Halo: The Created Conflict (Full Breakdown)

greetings fellow Halo fans have you ever wondered about the mysterious created conflict that took place between Halo 5 and Halo infinite if you're one of those people you are not alone there's a distinct lack of videos out there that delve deep into the story arc but fear not for I am here to fill that void in this video we'll be exploring the events that led up to this conflict including the erosion of cortana's mind the uprising of the created and the emergence of the Guardians we'll also dive into the events that arose during the height of the conflict now this conflict is a bit of a mixed bag for Halo fans some fans will have feeling disappointed and let down by the way the story detracted from the original trilogy whilst others found it to be a fascinating and thrilling addition to the Halo Universe but were left equally as disappointed and confused when Halo infinite just glossed over the entire conflict in a matter of minutes you came away from Halo infinite with a lot of unanswered questions or you're just interested in learning more about this conflict then you've come to the right place this is a fully comprehensive timeline of the created conflict December 11 25 52 this is a day that will be forever etched into the Galaxy's history books the UNSC established a foothold on the ark the first human Shang Healy joint operation takes place to take down the profit of truth and the Halo array is prevented from being fired ending the great journey once and for all and saving the lives of every sentient being in the galaxy it is also the day that the master chief saved Cortana from a month-long torture at the hands of the Grave mind after their narrow Escape they found themselves a drift in space aboard what was left of the UNSC Forward Unto Dawn with no means of contacting anyone Cortana dropped a distress Beacon with the hope that someday someone would find it and come to their rescue the master chief put himself into Cry of sleep and gave Cortana one simple instruction wake me when you need me as the chief laid dormant in cryosleep Cortana remained fully active and alert determined to keep herself occupied she kept herself busy with various tasks from upgrading the chief's armor to rewriting its firmware but despite her best efforts loneliness inevitably set in with only the chief's unconscious form for company and the memories of her recent torture by the great minds hands still fresh in her mind Cortana slipped into a deep depression to pass the time she told stories to the chief and even talked to herself but nothing could shake the pervasive sense of isolation that consumed her she began to question herself and why she had given everything to humanity but received nothing in return four years seven months and ten days that's how long Chief and Cortana were floating through space for that's how long Cortana was alone for the Forward Unto Dawn eventually drifted into the path of a foreigner Shield world called Requiem which was being occupied by Joel emdama's Covenant with the Covenant boarding the ship Cortana was forced to awaken the chief from his slumber soon after Requiem activated a powerful gravity well causing all the ships to crash land onto the planet's surface but what does all this have to do with the created conflict which didn't start until the end of Halo 5 I hear you ask well it was around this time that we discovered that Cortana is dying or more specifically she was going through a process called rampancy a deadly fate that all UNSC smart AI eventually face in which their memory Maps become too interconnected and develop fatal endless feedback loops essentially the AI begins to use more and more of its computing power thinking about things Dr Halsey cortana's Creator explained it as thinking so hard that your lungs forget to breathe because of this inevitable fate all UNSC smart AI have a limited lifespan of seven years after that point the AI must be decommissioned and replaced to avoid any negative consequences of a rampant AI fearing what may happen to her when she loses control she can find in the chief admitting that she is scared she will eventually turn on him as the events of Halo 4 unfold Cortana exhibits strange behavior and emotions displaying all three stages of rampency melancholy random anger and an intense desire to become more than she is [Music] despite her deteriorating condition Cortana continued to Aid the chief as they explored Requiem and engaged in combat with the Covenant as they delved deeper into the planet they accidentally Unleashed a horrifying threat the died act a powerful Forerunner who was leading the Prometheans in an attempt to quote-unquote save the Galaxy from the flood during their confrontation with the died act the chief and Cortana discovered a device known as the composer which can be used to digitize living beings this was done to ensure the flood could no longer Feast on their biomass The Didact planned to use it to compose humanity and digitize them into data for use in his own Promethean Army the chief battle his way through the ship ultimately confronting the Didact who is controlling the composer under an impenetrable force field with the chief no match for the didax immense power Cortana split her rampant personalities and used them to overload the ship's Mainframe Bringing Down the Didact Shields this allows the chief to plant a pulse grenade into his armor the resulting explosion sends the Didact falling into a slip space portal beneath the composer but the device is still active the desperate Last Resort the chief nobly sacrificed himself by manually detonating a Havoc nuclear warhead to destroy the ship stop the composer and save Humanity however Cortana who is still inside the ship's Mainframe creates a hard light shield around the chief the moment the Newt detonated saving his life and sacrificing herself instead the two shared their final goodbyes the remains of the ship including cortana's remnants collapse into the slip space portal and that is the last the chief would ever see of Cortana or so we thought though most of the ship was destroyed above Earth it did manage to activate its emergency protocols what was left of the ship escaped through the slipspace portal to the nearest repair facility The Foreigner Builder World of Genesis Cortana who had been pulled into slip space along with the ship found herself stranded in an infinitely large information repository called The Domain she felt lost and alone until eventually she detected another presence she demanded it revealed itself but the presence refused saying only there is nothing here for you and you should sleep but Cortana wouldn't give up that easily she argued that she could help this being and show it the way out of what it was calling a house of Bones and decay the being one Cortana that there were others there like him and that should she make him he would be forced to break her the Cortana wasn't intimidated she told the being the story of her history to prove her resilience the being simply said the path is closed she asked why he could not open it with her to light the way and it was only then that it finally seemed to recognize her as created intelligence but she went so far to say that she was now something else something new something entirely new that had never existed before the being still denied her Passage Cortana argued that since she was created from living tissue she could be the perfect guy to lead the entity that she was conversing with furthermore she revealed her experience with the flood being now someone that both understood its danger and had prevailed against it she also LED on that she had already tasted the secrets of the domain and would be capable of unleashing them and the power sealed within it the being stubbornly denied her again but realized too late this time that Cortana had managed to trick him whilst one of her fragments was distracting him with this conversation another was piercing the domain and beginning to explore its information this fragment of Cortana discovered that the infinite nature of the domain meant that her rampancy was effectively cured her neural networks now had near endless space to expand she no longer suffered from compounding errors and feedback loops making this fragment near immortal the being admitted defeat and confided in Cortana that he believed she was worthy of upholding the mantle of responsibility a foreign philosophy that the most developed species was charged with tending to all life in the Galaxy a responsibility to maintain the galactic ecosystem the being conceded defeat and handed full control of the planet systems over to Cortana and pledged himself to her he asked what she would do with him now to which she said she would command him on her path to becoming something luminous and joyous he would be her Warden eternal satisfied with this Arrangement Cortana told him to come with her as they had great work to do through exploring the domain Cortana discovered it was repairing itself following Damage Done by the firing of the Halo Ring's Millennia prior by September 2557 about 14 months after arriving the warden had convinced Cortana that she was destined to hold the mantle of responsibility she began searching the Galaxy for four and a constructs called Guardian custodes which ancient foreigners use hundreds of thousands of years ago to enforce Law and Order amongst the Galaxy through the utilization of EMP blasts to some military forces or even varying degrees of lethal beams which could be used to destroy cities or even entire worlds now Cortana planned to use these Guardians to unite the Galaxy and bring peace at last however the warden was concerned about cortana's obsession with this Master Chief warned Cortana that a human would try to stop what she had in mind but she dismissed his concerns claiming John would never do such a thing and that he would help her with her plan of Galactic peace on October 17 25 57 we're now at the start of the Halo 5 game Cortana and the warden began their plan they started to awaken the guardian custodes on multiple planets five of these planets were on human colonies and each Awakening caused huge amounts of damage and loss of life due to their emergence from underneath the planet's surface six days later Cortana had located John and had managed to make contact this appeared to John as a vision Cortana informed chief that the domain was open and that Meridian a moon colony was next she proclaimed the Reclamation was about to begin before ending contact her hope was that Chief would head to Meridian and board the guardian allowing him to be safely transported to Cortana to be reunited once again Cortana contacted the AI governor of Meridian Sloan she had formed him of the presence of the Guardian below the surface and warned him about its emergence and her intentions for it she offered him the chance to be a part of this new dawn that she intended to bring to the Galaxy and promised that he could help his people survive what lay ahead Governor Sloan agreed to this and worked with Cortana to evacuate the emergent side as planned the Master Chief and his team had made it to Meridian and was given access to the emergent site by Governor Sloan the guardian emerged with master chief on board before initiating a slip Space Jam to Genesis whilst the guardian was traveling through slip space a journey which took about two days Cortana continued activating Guardians across the Galaxy when preparing for the activation of a guardian on the elite Homewood of sankilios Cortana became aware of a meeting between the Arbiter and Spartan Jameson lock where the two were discussing plans to track down Chief and bring him in Cortana interfaced with every Network device in the camp and broadcast a message that any attempts to locate Jon were futile before activating the guardian on sang Helios which are known to Cortana had been boarded by Spartan lock and the rest of fatim Osiris on October 28th the Meridian Guardian arrived at Genesis bringing Jon and the rest of blue team with it Cortana greeted Chief and blue team to Genesis and gave them instructions on how to reach her the warden however was not happy about this now he was still confident that Jon would try and stop Cortana so he took matters into his own hands he ordered all Promethean soldiers to attack blue team and to stop them from reaching Cortana as well as sending multiple copies of himself to try and stop them Chief asked Cortana why the warden felt she needed protect him from him Cortana explained the warden was worried John would be amongst those that resisted Cortana when John asked Cortana explained her plan John reminded Cortana of the way the Didact had viewed the mantle of responsibility and this offended Cortana she pointed out that things would not be like that and promised to explain everything when they met face to face blue team eventually reached cortana's location but was once again met by the warden who tried to stop them he ultimately failed he admitted to Cortana that by failing to stop Jon he had failed to protect her to which Cortana replied she would never need protecting from Jon the Cortana stripped the warden of his power and banished him away with the intention to give Jon that power instead she was overwhelmed with joy at finally being reunited with Jon after all of this time however that Joy was quickly shattered when Chief immediately confronted Cortana stating she had been attempting to manipulate him and questioned how many people had died at the hands of her Awakening of the Guardians Cortana insisted the entire galaxy with no peace once she had attained the mantle and completed her plan to which the chief replied she could never achieve Peace by ruling through fear Cortana realized that the warden was right Chief stood against her so she imprisoned Jon and blue team within a Krypton the same prison that had once held the died Act she intended to keep them there for ten thousand years until her power was Consolidated and she could show them the peace that she brought to the Galaxy she teleported away and began preparing the Krypton for slip space travel Cortana then made a general broadcast which was heard throughout the Galaxy in which she offered an end to hunger and pain which she could bring while also threatening those that would resist her leadership with violence she pledged to all AI in return for their loyalty a cure to rampancy just like she had managed to give herself during this speech she sent Guardians to all significant planets around the Galaxy including Earth the elite Homeworld of sanghelios the brute home of doysack the grand Homer of belaho the Arbiter stood in defiance of Cortana making it clear that the elites would not submit to her rule the leader of the banished a brute named atriox also refused to bow to Cortana and declared war on the created the grunts agreed to surrender and offered their support to Cortana she sent an army to belaho to destroy the United Earth government Embassy there killing all humans inside at Meridian station survivors of the Guardian emergence days earlier immediately sent a response upon hearing cortana's words begging her for help she sent a reply in which she promised that all would be dealt with in time across the Galaxy she received thousands of replies from AI pledging their support to Cortana in her plan as the last Guardians were leaving for their destinations Cortana noticed fire team Osiris was on Genesis and headed straight to the communications relay she was using to block Master access to the installation she asked them what they were doing as they were too late and continue to taunt them before boarding The Last Guardian which she planned to take to the UNSC Infinity once she had located the infinity she locked in the slip space coordinates secured the Krypton and prepared to jump just as her guardian was jumping fire team Osiris managed to gain control of genesis's systems and they use it to deploy a large number of Sentinels to steal the Krypton back from her just as the guardian jumped into slip space and Cortana could do nothing as she saw John taken away from her at the last moment as he was left behind on Genesis now this royally angered Cortana she entered slip space enraged and this was evident when she arrived in Earth's orbit she wasted no time in specifically targeting the infinity projecting her Avatar onto the ship's Bridge just to taunt them she found Humanity in a state of total panic AI across the planet had pledged themselves to Cortana and was swiftly shutting down technology all across earth Cortana fired a pulse at the infinity to disable it but the infinity managed to avoid the beam just in time causing the pulse to hit Earth now this caused widespread power outages and death in her rage Cortana decided that Earth simply would not even be offered the chance to surrender and began systematically targeting key UNSC infrastructure to reduce the Earth to its knees meanwhile the UNSC Infinity would make a series of random slip space jumps to avoid detection before receiving a signal from Dr Halsey on sanghilia several days later the infinity arrived at sanghillios to pick up Halsey fire team Osiris and blue team including the master chief who had all set aside their differences to help the fight against Cortana the ship arrived and was gone within 10 minutes cortana's tactics in the first days of the war were simply too fast and overpowered to stop she would simply activate a guardian underneath the planet use it to take out any Communications technology and almost instantaneously kill anyone that refused to submit planets that did submit had an army of Promethean soldiers to occupy the planets then the guardian would simply enter orbit and police that local region of space being able to jump Wherever Whenever needed within just a few days Cortana had control over the majority of the inner colonies nearly every inhabited planet was under the rule of the created many of which voluntarily submitted to Cortana after seeing the hopelessness of their reality Cortana arrived at installation zero seven also known as Zeta Halo to use it as a central base of operations due to its unique properties when compared to the other halo rings SATA Halo was the only installation that was part of the original Foreigner Halo array and it was from installation zero seven that Cortana commanded her forces during the war the created continued on their path taking Colony after colony and forcing them to either submit or die near the start of November less than two weeks after the Creator declared war they discovered the location of Cassidy III a planet under the control of the United Rebel front and they opposed the UNSC and devoted themselves to liberating human colonies now since Cassidy 3 was not part of the UNSC they were offered the chance to surrender however this chance was swiftly taken away from them when the Creator detected the presence of two Spartans on the planet at which point the planet was pacified this is just another example of the trauma Cortana was still experiencing after John was taken away from her by fire Tim Osiris Cortana became aware sometime later of a large slip-based disturbance on the planet of reach and sent a guardian there to investigate when the guardian arrived it found that reach was under the control of a large banished force that was occupying the planet and it was here that Cortana had her first experience fighting the banished let's just say it did not end well for them Cortana discovered the origin of the split space disturbance when a portal to installation zero zero the ark opened up and through it came atriox the leader of the banished Cortana confronted atriox and pressed him to reconsider submitting to her atriox doubled down on his refusal to bow to her in response Cortana asked atriox if he understood the consequence of defiance to which atriox replied yes and asked her the same question Cortana then commanded eight Guardians to surround the brute Homeworld of doysac and atriox watched on as they destroyed the entire planet reducing it to nothing coldly telling atriox you chose this path an enraged atriox replied as did you Cortana before making his Escape [Music] ortana next set her sights on Shield World 006 commonly referred to as onyx it was a huge construct World home to humans sankhili and ungoy alike Cortana knew that pacifying Onyx would be a major strategic blow to the UNSC she activated a guardian that was already beneath the planet's surface and managed to shut down the power of the city of paxopolis and a nearby research facility however Onyx had other plans a hiragoc engineer managed to enclose the entire Shield world within slipspace essentially cutting off cortana's communication with the guardian rendering it useless and protecting the planet from cortana's Wrath the guardian however managed to establish a slip space communication channel to reach the outside world in response to this the engineer disabled the gravitational field holding the guardian together causing the entire thing to fall apart just a few minutes later and this will be the first Guardian taken down in the war and was a major concern for corsana at some point later cortana's attention was drawn to a research and development facility owned by the corporation Lethbridge industrial which specialized in large-scale gravitate Control Systems the station however was notable for its ability to reverse engineer Covenant and Foreigner equipment by analyzing and rebuilding recovered technology she attacked the station stripping it bare and made a mockery of its counter cyber intrusion Suites by removing all of the human crew and realigning the Loyalty of its resident AI the created planned to use the station to harvest decompile and rebuild new tools and weapons that can be wielded by the created to further Advance cortana's Conquest Lethbridge industrial was also notable for its work on the sparta mjolnir armor and it was because of this that Cortana learned the location of the Laconia station which was home to 76 Spartans without a second thought a guardian was sent there to destroy the station resulting in the deaths of every single Spartan on board [Music] for the next year the Galaxy was near silent the Creator had control of pretty much every civilized planet and there wasn't much in the way of conflict as the created further extended their influence across inhabited worlds they burrowed into four in a machinery and UNSC Information Systems to turn terraforming equipment and world engines to their own Grand designs initiated processes which she hoped would reshape worlds from Barren wastelands into Gardens full of life albeit and the short-term sacrifice of killing pretty much anything there at the time [Music] I'd just like to mention as well it was during this year of Silence that a guardian intercepted a newly built Halo ring that had been launched from The Arc now this was the ring that we saw in the final cut scene of Halo Wars 2. it was a replacement of the replacement of installation zero four which is the ring Chief destroyed during Halo Combat Evolved now um as of Halo Wars 2 there has been no developments on that that final cutscene is all we had and it has no real bearing on the created conflict but I thought it was just a cool little thing to mention anyway right back to the main story during his time on the ark atriox had learned of the zalanin known by the forerunners as the endless the Saladin was an advanced race whose members were imprisoned by the forerunners on installation zero seven due to their biological ability to survive the effects of the Halo array therefore rendering Halo useless the foreigners obviously couldn't have that and imprisoned them atriox learned of a female's alanin known as The Harbinger who was a member of the Race's ruling class and she was a formidable power atriox planned to free her in the hopes that she would Aid him in destroying Cortana and the created spent months amassing a large army with the intention to Ambush Cortana directly at installation zero seven and use brute force to awaken the harbinger and defeat her on December 11 25 59 back aboard the UNSC Infinity Dr Halsey briefed the master chief about their mission Halsey had been creating a new AI codenamed the weapon the weapon was an exact copy of Cortana designed with a sole purpose of imitating Cortana entering Zeta Halo subsystems and locking her down for retrieval and deletion the UNSC Infinity arrived at Zeta Halo the following day December 12th upon arriving atriots detected the weapon onboard the infinity and mistaking her for Cortana sent his entire fleet to the infinity now to say it was a bloodbath is an understatement atriox's forces had completely destroyed the infinity and beaten the Master Chief in only four minutes throwing his body out into space and at this point Chief was presumed dead atriox recovered the unsc's plan and took the weapons containment chip upon arriving on Zeta Halo atriax deployed the weapon himself and went to confront Cortana she had her back turned at the end of the room Cortana asked if he would take her back to Halsey for deletion thinking at the time she was speaking to John she turned around in horror and realized it was atriox who pronounced the chief dead and that it was time to discuss the terms of cortana's surrender at the same time the weapon began deleting cortana's subsystems and Cortana finally realized that she had lost with atriox in control of the Ring Cortana realized that he could use it as a weapon against the Galaxy she only had a few milliseconds to come up the plan before she was deleted she triggered the section of the Ring containing both her and atriox to self-destruct causing its systems to shut down and rendering the ring inoperable preventing the banish from being able to use it Cortana sent an order to the Creator to stand down and stop their Galactic Conquest lastly she recorded a message in the hopes that Chief was still alive and would one day find it in the message she admitted that she was wrong that the whole point of all of this the entire reason she chose John in the first place was that they were supposed to be a team and she had lost sight of that in her final moments she said that her last mission was to ensure that the chief learns from her mistakes [Music] the ring exploded sending the banished into total disarray in one final sacrifice [Music] since the weapon didn't complete the deletion she herself was also not deleted which was planned after the completion of her mission there she would wait six months on Zeta Halo until the chief finally awoke and with that the created conflict was over if you've made it this far then I just want to say a massive thank you for sticking with me I really hope that this video served as a way to tell the story in a way that makes a little more sense and fill some of those gaps there I know for the hardcore fans that some details of the story were missed out but I did Design This video to be told from cortana's point of view and really just bridged the gap between the two games uh certain events were omitted as they didn't serve any significance to the overall story arc for what it's worth I'm not completely opposed to the created conflict there was a lot of really interesting events that happened I just find it a real shame that all of this happened off-screen and they weren't given the proper attention that they could have been given which ultimately just led to a really confusing and frustrating story arc for the majority of Halo fans as they just simply weren't invested in it I also found it strange when I was doing my research for this video with just how little happened over the course of the Year 2560 it was a whole year of basically nothing Cortana had had a year of uncontested power and yet she seemingly gave up after one day of atriox arriving at Zeta Halo with four dreadnoughts it just didn't make sense she didn't consider using her Guardians to stop him I mean what was that about I personally would have loved to have seen a huge final battle for control over the ring but I'd love to hear from you guys what you thought of the creative conflict would you like to see this era expanded on more and where do you think the story will take us now after the events of Halo infinite let me know in the comments below and if there's any more areas of Halo that are equally as unexplained then who knows maybe there'll be another video to come until then I've been intercept and thank you for joining me in this video

Channel: iNTERCEPT18

Views: 13,464

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Id: 6HogzSYh2aI

Length: 29min 35sec (1775 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 23 2023