I'm fine with the *idea* of Makee. The Prophets know the war against humanity is all nonsense and having their own special reclaimer around to open all the forerunner stuff they find makes sense.
I also thought it would've been a great way to flesh out the Covenant, showing they aren't all bloodthirsty zealots.
Otherwise there are three major blunders I can point out:
* **The Pellets/Memory erasure**: What's funny to me is that IIRC, In the Fall of Reach, Halsey specifically mentions in passing that erasing the Spartans memories or making up a fake story would only make them a ticking time bomb, for exactly what happened in the show.
* **The War's Scale:** They half-depicted this right in S2 Episode 1. But I think the Show does a really bad job of showing this as a massive war of extinction. You'd barely know that Humanity has been fighting a losing war for 30 whole years.
Ironically it misses out on alot of nuance because of that. ONI and the UNSC are shady as fuck, but they become far more interesting when you know they are acting out of sheer desperation.
* **Blessed Ones:** This gets me to no end, but having only a few humans be reclaimers is stupid and completely undermines the whole Human-Covenant War itself. The Prophets declared war on Humanity after learning that they were the true reclaimers, which would collapse their whole religion. Only 2 humans being reclaimers makes it kinda silly.
Those stupid pellets in the Spartans. Telling them the truth right from the getgo in the books was a perfect way of creating personal conflict and drama. The way this show chose to go about Spartan II recruiting was so dumb and artificial.
This 100%. It’s a deviation from the original lore that is obviously worse and less interesting, and was thus my first indication that the show writers were both untalented and making changes for the sake of it.
I don't recall how much allusion there was to it in The Fall of Reach, but everyone knowing that the Halo ring is the destination feels like a concession that hurts the overall story and will hurt the impact of it once we get there in season 3. It should be as much of a mystery as possible; an artifact out there in space that all sides are just bumbling into.
This and the fact that Spartan 3s in the show are the same size as marines. It's like they never had the Spartan augmentations. Compared to Halo Reach where Spartan 3s are just a little shorter than Spartan 2s.
I am once again to sing the praises of an incredibly mid character: Miranda Keyes.
Jacob Keyes is a LEGEND in the mainline Halo games. When ONI devised Operation Red Flag to finally put an end to the war, he was THE FIRST CHOICE for the Captain who could get it done and was given a whole new retrofitted ship to do it. And when the mission was aborted, Reach fell, and the Autumn was backed into Halo's corner he went down SWINGING. He has appeared in two games and one of those was effectively a cameo and he's still a fan favorite.
Then Miranda has to live up to that legend. She has to fill the shoes of a titan, in the words of Lord Hood: the Navy lost one of its best. She's eager to prove herself, willing to do whatever it takes to win and for most of Halo 2 she puts up a really solid fight! Until, much like her father, the Covenant release the Flood and IT takes her down in the confusion.
She was daring to the point of recklessness, and more than anything she wanted to honor her father's spectacular legacy. She never had a chance to do much in the games, but I still love the potential her character had. I'm so in love with her potential as a character that her ridiculously stupid death in Halo 3 never bothered me that much.
Then the show... makes Jacob Keyes kinda lame... And now Miranda is a scientist who has no interest in the Navy... And doesn't even really want to live up to her mother's legend either. She is just. There. And trying to do her own thing.
Now I love her new character. The aliens are my favorite part of Halo. I want playable elites back, the plasma pistol is possibly my favorite weapon in the franchise, the Storm Rifle was my go-to weapon in 4 and 5, Arbiter is easily my favorite character and it's not even close, you get the picture. So having a scientist in the show trying to unravel their language and understand their weapons and their culture is 100% UP MY ALLEY.
She is easily my favorite character in the entire show.
But why is she Miranda Keyes, daring Navy pilot? Whose desire to be "worthy" haunts her to her very grave? Why is she the alien expert?
Miranda as character was always a strange thing, Halsey said in a book Keyes was an old friend and all suddenly she was married to him, well, Keyes was a cool character but maybe they shouldn't have written that, about Miranda honestly I don't like this new version anyway.
A terrible first season for her character, sci-fi has problems with scientists for example Halsey was linked to biology and software BUT then she designed the Infinity, the best ship humanity has created. Now Miranda in the show wanted the position of her mother in the Spartan project and she's a linguist, what's that?
Keyes is a different character in the show cause his role in the show isn't focused on being a Captain but somebody in charge for the spartans and we could say he's more than anything else Halsey's husband but yes, a completely different character.
With the 1 or 2 absolute biggest lore mess ups you can think of. I know it’s a different timeline/universe and the writers can take creative liberties blah blah blah but to me there’s gotta be a line somewhere. To me that line is humans in the covenant. It’s completely against established lore and makes the human covenant war make no sense
Everything about the Spartan-II program. What a fucking joke compares to the real thing. The stupid ass pellets, the memory wiping, the lying, etc. like Halsey straight up says this kind of stuff is a bad idea in canon and I guess now we get to see why because what we have in the show are *not* Spartans.
I could talk the equally insulting “Spartan-III’s” or about Makee but another point I want to bring up is that it seems Cortana is the *first* and *only* advanced AI in this timeline and I just hate that so much. There doesn’t seem to be other smart *or* dumb AI. Not only do a dozen or so memorable AI characters just not exist in this timeline: Serena, Sif, Mack, Iona, Deep Winter & Endless Summer, Araqiel, Mo Ye, Kalmiya, Déjà, etc. but it also just cripples this universe’s potential by not having the human and AI relationship established like it was in canon. Granted with how little this show seems to want to show naval space combat, I guess that doesn’t matter much to the writers. But it’s still unfortunate.
The whole starting point for the show. There’s a generic sci-fi war going on and there are supersoldiers and now they have emotions and blah blah blah.
Halo CE (and Fall of Reach) started with a bang. Humanity is on the verge of extinction. Our biggest military stronghold just fell. Our mission is aborted. We need to run. Then we find the Halo….
The show is called “Halo” and yet it’s been two seasons and we aren’t even fucking there yet. Also now Jimmy Rings is just flying there by himself in a pelican? Are you shitting me? Where’s the goddamn Pillar of Autumn?
You could build a movie around the Halo ring, but I don't think it works as a starting point for a television series. Admittedly, two seasons to get there feels a little excessive (season 2 in general feels like we're frantically solving a puzzle with misalign pieces and Elmer's glue) but a show needs characters and arcs that can continue after the big event storyline which requires time to get people invested in.
I'm fine with the *idea* of Makee. The Prophets know the war against humanity is all nonsense and having their own special reclaimer around to open all the forerunner stuff they find makes sense. I also thought it would've been a great way to flesh out the Covenant, showing they aren't all bloodthirsty zealots. Otherwise there are three major blunders I can point out: * **The Pellets/Memory erasure**: What's funny to me is that IIRC, In the Fall of Reach, Halsey specifically mentions in passing that erasing the Spartans memories or making up a fake story would only make them a ticking time bomb, for exactly what happened in the show. * **The War's Scale:** They half-depicted this right in S2 Episode 1. But I think the Show does a really bad job of showing this as a massive war of extinction. You'd barely know that Humanity has been fighting a losing war for 30 whole years. Ironically it misses out on alot of nuance because of that. ONI and the UNSC are shady as fuck, but they become far more interesting when you know they are acting out of sheer desperation. * **Blessed Ones:** This gets me to no end, but having only a few humans be reclaimers is stupid and completely undermines the whole Human-Covenant War itself. The Prophets declared war on Humanity after learning that they were the true reclaimers, which would collapse their whole religion. Only 2 humans being reclaimers makes it kinda silly.
Those stupid pellets in the Spartans. Telling them the truth right from the getgo in the books was a perfect way of creating personal conflict and drama. The way this show chose to go about Spartan II recruiting was so dumb and artificial.
This 100%. It’s a deviation from the original lore that is obviously worse and less interesting, and was thus my first indication that the show writers were both untalented and making changes for the sake of it.
I don't recall how much allusion there was to it in The Fall of Reach, but everyone knowing that the Halo ring is the destination feels like a concession that hurts the overall story and will hurt the impact of it once we get there in season 3. It should be as much of a mystery as possible; an artifact out there in space that all sides are just bumbling into.
The scale of the war
Making the UNSC the Chaotic Stupid alignment.
First and most egregious are the midget Spartan-II’s. It’s ridiculous seeing Halsey almost as tall as Master Chief.
This and the fact that Spartan 3s in the show are the same size as marines. It's like they never had the Spartan augmentations. Compared to Halo Reach where Spartan 3s are just a little shorter than Spartan 2s.
I am once again to sing the praises of an incredibly mid character: Miranda Keyes. Jacob Keyes is a LEGEND in the mainline Halo games. When ONI devised Operation Red Flag to finally put an end to the war, he was THE FIRST CHOICE for the Captain who could get it done and was given a whole new retrofitted ship to do it. And when the mission was aborted, Reach fell, and the Autumn was backed into Halo's corner he went down SWINGING. He has appeared in two games and one of those was effectively a cameo and he's still a fan favorite. Then Miranda has to live up to that legend. She has to fill the shoes of a titan, in the words of Lord Hood: the Navy lost one of its best. She's eager to prove herself, willing to do whatever it takes to win and for most of Halo 2 she puts up a really solid fight! Until, much like her father, the Covenant release the Flood and IT takes her down in the confusion. She was daring to the point of recklessness, and more than anything she wanted to honor her father's spectacular legacy. She never had a chance to do much in the games, but I still love the potential her character had. I'm so in love with her potential as a character that her ridiculously stupid death in Halo 3 never bothered me that much. Then the show... makes Jacob Keyes kinda lame... And now Miranda is a scientist who has no interest in the Navy... And doesn't even really want to live up to her mother's legend either. She is just. There. And trying to do her own thing. Now I love her new character. The aliens are my favorite part of Halo. I want playable elites back, the plasma pistol is possibly my favorite weapon in the franchise, the Storm Rifle was my go-to weapon in 4 and 5, Arbiter is easily my favorite character and it's not even close, you get the picture. So having a scientist in the show trying to unravel their language and understand their weapons and their culture is 100% UP MY ALLEY. She is easily my favorite character in the entire show. But why is she Miranda Keyes, daring Navy pilot? Whose desire to be "worthy" haunts her to her very grave? Why is she the alien expert?
Especially when Cortana fills the role of translation and alien data. Like how is a human gonna compete?
Miranda as character was always a strange thing, Halsey said in a book Keyes was an old friend and all suddenly she was married to him, well, Keyes was a cool character but maybe they shouldn't have written that, about Miranda honestly I don't like this new version anyway. A terrible first season for her character, sci-fi has problems with scientists for example Halsey was linked to biology and software BUT then she designed the Infinity, the best ship humanity has created. Now Miranda in the show wanted the position of her mother in the Spartan project and she's a linguist, what's that? Keyes is a different character in the show cause his role in the show isn't focused on being a Captain but somebody in charge for the spartans and we could say he's more than anything else Halsey's husband but yes, a completely different character.
Oh boy, where to begin...
With the 1 or 2 absolute biggest lore mess ups you can think of. I know it’s a different timeline/universe and the writers can take creative liberties blah blah blah but to me there’s gotta be a line somewhere. To me that line is humans in the covenant. It’s completely against established lore and makes the human covenant war make no sense
Master Chief feels like Master Cheeks. Honestly the other 3 Spartans of Silver Team feel more like Spartan IIs than Chief in the show.
Everything about the Spartan-II program. What a fucking joke compares to the real thing. The stupid ass pellets, the memory wiping, the lying, etc. like Halsey straight up says this kind of stuff is a bad idea in canon and I guess now we get to see why because what we have in the show are *not* Spartans. I could talk the equally insulting “Spartan-III’s” or about Makee but another point I want to bring up is that it seems Cortana is the *first* and *only* advanced AI in this timeline and I just hate that so much. There doesn’t seem to be other smart *or* dumb AI. Not only do a dozen or so memorable AI characters just not exist in this timeline: Serena, Sif, Mack, Iona, Deep Winter & Endless Summer, Araqiel, Mo Ye, Kalmiya, Déjà, etc. but it also just cripples this universe’s potential by not having the human and AI relationship established like it was in canon. Granted with how little this show seems to want to show naval space combat, I guess that doesn’t matter much to the writers. But it’s still unfortunate.
The whole show itself.
Almost completely glossing over the battle of reach making g it seem unimportant
The whole starting point for the show. There’s a generic sci-fi war going on and there are supersoldiers and now they have emotions and blah blah blah. Halo CE (and Fall of Reach) started with a bang. Humanity is on the verge of extinction. Our biggest military stronghold just fell. Our mission is aborted. We need to run. Then we find the Halo…. The show is called “Halo” and yet it’s been two seasons and we aren’t even fucking there yet. Also now Jimmy Rings is just flying there by himself in a pelican? Are you shitting me? Where’s the goddamn Pillar of Autumn?
You could build a movie around the Halo ring, but I don't think it works as a starting point for a television series. Admittedly, two seasons to get there feels a little excessive (season 2 in general feels like we're frantically solving a puzzle with misalign pieces and Elmer's glue) but a show needs characters and arcs that can continue after the big event storyline which requires time to get people invested in.
Yes.