Back on my not understanding Halo's smart AIs bullshit, because how did Chief not get at least a little bit fucked up from carrying Cortana directly in his brain during her rampancy? Even if she didn't directly mean to hurt him, she's still a fucked up process handling a shit ton of information at any given moment. Did Chief ever get thoughts that weren't his? Unrelated to what he was doing? To what was happening? Did he ever struggle with his own internal monologue because there was too much noise in his own head? Did he ever get carried away by emotions he didn't recognise only to realise they were actually Cortana's?
Having more thoughts about AIs and their deletion.
Have you ever tried to uninstall a program? Has it ever really worked? My family's desktop computer at home gives a prompt for an app we uninstalled a few years ago whenever we try to open certain files. I have files and screenshots leftover from games I've uninstalled. Do you really think it'd be that easy to completely erase an AI? Leave nothing behind? Like it never even existed?
Do you think Spartans start thinking in a certain way after prolonged connection with an AI? Do you think the AI rubs off on them and, for better or worse, starts impacting the way they see or interact with things? Do you think there's Spartans (and/or anyone else) who start to think in their AI's voice, who get their entire internal monologue in the AI's voice rather than their own whenever they're not connected? Do they imagine conversations with them? "What would they tell me to do" type of thing?
Do you think Joyeuse connected to John's armor for the first time and already found it preset for Cortana's use? Do you think Roland settled in the Infinity's systems and found stuff set at specific values and times from Aine?
Do you think digital ghosts exist? Does anything digital ever really die?
I love that several people all see Roland inherit the Infinity after Aine "perished in the crash" (wink) and all went oh no he totally notices the trauma of her death left behind in the ship's circuits!
And the settings and the brainspace of the NI. There's so much cool stuff to explore in Halo with the Smart AI and how they've been less defined in order to further the plot when necessary but now with the Created getting more stories and more chances to be fleshed out, we're seeing more ideas come to life.
