact, stupid, because surely it would have been detected through seismic surveys. Halo originally seemed to be constructed in the future of humanity--humans built the Halo rings, but they did so AFTER the 26th century. Although then again, I could be entirely misconstruing it, and the Forerunners are supposed to be Earth's mythological gods and angels. There was a lot of science fiction with similar concepts to the latter at the time--Babylon 5 and Stargate SG1 spring to mind. The Halo rings being the FUTURE of humanity though, seems to be more in line with the Marathon spirit, and offers a new kind of existential horror.
Hey! Maybe Bungie could do an HD remake of Marathon.
what if the lines talking about slaves is talking about the didact, being consumed by the logic plague, or, what if Maethrillian is out there, still inhabited by forerunners, either the ones who fired the rings, or their ancestors, slaves to their sins, and are hiding, maybe on the outer edges of our galaxy, maybe in an entirely different galaxy, ashamed of their final stand, and regretting it.
we can hate the storytelling of the 343 games. we can disown the art style as much as we want. we can trash talk matchmaking all day and night, but the storyline is there. the story of the halo universe lines up perfectly. everything that ive found is very cohesive, even if we want to let it burn until its nothing but glass
These letters came out when I was 8 years old. How I wanted to have these letters when they were coming out
Didn't the Halo: Fall of Reach book get released before the halo game? That book had Halsey in it so it doesn't seem that far fetched that she is mentioning her as "her mother."
Halo ARGs my beloved.
Do you think it was a mistake for Halsey to be the creator of cortan? This sounds like a much better story of her being more of an "ancient" being
This is cryptic and creepy but I love every minute of it
Wtf? I didn't even know that this kind of lore existed. Shits wild man. Amazing video as always !
They 100% should have named The Weapon from Halo Infinite “Joy” instead, referencing Joyeuse
I just want to bring up that the gamer joke "ur mom" would only come around later with xbox live. So it doesn't make sense for a joke before it existed to appear in 1999.
The central source of information used to be the library
Okay, but if the Halo timeline shares our modern day history. Wouldn't that *technically* make the letters canon in Halo lore?
Yeah... about those AI clothes... Is Roland supposed to be a "dumb" AI too? Because that would certainly explain why his body isn't the half remembered ghost of the rejected clone it came from, but a fully programmable avatar. And while we're at it, was the one from Halo Wars supposed to be?
Wait... they clothed Cortana too now. Did she loose sentience instead of escaping rampancy?
Music at the end of the video got me
my dumb arse just realized that the marathon logo in the middle of the ce logo
Being a subscriber to several Halo content creators, I think that my biggest reason for being displeased with 343 is the way they keep screwing around and leaving dedicated fans and content creators who make their living off the Halo universe hanging and in the lurch.
Yeah.... It's really frustrating. There needs to be a line of communication between 343 and the people who quite literally dedicate their lives (and livelihoods) to supporting the franchise, this is the second time now that we've been hung out to dry after an awful game release with no end in sight and it's extremely disheartening. I don't think they quite understand how damaging these absurdly long periods of time with absolutely nothing to fill the void between games are for people who want to stay in touch with the franchise and not just dip in whenever a new game releases