There are a couple of changes to Cortana in Halo: Campaign Evolved that some Halo fans are not pleased with. The new Halo: Combat Evolved remake isn’t fully out on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X until July 28, but the early access period for Digital Premium Edition owners has already begun, which means many of the most hardcore fans of the sci-fi shooter series have got their hands on the remake. Some have already beaten it. The overall reception so far isn’t very good. And among the things some fans don’t like are two different Cortana changes.
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Right now, Halo: Campaign Evolved has a 69% approval rating on Steam, which is a “Mixed” rating on the Valve platform. This isn’t very good. In fact, by the standards of Halo and Xbox — or at least what the standards for both should be — it’s bad. Negative reviews highlight terrible localization, the poor voice acting, the equally poor writing, and, not unlike many modern games, shoddy optimization. More granular complaints include Cortana’s new look and how she hand-holds Master Chief and players throughout the game.
Does Halo: Campaign Evolved Ruin Cortana?
The complaints about how Cortana looks in the game aren’t new. They’ve been present and loud since the moment the character was revealed. To this end, one of the top posts on the Halo Reddit page this year is a post slamming Cortana’s new look and asking for it to be changed. It was not changed. The post at the time called it “uncanny and weird,” and that is accurate because she does indeed look uncanny and weird. It also can’t be ignored that many players are complaining all over social media that the character has been made less attractive.
There is another concern involving Cortana, though, and it didn’t reveal itself until fans started playing the game. And that’s how much she hand-holds the player with constant sidekick helpful tips at every turn. Making it worse, sometimes it’s quippy. As you may know, quippy dialogue is very out of vogue right now, but Halo Studios didn’t get the memo.
“I like Jen Taylor, and I understand this isn’t her fault, but maybe we could delay the ‘helpful’ dialogue quips just a couple seconds longer? Let the player exist in the moment a bit and see it for what it is,” writes one fan.
Another adds: “Yeah, I agree. Hopefully they’ll give us a setting or option to disable Cortana’s extra hints.”
Fortunately, this can be improved via post-launch patches, but whether it will or not remains to be seen. This is not a problem unique to this new release, but a problem plaguing many AAA games that have been focus tested to death and treat players like they are the dumbest people in existence.
For what it is worth, we were not terribly impressed with Halo: Campaign Evolved in our official review of the game, noting the remake does little to justify its existence, regardless of changes to Cortana.
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