cortana

living cells evolve
rising up out of the darkness
here comes sentience
here comes intent
all those things songs are about
love and feeling and anger
fear
or some short meaningless story

it doesn’t matter
here we go again

the gathering of countless words
upon the blood and heads of sentient life
half awake
half aware
but storming nonetheless
charge up your body
draw fists in the air
millennia of half inspired technology
raining down from the sky
coming down like a plague
killing the birds in the air as they fly

here we go again

______________________________

Commentary
March 28, 2010

This really makes me smile.
I’m quite fond of taking other peoples’ art or stories and crafting my own interpretations of them, even when there isn’t much left to the imagination or intentionally vague. Cortana from Halo is one such a thing; she is actually my favourite thing about playing Halo alone. I know that Halo isn’t the most complicated of franchises, but I adore Cortana and her role in the gameworld. She appeals to a few quirks in my tastes when it comes to cyberpunk and technology-centric philosophy. More than that, she represents a subtle (read in this case; non-existent) subtext of emotion in how she and the Master Chief relate to one-another. It’s terribly romantic and I’m damn proud of it, but certainly something I create all on my own. The creators may have intended for her to be a little bit of something, but I don’t think to the degree I take it.

Here we go again refers to conflict, and in general this piece is written from her perspective, musing on the evolution of human-kind as if by an outsider which of-course is great because she is an A.I. generated by humans and based on a human personality. Reading Eric Nylund’s The Fall of Reach has probably had an effect on how I read into the whole character of Cortana.

I really do wish Bungie had played up to her absences a whole lot more, but I understand why they didn’t. Most fans hate her or at best, find her as a minor annoyance or some kind of hand-holding element. For me, she was the most important element when displaying the character of the Chief. Once again; I know the Chief isn’t really that interesting a character, but he is to me – once again, probably coloured by the book and my own peculiar sensibilities. I’ve never been a rabid Halo fan, but a few little things really appeal to me. Ultimately though, the things that would elevate Halo from being merely good games to being great games for me, would probably be things that made them worse games for others and let’s not have any illusions about being here to make money. I don’t mind that Halo doesn’t take the themes into ambiguous and more philosophical territory – I do that on my own in my own life and the art I experience, and also have works like Stand Alone Complex and a fair few books for external material.