Halo. Microsoft's Mario. The FPS prodigy, loved by the masses, and hated by the fans of the competition. But love it or hate it, you know two things.

1. It rocked. Even if it wasnt your cup of tea, it was still worth a few sips every time.

and 2. It is NOT over.

While Bungie is stepping out of the limelight, Microsoft is not letting go, putting 343 Studios in charge of the Halo franchise, lore and all. And while Bungie was more than happy to step away from the the lone hero antics for their farewell from Halo, 343 most defiantly will not.

it is almost assured that the next official Halo game will follow Master Chief onto whatever planet he was last seen drifting towards, but what is unknown is exactly what he will be facing once he awakens. A land of savage Elites? A new form of Flood? Lost Forerunners? The people of Marathon?

While all of those are good possible theories, i have one of my own that is very natural in the evolution of Halo lore. I think the next big bad in the Halo Universe is... Cortana.

If your a devout follower of the Halo stores, you know that Cortana is considered a "smart A.I.". These Smart A.I.'s are designed to operate at the levels of an overly genius human. They are smarter than normal A.I.'s in multiple fields of expertise, and have the ability to hypothesize. To think in ways that are normally human.

The downside to these A.I.'s is that they are still just machines. As they compile data, and begin to think more and more, developing their own identities and conciseness', and compiling massive amounts of data, they begin to break. In most cases, they simply shut down. Short circuit from the sheer mass of information. In other cases, they attempt to protect themselves against the first outcome by deleting lesser data. And if you are into sci-fi, you know that machines tend to see morals and emotions as lesser data.

To counteract both of these outcomes, most A.I.'s are decommissioned after a few years, their data stored, studied, and the more useful info shared with other A.I.'s as deemed necessary. But Cortana has been active for well over the standard amount of time. She has collected more data on The Covenant, The Forerunners, The Flood, and human beings than probably every A.I. combined. She has also developed a personality, similar to that of her maker Doctor Halsey, but with her own flair of attitude and logic, much like a daughter. And of course the often hinted at romance she "feels" towards Master Chief.

So what happens when an A.I., pushed to all of its limits and then some, with more data than anything before it, goes batty? There is allot of proof that its already happened, in game and out. In the ending of Halo 2, we see her begin to communicate with the Gravemind like an equal, something most computers and A.I.'s wouldnt do. But Cortana seemed to bypass the part of her programing that saw him as a threat, and gave into the idea of him being something worth sharing information with.

This carried over into halo 3, where Cortana seemed to be portraying erratic behavior through the Gravemind's telepathic link. How an A.I. was able to link telepathically to a parasitic being is beyond me, as she shouldnt have the ability to telepathically link without a brain. But if she is evolving to the point of having a truly artificial brain....

The final and possible most damning evidence comes from Halo Legends, the collection of Halo Universe stories animated by various anime studios. In Legends, Cortana actually shows signs of glitching and advanced technology as she makes a life-sized hologram of herself to speak to the frozen Master Chief.

Needless to say, Cortana has evolved into a different type of creature since she was handed off to Master Chief in on Reach. With the possible telepathy, the entire histories of multiple species, the development of deep emotions, and the possibility of her core systems eliminating programs that would keep her "human", it is all too possible that Cortana can become the next big dangerous adversary for Master Chief to topple.

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