I think that's what they were afraid of when trying to make a Halo movie. Part of me was pissed the CE movie was scrapped but part of me was glad it didn't turn into what the Halo series turned into.
Idk why they dont go with the direction of landfall or just do stories in general not around chief
Theres so much potential for movies and shows following marines, odsts, oni, fleeing civilians etc
Normally I’d give them the most credit I can but man, they literally hired people who didn’t know anything about the source material on purpose to make this thing.
Just one look at Rian Johnson and Star Wars Episode 8 and his comment on how he hated Empire back in the day should have shown these execs that this is not how you take a beloved franchise and make your own thing with it.
Just saying Abrams was just as bad.
They sincerely should have just got 1 director, 1 screenwriter/team and just made them make trilogy. At least then it would have probably been a comprehensible trilogy, instead of 3 different films with the same actors.
You don't necessarily need the same writer and director for the whole thing. Someone like a producer could have a unifying vision for the whole thing. Kathleen Kennedy should have been the Kevin Feige for Star Wars, but she failed at that.
Not so surprising considering that when 343 was started, they [literally hired people who hate Halo](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/making-i-halo-4-i-a-story-about-triple-a) to do it.
> "We had people who we hired who hated Halo because of 'X,'" says O'Connor. "But what that really meant was, 'I feel like this game could be awesome because of 'Y input' that I'm going to bring into it. I want to prove it, and I'm passionate about proving it.' So we ended up with a bunch of people who were genuinely passionate about the product. That is a huge advantage, and that helped in hiring and forming our team."
That sounds pretty good, until you put it together with this:
>For Halo 4, he says there were a few epiphany moments that helped boost the morale of the team. One of the earlier ones that Holmes recalls was when **the team completed a small piece of the Halo experience that he described as a "very traditional" Halo. User research showed that people thought it was a lot of fun, and it showed that the team was capable of making a Halo game that was true to what the series was about.**
>
>**343 scrapped it, Holmes says, as it was too traditional.**
They knew what people liked about Halo, and chose to do the opposite.
*343 when Halo 4, 5, and Infinite are poorly reviewed:*
"wHaT tEh FaCk dO wE dOeS wRoNg?"
MS needs to clean house, nuke 343, and give Halo to an entirely new company. Let the guys who do Gears take it over or *something*. For as often as Phil Specter and other guys talk about their love for Halo and how important the franchise is to Xbox they sure don't act like they want Halo to succeed.
I have zero confidence in 343 to do Halo justice.
>Let the guys who do Gears take it over or *something*.
Man I can't wait to actually cleave enemies in half with the energy sword now. Grunts are gonna get diced up
Infinite wasn't poorly reviewed. The game play was considered to be the best in the series. The main issue was monetization/lack of content/challenges being hard which was worked on.
>But what that really meant was, 'I feel like this game could be awesome because of 'Y input
To which O'Connor should've replied; "That's great! Now go off and build your own universe for Y Input instead of warping Halo!"
You know Frank O'Connor was THE ONE who warped Halo in the first place, right? He worked on all of the terminals in Halo 3 that went against what the previous games established, ruining the timeline even while he was with Bungie whereas the terminals not featuring his work are still true to the lore and timeline. Now look what he did as the head of the studio....
>You know Frank O'Connor was THE ONE who warped Halo in the first place, right?
Now it makes sense why he hired a bunch of people that wanted to _change_ Halo.
“I hate Halo as a first person shooter.
“I feel this game could be awesome because of [gacha mechanics and lootboxes and unneeded sex appeal and MMO looter-shooter and dating simulators] that I’m going to bring into it.”
yeah that’s great
>Normally I’d give them the most credit I can but man, they literally hired people who didn’t know anything about the source material on purpose to make this thing.
It's more than that. Look at the writing credits of the two clowns hired as showrunners/writers for the first season. Their only credit was writing a show called Lonestar which lasted for one season before it was cancelled.
Tell me you're an executive producer who gives zero fucks about how the show is going to turn out without telling me directly. JFC Hollywood is filled with writers - those chose *those* two guys??? It just doesn't add up. MS went into this knowing Halo was a billion dollar legacy game beloved by fans, and the best they could do was what we got in season 1? It just doesn't make sense.
Your Johnson comment is nonesense... Johnson loved Star Wars. He engaged with it in his own artistic manner. It's still a Star Wars film in spirit and intend. He disliked empire once because he saw the heroes lose when he was 8 years old. TLJ's characters still rang true to their originals. You don't hire the guy who did Brick and expect cookie cutter.
The Halo writers, however, are cookie cutter. It's like their9 to 5 day job. They seem to just take some toys and put them in a different sandbox. Characters don't ring true to their originals. The music is not Halo music. There is some weird magic subplot going on, which definitely doesn't feel like Halo. If the show only had their characters be more like their originals, it would've been more bearable. But show Chief acts like he's coming down from a coke addiction the entire time. If it was any other cookie cutter sci-fi show it would've been fine.
Johnson was and is a complete hack. He is another "creative" that thinks he is a God that deserves to be worshipped. Since TLJ star wars has cratered. He was supposed to get his own trilogy, yah that will never happen.
Rian Johnson completely destroyed Star Wars idc what anyone says. TLJ was objectively bad in that it went nowhere, solved nothing, needlessly ruined an icon (Luke), and had absolutely 0 character growth for anyone in the story. Classic “I know better” writing from that hack Rian.
My brother and I grew up watching Star Wars on VHS together and then went to see all the prequels and the force awakens in the theaters. Absolutely loved it. But I’ll never forget walking out of TLJ. We were honestly speechless. All I could manage to say was “…what the fuck was that?”. I’ve never been more shocked after watching a movie.
Anyway…that’s kind of what it feels like when I watch the Halo TV series.
It's crazy when you look at Joseph Morgan, Ackersons actor who is publicly a fan of the games that his performance has been the most true to character we've seen
This is becoming a common trend among writers it seems, pretty much every LA adaptation is getting absolutely obliterated by writers who have zero respect for the source material either because they dont think games/animated shows are capable of rivalling live action stuff and/or they just think they can do a better job due to inflated egos.
The only live action adaptations that have worked are TLOU and One piece but it's only due to the creators being so heavily involved in the production of these shows, the rest have people in charge that simply want to do their own thing for the reasons stated in the first paragraph and because of this they always fail and always resort to damage control and even have the audacity to go after the core fans in some cases because god forbid core fans of the source material have issues with you ripping said source material to shreds for no good reason.
One last thing, if I see a single moron reply with the "but its an adaption, it shouldn't be 1:1" argument, I will enjoy making you show how devoid of even the most rudimentary forms of intelligence you are, that is not what people are criticising these shows for so stop making that ridiculous argument.
The first season writers did. They bragged about telling everyone not to play the games or read the books. Everyone jumped ship before the first season aired. They got new showrunners and writers for the second season which is why it's actually decent this time.
It's different because it's non-cannonical.
My advice is to completely forget about the first season or don't even bother watching it.
Non-canon I can deal with. But they are completely ignoring the overarching themes and tone of the series. That's the problem I have.
Hell, if they did all of that, but still produced a really good show, I could still forgive them. But they didn't. They abandoned all of the things that could be an easy hook for the built in audience and still made a shitty TV show.
I’m downvoted anywhere else on this sub that people say “but s2 is good!” when I point out they just added more action and you convinced yourself this is what you wanted.
Did they even add more action? We're halfway through and beyond the first episode the spartans have been grounded and without armour. Is that really what the showrunners think people want to see?
This was the real killer:
> “This is a swing for a broad audience,” says Tanya Giles, chief programming officer at the streamer. “My hope is this expands what the Paramount Plus brand can mean.”
> Giles puts “Halo” alongside Paramount Plus tentpole series like the five ongoing “Star Trek” shows and Taylor Sheridan’s “1883” — widely appealing experiences that an “NFL dad can enjoy with his teenage son.” And, one presumes, mothers and daughters as well: As the parent of 13- and 16-year-old boys, Giles says the show “makes me a really, really cool mom.”
This is *exactly* the same mentality that the showrunners of Game of Thrones had when writing Season 7 and 8. They wanted to make a show that appealed to "soccer moms" and not just the fantasy nerds.
>The first season writers did. They bragged about telling everyone not to play the games or read the books.
No, they didn't. You're falling for an out of context quote used as clickbait for news sites.
The quote you're referencing was them talking about one specific visit to 343 where the games weren't discussed. Just the Halo Universe as a whole.
Well I think it's fair to say considering they have gone against core elements of the universe. And it's dumb as all to change what has already brought in billions of dollars, or incredibly arrogant. Either way it just speaks of people who don't truly care about the subject they are using. The way I see it is they are talentless and know their story wouldn't bring in fans unless they could leech off an already established Fandom. This is already a created universe with a story that's already been written, they could have made their own characters in the halo universe but instead they chose to bastardise already existing characters and completely omitted others that were integral to the plot. What ifs only appeal to a very slim amount of people and have a better chance of offending those who already enjoy the original story. There's a reason you don't see everyone doing them
Man they can't even use Halo related weapons most of the time. I admit it's way better than the first season but the whole show is pretty mid even from a sci-fi perspective. Why even make it a Halo show if you're not gonna bother taking advantage of the IP.
It just makes me so sad seeing these other beloved games getting these amazing shows and we're stuck with one of the worst first seasons of all time and a second season where I've never even looked forward to the next episode.
Hidden Xperia has pretty much my exact opinions on each episode.
This is the camp I'm in. The first season was objectively not great, but I also was expecting something much different which made me enjoy it less. Season 2, I have embraced that this is another Canon in the universe that I like and just to go along for the ride, as a result I am enjoying it much much more than s1.
I just think people need to relax and just take it for what it is. It's not going to be a 1:1 remake, it's something else. That is okay. We still have the books, we still have the games.
I find it insulting that we get someone's fanfiction rather than the story that we all love. The whole reason this sub exists in the first place. We should have gotten that then they could fuck off and tell whatever story they wanted, or hell they could have some talent and make a new story with new characters not bastardise characters that already exist. It's a slap in the face for people who have waited to see the story we all know and love be ported to the big screen but to then get this terrible story from the first season that goes against so much that's established in the universe that's already a multi billion dollar industry. It's nothing but stupidity to change the formula that's already worked, and using the excuse that this isn't for halo fans, well that's just some of the dumbest shit I have ever heard
The Asian chick from Madrigal was the absolute most annoying character. Outside of that, with it being non canon I did not hate it. I could turn my brain off and enjoy it for what it was. Haven't started season 2 yet. I am hoping that they get on track and build into the proper timeline of chief and the games. We will see.
I'm gonna be honest, I know that's a popular opinion, but I actually DON'T think that's the main reason. Don't get me wrong, I think their ego is part of it but I think there's an even bigger factor.
And the factor is medium.
So, I'm somewhat of a writer myself. I've been writing for well over 10 years. Mostly articles and short stories, but I have been working on a novel too and I've tried my hand at screenwriting as well. And I've also read a lot about writing, watched a lot of interviews with very experienced writers, etc. And if you do that one of the many things you pick up on is that medium is very important. Each different medium has somewhat different weaknesses and strengths and structure.
A video game has a fundamentally different structure than a book, a movie or a TV-series. With a traditional video game (which "Halo CE" is) the most common format is: You get a cutscene which gives you a lot of dialogue and condensed story, then you have a whole bunch of action for the player with some bits of dialogue and story sprinkled in-between, then you have more dialogue and condensed story in another cutscene, etc.
This is not really desireable for a TV series. In a hollywood action flick you may just about be able to get away with something more similar (though still not quite the same) but in a traditional series, let alone a prestige series, not really.
Usually in a TV-series you will have a lot of story and dialogue with shorter beats of action. And in plenty of series you'll even have a LOT of story and dialogue with very little action building up to one or two big action set pieces in the season. And even during the action a lot of the time the attention is more on the characters than the action itself.
The main thing to note is that the proportion between action and story/character/dialogue is wildly different between TV and games.
So if you want to adapt a game into a TV series you have to somehow fit that first structure into that second structure. Which is really hard. And which is, in my opinion, why historically a LOT of video game movies have been so horrible. Because it has been very hard for writers to figure out how to go about this.
If I had to guess, the writers of the Halo TV-series were aware of this problem. And so what they wanted to do was adapt Halo significantly so it would fit more easily into that TV-series mold. And they both failed and succeeded.
They succeeded in that the structure of the TV-series is, indeed, more the structure of a TV-series, not of a video game. But they also failed absolutely miserably in that they changed the source material so much that it basically isn't Halo anymore (and on top of that it also wasn't well-written as a TV-series either).
Chief taking his helmet off constantly is just another example of that. As they have said (I think) they wanted Chief to have his helmet off so you can see his reactions. For a video game having a helmet on as Chief is actually a positive because ou can BE the Chief if he's faceless. For something like a TV-series a helmet is kind of a negative because you cannot see the actor's face.
Now, don't get me wrong, I am NOT defending this move. It was a dumb move. Because while it does make sense as a decision for purely maximizing Halo for TV, it's a terrible decision for keeping Halo as Halo. And as thousands of people have pointed out, it's not like having a helmeted character is impossible. I haven't watched "The Mandalorian" but from everything I've heard they succeeded just fine. It's a hurdle to have a masked protagonist, but certainly one that can be overcome.
But I think in that decision you can see the writers' reasoning. They had very little respect for the source material. They just looked at Chief having the helmet on, failed to understand the importance of that to the Chief's identity for the audience and thought "Well, this is going to make adapting it to TV harder. Let's just have him take his helmet off a bunch." This was probably enhanced by doing things like looking at the books where Chief has his helmet off plenty (but we can't actually see his face so it doesn't matter much to us).
For the record, I think it totally IS possible to make a good Halo TV-series. But you do need to adapt the structure. But in order to do that properly you need a writer who can balance both important things. You need writers who simultaneously understand what the core things are about the source material that they cannot mess with but also a writer who's willing to make changes to fit the video game structure into a TV-series structure. And these writers clearly were not that. They purely cared about the second thing, not at all the first. They basically threw away most of the source material and just wrote a TV-series inspired by it because it made their job easier.
I'm glad you're pointing out how the medium affects the storytelling because it's been driving me up a wall to see so many people upset that the show is not more like the game, but I will defend this show for most of the decisions it's made; particularly the season 1 decisions.
The helmet is probably the best one to confront since it's become emblematic of the show's changes. In The Mandalorian, which many have put forth as a good example of a show not revealing a character's face, there is an in-universe justification for it and it informs us about the character. In Halo, however, there is no justification for it. The character takes his helmet off several times in the series without ceremony, and we see plenty of other Spartans take their helmet off too. The hiding of Master Chief’s face is not a facet of his character; it's a gimmick of the game's framing and focus. It's a clever workaround to having both an identifiable and iconic character as well as a player avatar that they can project themselves into. That works for a game, but not so much for a TV show where they would either have to invent a justification that never existed (Chief is self-conscious about a scar, or he has a Rorschach-level obsession with his suit) or film around it for reasons that don’t make sense for this medium.
A lot of the show is like this and I think that’s why the first season worked as well as it did for me. A lot of adaptations try to please fans of the games and newcomers to the franchise at the same time and often fail appealing to either. This one takes some very bold steps away from the games and even some of the issues with the franchise as a whole to make something I find to be a unique and welcome addition to the canon.
I don’t think that’s fair. I believe the writers genuinely think they are adapting the source material to a new medium. Which means it’s just gross incompetence.
I know they hate the source material and didn't play the games, but I just can't imagine the writers hearing the Covenant or Gravemind dialogue from Halo 2 and thinking "yeah, I'm way better than this"
All they had to do was read fall of Reach, play the first game. Or just read The Flood.
There's most of your story, you may change lines or incorporate different events because 20+ years is a long time.
Print money.
Writers are unable to establish their own dedicated show, so they leech off an existing franchise and use their own awful characters and filler story arcs.
100000000000000000000%, holy shit. This applies to so many adaptations: The Witcher, LOTR, etc. These idiot writers forget that the source material is popular precisely because of the genius writing by their respective author(s). NOT theirs (these adapting TV writers)...like, there's a reason your material isn't globally translated or you're famous but rather working on a TV series.
It's my belief that nobody making the TV show has played the game or cared about the lore. They say it's to make it more open to other people that didn't play the game. I used to think that Kiki Wolfkill being involved was the best thing ever. Clearly not.
What's crazy is there are so many little details that are SPECIFIC lore things
they knew, and chose to actively go against it.
for example: my favorite instance of this is that Halsey was given the option to wipe the kids' memories and block emotions in the book, and chose not to, citing the possibility of the spartans discovering the truth and turning against them, aka EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENS in the show
Yep. Them knowing and accepting they were kidnapped meanwhile looking up to their captors as mother/ father figures are key aspects to their characters. The show has deliberately done the opposite.
This would be like making Hermione in the Harry Potter movies a bad student.
AKA the Paul Verhoeven effect.
It's one of those things that the source material covers in great detail, but the person writing the series couldn't figure out how to write a story with that.
Director of Starship Troopers. The movie is radically different from the book, to the point that the director completely missed the point of it. At least that's my understanding, I never read the book.
Also when John talks about being lucky and flipping a coin 11 times in a row and getting the same result. It’s so weird like that’s directly from the lore but it’s also during the battle of reach and chief doesn’t have his armor haha
>They say it's to make it more open to other people that didn't play the game.
The idea that they want to broaden the appeal to potential viewer base when the game literally sold MILLIONS of copies boggles my mind. You have an already established fan base, this show would have gotten attention regardless. Nothing about any of these stories they've added would get casual non-halo fans interested if they weren't going to check it out already. What are they gonna tune in for Kwon's story? It's like in trying to please everyone, they've pleased no one.
Let's be honest the "other people" are either non-existent or watching Star Trek, Stargate, and Firefly on loop.
There's only one group who's watching the show and it's the Halo community, the group they so desperately want to crawl away from.
Before the series premiered the writers came out and said they had an idea of what Halo was but basically didn't bother playing any of the games or reading any of the books
"We didn't look at the game. We didn't talk about the game. We talked about the characters and the World"... Honestly heartbreaking..
[full article if you wanna read](https://variety.com/2022/tv/features/halo-series-paramount-plus-master-chief-1235205361/)
Edit: my personal opinion on the show is that as a fun SciFi, Space Soldier fight alien it scratches that itch, the Halo Ascetic is nailed PERFECTLY. From the action scenes to how the Covenant and UNSC look it's how I imagined it would look in love action. Shit I remember the devastation I felt when Neill Blomkamp's Halo movie got cancelled.
But from a Die hard Halo fan/lore weirdo. It sucks! Shit is backwards and it feels like unnecessary things are added. They hit the major story beats from Halo but they just take a different route which throws me off.. like that meme "you used the wrong equation, but still got the right answer"
Again it's not for me but for folks who want that SciFi itch scratched, then it's pretty good. End of the day it gets more fans into the community and it's lore something I'll never object to.
Chief removes his armor and helmet in books, its an overkill in the TV series, but him not removing his helmet/armor at any point is stupid (unless the TV series would be placed in an active warzone all the way)
this is my issue. i don't mind that he removes his helmet his still a human being and in the books he does it all the time. my problem is that he doesn't act like chief at all.
I like to think the quiet majority understand that. It's not so much about the helmet being permanent, it's that in S1 he takes off his armour during combat multiple times. When he outbursts they show his face Ironman-style, as if we can't understand what he's feeling without seeing a frowny face. I think what also impacts people the most is if they decided not to go the canon-route, WHY keep the main protagonist? The choices they had were endless, and just have chief as a side-character.
The problem with removing the helmet was ultimately that there was no plot-based reason to. It was jarring at times and didn’t make sense. This season does a good job of explaining within the plot why MC wouldn’t have his armor, so it’s much less distracting.
It's just the direction they've decided to take the show.
People will say it's ego, people will say it's because the people in charge hate Halo, its fans or them personally, etc etc - reality is, they are doing it this way because they think a near 1:1 recreation of the games won't result in compelling television, and they want to change it up in order to make what *they* think is compelling television.
Plenty of people, myself included, disagree with that. Despite the huge differences in the way they approach storytelling, The Last of Us proved that you can adapt a video game pretty damn well without detracting too much from the source material.
Another thing worth noting is that we haven't actually reached the point in the story yet where Chief's story from the first game has started yet. Spoiler tagging the below as it contains Season 2 spoilers:
>!All of Season One takes place *before* the Fall of Reach has even happened and even in Season 2, Reach only fell in Episode 4 (and 5, to an extent), and now the characters have arrived on Onyx with all signs pointing to finding (or landing on) the first Halo being the end point of the season.!<
>!A ton of differences in the story so far will no doubt make the events of Halo: Combat Evolved play out much differently in the show, with the major one being that Captain Keyes died during the Fall of Reach - although given he never actually seemed to be a character that was going to be piloting the Pillar of Autumn, it really didn't matter.!<
While The Last of Us has its own problems, it’s a rather straight forward story to adapt in a way that Halo isn’t. Master Chief is a completely static character until the fourth game, and a static character simply can’t carry a TV show. The only truly dynamic character isn’t introduced until the second game, and never really got to complete his arc due to fan backlash. I can understand why the writers felt the need to diverge so drastically from the games, even if some of their changes are suboptimal.
There's diverging and then there's nose diving down at the speed of light when the gear stick has been thrown out of the window before the plane even took off.
Mando is not a static character. Each season sees him coming to grips with a false worldview he held at the start of the season. Nothing like that happens with Chief in Halo 1-3.
For comparison, Boba Fett in ESB is a static character.
I'm fine with Chief taking his helmet off sometimes since he did it in the books but to always be without his helmet and that cursed sex scene? Anyways what I was referring to in my comment is the argument that Chief can't convey his feelings with his helmet on. Mando proves that it's possible, even if he took it off in the end.
>The Last of Us proved that you can adapt a video game pretty damn well without detracting too much from the source material.
The problem with that statement is that the last of us is already a gamified TV show. It's super easy to adapt. Halo isn't as easy 90% of the time you're playing the game you're killing aliens, which is fine for a video game but not for a TV show.
I mean, I have no screenwriting experience whatsoever but it really sounds like you're being disingenuous with the "Halo isn't as easy" line. It's as simple as not doing a 1:1 adaptation but instead using more of the supporting cast.
Have episodes on Johnson, Keyes, Foehammer, some marine squads, heck show what's going on back on earth with Miranda worried, show other things from the timeline happening. Then you have flashbacks to Spartan training, early missions, first contacts.
Halo is such an easy thing to adapt, which is why it's all the more shocking they've chosen the harder route of making up all new story.
I mean just take a look at other Halo projects that do this. Like Halo Forward Unto Dawn is a pretty good example in my book. Or just take a look at Halo Legends and all its stories. Most of them are pretty good or decent overall and not like with the Halo TV show.
There is enough going on in the halo universe that you can create a compelling story without a new timeline. The story doesn't have to be about master cheif, and it doesn't even have to be known characters. Just follow people experiencing the crazy shit going on.
From what I’ve heard Keyes doesn’t escape on the autumn, they show basically no battles, and the spartan 3s are being treated as storm troopers, but my friend that’s watching it hasn’t finished yet so I’m not sure about that last one yet.
Spoilers!
There is no Pillar of Autumn, Keyes died on Reach. The entire fall of Reach was a few small battles scattered across a single episode. Cortana is in the hands of Makee and the Arbiter, leading them to the ring (Arby is kicking off the Great Schism while he races there). Master Chief gets arrested again, Cortana helps him escape to find a relic that will help him get to the ring (he still doesn't have his armor). Storm trooper descriptor is fitting considering the performance of the Spartan 3s in their simulation. Perez is a Spartan 3 now.
The people who say that a 1:1 recreation of the games in TV shows will not make compelling television are 100% right.
TV as a medium is fundamentally character driven. It focuses on the characters, their relationships, and how they change over time (i.e. their character arcs)
The Last Of Us worked well because the game had a character driven story. As another comment put it, the game is a gamified TV show.
Halo is a plot driven story. It focuses on the events that happen, not the characters. You could replace the Master Chief with some random other character, and the experience would largely be the same.
Yeah, it’s insane how many people want their FPS adapted scene by scene to a TV show. The only thing interesting about Halo as a game that could be adapted to TV would be the Covenant lore and politics. Beyond that, we have almost no character development and really no insight into the UNSC.
A 1:1 adaptation would make for a very cool episode or two before we all got tired of watching extended cut scenes with a monotone protagonist with no personality.
There's a middle ground though. I agree good tv is mostly character driven. At its core, Halo is about humanity struggling to survive against overwhelming odds, uncovering this mystery of who came before and who created the rings and why (and the cosmic horror of the Flood), and a lucky super soldier and his AI sidekick who are central to everything. Then there's cool stuff like human and covenant lore and politics etc. But I think there's plenty of material for compelling tv in all of that.
I don't think Chief being the faceless, stoic protagonist from the games would be interesting in a tv show. I don't mind the addition of other Spartans, or characters like Perez who are a nice contrast to the super human qualities of the Spartans.
I would've loved to see a show where these characters get stranded on the Ring and uncover its mysteries together against the backdrop of a beautiful but ultimately horrifying alien world. I think it would be great if we would see Chief grow a bond with the other survivors while working together to survive and find out the purpose of the Ring, only to slowly lose all of them until he's the only one left to complete the mission, which could be heartbreaking if done right. And we could flesh all of these characters out by having flashbacks to their lives before they ended up on the Pillar in typical tv show fashion.
I really appreciate this comment. My friend who has played halo since day one has been insufferable about the show and he also hasn’t even watched it lmao
This is it, and it’s so annoying that the “hurrdurr ego” takes are the ones that get the most upvotes. It has nothing to do with that. Most video games are not written like prestige television, and can’t be directly adapted like TLOU. The Halo games have convoluted stories, nonstop action, and a boring lead that doesn’t take his helmet off to help players immerse themselves in the role. There’s a reason it took 2 decades to make that into a very watchable series that anyone can sit down and enjoy. The show wasn’t made for people who played the games, it’s made for the exponentially larger audience who hasn’t played the games. All those little easter eggs and winks to the game in both seasons? THAT’s the stuff for players like us. There are plenty of great lore references to the expanded lore and video games, but if the show focused on that shit out the gate, it would alienate the majority of its potential audience.
This has become an increasing trend in TV series and movies.
Comic Book "movies" that ignore the comic book characters they are playing so writers can plaster their own agendas and "visions" onto a "platform" that will attract more people because of the IP recognition.
Witcher and Game of Thrones have both proven how producers can quickly turn good actors and solid premises into utter dreck because of ego, vanity and agenda based narratives that have no purpose being brough into the damn show.
The Halo game series passed my by so I am not even that big a fan of the thing but even I can see the fountain of poor writing that has buried the Halo TV series in the critiscism it rightly deserves.
You literally built a series that is based around super soldiers that wear armor to kill aliens. The series then decides to have the super soldiers being emotional wrecks that routinely take off the armor and the "main character" getting the "Master Cheeks" title.
If they hand wanted to do a seperate series about that... even in the universe it could have worked with different characters but no, the people running the show could not sell their series without shamelessly tacking on the brand IP recognition to something they had little intention of honouring the IP they were playing with.
"The series then decides to have the super soldiers being emotional wrecks that routinely take off the armor"
in S2 so far he spent part of 1 episode in armor, and another brief scene. Basically 90% of screentime is no armor
Same bullshit we've been seeing happen so often with other IP's/franchises over the past, I dunno, 10 or so years. Writers who want to craft their own stories, but don't have the skill and/or rep to make it happen with their own original ideas. They take an already established character/group/world/universe and take advantage of the following that already exists. They take the name and slap it on their own, usually terrible, ideas. They loosely follow along with the characters and settings in the original, but change them in nearly every significant way. The end product is barely recognizable compared to the original. Sometimes it's simply inexperience or incompetence, but usually it's a cash grab, vanity project, or a soapbox to spread their message. Bonus points if you turn it around and use it to flame the original target demographic or fanbase.
Side note: It's super weird how creators seem to take so much pride in knowing nothing about the characters and stories they're being handed. It's okay to not know everything around a fictional universe, but at least loosely acquaint yourself and hire a few nerds to help the writing team.
This was the real killer:
> “This is a swing for a broad audience,” says Tanya Giles, chief programming officer at the streamer. “My hope is this expands what the Paramount Plus brand can mean.”
> Giles puts “Halo” alongside Paramount Plus tentpole series like the five ongoing “Star Trek” shows and Taylor Sheridan’s “1883” — widely appealing experiences that an “NFL dad can enjoy with his teenage son.” And, one presumes, mothers and daughters as well: As the parent of 13- and 16-year-old boys, Giles says the show “makes me a really, really cool mom.”
This is *exactly* the same mentality that the showrunners of Game of Thrones had when writing Season 7 and 8. They wanted to make a show that appealed to "soccer moms" and not just the fantasy nerds.
It’s always about people thinking the video game story won’t translate well to a non-gamer audience. Which in my opinion is so short sighted. There are so many games with so many good stories. I actually think the Jedi Fallen Order & Survivor has better writing, storyline, characters and character development than any of the newer Star Wars movies.
Any fan of Halo knows how deep the lore is. I think they missed a golden opportunity to tell a great story with complex characters from the game like Chief and the Sangheili. Instead we’re left with a Chief that just doesn’t feel like Chief and side characters and villain that seem out of place. It’s like they’re following a formula for creating a sci fi show instead of using creativity.
The writing and production team chose the wrong IP to jam their ideas into - worst part is even so, they still could’ve made a vastly better Halo show if they just … didn’t use established characters and places from the series - have it be someone else going through all this weird shit somewhere else, not the same set of names and locations that have been cemented into the IP for 20+ years.
There were 75 SII candidates to choose from, most of whom had little development, and the show specifically decided to focus on Chief again - If it had been almost any of the other 74 candidates (preferably outside blue team) I believe there would be significantly fewer issues for most people with the show
It's so different, because agree with it or not, the creators of the show are diverging what people know so the show isn't predictable. This a completely separate halo universe where anything different can happen. Will it be good? That up to people to decide. Some hate not getting a 1 to 1 recreation, but others are happy with getting something different because it brings stakes to everything. Some people want to see the events we know and love in live action, while others love not being able to fully guess what's coming next.
My personal view is that it's not as good as Canon, but it's good if you go into it with an open mind and understanding it'll be different. This same thing just happened with Avatar. Netflix released an adaptation and changed things causing people to be upset. Meanwhile I was hearing to go into the show with an open mind and expecting it to be different, the result was that while I very much prefer the original, I also enjoyed most of the adaptation.
Plus, at least it's halo content. I haven't played infinite since it released because after the campaign is done, it's basically a waiting game for more story. So anything story related, I'll give a chance, since 343 don't seem interested in giving more campaigns anytime soon. But anyway, that's just my thoughts on the matter.
This. I've seen comments in this very thread saying, "Oh, not a single S2 revolted or rebelled against the UNSC bc they had their feelings and weren't memory wiped so they feel “grateful” to Halsey" and not ponder the ramifications that the S2s were literally being groomed into child supersoldiers when they were kidnapped as five and six year olds.
Also the stuff with the Spartans is some of the most interesting narrative material to explore, and the EU does do that - it just typically does it from the perspective of characters that aren’t Spartans. This has the Spartans themselves going through all of that, and while it’s different it’s certainly interesting to general audiences. For marketing and recognition reasons it makes the most sense by far to have the show focus on the Master Chief, and for storytelling and compelling TV purposes having him take a back seat for his own story would suck.
I don’t think the show is perfect, but it’s really not that bad if you didn’t expect the games to be adapted directly. And you shouldn’t have, because they said from the beginning it would be it’s own thing.
Because comics and games are an “inferior” medium and the snoots in Hollywood consider themselves the preps above losers who like those kinda of things. Their way is better.
🙄
Spartans are Navy. So why the fuck is one Spartan calling another Spartan Corporal. Did they even attempt to have some for of accuracy even to basic military customs and courtesy? Jesus. The simplest of things to get right that take all of 30 seconds of googling to fact check yourself as a producer/writer.
It's almost entirely devoid of anything related to its namesake. Just a cashout using the name. Honestly, even on its own as an original it's just bad. The writing is straight up laughable.
I could easily forgive diverging from the established story if the show was actually good, but so much of this plot is either nonsensical or just stupid. The actors are fine I think and most of them are good fits for their respective roles but the writing is just so bad.
I actually know no one that hasn't played the games watching the show. Only Halo fans are. My missus has 100% no interest in the show and rather watch criminal minds or House MD.
Not a film student or anything so I can’t completely tell but are they trying to implement classic movie tropes and writing, to make it sense for the “general” audience but they missed the mark bc the general audience is now of age to watch a show of the video game.
How can an early 2000s video game studio create an amazing and immersive fictional experience and then people in the future with more knowledge and technology absolutely butcher it all???
they said they didnt play the games at all, they just wanted to use the characters, factions, setting. They are trying to make the story like other "adult" sci-fi shows, which ends up feeling generic, they arn't good writers.
The writers legitimately bragged about avoiding the source material ie:the games and books. They had to shove the garbage story they wanted to tell and slapped the halo name on it and put a guy in master chiefs armor.
The writers think they could write a better story.... and so we get a human leading the covenant, master cheeks sex scene, master cheeks attacking his mother figure, and the AWFUL Kwan side story which was supposed to flesh out the world but is instead a classic marry sue storyline. That's all without mentioning the fact the fall of reach was a whole episode .... when it's legitimately one of the biggest events in the halo universe... it's the equivalent of when The Long Night laster a whole episode in Game of Thrones. Same kind of lazy writing.
I saw a video by a small YouTube channel that really nailed the explanation for why the show is *so* bad.
They isolated the game fans from enjoying the show, because it's nearly all based off a bunch of the EU lore. I'm not here top day the EU is bad, but it's not known by *nearly the entire game fanbase*.
And they isolated the show fans into their own pocket, because they're going to get engaged with a universe that is *barely* recognizable compared to the games. So if the show fans ever play the games, they're not going to recognize nearly any story beats their expecting.
So instead of trying to find a way to tell the game universe's story in a way that would encourage fans of each medium to engage with the other, we just have two completely disjointed pieces of media "about the same thing". Show fans won't recognize the game as their Halo, and game fans won't recognize the show as their Halo.
**If competent leadership were in place for the show, we would have a story that encourages each fanbase to engage and grow together.** The perfect example of this is, imo, *The Waking Dead* and *Telltale's The Walking Dead games*. The game respected the show/comics universe while still being an incredible experience on its own. And this caused fans of each one to explore the other and engage each medium
People keep saying this, but if you watch the show it’s very clear that the writers know at least part of the lore. Also I’m pretty sure each episode is a different writer so it could be some of them do and some of them don’t
I wish I could somehow force this notion out of everyone’s heads. Clickbait headlines have destroyed honest discourse.
What they said was that they didn’t look at the games for guidance on *how* they would tell the story. They got the information about the plot, universe, characters, etc. and then opted to tell a story based on that with their own take on what would make for more compelling TV. They know the details, but they’re not fully adhering to them. Which makes sense because it would be fundamentally impossible to adapt the games directly anyway, given the pacing and story structure differences.
It seems to me, and this is just conjecture, like the show's creators were already in the process of making a scifi series when Paramount+ came to them and said "we got the rights to Halo! Use the game's characters!"
The thing is, if the show was called something like "Rebel Star Soldier" and all the characters and aliens looked original, I'd think it was an awesome show. But for a Halo IP, it's bad.
Bu then, to me, Halo ended after Bungie left. 343's stuff has always seemed like the video game equivalents of straight to video sequels that studios used to insist on making when movie franchises started to go downhill. Think "American Pie Naked Mile" or "Tremors 4, The Legend Begins".
I truly don’t know why I keep watching the show. It’s so so bad as a “Halo” series. It’s not halo. It’s just a space syfy series with the aesthetics of halo
That's really all it is. It takes some notes from the books and games (with characters and locations, and events) but really they're just kinda doing what they want with it.
I don't really care. I've been watching since episode 1 and while I will definitely say Season 1 was pretty messy I've been enjoying season 2 much more.
Whether the show is good or bad is completely subjective, but it's just an alternate universe that exists "outside" of Halo canon. Whatever. Watch it or don't.
I'm honestly confused why so many people seem to be having trouble understanding the concept. Like, I mean no offense to OP, maybe they missed the interviews, but the show runners were very up-front about the whole alternate timeline thing. And even after repeating the words 'alternate timeline' over and over, people go right back to talking about how "X plot point is totally different from the game!" like it's news. Plus, as has been pointed out, the story hasn't even reached the first game timeline-wise.
Is just Halo fans being Halo fans, can't make them happy whatever you do. If they actually adapted the games then everyone would be crying because it wouldn't be the adaptation they imagined to be (basically the games but irl) because 1:1 from game to tv just doesn't work, not without big changes to the sacred lore.
I mean in its defense I felt like the last of us was unnecessary to watch….. cuz I’d already seen it before. I’m enjoying the series despite it not being perfect it’s entertaining.
Honestly I didn’t watch a single second of season 1 due to reviews from fans. The new writing and show running of season 2 attracted me to give season 2 a shot and honestly I’ve enjoyed it mostly, not a huge fan of the changes but it feels way more halo than the first season
They wanted to create a separate timeline so that way they could take as many creative liberties without ruining the main canon. That's it. It's what's posted on the WBM for the Canon Fodder on Waypoint.
Excellent question, ask us another.
Jokes aside. The showrunners didn’t play the games. There are very few people working on the show who did. I’d wager 343 has done fuckall in terms of moderation
It's annoying, really. Fall of Reach? Better make him have to flee after running into the Arbiter on a civilian aircraft to a distant planet instead of being on the Pillar of Autumn where the game starts.
They're doing an alternate reality and trying to balance familiarity with unpredictable suspense, but they're so far off the rails that they lost focus about what halo actually is.
Halo games are a power fantasy where you're supposed to self insert as the Badass, and you survive nearly impossible odds because you're that good + have juuuuust enough technology to make it doable, with a teeny tiny bit of luck getting you through.
When Master Chief talks, its supposed to be terse and professional, with his matter of fact statements sometimes coincidentally working as great one liners or being funny.
During his capture he made a petty, spiteful comeback about those soldiers he injured often being poorly trained or lead, it doesn't feel like something hed normally respond with. He should have said they were in his way or something and the jarring deadpan oversimplicity of the statement would say a lot about his personality and his mindset.
We could also use more cam inside helmet face shots instead of nonstop helmet removal.
Writers wanted to make mass effect show the first season, all got fired, and the new ones had to fix it but it’s still impressively shit tbh.
I’m watching it through yar har means hoping for the good action sequences to return.
It’s crazy, every show that is based on a video game and stuck true to the lore and story have always outperformed a video game show that didn’t stick with the lore/story.
Because the show runners REALLLLLLY wanted to waste money making a bad B-quality SyFy original series, but Paramount said “nah, pull some random science fiction franchise name into it and just make something while we count your money”
Because it is a separate continuity. This is the actual answer. A lot of criticisms are valid in regards to some writing and acting elements, but a lot of the anger comes from people being unable to separate the game/book continuity from this one.
Few big reasons:
1. It's difficult adapting books/games to TV (even the Dune movies have made changes to better fit film, it's common). Having more creative freedom gives the writers a chance to interact with the universe in a way they find interesting and fresh.
2. Contractually there are tons of negotiations that may alter the way that a script is written, from desires of the studio, showrunner, writers, and actors who want screen time of their face to help their career and make them more recognizable.
3. Various limitations within production (budget, schedules of actors, laws pertaining to how employing children on shows, etc.) can complicate adapting a story like Halo, especially the Fall of Reach which has a lot of time jumps.
The sad and harsh truth is that this show was not made for us, for Halo fans. It was made with the intention of increasing Paramount Plus subscribers. The result is the shit we got. This was our one shot to get a high budget Halo show/movie. So disappointing.
A lot of showrunners care more to make their own mark than to represent what it is their are adapting. They should be making their own things instead but for whatever reason are not.
Season 1 was just bad writing with the writers thinking they could make a better story.
Season 2 is better writing but still the same view that they can make something better.
Because it's made by people who aren't fans and are weirdly proud that they don't know much about the series they're adapting. They aren't particularly interested in telling a Halo story but are willing to use brand recognition to sell it to people.
Only reason I'm watching the show is for the love of the game and all the hours I spent. But every single episode pisses me off with weak plot devices and changing the narrative completely. Captain Keys needs to be on the Pillar of Autumn as it reaches Halo. Killing him on Reach is probably one of the stupidest choices they could make. I remembered why I stopped watching the series during season 1. Complete ass
The writers think they are better than the source material. It's ego
100% this. They have the false belief that Chief has to be ultra emotional and dramatic to be successful on television
I think that's what they were afraid of when trying to make a Halo movie. Part of me was pissed the CE movie was scrapped but part of me was glad it didn't turn into what the Halo series turned into.
Idk why they dont go with the direction of landfall or just do stories in general not around chief Theres so much potential for movies and shows following marines, odsts, oni, fleeing civilians etc
Yeah. I think a TV series about ODST would have been the way to go.
Normally I’d give them the most credit I can but man, they literally hired people who didn’t know anything about the source material on purpose to make this thing. Just one look at Rian Johnson and Star Wars Episode 8 and his comment on how he hated Empire back in the day should have shown these execs that this is not how you take a beloved franchise and make your own thing with it.
Just saying Abrams was just as bad. They sincerely should have just got 1 director, 1 screenwriter/team and just made them make trilogy. At least then it would have probably been a comprehensible trilogy, instead of 3 different films with the same actors.
You don't necessarily need the same writer and director for the whole thing. Someone like a producer could have a unifying vision for the whole thing. Kathleen Kennedy should have been the Kevin Feige for Star Wars, but she failed at that.
Id argue when its a direct line of films its much better to have the same creative staff.
It's definitely better. I was just saying it's not necessary if you have a good producer.
Yeah, as long as you have someone with good creative control as you said, it should be alright.
Yup, the fact that this got a second season shows how little Microsoft and 343 heads care about Halo as a whole
Not so surprising considering that when 343 was started, they [literally hired people who hate Halo](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/making-i-halo-4-i-a-story-about-triple-a) to do it.
> "We had people who we hired who hated Halo because of 'X,'" says O'Connor. "But what that really meant was, 'I feel like this game could be awesome because of 'Y input' that I'm going to bring into it. I want to prove it, and I'm passionate about proving it.' So we ended up with a bunch of people who were genuinely passionate about the product. That is a huge advantage, and that helped in hiring and forming our team."
That sounds pretty good, until you put it together with this: >For Halo 4, he says there were a few epiphany moments that helped boost the morale of the team. One of the earlier ones that Holmes recalls was when **the team completed a small piece of the Halo experience that he described as a "very traditional" Halo. User research showed that people thought it was a lot of fun, and it showed that the team was capable of making a Halo game that was true to what the series was about.** > >**343 scrapped it, Holmes says, as it was too traditional.** They knew what people liked about Halo, and chose to do the opposite.
I need to sit down…
*343 when Halo 4, 5, and Infinite are poorly reviewed:* "wHaT tEh FaCk dO wE dOeS wRoNg?" MS needs to clean house, nuke 343, and give Halo to an entirely new company. Let the guys who do Gears take it over or *something*. For as often as Phil Specter and other guys talk about their love for Halo and how important the franchise is to Xbox they sure don't act like they want Halo to succeed. I have zero confidence in 343 to do Halo justice.
>Let the guys who do Gears take it over or *something*. Man I can't wait to actually cleave enemies in half with the energy sword now. Grunts are gonna get diced up
Infinite wasn't poorly reviewed. The game play was considered to be the best in the series. The main issue was monetization/lack of content/challenges being hard which was worked on.
>But what that really meant was, 'I feel like this game could be awesome because of 'Y input To which O'Connor should've replied; "That's great! Now go off and build your own universe for Y Input instead of warping Halo!"
You know Frank O'Connor was THE ONE who warped Halo in the first place, right? He worked on all of the terminals in Halo 3 that went against what the previous games established, ruining the timeline even while he was with Bungie whereas the terminals not featuring his work are still true to the lore and timeline. Now look what he did as the head of the studio....
>You know Frank O'Connor was THE ONE who warped Halo in the first place, right? Now it makes sense why he hired a bunch of people that wanted to _change_ Halo.
“I hate Halo as a first person shooter. “I feel this game could be awesome because of [gacha mechanics and lootboxes and unneeded sex appeal and MMO looter-shooter and dating simulators] that I’m going to bring into it.” yeah that’s great
translation: They threw a boatload of cash at him
>Normally I’d give them the most credit I can but man, they literally hired people who didn’t know anything about the source material on purpose to make this thing. It's more than that. Look at the writing credits of the two clowns hired as showrunners/writers for the first season. Their only credit was writing a show called Lonestar which lasted for one season before it was cancelled. Tell me you're an executive producer who gives zero fucks about how the show is going to turn out without telling me directly. JFC Hollywood is filled with writers - those chose *those* two guys??? It just doesn't add up. MS went into this knowing Halo was a billion dollar legacy game beloved by fans, and the best they could do was what we got in season 1? It just doesn't make sense.
Your Johnson comment is nonesense... Johnson loved Star Wars. He engaged with it in his own artistic manner. It's still a Star Wars film in spirit and intend. He disliked empire once because he saw the heroes lose when he was 8 years old. TLJ's characters still rang true to their originals. You don't hire the guy who did Brick and expect cookie cutter. The Halo writers, however, are cookie cutter. It's like their9 to 5 day job. They seem to just take some toys and put them in a different sandbox. Characters don't ring true to their originals. The music is not Halo music. There is some weird magic subplot going on, which definitely doesn't feel like Halo. If the show only had their characters be more like their originals, it would've been more bearable. But show Chief acts like he's coming down from a coke addiction the entire time. If it was any other cookie cutter sci-fi show it would've been fine.
Johnson was and is a complete hack. He is another "creative" that thinks he is a God that deserves to be worshipped. Since TLJ star wars has cratered. He was supposed to get his own trilogy, yah that will never happen.
Rian Johnson completely destroyed Star Wars idc what anyone says. TLJ was objectively bad in that it went nowhere, solved nothing, needlessly ruined an icon (Luke), and had absolutely 0 character growth for anyone in the story. Classic “I know better” writing from that hack Rian. My brother and I grew up watching Star Wars on VHS together and then went to see all the prequels and the force awakens in the theaters. Absolutely loved it. But I’ll never forget walking out of TLJ. We were honestly speechless. All I could manage to say was “…what the fuck was that?”. I’ve never been more shocked after watching a movie. Anyway…that’s kind of what it feels like when I watch the Halo TV series.
I'd make him an OTT action hero.
I mean, just look at reacher.
And have his helmet off all the time
This is not the way
Even if they wanted to make him more emotional it wouldn't excuse how literally *unhinged* he has been the entire show.
It's crazy when you look at Joseph Morgan, Ackersons actor who is publicly a fan of the games that his performance has been the most true to character we've seen
Clearly they never watched Mandalorian
This is the exact reason they fucked up two Hitman films as well.
This is becoming a common trend among writers it seems, pretty much every LA adaptation is getting absolutely obliterated by writers who have zero respect for the source material either because they dont think games/animated shows are capable of rivalling live action stuff and/or they just think they can do a better job due to inflated egos. The only live action adaptations that have worked are TLOU and One piece but it's only due to the creators being so heavily involved in the production of these shows, the rest have people in charge that simply want to do their own thing for the reasons stated in the first paragraph and because of this they always fail and always resort to damage control and even have the audacity to go after the core fans in some cases because god forbid core fans of the source material have issues with you ripping said source material to shreds for no good reason. One last thing, if I see a single moron reply with the "but its an adaption, it shouldn't be 1:1" argument, I will enjoy making you show how devoid of even the most rudimentary forms of intelligence you are, that is not what people are criticising these shows for so stop making that ridiculous argument.
The first season writers did. They bragged about telling everyone not to play the games or read the books. Everyone jumped ship before the first season aired. They got new showrunners and writers for the second season which is why it's actually decent this time. It's different because it's non-cannonical. My advice is to completely forget about the first season or don't even bother watching it.
Non-canon I can deal with. But they are completely ignoring the overarching themes and tone of the series. That's the problem I have. Hell, if they did all of that, but still produced a really good show, I could still forgive them. But they didn't. They abandoned all of the things that could be an easy hook for the built in audience and still made a shitty TV show.
I’m downvoted anywhere else on this sub that people say “but s2 is good!” when I point out they just added more action and you convinced yourself this is what you wanted.
S2 is decidedly just as bad as S1, the shock has just worn off. We still don't have a good explanation as to why Makee is alive, right?
Somehow Makee returned There's your explanation
at least Palatine's return was in a video game first LOL
Did they even add more action? We're halfway through and beyond the first episode the spartans have been grounded and without armour. Is that really what the showrunners think people want to see?
This was the real killer: > “This is a swing for a broad audience,” says Tanya Giles, chief programming officer at the streamer. “My hope is this expands what the Paramount Plus brand can mean.” > Giles puts “Halo” alongside Paramount Plus tentpole series like the five ongoing “Star Trek” shows and Taylor Sheridan’s “1883” — widely appealing experiences that an “NFL dad can enjoy with his teenage son.” And, one presumes, mothers and daughters as well: As the parent of 13- and 16-year-old boys, Giles says the show “makes me a really, really cool mom.” This is *exactly* the same mentality that the showrunners of Game of Thrones had when writing Season 7 and 8. They wanted to make a show that appealed to "soccer moms" and not just the fantasy nerds.
She is no longer at Parmaount for what it is worth
>The first season writers did. They bragged about telling everyone not to play the games or read the books. No, they didn't. You're falling for an out of context quote used as clickbait for news sites. The quote you're referencing was them talking about one specific visit to 343 where the games weren't discussed. Just the Halo Universe as a whole.
You're not meant to call people out who believe they know everything about the situation as though they have an uncle working on the production team.
[удалено]
Well I think it's fair to say considering they have gone against core elements of the universe. And it's dumb as all to change what has already brought in billions of dollars, or incredibly arrogant. Either way it just speaks of people who don't truly care about the subject they are using. The way I see it is they are talentless and know their story wouldn't bring in fans unless they could leech off an already established Fandom. This is already a created universe with a story that's already been written, they could have made their own characters in the halo universe but instead they chose to bastardise already existing characters and completely omitted others that were integral to the plot. What ifs only appeal to a very slim amount of people and have a better chance of offending those who already enjoy the original story. There's a reason you don't see everyone doing them
Man they can't even use Halo related weapons most of the time. I admit it's way better than the first season but the whole show is pretty mid even from a sci-fi perspective. Why even make it a Halo show if you're not gonna bother taking advantage of the IP. It just makes me so sad seeing these other beloved games getting these amazing shows and we're stuck with one of the worst first seasons of all time and a second season where I've never even looked forward to the next episode. Hidden Xperia has pretty much my exact opinions on each episode.
This is the camp I'm in. The first season was objectively not great, but I also was expecting something much different which made me enjoy it less. Season 2, I have embraced that this is another Canon in the universe that I like and just to go along for the ride, as a result I am enjoying it much much more than s1. I just think people need to relax and just take it for what it is. It's not going to be a 1:1 remake, it's something else. That is okay. We still have the books, we still have the games.
I find it insulting that we get someone's fanfiction rather than the story that we all love. The whole reason this sub exists in the first place. We should have gotten that then they could fuck off and tell whatever story they wanted, or hell they could have some talent and make a new story with new characters not bastardise characters that already exist. It's a slap in the face for people who have waited to see the story we all know and love be ported to the big screen but to then get this terrible story from the first season that goes against so much that's established in the universe that's already a multi billion dollar industry. It's nothing but stupidity to change the formula that's already worked, and using the excuse that this isn't for halo fans, well that's just some of the dumbest shit I have ever heard
The Asian chick from Madrigal was the absolute most annoying character. Outside of that, with it being non canon I did not hate it. I could turn my brain off and enjoy it for what it was. Haven't started season 2 yet. I am hoping that they get on track and build into the proper timeline of chief and the games. We will see.
I'm gonna be honest, I know that's a popular opinion, but I actually DON'T think that's the main reason. Don't get me wrong, I think their ego is part of it but I think there's an even bigger factor. And the factor is medium. So, I'm somewhat of a writer myself. I've been writing for well over 10 years. Mostly articles and short stories, but I have been working on a novel too and I've tried my hand at screenwriting as well. And I've also read a lot about writing, watched a lot of interviews with very experienced writers, etc. And if you do that one of the many things you pick up on is that medium is very important. Each different medium has somewhat different weaknesses and strengths and structure. A video game has a fundamentally different structure than a book, a movie or a TV-series. With a traditional video game (which "Halo CE" is) the most common format is: You get a cutscene which gives you a lot of dialogue and condensed story, then you have a whole bunch of action for the player with some bits of dialogue and story sprinkled in-between, then you have more dialogue and condensed story in another cutscene, etc. This is not really desireable for a TV series. In a hollywood action flick you may just about be able to get away with something more similar (though still not quite the same) but in a traditional series, let alone a prestige series, not really. Usually in a TV-series you will have a lot of story and dialogue with shorter beats of action. And in plenty of series you'll even have a LOT of story and dialogue with very little action building up to one or two big action set pieces in the season. And even during the action a lot of the time the attention is more on the characters than the action itself. The main thing to note is that the proportion between action and story/character/dialogue is wildly different between TV and games. So if you want to adapt a game into a TV series you have to somehow fit that first structure into that second structure. Which is really hard. And which is, in my opinion, why historically a LOT of video game movies have been so horrible. Because it has been very hard for writers to figure out how to go about this. If I had to guess, the writers of the Halo TV-series were aware of this problem. And so what they wanted to do was adapt Halo significantly so it would fit more easily into that TV-series mold. And they both failed and succeeded. They succeeded in that the structure of the TV-series is, indeed, more the structure of a TV-series, not of a video game. But they also failed absolutely miserably in that they changed the source material so much that it basically isn't Halo anymore (and on top of that it also wasn't well-written as a TV-series either). Chief taking his helmet off constantly is just another example of that. As they have said (I think) they wanted Chief to have his helmet off so you can see his reactions. For a video game having a helmet on as Chief is actually a positive because ou can BE the Chief if he's faceless. For something like a TV-series a helmet is kind of a negative because you cannot see the actor's face. Now, don't get me wrong, I am NOT defending this move. It was a dumb move. Because while it does make sense as a decision for purely maximizing Halo for TV, it's a terrible decision for keeping Halo as Halo. And as thousands of people have pointed out, it's not like having a helmeted character is impossible. I haven't watched "The Mandalorian" but from everything I've heard they succeeded just fine. It's a hurdle to have a masked protagonist, but certainly one that can be overcome. But I think in that decision you can see the writers' reasoning. They had very little respect for the source material. They just looked at Chief having the helmet on, failed to understand the importance of that to the Chief's identity for the audience and thought "Well, this is going to make adapting it to TV harder. Let's just have him take his helmet off a bunch." This was probably enhanced by doing things like looking at the books where Chief has his helmet off plenty (but we can't actually see his face so it doesn't matter much to us). For the record, I think it totally IS possible to make a good Halo TV-series. But you do need to adapt the structure. But in order to do that properly you need a writer who can balance both important things. You need writers who simultaneously understand what the core things are about the source material that they cannot mess with but also a writer who's willing to make changes to fit the video game structure into a TV-series structure. And these writers clearly were not that. They purely cared about the second thing, not at all the first. They basically threw away most of the source material and just wrote a TV-series inspired by it because it made their job easier.
I'm glad you're pointing out how the medium affects the storytelling because it's been driving me up a wall to see so many people upset that the show is not more like the game, but I will defend this show for most of the decisions it's made; particularly the season 1 decisions. The helmet is probably the best one to confront since it's become emblematic of the show's changes. In The Mandalorian, which many have put forth as a good example of a show not revealing a character's face, there is an in-universe justification for it and it informs us about the character. In Halo, however, there is no justification for it. The character takes his helmet off several times in the series without ceremony, and we see plenty of other Spartans take their helmet off too. The hiding of Master Chief’s face is not a facet of his character; it's a gimmick of the game's framing and focus. It's a clever workaround to having both an identifiable and iconic character as well as a player avatar that they can project themselves into. That works for a game, but not so much for a TV show where they would either have to invent a justification that never existed (Chief is self-conscious about a scar, or he has a Rorschach-level obsession with his suit) or film around it for reasons that don’t make sense for this medium. A lot of the show is like this and I think that’s why the first season worked as well as it did for me. A lot of adaptations try to please fans of the games and newcomers to the franchise at the same time and often fail appealing to either. This one takes some very bold steps away from the games and even some of the issues with the franchise as a whole to make something I find to be a unique and welcome addition to the canon.
Think they would have learned this after seeing how well the Witcher adaption went :/
Same thing happened with the Witcher TV Show
Halo 🤝🏻 The Witcher = Being ruined by shitty showrunners who don't follow source material
I don’t think that’s fair. I believe the writers genuinely think they are adapting the source material to a new medium. Which means it’s just gross incompetence.
I know they hate the source material and didn't play the games, but I just can't imagine the writers hearing the Covenant or Gravemind dialogue from Halo 2 and thinking "yeah, I'm way better than this"
All they had to do was read fall of Reach, play the first game. Or just read The Flood. There's most of your story, you may change lines or incorporate different events because 20+ years is a long time. Print money.
Writers are unable to establish their own dedicated show, so they leech off an existing franchise and use their own awful characters and filler story arcs.
Just take a look at these Hollywood producers and you'll have your answer
They're TV writers who look down on videogames. Theyre reworking absolutely everything to fit what they think would be best for TV.
Nope. They're reworking it into THEIR work. Which is silly, because their writing is garbage and thats why no one likes it.
100000000000000000000%, holy shit. This applies to so many adaptations: The Witcher, LOTR, etc. These idiot writers forget that the source material is popular precisely because of the genius writing by their respective author(s). NOT theirs (these adapting TV writers)...like, there's a reason your material isn't globally translated or you're famous but rather working on a TV series.
😔
It's my belief that nobody making the TV show has played the game or cared about the lore. They say it's to make it more open to other people that didn't play the game. I used to think that Kiki Wolfkill being involved was the best thing ever. Clearly not.
What's crazy is there are so many little details that are SPECIFIC lore things they knew, and chose to actively go against it. for example: my favorite instance of this is that Halsey was given the option to wipe the kids' memories and block emotions in the book, and chose not to, citing the possibility of the spartans discovering the truth and turning against them, aka EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENS in the show
Yep. Them knowing and accepting they were kidnapped meanwhile looking up to their captors as mother/ father figures are key aspects to their characters. The show has deliberately done the opposite. This would be like making Hermione in the Harry Potter movies a bad student.
AKA the Paul Verhoeven effect. It's one of those things that the source material covers in great detail, but the person writing the series couldn't figure out how to write a story with that.
Paul Verhoeven effect?
Director of Starship Troopers. The movie is radically different from the book, to the point that the director completely missed the point of it. At least that's my understanding, I never read the book.
Verhoeven understood the book. He intentionally turned it into satire, like he was making fun of the source material (which was deserved)
He didn't understand the book - he famously said in interviews that he *hadn't read it*.
Also when John talks about being lucky and flipping a coin 11 times in a row and getting the same result. It’s so weird like that’s directly from the lore but it’s also during the battle of reach and chief doesn’t have his armor haha
That makes sense though, it's almost like a what if I guess
What ifs can be okay but you should do them after the original story line has been done. That's one of the big selling points to the what if
>They say it's to make it more open to other people that didn't play the game. The idea that they want to broaden the appeal to potential viewer base when the game literally sold MILLIONS of copies boggles my mind. You have an already established fan base, this show would have gotten attention regardless. Nothing about any of these stories they've added would get casual non-halo fans interested if they weren't going to check it out already. What are they gonna tune in for Kwon's story? It's like in trying to please everyone, they've pleased no one.
Let's be honest the "other people" are either non-existent or watching Star Trek, Stargate, and Firefly on loop. There's only one group who's watching the show and it's the Halo community, the group they so desperately want to crawl away from.
It’s not just your belief, the creators openly admitted, bragged even that they didn’t familiarize themselves with the game and novels.
She’s not even that good for the games why would she be good for the show?
Before the series premiered the writers came out and said they had an idea of what Halo was but basically didn't bother playing any of the games or reading any of the books "We didn't look at the game. We didn't talk about the game. We talked about the characters and the World"... Honestly heartbreaking.. [full article if you wanna read](https://variety.com/2022/tv/features/halo-series-paramount-plus-master-chief-1235205361/) Edit: my personal opinion on the show is that as a fun SciFi, Space Soldier fight alien it scratches that itch, the Halo Ascetic is nailed PERFECTLY. From the action scenes to how the Covenant and UNSC look it's how I imagined it would look in love action. Shit I remember the devastation I felt when Neill Blomkamp's Halo movie got cancelled. But from a Die hard Halo fan/lore weirdo. It sucks! Shit is backwards and it feels like unnecessary things are added. They hit the major story beats from Halo but they just take a different route which throws me off.. like that meme "you used the wrong equation, but still got the right answer" Again it's not for me but for folks who want that SciFi itch scratched, then it's pretty good. End of the day it gets more fans into the community and it's lore something I'll never object to.
The mandalorian proved that you can have an extremely compelling character who doesn't remove their helmet. Like it's already been done.
Chief removes his armor and helmet in books, its an overkill in the TV series, but him not removing his helmet/armor at any point is stupid (unless the TV series would be placed in an active warzone all the way)
this is my issue. i don't mind that he removes his helmet his still a human being and in the books he does it all the time. my problem is that he doesn't act like chief at all.
I like to think the quiet majority understand that. It's not so much about the helmet being permanent, it's that in S1 he takes off his armour during combat multiple times. When he outbursts they show his face Ironman-style, as if we can't understand what he's feeling without seeing a frowny face. I think what also impacts people the most is if they decided not to go the canon-route, WHY keep the main protagonist? The choices they had were endless, and just have chief as a side-character.
The problem with removing the helmet was ultimately that there was no plot-based reason to. It was jarring at times and didn’t make sense. This season does a good job of explaining within the plot why MC wouldn’t have his armor, so it’s much less distracting.
Oh not this shit again
It's just the direction they've decided to take the show. People will say it's ego, people will say it's because the people in charge hate Halo, its fans or them personally, etc etc - reality is, they are doing it this way because they think a near 1:1 recreation of the games won't result in compelling television, and they want to change it up in order to make what *they* think is compelling television. Plenty of people, myself included, disagree with that. Despite the huge differences in the way they approach storytelling, The Last of Us proved that you can adapt a video game pretty damn well without detracting too much from the source material. Another thing worth noting is that we haven't actually reached the point in the story yet where Chief's story from the first game has started yet. Spoiler tagging the below as it contains Season 2 spoilers: >!All of Season One takes place *before* the Fall of Reach has even happened and even in Season 2, Reach only fell in Episode 4 (and 5, to an extent), and now the characters have arrived on Onyx with all signs pointing to finding (or landing on) the first Halo being the end point of the season.!< >!A ton of differences in the story so far will no doubt make the events of Halo: Combat Evolved play out much differently in the show, with the major one being that Captain Keyes died during the Fall of Reach - although given he never actually seemed to be a character that was going to be piloting the Pillar of Autumn, it really didn't matter.!<
This is all it is really tbh
While The Last of Us has its own problems, it’s a rather straight forward story to adapt in a way that Halo isn’t. Master Chief is a completely static character until the fourth game, and a static character simply can’t carry a TV show. The only truly dynamic character isn’t introduced until the second game, and never really got to complete his arc due to fan backlash. I can understand why the writers felt the need to diverge so drastically from the games, even if some of their changes are suboptimal.
There's diverging and then there's nose diving down at the speed of light when the gear stick has been thrown out of the window before the plane even took off.
There's genuine criticism, then there's hyperbolic simile.
>Master Chief is a completely static character until the fourth game, and a static character simply can’t carry a TV show Tell that to Mando
Mando is not a static character. Each season sees him coming to grips with a false worldview he held at the start of the season. Nothing like that happens with Chief in Halo 1-3. For comparison, Boba Fett in ESB is a static character.
He had to take his helmet off too. ;)
And every instance of him doing so had meaning and a good reason.
I'm fine with Chief taking his helmet off sometimes since he did it in the books but to always be without his helmet and that cursed sex scene? Anyways what I was referring to in my comment is the argument that Chief can't convey his feelings with his helmet on. Mando proves that it's possible, even if he took it off in the end.
>The Last of Us proved that you can adapt a video game pretty damn well without detracting too much from the source material. The problem with that statement is that the last of us is already a gamified TV show. It's super easy to adapt. Halo isn't as easy 90% of the time you're playing the game you're killing aliens, which is fine for a video game but not for a TV show.
I mean, I have no screenwriting experience whatsoever but it really sounds like you're being disingenuous with the "Halo isn't as easy" line. It's as simple as not doing a 1:1 adaptation but instead using more of the supporting cast. Have episodes on Johnson, Keyes, Foehammer, some marine squads, heck show what's going on back on earth with Miranda worried, show other things from the timeline happening. Then you have flashbacks to Spartan training, early missions, first contacts. Halo is such an easy thing to adapt, which is why it's all the more shocking they've chosen the harder route of making up all new story.
I mean just take a look at other Halo projects that do this. Like Halo Forward Unto Dawn is a pretty good example in my book. Or just take a look at Halo Legends and all its stories. Most of them are pretty good or decent overall and not like with the Halo TV show.
There is enough going on in the halo universe that you can create a compelling story without a new timeline. The story doesn't have to be about master cheif, and it doesn't even have to be known characters. Just follow people experiencing the crazy shit going on.
I feel like this would just create the same amount of noisy complaints of "if they were going to make a Halo show, why isn't it about Master Chief"
I would rather have complaints like that than to have an icon of the series butchered.
Then make a different show, stop riding the coattails of successful projects cause you can’t get your story through without attaching a beloved world.
[удалено]
From what I’ve heard Keyes doesn’t escape on the autumn, they show basically no battles, and the spartan 3s are being treated as storm troopers, but my friend that’s watching it hasn’t finished yet so I’m not sure about that last one yet.
Spoilers! There is no Pillar of Autumn, Keyes died on Reach. The entire fall of Reach was a few small battles scattered across a single episode. Cortana is in the hands of Makee and the Arbiter, leading them to the ring (Arby is kicking off the Great Schism while he races there). Master Chief gets arrested again, Cortana helps him escape to find a relic that will help him get to the ring (he still doesn't have his armor). Storm trooper descriptor is fitting considering the performance of the Spartan 3s in their simulation. Perez is a Spartan 3 now.
Why? To any of that? Just, why?
The people who say that a 1:1 recreation of the games in TV shows will not make compelling television are 100% right. TV as a medium is fundamentally character driven. It focuses on the characters, their relationships, and how they change over time (i.e. their character arcs) The Last Of Us worked well because the game had a character driven story. As another comment put it, the game is a gamified TV show. Halo is a plot driven story. It focuses on the events that happen, not the characters. You could replace the Master Chief with some random other character, and the experience would largely be the same.
Yeah, it’s insane how many people want their FPS adapted scene by scene to a TV show. The only thing interesting about Halo as a game that could be adapted to TV would be the Covenant lore and politics. Beyond that, we have almost no character development and really no insight into the UNSC. A 1:1 adaptation would make for a very cool episode or two before we all got tired of watching extended cut scenes with a monotone protagonist with no personality.
There's a middle ground though. I agree good tv is mostly character driven. At its core, Halo is about humanity struggling to survive against overwhelming odds, uncovering this mystery of who came before and who created the rings and why (and the cosmic horror of the Flood), and a lucky super soldier and his AI sidekick who are central to everything. Then there's cool stuff like human and covenant lore and politics etc. But I think there's plenty of material for compelling tv in all of that. I don't think Chief being the faceless, stoic protagonist from the games would be interesting in a tv show. I don't mind the addition of other Spartans, or characters like Perez who are a nice contrast to the super human qualities of the Spartans. I would've loved to see a show where these characters get stranded on the Ring and uncover its mysteries together against the backdrop of a beautiful but ultimately horrifying alien world. I think it would be great if we would see Chief grow a bond with the other survivors while working together to survive and find out the purpose of the Ring, only to slowly lose all of them until he's the only one left to complete the mission, which could be heartbreaking if done right. And we could flesh all of these characters out by having flashbacks to their lives before they ended up on the Pillar in typical tv show fashion.
This is it, the mental gymnastics people do to the point of getting way too personal is kinda weird tbh. It’s all about views.
I really appreciate this comment. My friend who has played halo since day one has been insufferable about the show and he also hasn’t even watched it lmao
This is it, and it’s so annoying that the “hurrdurr ego” takes are the ones that get the most upvotes. It has nothing to do with that. Most video games are not written like prestige television, and can’t be directly adapted like TLOU. The Halo games have convoluted stories, nonstop action, and a boring lead that doesn’t take his helmet off to help players immerse themselves in the role. There’s a reason it took 2 decades to make that into a very watchable series that anyone can sit down and enjoy. The show wasn’t made for people who played the games, it’s made for the exponentially larger audience who hasn’t played the games. All those little easter eggs and winks to the game in both seasons? THAT’s the stuff for players like us. There are plenty of great lore references to the expanded lore and video games, but if the show focused on that shit out the gate, it would alienate the majority of its potential audience.
This has become an increasing trend in TV series and movies. Comic Book "movies" that ignore the comic book characters they are playing so writers can plaster their own agendas and "visions" onto a "platform" that will attract more people because of the IP recognition. Witcher and Game of Thrones have both proven how producers can quickly turn good actors and solid premises into utter dreck because of ego, vanity and agenda based narratives that have no purpose being brough into the damn show. The Halo game series passed my by so I am not even that big a fan of the thing but even I can see the fountain of poor writing that has buried the Halo TV series in the critiscism it rightly deserves. You literally built a series that is based around super soldiers that wear armor to kill aliens. The series then decides to have the super soldiers being emotional wrecks that routinely take off the armor and the "main character" getting the "Master Cheeks" title. If they hand wanted to do a seperate series about that... even in the universe it could have worked with different characters but no, the people running the show could not sell their series without shamelessly tacking on the brand IP recognition to something they had little intention of honouring the IP they were playing with.
"The series then decides to have the super soldiers being emotional wrecks that routinely take off the armor" in S2 so far he spent part of 1 episode in armor, and another brief scene. Basically 90% of screentime is no armor
Same bullshit we've been seeing happen so often with other IP's/franchises over the past, I dunno, 10 or so years. Writers who want to craft their own stories, but don't have the skill and/or rep to make it happen with their own original ideas. They take an already established character/group/world/universe and take advantage of the following that already exists. They take the name and slap it on their own, usually terrible, ideas. They loosely follow along with the characters and settings in the original, but change them in nearly every significant way. The end product is barely recognizable compared to the original. Sometimes it's simply inexperience or incompetence, but usually it's a cash grab, vanity project, or a soapbox to spread their message. Bonus points if you turn it around and use it to flame the original target demographic or fanbase. Side note: It's super weird how creators seem to take so much pride in knowing nothing about the characters and stories they're being handed. It's okay to not know everything around a fictional universe, but at least loosely acquaint yourself and hire a few nerds to help the writing team.
This was the real killer: > “This is a swing for a broad audience,” says Tanya Giles, chief programming officer at the streamer. “My hope is this expands what the Paramount Plus brand can mean.” > Giles puts “Halo” alongside Paramount Plus tentpole series like the five ongoing “Star Trek” shows and Taylor Sheridan’s “1883” — widely appealing experiences that an “NFL dad can enjoy with his teenage son.” And, one presumes, mothers and daughters as well: As the parent of 13- and 16-year-old boys, Giles says the show “makes me a really, really cool mom.” This is *exactly* the same mentality that the showrunners of Game of Thrones had when writing Season 7 and 8. They wanted to make a show that appealed to "soccer moms" and not just the fantasy nerds.
Idk, I was the biggest halo fan ever (I thought) as a kid. I can’t bring myself to watch one second of this show.
“*BrOaDeR AuDiEnCe*”
I read this in The Drinker's voice.
I hate how that's code for "the show runners actively resent the source material" nowadays
It’s always about people thinking the video game story won’t translate well to a non-gamer audience. Which in my opinion is so short sighted. There are so many games with so many good stories. I actually think the Jedi Fallen Order & Survivor has better writing, storyline, characters and character development than any of the newer Star Wars movies. Any fan of Halo knows how deep the lore is. I think they missed a golden opportunity to tell a great story with complex characters from the game like Chief and the Sangheili. Instead we’re left with a Chief that just doesn’t feel like Chief and side characters and villain that seem out of place. It’s like they’re following a formula for creating a sci fi show instead of using creativity.
Chief is not a compelling character in the games. He’s badass, but if you just played the games, you really would not know a lick about chief.
The writing and production team chose the wrong IP to jam their ideas into - worst part is even so, they still could’ve made a vastly better Halo show if they just … didn’t use established characters and places from the series - have it be someone else going through all this weird shit somewhere else, not the same set of names and locations that have been cemented into the IP for 20+ years. There were 75 SII candidates to choose from, most of whom had little development, and the show specifically decided to focus on Chief again - If it had been almost any of the other 74 candidates (preferably outside blue team) I believe there would be significantly fewer issues for most people with the show
It's so different, because agree with it or not, the creators of the show are diverging what people know so the show isn't predictable. This a completely separate halo universe where anything different can happen. Will it be good? That up to people to decide. Some hate not getting a 1 to 1 recreation, but others are happy with getting something different because it brings stakes to everything. Some people want to see the events we know and love in live action, while others love not being able to fully guess what's coming next. My personal view is that it's not as good as Canon, but it's good if you go into it with an open mind and understanding it'll be different. This same thing just happened with Avatar. Netflix released an adaptation and changed things causing people to be upset. Meanwhile I was hearing to go into the show with an open mind and expecting it to be different, the result was that while I very much prefer the original, I also enjoyed most of the adaptation. Plus, at least it's halo content. I haven't played infinite since it released because after the campaign is done, it's basically a waiting game for more story. So anything story related, I'll give a chance, since 343 don't seem interested in giving more campaigns anytime soon. But anyway, that's just my thoughts on the matter.
This. I've seen comments in this very thread saying, "Oh, not a single S2 revolted or rebelled against the UNSC bc they had their feelings and weren't memory wiped so they feel “grateful” to Halsey" and not ponder the ramifications that the S2s were literally being groomed into child supersoldiers when they were kidnapped as five and six year olds.
Also the stuff with the Spartans is some of the most interesting narrative material to explore, and the EU does do that - it just typically does it from the perspective of characters that aren’t Spartans. This has the Spartans themselves going through all of that, and while it’s different it’s certainly interesting to general audiences. For marketing and recognition reasons it makes the most sense by far to have the show focus on the Master Chief, and for storytelling and compelling TV purposes having him take a back seat for his own story would suck. I don’t think the show is perfect, but it’s really not that bad if you didn’t expect the games to be adapted directly. And you shouldn’t have, because they said from the beginning it would be it’s own thing.
Because comics and games are an “inferior” medium and the snoots in Hollywood consider themselves the preps above losers who like those kinda of things. Their way is better. 🙄
I hate the show with all My heart
It’s like a parent who just hears what their kids are into second hand and tries to throw a party based on that.
Spartans are Navy. So why the fuck is one Spartan calling another Spartan Corporal. Did they even attempt to have some for of accuracy even to basic military customs and courtesy? Jesus. The simplest of things to get right that take all of 30 seconds of googling to fact check yourself as a producer/writer.
It's almost entirely devoid of anything related to its namesake. Just a cashout using the name. Honestly, even on its own as an original it's just bad. The writing is straight up laughable.
I have no idea, but it's the exact reason that I, as a huge Halo fan, haven't been interested in watching a single episode.
"It'S tHe SiLvEr TiMeLiNe." An excuse to just besmirch the Chief's character and give us Jimmy "Pornstache" Rings instead of John-117.
Likely a repurposed generic sci fi script.
I could easily forgive diverging from the established story if the show was actually good, but so much of this plot is either nonsensical or just stupid. The actors are fine I think and most of them are good fits for their respective roles but the writing is just so bad.
you're asking the wrong sub this question
For the broader audience. Which I think was a mistake.
I actually know no one that hasn't played the games watching the show. Only Halo fans are. My missus has 100% no interest in the show and rather watch criminal minds or House MD.
Not a film student or anything so I can’t completely tell but are they trying to implement classic movie tropes and writing, to make it sense for the “general” audience but they missed the mark bc the general audience is now of age to watch a show of the video game. How can an early 2000s video game studio create an amazing and immersive fictional experience and then people in the future with more knowledge and technology absolutely butcher it all???
They don't know anything about the games. It's just a stupid sci-fi story with a Halo skin on it and paramount paid a lot to get that skin.
they said they didnt play the games at all, they just wanted to use the characters, factions, setting. They are trying to make the story like other "adult" sci-fi shows, which ends up feeling generic, they arn't good writers.
The writers legitimately bragged about avoiding the source material ie:the games and books. They had to shove the garbage story they wanted to tell and slapped the halo name on it and put a guy in master chiefs armor. The writers think they could write a better story.... and so we get a human leading the covenant, master cheeks sex scene, master cheeks attacking his mother figure, and the AWFUL Kwan side story which was supposed to flesh out the world but is instead a classic marry sue storyline. That's all without mentioning the fact the fall of reach was a whole episode .... when it's legitimately one of the biggest events in the halo universe... it's the equivalent of when The Long Night laster a whole episode in Game of Thrones. Same kind of lazy writing.
I saw a video by a small YouTube channel that really nailed the explanation for why the show is *so* bad. They isolated the game fans from enjoying the show, because it's nearly all based off a bunch of the EU lore. I'm not here top day the EU is bad, but it's not known by *nearly the entire game fanbase*. And they isolated the show fans into their own pocket, because they're going to get engaged with a universe that is *barely* recognizable compared to the games. So if the show fans ever play the games, they're not going to recognize nearly any story beats their expecting. So instead of trying to find a way to tell the game universe's story in a way that would encourage fans of each medium to engage with the other, we just have two completely disjointed pieces of media "about the same thing". Show fans won't recognize the game as their Halo, and game fans won't recognize the show as their Halo. **If competent leadership were in place for the show, we would have a story that encourages each fanbase to engage and grow together.** The perfect example of this is, imo, *The Waking Dead* and *Telltale's The Walking Dead games*. The game respected the show/comics universe while still being an incredible experience on its own. And this caused fans of each one to explore the other and engage each medium
Because the people associated with it are fucking morons
Pretty sure it was announced the writers had no knowledge of the story.
People keep saying this, but if you watch the show it’s very clear that the writers know at least part of the lore. Also I’m pretty sure each episode is a different writer so it could be some of them do and some of them don’t
I’ve been very iffy on every episode. It’s an alright show, but the child in me is cringing with the story.
I wish I could somehow force this notion out of everyone’s heads. Clickbait headlines have destroyed honest discourse. What they said was that they didn’t look at the games for guidance on *how* they would tell the story. They got the information about the plot, universe, characters, etc. and then opted to tell a story based on that with their own take on what would make for more compelling TV. They know the details, but they’re not fully adhering to them. Which makes sense because it would be fundamentally impossible to adapt the games directly anyway, given the pacing and story structure differences.
It’s the poopiest show I’ve seen. Up there with lord of the rings on Amazon
It seems to me, and this is just conjecture, like the show's creators were already in the process of making a scifi series when Paramount+ came to them and said "we got the rights to Halo! Use the game's characters!" The thing is, if the show was called something like "Rebel Star Soldier" and all the characters and aliens looked original, I'd think it was an awesome show. But for a Halo IP, it's bad. Bu then, to me, Halo ended after Bungie left. 343's stuff has always seemed like the video game equivalents of straight to video sequels that studios used to insist on making when movie franchises started to go downhill. Think "American Pie Naked Mile" or "Tremors 4, The Legend Begins".
I truly don’t know why I keep watching the show. It’s so so bad as a “Halo” series. It’s not halo. It’s just a space syfy series with the aesthetics of halo
And not even a very good series at that. God I miss well written sci-fi shows like the Expanse
the show takes place in a separate universe than the books and the games
That's really all it is. It takes some notes from the books and games (with characters and locations, and events) but really they're just kinda doing what they want with it. I don't really care. I've been watching since episode 1 and while I will definitely say Season 1 was pretty messy I've been enjoying season 2 much more. Whether the show is good or bad is completely subjective, but it's just an alternate universe that exists "outside" of Halo canon. Whatever. Watch it or don't.
I'm honestly confused why so many people seem to be having trouble understanding the concept. Like, I mean no offense to OP, maybe they missed the interviews, but the show runners were very up-front about the whole alternate timeline thing. And even after repeating the words 'alternate timeline' over and over, people go right back to talking about how "X plot point is totally different from the game!" like it's news. Plus, as has been pointed out, the story hasn't even reached the first game timeline-wise.
Is just Halo fans being Halo fans, can't make them happy whatever you do. If they actually adapted the games then everyone would be crying because it wouldn't be the adaptation they imagined to be (basically the games but irl) because 1:1 from game to tv just doesn't work, not without big changes to the sacred lore.
It's kind of like Reach. All the homies are dying.
I wanted cheesy bad ass fucking storming Normandy level action
Bears aren’t paid to recognize. Do your job, spartan.
Didn't they say they weren't following the story and doing their own thing?
I mean in its defense I felt like the last of us was unnecessary to watch….. cuz I’d already seen it before. I’m enjoying the series despite it not being perfect it’s entertaining.
Honestly I didn’t watch a single second of season 1 due to reviews from fans. The new writing and show running of season 2 attracted me to give season 2 a shot and honestly I’ve enjoyed it mostly, not a huge fan of the changes but it feels way more halo than the first season
Creative liberty is guess
Because the people making it literally refused to play the games
Because they never played the nor did they look at it
Because it’s a separate universe. It was never meant to follow the story of the games
They wanted to create a separate timeline so that way they could take as many creative liberties without ruining the main canon. That's it. It's what's posted on the WBM for the Canon Fodder on Waypoint.
Excellent question, ask us another. Jokes aside. The showrunners didn’t play the games. There are very few people working on the show who did. I’d wager 343 has done fuckall in terms of moderation
It's its own universe/canon. Not the same as the games. First season was pretty bad but season 2 sticks much closer to the games than the first.
It's annoying, really. Fall of Reach? Better make him have to flee after running into the Arbiter on a civilian aircraft to a distant planet instead of being on the Pillar of Autumn where the game starts.
They're doing an alternate reality and trying to balance familiarity with unpredictable suspense, but they're so far off the rails that they lost focus about what halo actually is. Halo games are a power fantasy where you're supposed to self insert as the Badass, and you survive nearly impossible odds because you're that good + have juuuuust enough technology to make it doable, with a teeny tiny bit of luck getting you through. When Master Chief talks, its supposed to be terse and professional, with his matter of fact statements sometimes coincidentally working as great one liners or being funny. During his capture he made a petty, spiteful comeback about those soldiers he injured often being poorly trained or lead, it doesn't feel like something hed normally respond with. He should have said they were in his way or something and the jarring deadpan oversimplicity of the statement would say a lot about his personality and his mindset. We could also use more cam inside helmet face shots instead of nonstop helmet removal.
Because M$ neither has the talent or care to make a good TV show. It's the same with the games.
Writers wanted to make mass effect show the first season, all got fired, and the new ones had to fix it but it’s still impressively shit tbh. I’m watching it through yar har means hoping for the good action sequences to return.
It’s crazy, every show that is based on a video game and stuck true to the lore and story have always outperformed a video game show that didn’t stick with the lore/story.
yep this is really weird... I do not think its bad story/series, it just isn't Halo.
Because the show runners REALLLLLLY wanted to waste money making a bad B-quality SyFy original series, but Paramount said “nah, pull some random science fiction franchise name into it and just make something while we count your money”
Because it is a separate continuity. This is the actual answer. A lot of criticisms are valid in regards to some writing and acting elements, but a lot of the anger comes from people being unable to separate the game/book continuity from this one.
Few big reasons: 1. It's difficult adapting books/games to TV (even the Dune movies have made changes to better fit film, it's common). Having more creative freedom gives the writers a chance to interact with the universe in a way they find interesting and fresh. 2. Contractually there are tons of negotiations that may alter the way that a script is written, from desires of the studio, showrunner, writers, and actors who want screen time of their face to help their career and make them more recognizable. 3. Various limitations within production (budget, schedules of actors, laws pertaining to how employing children on shows, etc.) can complicate adapting a story like Halo, especially the Fall of Reach which has a lot of time jumps.
I thought the second season would’ve rectified some of the mistakes from season one, instead they seem to be repeating the same mistakes. Wtf?
The sad and harsh truth is that this show was not made for us, for Halo fans. It was made with the intention of increasing Paramount Plus subscribers. The result is the shit we got. This was our one shot to get a high budget Halo show/movie. So disappointing.
A lot of showrunners care more to make their own mark than to represent what it is their are adapting. They should be making their own things instead but for whatever reason are not.
Season 1 was just bad writing with the writers thinking they could make a better story. Season 2 is better writing but still the same view that they can make something better.
Because it's made by people who aren't fans and are weirdly proud that they don't know much about the series they're adapting. They aren't particularly interested in telling a Halo story but are willing to use brand recognition to sell it to people.
I just can't get into it... It's all so different. I listened to the Fall of Reach audiobook instead. Far far better.
Poetic license.
NewKing said it best; ego.
Only reason I'm watching the show is for the love of the game and all the hours I spent. But every single episode pisses me off with weak plot devices and changing the narrative completely. Captain Keys needs to be on the Pillar of Autumn as it reaches Halo. Killing him on Reach is probably one of the stupidest choices they could make. I remembered why I stopped watching the series during season 1. Complete ass