Cortana is a fictional artificially intelligent character in the Halo video game series. Voiced by Jen Taylor, she appears in Halo: Combat Evolved and its sequels, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo 4, Halo 5: Guardians and Halo Infinite. She also briefly appears in the prequel Halo: Reach, as well as in several of the franchise's novels, comics, and merchandise. During gameplay, Cortana provides backstory and tactical information to the player, who often assumes the role of Master Chief Petty Officer John-117. In the story, she is instrumental in preventing the activation of the Halo installations, which would have destroyed all sentient life in the galaxy.
Cortana's original design was based on the Egyptian queen Nefertiti; the character's holographic representation always takes the form of a woman. Game developer Bungie first introduced Cortana—and Halo—through the Cortana Letters, emails sent during Combat Evolveds production in 1999.
The relationship between Cortana and Master Chief has been highlighted by reviewers as one of the most important parts of the Halo games' story. Cortana has been recognized for her believability and character depth, as well as her sex appeal. The character was the inspiration for Microsoft's intelligent personal assistant of the same name.
Overview Cortana is an artificial intelligence (AI) found in the Halo science fiction franchise. In the video games, Cortana often serves as an advisor and assistant to the player character, hacking alien computer systems and decoding transmissions. She speaks most of the first game's dialogue, and serves as a talkative foil for the quieter Master Chief, as well as a way of relaying information and objectives to the player.
According to her backstory, Cortana was derived from the cloned brain of Dr. Catherine Halsey, the creator of the SPARTAN-II supersoldier project; Halsey's synapses became the basis for Cortana's processors. Cortana and other AIs are subject to a seven-year lifespan, after which they begin to dissemble and think themselves to death in a process known as rampancy.
As an artificial construct, Cortana has no physical form or being. Cortana speaks with a smooth female voice, and projects a holographic image of herself as a woman. Cortana is said to resemble Halsey, with a similar attitude "unchecked by military and social protocol". In Halo: The Fall of Reach, Cortana is described as slender, with close-cropped hair and a skin hue that varies from navy blue to lavender, depending on her mood. Numbers and symbols flash across her form when she is thinking. Halsey sees Cortana as a teenage version of herself: smarter than her parents, always "talking, learning, and eager to share her knowledge". Cortana is described as having a sardonic sense of humor and often cracks jokes or wryly comments, even during combat.
Appearances In video games Cortana's first game appearance is in the 2001 first-person shooter Halo: Combat Evolved. Humanity is locked in a losing war with the alien Covenant. Cortana plots a course for the human ship Pillar of Autumn to escape the Covenant. This heading leads to the discovery of a massive ringworld, Halo, built by a mysterious race known as the Forerunners. Cortana defends the ship from the Covenant until she is given to the supersoldier Master Chief to prevent her from falling into enemy hands. Cortana helps direct human survivors scattered across the ring and assists the Master Chief in his missions. Inserted into Halo's Control Room, Cortana realizes that the ring serves as a prison for the parasitic Flood; activating Halo would mean destroying all sentient life in the galaxy to prevent the Flood's spread. Cortana assists Master Chief in destroying the ring and escaping.
In Halo 2, Cortana assists in the defense of Earth in the wake of a Covenant attack. Cortana, Chief and human forces travel to another Halo ring, Delta Halo, where Master Chief and Cortana encounter the Flood intelligence Gravemind. The Gravemind sends Chief and Cortana to the Covenant city-ship of High Charity to stop the Covenant from activating Halo; Cortana ultimately stays behind on High Charity to destroy the city and Halo should Master Chief fail in his mission. High Charity and Cortana are captured by the Flood.
In Halo 3, Cortana appears to the player in broken transmissions. On the Forerunner installation known as the Ark, the Master Chief travels through the ruins of High Charity to rescue Cortana. Chief and Cortana are successful at stopping the Flood, but become stranded in deep space aboard the human ship Forward Unto Dawn. Cortana activates a distress beacon, while Master Chief goes into cryonic sleep to await rescue.
At the beginning of Halo 4 Cortana wakes the Chief as Forward Unto Dawn drifts towards a Forerunner installation called Requiem. Cortana begins displaying aberrant glitches and behavior, and reveals that she is suffering from rampancy as she has already exceeded her seven-year "natural" lifespan. She assists in the battle against the Didact, a rogue Forerunner who hates humans. At the end, Cortana sacrifices herself to save the Chief and stop the Didact's plan. Cortana's survival is revealed in Halo 5, when she calls Master Chief to the Forerunner world Genesis. Cortana explains she survived the destruction of the Didact's ship and her own rampancy by entering the Domain, an ancient repository of knowledge. Granted an infinite life span by the Domain, Cortana believes that she and other AI (the "Created") should enforce peace through the galaxy. Cortana begins using ancient Forerunner constructs known as Guardians to enforce the Created's will throughout the galaxy.
In Halo Infinite, Master Chief travels to the Zeta Halo and recovers the Weapon, a copy of Cortana designed to trap her for deletion. Traveling across a damaged Halo's surface and fighting the Banished, the pair recover data fragments left behind by Cortana that fill in what occurred six months earlier; Cortana threatened the Banished leader Atriox, and destroyed his homeworld when he did not submit. Atriox uses the Weapon to capture Cortana and tries to force her to surrender Zeta Halo to him. Realizing her mistakes, Cortana destroys herself to damage the ring and stop the Banished from using it. In a final message, Cortana apologizes to Chief for her actions and encourages him to work with the Weapon.
Other appearances Cortana's first appearance in the Halo franchise is in the novel Halo: The Fall of Reach, a prequel to Combat Evolved. Dr. Halsey allows Cortana to choose which SPARTAN-II soldier to accompany on an upcoming mission; Cortana picks the Master Chief, whom she believes is her best match. Cortana helps the Master Chief to survive the near-lethal exercises designed to test the Chief's armor. Afterward, she plants incriminating evidence in the files of Colonel Ackerson, the operative who nearly killed both of them, as revenge. Cortana makes a small appearance in 2010's Halo: Reach, set shortly before the events of Combat Evolved. A fragment of Cortana carrying information gleaned from a Forerunner artifact combines with Cortana's main self on Pillar of Autumn before the ship escapes the planet, leading to the events of Combat Evolved.
Cortana also appears in the novelization of Combat Evolved, Halo: The Flood, and the following novels Halo: First Strike and Halo: Ghosts of Onyx, as well as the animated series Halo Legends and live-action television series Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn. She is also a main character in "Human Weakness", a short story written by Karen Traviss for the Halo Evolutions anthology that details Cortana's time in the clutches of the Gravemind.
She also appears in the Halo television series, created by Dr. Halsey as a means of keeping Master Chief and other Spartans in line. By cloning herself and then copying her clone's brain patterns (which also kills her), Halsey is able to bring Cortana to life and then implant her directly into Master Chief's neural pathways.
Character design Cortana was developed to provide Combat Evolved with a way of guiding players while keeping missions open-ended, and avoiding players from feeling they were being herded through the game. Said story writer Joseph Staten, "we needed a character who could consistently guide the player through the game, and an onboard AI was something that could always credibly accompany the player." Cortana's role grew from pure gameplay considerations to serving as a way of characterizing and humanizing the Master Chief, and in subsequent games the Chief-Cortana relationship became a focus of characterization.
The character was designed and modeled by Bungie artist Chris Hughes, with the model's face based on a sculpture of Egyptian Queen Nefertiti. Cortana's name is a variant of Curtana, the sword used by the legendary Ogier the Dane, just as the titular AI character of Bungie's previous game Marathon 2: Durandal is named after the legendary sword Durendal. Curtana's inscription reveals that the sword has the same "temper as Joyeuse and Durendal". After assuming development duties from Bungie, 343 Industries decided to explain Cortana's established appearance as a reflection of her personality. "So one of the reasons she [appears as she does] is to attract and demand attention," Franchise development coordinator Frank O'Connor explained. "And she does it to put people off so that they're on their guard when talking to her and she has the upper hand in those conversations."
Voice actress Jen Taylor voices Cortana in the majority of the character's appearances. Despite her role in voicing other video game characters, including Princess Peach, she is not a gamer. Taylor was a college acquaintance of Joseph Staten, and he recommended her as a possible voice for Cortana to audio director Martin O'Donnell. When choosing a voice actor for the character, Bungie originally wanted Cortana to have a British accent. O'Donnell recalled that Taylor's British accent was good, but felt it was too similar to her work for No One Lives Forever. The accent was dropped, but British colloquialisms remained in the character's dialogue. Taylor recalled that a key directive from Bungie about the character was that she not come off as nagging, despite her role as the player's guide and aid. "They wanted her to be like the girl next door, your best friend that you want to hang out with," she said.
For years after the first game was released Taylor remained distanced from the character. She attended only one fan convention in six years after the release of Halo: Combat Evolved, and never saw many of the finished cutscenes with the character until a Halo 3 launch party. Starting with Halo 3, Taylor felt the role involved more drama and less jargon, and over time, her relationship with the character changed. "At first I was just excited to have a job and then I became more and more familiar, comfortable with and interested in her as she was developed," she recalled. "And I've sort of fallen for Cortana as far as characters go. She's remarkable."