Here’s why Cortana is naked in the Halo franchise

If you've played a Halo game chances are you've come across Master Chief's partner in crime, Cortana. Cortana is Master Chief's personal A.I. and there's something you'll notice about the illegally uploaded brain – she takes the form of a woman, a very naked blue woman.

According to 343 Industries' franchise director, Frank O'Connor, Cortana really isn't nude because she isn't real and she chooses that appearance on purpose.

"She's not actually nude, 'cause she has neither nor private parts. She's effectively wearing a holographic body stocking, but that's what it makes you think of," O'Connor explained to GamesRadar during a livestream. "One of the reasons she [chooses to appear without clothes] is to attract and demand attention. And she does it to put people off so that they're on their guard when talking to her and she has the upper hand in those conversations."

"It's kind of almost like the opposite of that nightmare you have where you go to school in the nude," O'Connor said. "You're terrified and embarrassed and she's kind of projecting that back out to her audience and winning intellectual points as a result."

If this sounds like a bit of a cop out, that's because it might be. O'Connor went on to say, "That's not why she was designed like that, that's how we backed into her fiction." Basically,  designers designed her as a nudist A.I. and the folks at Bungie (who developed the Halo games before 343 Industries took over) liked her design enough to work around it.

Is this the walk of someone trying to have the "upper hand"?