became more and more familiar, comfortable with and interested in her as she was developed," she recalled. "And I've sort of fallen for Cortana as far as characters go. She's remarkable." For Halo 4, Taylor performed her lines in the same room as Steve Downes, the voice of Master Chief, for the first time in the series. She credited the change for making the dialogue feel more authentic and real. She reprises her role as Cortana for the Halo television series. Promotion Bungie introduced the Halo series publicly in 1999 by sending the Cortana Letters, a series of cryptic email messages, to the maintainer of marathon.bungie.org, a fan site for one of Bungie's previous series, the Marathon Trilogy. The strategic use of cryptic messages in a publicity campaign was repeated in I Love Bees, a promotion for Halo 2. Although Bungie does not consider most of the letters to be canon, Cortana speaks many of the same lines in Halo 3. According to C. J. Cowan, Bungie's director of cinematics, the studio used the character here to give story clues without actually revealing the story. Cortana is featured in a variety of Halo merchandise. The character's first action figure was a seven-inch (178 mm) miniature released as part of the Halo: Combat Evolved series of action figures. McLees noted that the first action figure was supposed to convey an older appearance than was depicted in the games. This was accomplished by making the figure more buxom; despite McLees' request to revert the change, the sculptor was unwilling and time constraints left the design intact. The character is also featured in the first series of Halo 3 action figures, distributed by McFarlane Toys, Funko vinyl figurines, and in a limited-edition silver-plated statue by Weta Workshop. IGN noted that Cortana toys are lacking among Halos merchandising. Windows digital assistant Microsoft developed its virtual assistant for the Windows Phone operating system under the codename "Cortana" in reference to the Halo character. Though other final gender-neutral names for the final product were considered, positive developer and fan response to the leaked codename led to it becoming permanent. Deborah Harrison, one of Cortana's 'personality designers', met with 343 Industries and added more confidence to the personality. "As a result of the meetings we ended up coming back and baking this into the DNA of the digital assistant speech pattern, her approach to jokes and her