Skip to main content

The voice behind Halo’s Cortana reflects on the character’s 21-year journey

No matter what sphere of gaming you frequent, it’s hard to escape Halo. This first-person shooter has successfully reinvented itself multiple times since its initial debut on the original Xbox in 2001. It’s a feat that wouldn’t be possible without it’s cast of characters like Master Chief and his sidekick, the artificial intelligence Cortana.

HALO INFINITE - Master Chief Meets The Weapon Cutscene

While Chief is the face of the series, some consider Cortana the true center of Halo’s universe. Like Chief, Cortana has gone through vast changes throughout Halo’s history. While these many arcs and versions all paint Cortana in different lights, they all share one variable: the voice actress behind the program, Jen Taylor.

Master Chief looking at Cortana in Halo 3.

Since the original Halo, Taylor has played multiple versions of everyone’s favorite AI. We’ve seen her as a brilliant, wisecracking Cortana in the original Halo trilogy, a fresh and goofier version of her in Halo Infinite, and this year she’s become her full self in the Halo television show. So how does she keep the character so familiar to us all while reinventing her along with the series? At MomoCon 2022, I spoke with Taylor about her years of playing Cortana and how she’s grown alongside the character over the years.

Raising Cortana

“So much of it has to do with timeline and knowing which arc I’m playing,” Taylor tells Digital Trends. “I feel like, especially with Cortana, I’ve become so familiar with her after playing her for 21 years that I feel very comfortable finding her. It feels more like different aspects of her personality that I’m focusing on. I’m just exploring and getting to know them. It also depends on my director and how they pushed me. I’m working with a lot of other people and I don’t want to take solo credit for this project because there’s so many people working on this character.”

Cortana in Halo 2.

While she’s quite literally grown with the character, there are pieces of Cortana that shocked Taylor during her long run with the character. For the Halo 4 saga, 343 Industries franchise creative director Josh Holmes revealed Cortana’s rampancy was based on dementia going on within Holmes’ family. When asked about this, Taylor was visibly shocked and said she felt an added layer to her relationship with Cortana, years after that performance.

“If that’s true, that’s remarkable. My own father is going through that, so that is a really remarkable thing that I’ve just learned from you and shocking to me that I didn’t know,” Taylor says.

It was an emotional experience for me at the time.

I was directed to play as many different facets and extreme sides of one’s personality, and we blended them all together,” she says. “For example, my director for those scenes pushed me to explore all these different sides. Like ‘OK, we’re going to do standard Cortana voice reading this particular line. And now I want you to do baby Cortana. And now I want you to do Wizard Cortana.’ I mean, we did as many different variations, sort of personalities, as you say, that we could come up with. They blended them all together to become one, so those takes when she’s starting to fracture are actually like 20 different takes blended together.”

“Now that you tell me that, it’s even more intense. So I’m going to have to process that stuff ’cause I didn’t know that that was actually happening.”

Cortana and the Chief

Like Cortana, Taylor hasn’t gone through this journey alone. Or so I thought. While Cortana and Master Chief have been side by side since 2001, I was blown away that Taylor and Chief’s voice actor, Steve Downes, didn’t physically meet until 2011.

“We had never met until 10 years into the process,” Taylor says. “After Halo 3 came out, there was a celebration, and at the 10-year anniversary I just walked right up and gave him the biggest bear hug in the world.”

I felt like, you are the only other person on the planet who understands the journey that I’ve been on.

Halo 4 is the only project that we worked actually in the booth together. We came in to voice over these motion capture actors’ performances. So we got to be together in the room, and that was a remarkable experience. I think that personally when I watch Halo 4 cutscenes, I can feel that connected energy.”

Downes isn’t the only Chief Taylor’s Cortana has partnered up with either. The Halo television series recently finished its first season and introduced us all to a new take on the dynamic duo. Unsurprisingly, the showrunners knew exactly who they wanted as Cortana.

“They came to me partway through filming when, COVID shut everything down,” she detailed. “I got a call in August of 2020 asking me If I would audition. So I read six or seven of the scenes via Zoom, filmed it with me walking around being Cortana. Then they had a callback where it was just a Zoom meeting and I read the scenes with them. Right after that, I was in.”

Cortana in the Halo television series.

“As far as how different it was versus the games, we used the same technology that I’m very familiar with, which is performance capture,” Taylor says. “But I’m doing performance capture on a TV show, so there’s a ton of technical stuff that I’m having to deal with that I wouldn’t normally. Also nobody else I’m working with is doing motion capture. Everybody else is live performance. So that was strange.”

It was an interesting challenge to try to maintain the character within that.

While she’s new to motion capturing alongside real-life actors, Taylor is no stranger to live productions that don’t require her in an ADR studio. In fact, she’s also done live television and her mainstay, theater.

“They’re all so different. But in the end, we’re all pretending. I don’t know that I have a favorite because I love the aspects of each of them,” she said. “I just finished doing a pla,y and it is such a different experience in that you’re telling a whole story each night. You have a full arc that you get to play in, explore, and control to a certain point. When you’re doing TV or performance capture, you’re doing just a fraction of a scene. Oftentimes, you’re doing a moment over and over and over again. You dive into a moment and examine it almost minutely in TV or film. I think that becomes a skill and an art to figure out how to blend that and how to make that an arc.”

No matter the medium, Taylor shows no signs of slowing down with her acting career. Whether it’s through the voice of our favorite AI, in the Halo television show, or in Broadway plays, she’s constantly honing her craft. Like Cortana, she’s constantly evolving with each new experience.

Topics
DeAngelo Epps
De'Angelo Epps is a gaming writer passionate about the culture, communities, and industry surrounding gaming. His work ranges…
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse features an incredible video game Easter egg
Miles Morales falls through a multiverse portal in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is out now and it contains a wealth of Easter eggs for video fans to obsess over. It's full of references to Spidey's history, from his comic books to cartoons and beyond. The animated sequel even includes some nods to the franchise's video game history, leading to one of its best (and most obscure) references: Spider-Man for the Atari 2600.

(A quick heads up if you're afraid of spoilers: This article contains some very light story details for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.)

Read more
Best gaming laptop deals: Portable gaming rigs from $600
The Alienware x17 R2 Gaming Laptop viewed from the back.

If you're keen to game while on the move, you need a sweet gaming laptop. Regular laptop deals won't cut it as you need something with a dedicated graphics card and maybe even something with some cool gamer looks too. Gaming laptops aren't cheap but that doesn't mean there aren't some great deals around. If you're looking to invest in a cool new gaming laptop, we've picked out the current best deals around right now. We've considered different budgets as well as different requirements so there's something for everyone below. Take a look and see what appeals to you.
Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 -- $600, was $900

Known as one of the best laptop brands for both gaming and business purposes, Lenovo knows how to make a robust system. The Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 packs a lot into its great price tag. It has an AMD Ryzen 5 5600H processor, 8GB of memory and 256GB of SSD storage. More storage space would be nice but if you're fine just having a few games installed at once, this won't slow you down. It also has an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti graphics card which is great for playing the latest games if you don't mind tweaking the detail level. As well as that, there's a 15.6-inch full HD screen, white backlit keyboard and a cool-looking style to the laptop.

Read more
Nintendo Switch’s weirdest launch game is getting a surprise sequel
Key art for Everybody 1-2-Switch!

Nintendo has quietly announced Everybody 1-2-Switch!, a sequel to one of the oddest launch titles for Nintendo Switch.
1-2-Switch! was a Nintendo Switch launch title that served as a tech demo of sorts for the Joy-Con controllers, with players completing minigames based on direction from actors in live-action clips. It's a very quirky and critically divisive Nintendo Switch game, so it's a bit surprising to see a follow-up. According to the eShop listing for Everybody 1-2-Switch!, this game lets players use their Joy-Cons or smartphones to complete a variety of team-based minigames. And that's about all we've seen or know about this $30 game ahead of its June 30 launch alongside some new pastel Joy-Cons.

Everybody 1-2-Switch!'s announcement was quite unorthodox for Nintendo. It simply tweeted about the game's existence and opened up preorders on the eShop. This all happened with no reveal trailer less than a month before the game's launch. It's unknown why Nintendo's taking this approach instead of including the game in a Nintendo Direct or other major showcase, but a 2022 report from Fanbyte may reveal the answer. According to that report, Everybody 1-2-Switch! tested horribly, and Nintendo worried that the game could "damage the company’s reputation as a great software developer." 
Almost a year after that report, it seems that the game has improved enough to release, or maybe Nintendo is just willing to take the hit after the impressive launch and critical reception of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Either way, this is a weird sequel to a weird Nintendo Switch launch game that's being mutedly marketed so it doesn't elicit much hype. We'll just have to wait and play it for ourselves if we want to know whether Everybody 1-2-Switch! is an enjoyable game or not.
Everybody 1-2-Switch! will be released physically and digitally for Nintendo Switch on June 30.

Read more