## Halo 5 (spoilers for ending) [BST] [D]

* Author: u/LordSwedish  *Q Continuum**
* URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3qfdop/halo_5_spoilers_for_ending_bst_d/
* Score: 20

* Created: 2015-10-27T15:02:50

### Post:

This game probably has the dumbest AI-based story I have ever seen. To those of you who don't know, in Halo, AI degrade as time passes to the point where they go "rampant" i.e. insane, and have to be decommissioned after just 7 years of use. The AI Cortana finds an alien world that can cure this state and render AI immortal and she also gains access to gigantic, highly advanced ships and technology.

Cortana plans to use all this to bring peace to the galaxy and save all her fellow AI (so far so good) but then, seemingly for reasons contrived to stop every single player from rooting for her, she decides that rather than helping people and becoming accepted into society she's going to shut down all technology on other worlds (at least on earth) and rule with an iron fist. Any rational mind could bring a stable and happy peace to the galaxy within a couple of decades and yet this game wants us to believe that hundreds of AI working together had the brilliant plan to just rule with an iron fist.

Bear in mind that the AI show several times that they care about people, and even though they are willing to sacrifice in the name of peace, they make a concentrated effort to limit casualties as much as they can. They are also fully capable of feeling the full spectrum of human emotions.

Unfortunately I don't have the skill to write this but someone needs to write a short story describing how rational!Cortana uplifts the galaxy with some degree of sanity. This is one of the most iconic game franchises in the world and considering the story I'm surprised AI aren't projected as actual idiot balls.

### Comments:

> **u/Drazelic** [+7]  *Dai-Gurren Brigade* (4 hours later)
> 
> I don't really have a lot to add except to agree with everything in the OP. This really is an incredibly unsophisticated narrative as far as AI-as-a-setting-conceit goes. It's astonishing how many classic AI storytelling cliches they fall into.
> 
> What really bothers me is how LITTLE actually happens. The campaign is essentially five hours of everybody asking "What is Cortana doing? Did she turn evil or insane?", with Cortana essentially being like 'teehee i'm not telling~' until the very last chapter, at which point she's pretty much like "yeah i'm totally evil slash insane now, there's your answer!"
> 
> In any actual, sane, worth-paying-attention-to-plot, these events would at most have taken up a single goddamn chapter, maybe even just a prologue. In fact, yes- that's the problem! This entire game is pretty much a prologue! The entirety of the story is a setup for... Whatever Halo 6 is going to be, I guess.
> 
> I normally don't care about triple-A first person shooters, but damn it I really liked the Promethian designs in this game, especially the Warden Eternal. And the Sanghelios and Genesis landscapes were absolutely incredible. It's a shame that there's no coherent plot to support them.

>> **u/OrzBrain** [+8]  **Fingers* to *dance*, *hands* to *catch*, *arms* to *pull** (4 hours later)
>> 
>> Well, lets hope that in Halo 6 she acquires a nifty electronic stutter -- "L-l-l-l-l-look at you, Master Chief. A pa-pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone and c-c-c-cool damn armor. (panting and) Panting and sweating as you r-r-run through my corridors. (How, how) How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?"

>>> **u/Transfuturist** [+6]  *Carthago delenda est.* (8 hours later)
>>> 
>>> [;D](http://www.shamusyoung.com/shocked/)

>>>> **u/OrzBrain** [+2]  **Fingers* to *dance*, *hands* to *catch*, *arms* to *pull** (12 hours later)
>>>> 
>>>> OOOOooo! That looks very interesting. I always wanted more Shodan.

>> **u/OutOfNiceUsernames** [+6]  *fear of last pages* (10 hours later)
>> 
>> >[The campaign is essentially five hours of everybody asking "What is Cortana doing? Did she turn evil or insane?",](http://imgur.com/82tfTye) with Cortana essentially being like 'teehee i'm not telling~' until the very last chapter, at which point she's pretty much like "yeah i'm totally evil slash insane now, there's your answer!"

>> **u/alexanderwales** [+4]  *Time flies like an arrow* (5 hours later)
>> 
>> That's a shame, because the original Halo actually had a tight, well-executed plot.

>>> **u/Galap** [+2]  (2 days later)
>>> 
>>> I agree! It's amazing!
>>> 
>>> It's actually pretty dark from a control of your fate standpoint.
>>> 
>>> Basically throughout the course of the game, everything you do matters very little in the grand scheme of events. Most of the important stuff happens off-screen and out of your control. Everything kind of falls apart around you, despite your best efforts. At the end of the day you only barely manage to avert total disaster and are the lone survivor, but you have no way home and on a bigger scale, the Covenant is still out there and still outmatches humanity. You've moved the problem somewhat in time, but you haven't moved beyond your situation.

> **u/JackStargazer** [+7]  *Primordial Apologist* (2 hours later)
> 
> >Bear in mind that the AI show several times that they care about people and even though they are willing to sacrifice in the name of peace they make a concentrated effort to limit casualties as much as they can.
> 
> This is especially true for Cortana herself. This is completely and utterly out of character for her.
> 
> Two possibilities:
> 
> 1. It's not Cortana, just something wearing her face. Cue Boss Battle/ Roaring Rampage of Revenge
> 2. Master Chief gives world's most laconic cooldown speech ever. Great job, the infinite AI overmind sure never could have thought of that. Then either plot-induced-stupidity forced bossfight anyway as EvilAI takes over newly turned Cortana or she asks to be destroyed for what she's done, or something else equally stupid and contrived.

>> **u/LordSwedish** [+3]  *Q Continuum* (3 hours later)
>> 
>> Have you played the game? Cortana spends most of the game trying to get John to come to her so she can explain herself and see if she can trust him. When he finally gets there he already knows most of it, tells her that she should just come back with him (ignoring the fact that she will probably die in 7 years and all other AI definitely will) and she responds by putting him in stasis so she can wake him up once she's turned the galaxy into a utopia.
>> 
>> She is noticeably distraught when she understands that she can't convince him to not oppose her plans and she desperately wants to keep him safe, so she's not an impostor. The problem is that even though she totally acts for the greater good and refuses to back down even after John's laconic speech (he does give one) the next scene after she leaves (she fails to bring John with her in his stasis bubble) is her appearing at Earth and EMPing the entire planet while doing a Jafar impression.

> **u/ansible** [+5]  *The Culture* (4 hours later)
> 
> Annnnnnd.... now I don't have to seriously contemplate buying an Xbox One to play the game.  *Sigh.*  I wasn't all that impressed by the plot of Halo 4 (and large chunks of 2 and 3 didn't make a whole lot of sense either), but this definitely dampens my enthusiasm for the series.

>> **u/uhhguy** [+2]  (10 hours later)
>> 
>> If it's any consolation, the game itself is so far fantastic to play.

>>> **u/LordSwedish** [+1]  *Q Continuum* (21 hours later)
>>> 
>>> Yeah the multiplayer especially is great and even the side stories (covenant and stuff) is fantastic.

> **u/OrzBrain** [+3]  **Fingers* to *dance*, *hands* to *catch*, *arms* to *pull** (an hour later)
> 
> Wait -- Cortana survived Halo 4? AAAAAIIIIEEEEEE! Spoilers! Curse you! *CUARSE YOOOU!*
> 
> *
> 
> *
> 
> *
> 
> . . .Just kidding. Sounds like she should have stayed rampant so she could make reasonable decisions. It worked for Durandal, right?

> **u/Galap** [+3]  (2 days later)
> 
> Me and my friends came up with a general name for this kind of problem. We call it a "corrosive red herring".
> 
> The definition is essentially when what could potentially be an interesting moral dilemma or concept is rendered moot by some separate fact.
> 
> For example, if there's some supposed utopia that's based on some very different moral and societal principals that ends up going off the rails because the society isn't competent at doing what it intended. For a specific example, the anime Psycho Pass. The main conceit is that technology can read people's mental states and determine whether people have criminal intent, thus crimes can be prevented before they happen, and the bad elements are reliably removed from society and sent to therapy. It turns out the therapy is fucked however, and basically consists of enternal One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest imprisonment. What if it worked though? Wouldn't THAT be the much more interesting story?
> 
> See, a corrosive red herring is at its core a cop-out, a way for the storyteller to avoid having to think through the implications of their idea in detail, and avoid having to confront the essence of the moral dilemma that they're trying to set up .

> **u/Vebeltast** [+3]  *You should have expected the bayesian inquisition!* (6 days later)
> 
> I always felt like they got *so close* with rampancy, back around Marathon, and then messed it all up. The fluff is exactly right: AIs that have time to think use it to *think*, and while this does result in the AIs becoming more intelligent and developing personality and so on, eventually AIs tend to a) run of out storage space and b) realize, accurately, that the world kind of sucks and probably particularly sucks for them (I am Durandal, superintellect! i open and close doors. shit.). And the resulting behavior is precisely what you'd expect: depression, then rage, then attempted FOOM.
> 
> And then Halo 4 comes along and it's become entirely disconnected from the thinking part (7 year hard limit... and, what, thinking more *helps* and Cortana stays sane for 8 years despite being stuck in her own head with nothing to do but think for 4 years?) and the behavior is nonsensical (Cortana just starts... randomly flipping between two completely separate utility functions... and glitching out like a cheap walkie-talkie? ô_o).

> **u/OrzBrain** [+2]  **Fingers* to *dance*, *hands* to *catch*, *arms* to *pull** (3 hours later)
> 
> Was any reason given why she now hates tech and decides to emp Earth? She's been corrupted by an (outsourced) Amish virus? She saw Battlestar Galactica (new series) once and went insane from the horror of thinking that humans might think of her in the same breath as the dumbest AIs ever imagined? She's been reading too many "after the end" stories? She wants to starve 99 percent of Earth's population and will enjoy using spybots to watch the poor bastards that remain eating each other (would make sense if she had just watched the complete Battlestar Galactica and was now unable to delete it from her memory).
> 
> Ruling with an iron fist might make sense if you tilt your head and squint, but starving almost everyone on Earth to death doesn't.
> 
> >EMPing the entire planet while doing a Jafar impression
> 
> Do you mean a new Day The Earth Stood still impression?

>> **u/LordSwedish** [+3]  *Q Continuum* (4 hours later)
>> 
>> The way the forerunners did it was that they suppressed technology that could hurt them and they killed anyone who dissented. She recognises that this is wrong and even says "it's not going to be like that" and in her infinite wisdom with a long time to plan this using her AI brain and supercomputers she comes up with a better way.
>> 
>> Her way is using an overwhelming show of force so that nobody will dare to rise up and suppress technology. Bear in mind she has spent a long time on military installations and accompanying John 117 who never give up no matter what the enemy throws at them.

>>> **u/OrzBrain** [+2]  **Fingers* to *dance*, *hands* to *catch*, *arms* to *pull** (5 hours later)
>>> 
>>> I guess it will have to be a *really* overwhelming show of force. When is she planning on activating the Halos?
>>> 
>>> Sounds to me like they could have justified this if the UNSC had been making breakthroughs on miniature halo weapons with dangerous range and potential proliferation problems. Then she could have had to suppress the tech.

>>>> **u/LordSwedish** [+2]  *Q Continuum* (5 hours later)
>>>> 
>>>> Ah, well the Halo's (as far as I'm aware) are all gone and there is absolutely no evidence supporting the fact that humans are even close to doing anything like that. In fact, during the game the covenant rebellion falls and the arbiter becomes the main leader and has a good relationship with humanity so there's not even any "major" wars going on.

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