This article contains spoilers for Halo Infinite.
The Halo series is full of iconic weapons, moments, enemies, and even lines of dialogue, but perhaps nothing is more iconic than the franchise's two main characters: Master Chief and Cortana. The pair are featured in every numbered game, and Halo Infinite is no exception - sort of. Halo Infinite does feature Cortana, but not necessarily as a lot of fans expected her to be featured. Following her mutiny in Halo 5: Guardians, she left Master Chief's side, so to replace her, Chief gets a new AI named Weapon. Weapon fills a lot of the void left by Cortana, but they aren't quite the same. As players continue making their way through the campaign, plenty of comparisons, both conscious and sub-conscious, are made between the two.
There's a lot to like about both characters, but Cortana and Weapon have some distinguishing characteristics that definitely set the pair apart. Because of how little Master Chief speaks, a lot of Halo's personality was given to the series by Cortana. Now that she's out of the picture as Chief's AI side-kick, those duties seem to be resting on Weapon's shoulders for the foreseeable future of the franchise.
Weapon Has Some Big Shoes to Fill
It's unclear if Cortana's role in the Halo franchise has ended following Halo Infinite. In the game, Master Chief discovers that she's been killed and all that remain of her are "dust and echoes." This doesn't stop her from making a few appearances towards the end of the game, but she isn't actually there, just the remnants of her AI. She does, however, sound suspiciously similar to Weapon. The two share the same voice actor, but up until a pivotal moment in the story, there wasn't much connecting the two. As it turns out, Weapon is a new copy of Cortana based on the AI before she turned evil after succumbing to Rampancy.
Although Weapon is a direct copy of Cortana, they aren't exactly the same in every way. Weapon is a little bit more jovial and joke-ey than Cortana was; that's not to say that Cortana didn't have a sense of humor, but Weapon is a lot quippier. She frequently comes across like a less mature version of Chief's AI, which to some extent makes sense given the fact that she's a much younger version of Cortana.
In terms of their actual technical prowess, Weapon and Cortana are virtually indistinguishable. Both run complex programs that do a lot of the essential technical work that Master Chief isn't capable of doing, and both do it with efficiency and speed. While Weapon doesn't ever come across as inept, there are a handful of moments where she does get tripped up over other programs inside the many terminals she gets jacked into during Halo Infinite's campaign, but that seems to be because she simply isn't as experienced as Cortana given her young age.
One of the big questions that Halo Infinite leaves the player with at the end of the game revolves around Weapon and her similarities to Cortana. Because Cortana went bad following Halo 5, Weapon is afraid that she'll go down the same path because she's a copy. Chief reassures her that that won't happen, but there still remain some questions about whether or not Weapon will have the capacity to change. It seems like that question will be addressed in the follow-up to Halo Infinite, which will hopefully explore Weapon as a character even more and continue giving her depth in the same way that the previous games did with Cortana.
Halo Infinite is available now for PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.