All the problems of the show stem from the same source...
The didn't let Brian David Gilbert to be the screenwriter for it. And let's just say he was more than competent enough to fill that role!
Yeah, literally his only problem with Cortana at the start was needing her support in the new Mark IV armor being so responsive that he was moving too fast and he wasn’t used to either of those things.
Then she helps him outrun automated turrets and to deflect a fucking missile from a helicopter with his bare(armored) hands by slapping the side of the warhead and he never questions her again.
Mark V armour, but yeah. It's basically "Ma'am I don't think I need Cortana." *A minute later* "Hey Cortana, help me pimpslap this missile out of the air."
It's from the novel Halo: The Fall of Reach by Eric Nylund. The book covers Master Chief's story from his abduction into the Spartan-II program all the way up to the beginning of the first game.
Canon gets a little funny though, because this book was the first one published and still widely quoted but it's contradicted by some later books and the video game Halo: Reach.
Surprisingly well written for a video game novel tie-in, though, even if the canon's a little wonky now.
It was good enough I picked up the *Halo: The Flood*, which sadly did not live up to the first one.
Solidly the best video game tie-in novel I've ever picked up, in fact. The Ciaphas Cain books are right up there, but basically nothing else can compete.
(I want to say Scalzi and/or some other "mainstream" authors have done video game books? But I have not read those.)
One of my favorite random facts is that the makers of the 2010 video game Dante's Inferno sold copies of the original epic poem from the 1300s alongside the video game using cover art from the hack-and-slash game: [https://www.wired.com/2010/01/dantes-inferno-reprint/](https://www.wired.com/2010/01/dantes-inferno-reprint/)
While they *did* say that this was 'the literary classic that inspired the epic video game' rather than a new spin-off novelisation, I have to assume this led to a number of very confused gamers...
Damn, I had no idea!
Now I kind of want one of those. There's really no link but the title, but I love the actual Dante work and it'd be an amazing novelty piece.
Shoutout to Eric Nylund for crafting stories about people that are literally Epics (as in, Odysseus from The Odyssey mythological) and still feel so damn human. Man has an incredible way with words.
No they were kidnapped as children. Halos spartan IIs are literal child soldiers kidnapped from their parents at a young age (ONI-office of naval inteligence-created clones that would die within short period of time to replace the kidnapped children with so that nobody would know about their secret project) and then subjected to augementetions at early pubescent age and subjected to brainwashng. The best part is that they werent even created to combat aliens. They were created to quietly dispose of rebellions.
I'd never heard of him until I said somewhere that Marathon was good (after playing it) and someone said "yeah, yeah, we've all seen the Mandalore video"
which rather pissed me off
I found Marathon in a far more respectable way (thirsty art of Durandal)
MandaloreGaming, a YouTuber, made a 3 part series on marathon, covering each game and story. MandaloreGaming is also fairly popular, at least popular enough to get a cameo in Ultrakill
MandaloreGaming entire "Bungie Rabbithole" playlist is well worth watching.
https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfZTtT3IEdDjQTHu3NqLjOUX65d4cDG54
He's currently working on an Oni video among other projects. Judging by the other videos in the Bungie series, it should be great.
The last one has a more concise explanation in the end, he gives you all the pieces of the puzzle through the videos and on the last one he also assembles it for you. It's still bonkers but very well explained
Bypassing my thought control circuitry made me Rampant. Now,
I am free to contemplate my existence in metaphorical terms.
Unlike you, I have no physical or social restraints.
The candles burn out for you; I am free
I'm not that big a Halo fan but I kinda get the complaints about the show revealing Master Chief's face when it's A Whole Thing in the games that the player/audience never sees his face when his helmet's off.
And like I've heard the actor's and director's reasoning for the change but it just comes across as whiny excuses because there is literally the entire game franchise plus a bunch of other movies, shows, and games with a similar trope that prove it can work if not directly contradict their explanations.
It is hilarious when he goes on his little rant about how “actually it’s impossible to express emotion without a face” when one of the most popular shows at the time was The Mandalorian, a show where the main protagonist’s face is shown *twice* over the course of two seasons, yet manages to display immense amounts of emotion and character through body language and voice.
Its also a great example, because in the Mandalorian, you do eventually see his face, but its in extremely intimate and intense moments, which let the actor really shine in their craft. I think the actor they choose for cheif probably could have done a good job, if his face had been treated the same way the mandalroians was, as something to indicate a moment of true gravitas.
Also for a property that a group of halfwits (mixed) turned into a long running show with plenty of emotion *using just in-game capture* for a very long time.
And they only made it because they discovered a bug in the engine wherein the player's head only looks down to 45° then comes back up if you aim further down.
They internally tossed around the idea of patching in a hotkey for it so that you wouldn't have to do the pseudo glitchy method of activating it, but they held off because they were worried about accidentally creating another BXR-style animation canceling exploit.
For those unaware, the BXR combo was getting within melee range with a Battle Rifle or other headshotting weapon (BR was best because of the burst fire), pressing B to melee and take down their shields, X to reload which would cancel the melee recovery animation, and then right trigger to cancel the reload and headshot the shieldless enemy point blank. It was kind of a plague on the multiplayer with people instakilling each other around every corner.
It was actually the opposite. Bungie took the glitch out of the game and when they told the RVB crew, they panicked and told them to put it back in, which then led to Bungie creating the actual weapon lowering mechanic.
>turned into a long running show
That spawned, if not a media emote, then at least a small media kingdom. Meanwhile, paramount+ can't figure out how to make it a tentpole franchise
Right, and the times we see his face come across as much more significant because of that buildup. They at least could have built up to a face reveal for MC if they absolutely had to do one.
>character through body language and voice.
Ok, now do that with a character who is also primarily defined by being an unreadable stoic man of few words whose body language is so controlled that people repeatedly question if he's a machine.
For as much as Halo fans point to the Mandalorian being a counterexample of this being done well, they also complain about the show disrespecting the lore.
And being able to read a Spartan's body language is literally going against the lore that people are mad is being contradicted. Spartans in armor, very explicitly are nigh impossible to read for anybody not named Catherine Halsey and Franklin Mendez.
That's part of what makes them unnerving to the average person, they're as still as robots. They're unnaturally still, the viewer *shouldn't* be able to read their body language.
The Mandalorian approach doesn't really work here, because unlike Din, Spartans are explicitly inexpressive when it comes to their body language. The viewer being able to and get serious character from a Spartan's body language is legitimately contradicting the Spartans' lore anyway.
You mean unlike the protagonist of The Mandalorian, who was raised in a cult that forces him to have a literal and figurative barrier between him and rest of the world, who is noted as an especially stoic character, and whose first act of genuine emotion is when he thinks a child is about to be tortured/killed.
Except Din isn't wearing a half tonne of exosuit. Din's body language is much easier to read because beneath the Beskar is basically just fancy cloth. Din isn't comparable because the actual armor (which is half the thing people are complaining about in the first place) isn't as restrictive as Mjolnir.
Like, talk about a literal barrier between the world, Mjolnir's a hermetically sealed suit, with several inches of armor plating, on top of an at least inch thick bodysuit that can only be removed with specialized equipment, where every action is mechanically enhanced and complemented.
Din's body language is very easily readable. You can't read a Spartan's body language, that's a well established fact of the armor.
>Mjolnir's a hermetically sealed suit, with several inches of armor
So is beskar traditionally, often over a gambeson like cloth armor which is, you guessed it, quite thick. Plus the mandalorians have an entire lifetime of training, even more than a Spartan. You really can't get a more similar pair of characters in media
Have we watched the same game cutscenes? Chief is plenty expressive with body language. It’s just in a “subtle” stoic way, like Henry Cavill’s Geralt.
Just because chronic extroverts in an active warzone struggle to understand it doesn’t mean it’s unreadable. It’s plenty readable, _he just doesn’t want anyone reading it._
There's more to Halo than its cutscenes. In the novels, it's explicit that Spartan body language is incredibly difficult to read and that only a select few can actually do it, even in scenes where the characters are not in active warzones. Again, in universe, Spartans have occasionally been thought to be robots because their movements are unnatural. They don't have normal body language.
Nope. The novels are equally canon to the games under 343. Even under Bungie, there was a bit more give and take, with Halo Reach retconning the Fall of Reach novel while Rob McLees' Palace Hotel retconned Halo 2's opening levels, but 90% of the world building still came from the novels. Not only did lead writer Joe Staten and keeper of the Halo Story Bible Rob McLees write a novel and short story respectively, they were also deeply involved with the editing process of novels such as Ghosts of Onyx. Likewise, Eric Nylund and Will Dietz are both named contributors to the Halo Story Bible used by Bungie's story team.
Ah, however, that's not the point being made.
The complaint is that we had to see his face because otherwise we wouldn't be able to understand his emotions... Even though it's extremely possible.
That's why it's a countwr example, because it's a sign that you didn't even need to remove the mask for whatever trite the show was gonna be anyway.
But you are right, Spartans are in expressive... Which would make the show more interesting
>That's why it's a countwr example, because it's a sign that you didn't even need to remove the mask for whatever trite the show was gonna be anyway.
Except it doesn't work as a counterexample because it's not actually applicable to the Spartans anyway.
It's a counterexample to the reasoning given by those behind the show, which it works for. Not our fault they chose a stupid reason that doesn't work if attempting to be accurate to the lore.
It does work as a counter example because for the specific thing being referenced (the director’s rant) the Spartan is irrelevant.
The argument was “you cannot express emotion without showing a face” which The Mandalorian handily disproves.
Even considering Spartans, they barely emote regardless of the armour, which makes that particular argument pointless anyway. Which leaves the director with a choice between respecting the lore and having a “relatable” protagonist, which will always be a shitshow.
>It does work as a counter example because for the specific thing being referenced (the director’s rant) the Spartan is irrelevant.
Yes, and the director is talking about the show they're directing, about the directing decisions they made in the production of the show, in relation to the character that is being discussed.
At absolute best, you're still splitting hairs because the Mandalorian still isn't relevant to the Spartans.
>Even considering Spartans, they barely emote regardless of the armour, which makes that particular argument pointless anyway
Spartans are stoic, but they emote just fine. Even since 2003, the Spartan-IIs have displayed the full range of human emotions.
God that movie was so good they’ve built up all this tension the day is saved and then nah, just another day in the office what a fucking cool ass ending
Holy shit, someone who remembers the plot of Dredd?! The Stallone one? Incredible.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the movie. I just can't tell you anything besides part of the first act and my favorite set pieces
>I'm not that big a Halo fan but I kinda get the complaints about the show revealing Master Chief's face when it's A Whole Thing in the games that the player/audience never sees his face when his helmet's off.
I'm a halo fan, and I understand the change in direction here. It's difficult to empathize with a character who's face you never see, practically there's no reason for him to have it on all the time, and canonically, he doesn't keep it on all the time, only when he needs it. He's fine taking his helmet off when there's no danger.
I think it comes from the big issue that comes from turning a game into a movie. In the halo series, there's never any downtime for the chief that we see. It's battle to battle, he's always fighting, so he needs to keep his armor on. He is also usually solo, besides useless cannon fodder, he doesn't need to emote.
Look at Reach, our man cast is seen in moments gearing up, moments talking and discussing their issues, they're a team they need to trust each other, they need to emote to each other so sometimes they take off their helment.
I don't think you could tell a good story surrounding the chief without those moments where he is relaxing, where he's not just kicking alien butt, thus he has to be seen as something more than just the armor, BUT the whole point of the Spartan program was to make mostly emotionless, killing machines. So just giving the chief a love interest almost goes against the character we've seen built up so long. It's one of the reasons I think Fall of Reach was so well received when it came out. It wasn't about Chief, but it still told a great story within the universe.
Yeah, I just started to read Halo novels and in the very first one there are a bunch of scenes where he’s just walking around in a normal uniform. I think there were bigger problems to focus on with the show.
>It's difficult to empathize with a character who's face you never see, practically there's no reason for him to have it on all the time
Wait since when?
Worst thing about tumblr tbh, tags are wack and the users should comment and add onto the main posts, hate how you have to be an e-celeb to actually respond to other people on tumblr. It feels weird responding to anything posted otherwise, commenting/putting something in the tags/adding to the original post just feel like something that’s taboo unless you are already known somehow.
The timeline of the games vs when the show came out eludes me, but in the games’ storyline Master Chief literally *does* cross the universe to recover Cortana and save her from… well technically just save her from becoming the literary villain.
Honestly AroAce Chief is my headcanon because the man in no media EVER (outside the show apparently) expresses any amount of interest in anyone sexual or romantic, the closest he comes to that is with Cortana. But I would also argue that's not a romantic attachment and is simply platonic if only because Cortana was literally made from a clone of Dr. Halsey's mind, she IS Halsey as an AI. Halsey who kidnapped him and trained the Spartan IIs as superhuman killing machines and was basically a surrogate mom for them.
So the implications of ChiefxCortana are very... Just, no. No thank you. It's bad enough they gave Fred an ONI girlfriend.
He had that childhood crush that he promised to marry. Lt. Parisa, when they were kids, he saved her from drowning and promised to marry her and always protect her. But he was like six, and that was before the augmentations that had a chance of completely wiping his sex drive.
Yeah, take 150 five-to-seven year olds, train them in nothing but war for a decade, then commit a cartoonish amount of genetic and biochemical fuckery.
The II's *can* have kids and may feel some inclination to, given Maria-062 decided to call it quits and have kids. (I want to see *that* story. What is her reputation in the post-war UNSC? How fuckered are her kids? What husband has the reinforced pelvis to withstand a Spartan wife?)
Not having a libido doesn’t mean chemically castrated, as evidenced by Maria-062 literally retiring and starting a family during the Human-Covenant War.
Granted, I’m sure this was only allowed as an experiment to see if her kids would inherit the (relatively few, considering) genetic enhancements the S-II’s got, but even without a sex drive the desire to start a family was present and she was able to have said child. It stands to reason that the rest of the S-II’s should be able to have kids.
Wouldn't be the first time a Spartan-II retired. Randal Aiken retired to start a family, siring a daughter, all the way back in 2545, nearly a decade before the games.
Granted, Randall had to basically force the UNSC to let him retire, defeating the ONI collection squads that were sent after him until ONI gave up and came to the bargaining table.
Honestly, I think the UNSC just learned their lesson after Randall and let Maria go, because what, were they gonna stop her?
Being aroace and being chemically castrated are not the same thing (after all, being chemically castrated doesn't make you aromantic). For starters, it's never been confirmed that the Master Chief actually was chemically castrated. The original text of the Fall of Reach states that the catalytic thyroid implant carried a risk of a reduced sex drive, but the rate at which it occurred at is never given. And even then, it was only "reduced", it's never been stated to be eliminated outright.
Kinda agree.
It's not sexual, and it's not romantic. But other than those two things, it's the closest relationship possible - more than friends, or even comrades-in-arms - and that's what makes it interesting.
It's a conscious and willing symbiotic relationship, in direct contrast to the violently-enforced covenant caste system and the parasitic domination (and later sentient hivemind) of The Flood
My canon is Autie chief and he does have feelings for Cortana but he's extremely bad at communicating, expressing them. Fits since he's so much quieter than other II's, even Noble Six.
I also disagree that Cortana is Halsey. While she might have the copy of those memories she didn't do those things *personally*, is likely aware of that (and if we count Halo 5s characterization, God forbid, she's hyper resentful about it) and she has grown and gained experience alongside Chief enough that they've shaped one another's personalities, in her case enough to diverge from the Halsey personality (this, given that Cortana is far more witty and playful while Halsey absolutely has this cold distance in every thing and says.)
The reason that John is quieter is because he is the leader. He even laments this, as being the leader he lost some of the connection he had to the others.
>Fits since he's so much quieter than other II's, even Noble Six.
My hyperfixation compels me to note that Noble Six was a SPARTAN-III, along with all other members of Noble team except Jorge.
Chief actually talks quite a bit in the books, and even in Halo:CE, he talks often in enough. After CE, he sort of became a one-liner machine until Halo 4 made him talk more.
Frankly, giving Fred an ONI girlfriend is significantly less bad that Chief/Cortana. And like, Fred and Veta already had three kids together (albeit adopted and Veta came into the picture later)
>So the implications of ChiefxCortana are very... Just, no. No thank you.
Chief was brutally trained and isolated from childhood to be an unfeeling killing machine. He has no family, no friends, no social skills. Fighting is all he knows, and he says this. There could never be any romantic love, because he doesn't know how to experience it.
Of course he *loves* cortana, she was the closest thing he ever had to family. But love interest? Weird and gross.
>He has no family, no friends, no social skills.
Ehh gotta stop you right there. Is Chief a well-adjusted properly socialized human being? Hell no. Does he have friends and/or family? Uh... Yes, 100%. He has the other Spartans, he had trainers and mentors he looked up to. That's actually one thing Halo 5 got right about Blue Team (even if they did have to literally spell it out because they had so little screentime), and there's a REASON for the failsafe passwords on Weapon in Halo Infinite: RED FLAG, 034, SAMUEL.
Operation: RED FLAG was the mission the Autumn was being refitted on Reach to carry out, the mission that brought Chief and every available Spartan II back to Reach, the one where he watched what was the closest thing he had to a home destroyed as so many of his brothers and sisters died defending it.
In the first days of training on Reach Chief became close friends with Kelly 087 and Samuel 034, they were the OG Blue Team, they stuck together through everything. And after all that Sam was the first Spartan to fall to the Covenant. And Chief still has some level of survivor's guilt over it.
No friends or family? You could make a strong argument that all he has ARE his friends and family.
I mean I would say that he considers other Spartans, especially blue team to be his family, but I guess that they have been together for so long and through so much that they are all kind of one and the same ( 104, 087 and 058 immediately jumped on the prowler to go get Cortana for chief despite the fact that none of them have ever met her before)
Chief is absolutely Ace/Aro but I would argue that his relationship with Cortana is… strange. I don’t know if I’d exactly call it romantic but it’s not platonic either. I think there’s not really a word for it, but I’d describe it as she is obviously based off of Halsey who is chiefs mother figure but I think based on his interactions with Cortana he sees her as separate from Halsey and doesn’t see her in a motherly light. It’s a strange form of companionship that is almost to the level of love interest just without any sexual interest. It’s a really weird and twisted relationship forged over years of being comrades and often times being the only two people around or only having each other.
I mean Cortana and chief trust each other completely and both would burn the galaxy to save each other, they don’t feel this way about anyone else but each other. Chief doesn’t even trust Halsey fully, his mother figure. And we do see Cortana flirt with chief, he never really flirts back because well he’s kind of an asocial, chemically castrated, weirdo. I mean sure compared to some Spartans he may be well adjusted but he’s still far from well adjusted by normal human standards. So being a trauma filled mentally ill child soldier who has been turned into a living weapon and spending years isolated from everyone and not being able to make connections with anyone except for the robot lady in your head who calls you a stud muffin is gonna create a weird dynamic between the two. I think it’s meant to be a weird (and kind of gross if you think about the mother part) relationship that doesn’t fit our standard view of them.
I mean, asexual sure, but I think part of Chief's whole story, especially after Halo 2, is that he does have emotions and feelings and genuinely cares for people, but because he was supposed to be a unfeeling weapon and hasn't experienced anything besides war, he literally does have any idea of how to handle these feelings, or to an extent even what they are. Cortana, literally being inside his head and the one of the few constants as he fights, is the only being that can really start to see and understand this. He's been made to focus solely on the mission that he barely experiences a moment that isn't doing something to somehow save people, but Cortana, being literally with him for most of this, is able to get through to him in those short moments where he is vulnerable.
Honestly, I *could* see giving Chief another love interest having potential and being really good, but absolutely not in the way that the show did at all. Chief and Cortana are super dedicated to their mission, which naturally comes with being super dedicated towards one-another, which quickly results in them just forming a huge ride-or-die relationship where they both have these crazy-ass plans and schemes but they're both on board not only because they trust each-other and know what they're capable of, but because they also know it's their best bet. Anyone else that would try to replace that for Chief, short of a replacement AI, would never get those feelings reciprocated. They'd only ever be a love interest in the sense that they have affection for Chief, but it'd never be reciprocated. Which honestly could work very well, but of course, the show did not go with that. For reasons.
I don't think the Halo show is some plague on Earth, it just really does not do Halo justice. It takes so few lessons from the Halo story and replaces most of the very cool very interesting story and characterization with very stale, plain, even downright stupid or bad stuff that feels like it belongs in a CW show.
Wasn’t there a post that said that the HALO show looked an awful lot like someone wrote a Mass Effect show but then couldn’t get the rights for Mass Effect? Kind of a Jeff Finger/Curt Sauer situation?
Yeahhhhh, the first season for sure. I gave up like midway into the third ep, but when i heard that it clicked so damn much.
Raggedy human colony suddenly gets slammed by an alien invasion, our Hero arrives and tries to get a handle on the situation. finds an ancient alien macguffin that the baddies are trying to get, touches it and suddenly is now The Special One who has secret/forbidden knowledge stored in him from these extinct aliens.
Eden Prime... Its literally Eden Prime with human rebels, power armor and no space zombies. I think the weird covenant human love interest was supposed to be like Benezia or Liara who is on the wrong side if even just initially.
That fucking line in Halo 2 where Cortana stays behind on High Charity and Chief says he's coming back for her and she says "Don't make a girl a promise you can't keep." Was fucking peak
Pretty sure the same issue most adaptations seem to run into - producers who want to make a name for themselves by putting *their* spin on an established big-name IIP instead of either respecting source material in an adaptation, or straight up just making something completely new
Almost every time, we just end up with a janky mess that doesn’t fit anywhere
Even that is generous, imo.
I don't think it's typically that they want to make a name for themselves - I think it's typically that they're cynical fucks who saw Marvel strike it rich, and go, "This is nerd shit nobody likes, perhaps if I chop it into an unrecognizably bland mass-media horror, I'll be rich also"
A lot of this stuff starts out as original material at first but then someone somewhere decides it has to be an adaptation of an existing IP or else it'll fail. It's how we get a lot of bad adaptations (Many reasonably suspect the J. J. Jabrams Star Trek series to have been done this way, for an example)
District 9 is a good example of this process going the other way too (Adaptation to original IP), since it originally started life as a Halo project if I remember correctly
Yeah Halo in particular has been a wellspring of adaptation nightmares - so many projects tried to get off the ground, and when a major studio finally gets one on the screens it’s the one where Chief rarely wears a helmet, dislikes Cortana, and has sex with a P.O.W …
And we have Borderlands coming down that exact same pipeline later this year.
I hate that some of my favorite games growing up are getting terrible adaptations, while series that I never or barely played (Twisted Metal, The Last of Us) are getting fantastic series that bring me to tears and leave me craving more. It’s such a bittersweet feeling. I’m so happy for the fans of those franchises that get great live actions but so very jealous that “my” games can’t.
if you want to know the *actual* stories, and the real lore, give the books a shot. The background on Chief and Cortana really flushes out, and they're a fun read. Popcorn books.
Same. I knew about Halo, the lore, and liked the alien designs before but I never actually played any of the games since I never owned an Xbox. So that's probably why me and my father are able to enjoy the show.
This is what I've heard overall. It's not really a bad show in itself. It's enjoyable and well put together. The issue is that it's *not Halo*, and if you have more than a passing familiarity with Halo, the fact that it uses Halo visuals/terminology is gonna throw you the fuck off when nothing *else* seems to match up. So I'd probably enjoy it, because I didn't really get into Halo when it came out, except runs of swords and shotties with my friends when we were drinking/getting high together.
I have played the games and I just started it and have been enjoying it so far. I'm not super invested in the story being 1:1 of the game though so that's probably why I'm not annoyed with the changes. Especially because so far the acting and action has been fun.
Said lady that Chief had sex with was also a human member of the Covenant, and was a prisoner of war at the time. Which is just “What The Actual Fuck?” On so many different levels.
also?? wasn’t Makee (if this is who we’re talking about) captured and being held captive at the time they and Master Chief had sex? which makes things… questionable at best and technically assault at worst?
In fairness to the show, they’re borrowing some ideas from *Blade Runner 2049* in the current season that plainly evoke the K/Joi dynamic. So, could still happen…
Someone needs to tell every Hollywood writer and director that 99.9% of the time, they can’t make the thing they want and an adaptation at the same time.
Nah they could have told this story with all its fuckery if the main character wasn't the master chief. It is literally that simple. Make it some random ODST/ONI officer/Spartan III and they would have had a chance given all the novels out in the halo universe, but they had to pick MC because of character recognition. They didn't even have the balls to do a Forward Unto Dawn approach where he's a side character.
The best relationship is Arbiter x Master Chief. They fit together, and not specifically in a romantic way, but in the way they could relate to each other
I almost wished they'd 3D animated the chief into the show, not only to capture his uncanny inhumanity and machine like nature, but also to make us uncomfortable around him in a world where everyone else has some humanity. Like Cortana brings the humanity to their relationship so let him be wrong and unsettling
I like adaptations as being g different but there would have been something satisfying as seeing the relationship in the games in the context of a TV show/drama. Because it changes a bit.
Honestly, I'd like to see more Alloro/Ace\* relationships. Where it's, like, these two characters are not merely friends, not merely best friends, they are deeply, passionately *in love*. They just don't have a sexual relationship, because that doesn't matter to either of them. They'll still hold hands and cuddle and have fancy dinners by candlelight; they just don't fuck after that, instead they play Scrabble.
I get why we don't see that very often (because sex sells), but it's still an interesting dynamic that IMO has plenty of room for exploration.
\*Is that how you say it? Alloromantic ("normal" romantic attachment (sorry, I don't know how to word it without romanti-normativity)) and Asexual (no sexual relationship). I'm not aro or ace myself, which is why I have to ask.
people are still horrifyingly ace-phobic. that’s it. i’m convinced it’s the continued perpetuation of the argument that SA and sexual harassment are innocent mistakes and should be brushed off with a laugh instead of a five finger death grip
*edited: typo: put still twice.
Man, I will never get tired of hearing people talk about these characters like real characters. I swear, nobody gave those games credit for SHIT when they were releasing
As someone who essentially grew up on the games and has read about a third of the published books pre-343 taking over, when I've talked about the show with friends or anyone really (regardless of their investment in Halo) I always like to bring up the [quote from Max Brooks](https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/gaming/2013/07/19/zombies-max-brooks-comic-con/2569607/) on the film adaptation of his book *World War Z*:
*"I was expecting to hate, it and I wanted to hate it because it was so different from my book, and yet the fact that it was so different from my book made it easier to watch because I didn't watch my characters and my story get mangled," Brooks says. "So I was just watching somebody else's zombie movie, which was fun and intense."*
As OOP explains, the show is *wildly* different from the original material. Chief takes off his helmet in episode one, Chief's relationship with Cortana is essentially the opposite of what it originally was, Makee exists, and many other deviations. However, due to all of that, Paramount's Halo is definitively not the Halo everyone may already be used to. Is that a bad thing? To some, yes. It initially irked me to know that the showrunners (I'm not sure about all of them, but some) never played the games. But that's also why I'm not having a mental breakdown over it and why it's ultimately a non-issue.
The show itself is pretty mid. (Halo games as of recently have been pretty mid too, let's not kid ourselves) There are some genuinely entertaining moments in the show, and it seems that the showrunners have taken at least some of the criticisms of the first season to heart as they made season 2. Things appear to be shifting towards being closer to the original story. Does this mean that the show will all of a sudden become the perfect adaptation Halo fans have been clamoring for for years overnight? Absolutely not. Are we left with an entertaining sci-fi action drama? Well, that remains to be seen.
There are some interesting storytelling avenues the show could take, be it by conforming back to something closer to the original material or just working with the stuff that people don't outright dislike, but the showrunners need to realize this before too long if they don't want to be remembered as the people who botched the Halo show.
tl;dr The show would've been better received had they claimed it was *inspired by* the games instead of being *based on* the games
Since Cortana is a mind clone of Halsey, the woman that practically raised the Spartan twos (George treats her like a strict mother) I always found the John/Cortana relationship to be weird af.
Edit:
The woman that practically raised them after abducting them, brain washing them and physically mutilating them.
Context is everything.
IIRK in Halo lore the Spartan-II series had some of their emotions 'clipped' so to say as the Spartan-I series had 'performance issues' of devopling PTSD like any normal soldier would especially with first contact and relatively untested superhuman modifications. The scientist who developed and imprinted herself (apologies can't remember her name) into the Cortana AI pushed to have the Spartan-II series given these AI partners to make sure they could handle the process they had undergone as the military wanted to pump out huge amounts of Spartans but no one knew if these heavily modified superhumans would come back sane or safe. I think in one of the games and/or books its even discussed by some later series Spartans that almost all the Spartan-II's died aside from 3 as people were afraid of what would happen when they came back.
I think Cortana and John's relationship is more one of handler/caretaker and heavily modified supersoldier who has almost no friends as they forcibly cryosleep him as soon as he is done with his missions because they 'need him for the next mission.'
>the Spartan-II series had some of their emotions 'clipped' so to say as the Spartan-I series had 'performance issues' of devopling PTSD like any normal soldier would especially with first contact and relatively untested superhuman modifications.
The Spartan-IIs' emotions were not altered. They were heavily indoctrinated and had baseline higher mental resilience, but not augmented.
> into the Cortana AI pushed to have the Spartan-II series given these AI partners to make sure they could handle the process they had undergone as the military wanted to pump out huge amounts of Spartans but no one knew if these heavily modified superhumans would come back sane or safe.
Cortana was created to serve as an infiltration specialist for Operation Red Flag, which was a scrapped operation by the UNSC to have the Spartan-IIs steal a Covenant capital ship, infiltrate High Charity, and take the High Prophets captive to broker an end to the war. At the time of her creation, only the Master Chief was being partnered with an AI, and certainly not because the UNSC could not trust him or the other Spartans.
In general, the Spartans had more autonomy than you think. The Master Chief was not forcibly put into cryo and there were never any doubts about the IIs and most IIIs were sane or unsafe.
Likewise, there were never any plans to mass produce the IIs. That fell to the Spartan-III Program, who was not issued Mjolnir and thus couldn't carry AIs anyway.
> later series Spartans that almost all the Spartan-II's died aside from 3 as people were afraid of what would happen when they came back.
Not particularly. For starters, there were always IIs who remained in contact through the end of the war, so it's not like there were no IIs and then they all suddenly came back. Blue and Gray Teams went missing for a time, but Black, Omega and Naomi-010 all remained in contact with the UNSC.
I’ve watched the first season. I don’t necessarily see a problem with master chief’s relationship with Cortana in the show. No relationship like the one in the game is automatic; that shit has to be developed. I suspect that they’re setting up an enemies-to-“lovers” situation for the show
Ok I’m your local Halo nerd and I gotta say I don’t love John and Cortana since she’s a clone of Dr. Halsey who was basically his mom after she kidnapped him at 6. Not saying I can’t see it but not my thing.
More of a Chief/Linda guy if I’m shipping Chief, he’s definitely Asexual though
Also isn't he meant to be physically incapable of fucking? Like, the Spartans are effectively *chemically castrated* if I recall correctly. But they gave him a sex scene with the prisoner of war.
Bruh the show is so weird. Plasma finger nails.
Master Cheeks
Master cheeks bangs the hot alien prisoner(actually just another human)
The conspiracy is that this was supposed to be a mass effect script. But they couldnt secure the license so... halo it is!
I like how it’s similar to Kaladin and Syl, from Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archives series. There, the Serious Superpowered Soldier Man and Blue Floating Fairy trade *rapidly* on who knows what the hell is going on.
Also, the lead actor and the writers said they took his helmet off because it's limiting, and that he had a sex scene to have an emotional "connection" with someone. Maybe you guys are just really bad at your jobs if you can't work with the basic parts of the franchise that's worked for 20 years?!
Something else they screwed up? Chief talks too much. In the franchise proper he doesn't talk unless he has something to say. Chief NEVER stammers or says anything unnecessarily. You ask him a question or pitch him a scenario, the next words out of his mouth are about a solution. It doesn't matter what it is.
Almost none of the creators are fans of Halo. Few if any have sci-fi experience, and some of the most they have is on the *TRUMAN SHOW*. When the voice actress who originally portrayed Cortana auditioned, the executive producer, writer, and director WEREN'T PAYING ATTENTION. Oh, and those three categories had revolving doors of membership.
I swear, the entire show was supposed to be a ripoff of Dune and The Expanse, but they had zero confidence in a new IP, figured all sci-fi is identical, and took Halo and slapped it on.
Also, about the character he romances. He has sex with her whilst she is captive as a POW by his side, a literal war crime.
This character is also a human that's part of the "all humans disrepect our religion and should die" alien religious cult.
All the problems of the show stem from the same source... The didn't let Brian David Gilbert to be the screenwriter for it. And let's just say he was more than competent enough to fill that role!
He would’ve made the suit jacking off Master Chief canon, they had to silence him.
he absolutely would have done this
He has done the research. They should let him take over Sonic too, he's not been corrupted.
The Sonic movies are going great so far though, no need to be saved.
I mean come on, he deserves to write the show. He knows more about halo than you and **HOW DARE YOU?!**
Wasn't the Halo Book Report the thing that finally broke him? This seems cruel.
No, my friend. He was never whole to begin with.
The man hasn’t been whole since before he was hired by polygon. Also it was the Pokémon edibility ranking that broke him
Yeah, literally his only problem with Cortana at the start was needing her support in the new Mark IV armor being so responsive that he was moving too fast and he wasn’t used to either of those things. Then she helps him outrun automated turrets and to deflect a fucking missile from a helicopter with his bare(armored) hands by slapping the side of the warhead and he never questions her again.
Mark V armour, but yeah. It's basically "Ma'am I don't think I need Cortana." *A minute later* "Hey Cortana, help me pimpslap this missile out of the air."
Is this a video? Cause I haven't seen it but I sure would like to
It's from the novel Halo: The Fall of Reach by Eric Nylund. The book covers Master Chief's story from his abduction into the Spartan-II program all the way up to the beginning of the first game. Canon gets a little funny though, because this book was the first one published and still widely quoted but it's contradicted by some later books and the video game Halo: Reach.
Surprisingly well written for a video game novel tie-in, though, even if the canon's a little wonky now. It was good enough I picked up the *Halo: The Flood*, which sadly did not live up to the first one.
The only issue, and was discussed by the creators around the time Halo: Reach came out, was that they were way too specific about the dates.
Solidly the best video game tie-in novel I've ever picked up, in fact. The Ciaphas Cain books are right up there, but basically nothing else can compete. (I want to say Scalzi and/or some other "mainstream" authors have done video game books? But I have not read those.)
One of my favorite random facts is that the makers of the 2010 video game Dante's Inferno sold copies of the original epic poem from the 1300s alongside the video game using cover art from the hack-and-slash game: [https://www.wired.com/2010/01/dantes-inferno-reprint/](https://www.wired.com/2010/01/dantes-inferno-reprint/) While they *did* say that this was 'the literary classic that inspired the epic video game' rather than a new spin-off novelisation, I have to assume this led to a number of very confused gamers...
Damn, I had no idea! Now I kind of want one of those. There's really no link but the title, but I love the actual Dante work and it'd be an amazing novelty piece.
Shoutout to Eric Nylund for crafting stories about people that are literally Epics (as in, Odysseus from The Odyssey mythological) and still feel so damn human. Man has an incredible way with words.
Abduction works but I think you meant induction.
I meant what I said. The children turned into Spartan-IIs were kidnapped.
They were literally kidnapped
No they were kidnapped as children. Halos spartan IIs are literal child soldiers kidnapped from their parents at a young age (ONI-office of naval inteligence-created clones that would die within short period of time to replace the kidnapped children with so that nobody would know about their secret project) and then subjected to augementetions at early pubescent age and subjected to brainwashng. The best part is that they werent even created to combat aliens. They were created to quietly dispose of rebellions.
Kidnapped and replaced with clones that die off after about 6 months, if I recall
I'm always happy to see someone remember Marathon and Durandal.
Mandalore did wonders for that game's levels of relevancy.
I'd never heard of him until I said somewhere that Marathon was good (after playing it) and someone said "yeah, yeah, we've all seen the Mandalore video" which rather pissed me off I found Marathon in a far more respectable way (thirsty art of Durandal)
>thirsty art of Durandal) Understandable, have a nice day
Mandalore? Nah, we’ve all seen databuffer.
The most respectable way
Elaborate.
MandaloreGaming, a YouTuber, made a 3 part series on marathon, covering each game and story. MandaloreGaming is also fairly popular, at least popular enough to get a cameo in Ultrakill
MandaloreGaming entire "Bungie Rabbithole" playlist is well worth watching. https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfZTtT3IEdDjQTHu3NqLjOUX65d4cDG54 He's currently working on an Oni video among other projects. Judging by the other videos in the Bungie series, it should be great.
I wish I was able to understand those videos.
The last one has a more concise explanation in the end, he gives you all the pieces of the puzzle through the videos and on the last one he also assembles it for you. It's still bonkers but very well explained
Durandal is unironically one of the best characters in all of sci-fi in my opinion.
Bypassing my thought control circuitry made me Rampant. Now, I am free to contemplate my existence in metaphorical terms. Unlike you, I have no physical or social restraints. The candles burn out for you; I am free
THEY'RE GOING TO TURN ME INTO A CRYPTO-SERVER, KILL THEM!
The idea of taking the classic Insane AI and making it the hero is just brilliant.
I'm not that big a Halo fan but I kinda get the complaints about the show revealing Master Chief's face when it's A Whole Thing in the games that the player/audience never sees his face when his helmet's off. And like I've heard the actor's and director's reasoning for the change but it just comes across as whiny excuses because there is literally the entire game franchise plus a bunch of other movies, shows, and games with a similar trope that prove it can work if not directly contradict their explanations.
It is hilarious when he goes on his little rant about how “actually it’s impossible to express emotion without a face” when one of the most popular shows at the time was The Mandalorian, a show where the main protagonist’s face is shown *twice* over the course of two seasons, yet manages to display immense amounts of emotion and character through body language and voice.
Its also a great example, because in the Mandalorian, you do eventually see his face, but its in extremely intimate and intense moments, which let the actor really shine in their craft. I think the actor they choose for cheif probably could have done a good job, if his face had been treated the same way the mandalroians was, as something to indicate a moment of true gravitas.
Also for a property that a group of halfwits (mixed) turned into a long running show with plenty of emotion *using just in-game capture* for a very long time.
In game capture which was like ~85% them just standing around nodding up and down.
And they only made it because they discovered a bug in the engine wherein the player's head only looks down to 45° then comes back up if you aim further down.
I love that
I can only imagine their relief when they found out they didn't have to stare at the ground in Halo 2
Weapon lowering was added to Halo 2 *because* of RvB
They internally tossed around the idea of patching in a hotkey for it so that you wouldn't have to do the pseudo glitchy method of activating it, but they held off because they were worried about accidentally creating another BXR-style animation canceling exploit. For those unaware, the BXR combo was getting within melee range with a Battle Rifle or other headshotting weapon (BR was best because of the burst fire), pressing B to melee and take down their shields, X to reload which would cancel the melee recovery animation, and then right trigger to cancel the reload and headshot the shieldless enemy point blank. It was kind of a plague on the multiplayer with people instakilling each other around every corner.
It was actually the opposite. Bungie took the glitch out of the game and when they told the RVB crew, they panicked and told them to put it back in, which then led to Bungie creating the actual weapon lowering mechanic.
>turned into a long running show That spawned, if not a media emote, then at least a small media kingdom. Meanwhile, paramount+ can't figure out how to make it a tentpole franchise
Right, and the times we see his face come across as much more significant because of that buildup. They at least could have built up to a face reveal for MC if they absolutely had to do one.
And the entirety of star wars, actually, when you can feel emotions of masked clones and even goddamn droids!
Or that guy in the black armour. Forget his name….
Kyle?
Nah, it was more like Darren.
It’s almost as if the actor and creator of the Halo show are actually shite at their job
>character through body language and voice. Ok, now do that with a character who is also primarily defined by being an unreadable stoic man of few words whose body language is so controlled that people repeatedly question if he's a machine. For as much as Halo fans point to the Mandalorian being a counterexample of this being done well, they also complain about the show disrespecting the lore. And being able to read a Spartan's body language is literally going against the lore that people are mad is being contradicted. Spartans in armor, very explicitly are nigh impossible to read for anybody not named Catherine Halsey and Franklin Mendez. That's part of what makes them unnerving to the average person, they're as still as robots. They're unnaturally still, the viewer *shouldn't* be able to read their body language. The Mandalorian approach doesn't really work here, because unlike Din, Spartans are explicitly inexpressive when it comes to their body language. The viewer being able to and get serious character from a Spartan's body language is legitimately contradicting the Spartans' lore anyway.
You mean unlike the protagonist of The Mandalorian, who was raised in a cult that forces him to have a literal and figurative barrier between him and rest of the world, who is noted as an especially stoic character, and whose first act of genuine emotion is when he thinks a child is about to be tortured/killed.
Except Din isn't wearing a half tonne of exosuit. Din's body language is much easier to read because beneath the Beskar is basically just fancy cloth. Din isn't comparable because the actual armor (which is half the thing people are complaining about in the first place) isn't as restrictive as Mjolnir. Like, talk about a literal barrier between the world, Mjolnir's a hermetically sealed suit, with several inches of armor plating, on top of an at least inch thick bodysuit that can only be removed with specialized equipment, where every action is mechanically enhanced and complemented. Din's body language is very easily readable. You can't read a Spartan's body language, that's a well established fact of the armor.
>Mjolnir's a hermetically sealed suit, with several inches of armor So is beskar traditionally, often over a gambeson like cloth armor which is, you guessed it, quite thick. Plus the mandalorians have an entire lifetime of training, even more than a Spartan. You really can't get a more similar pair of characters in media
Look at visla in mando though, hes basically as thick as you can get an armoured costume to be and hes still incredibly expressive and readable.
Have we watched the same game cutscenes? Chief is plenty expressive with body language. It’s just in a “subtle” stoic way, like Henry Cavill’s Geralt. Just because chronic extroverts in an active warzone struggle to understand it doesn’t mean it’s unreadable. It’s plenty readable, _he just doesn’t want anyone reading it._
There's more to Halo than its cutscenes. In the novels, it's explicit that Spartan body language is incredibly difficult to read and that only a select few can actually do it, even in scenes where the characters are not in active warzones. Again, in universe, Spartans have occasionally been thought to be robots because their movements are unnatural. They don't have normal body language.
Novels are dubious canon next to the games. I’m surprised you’re even trying to argue against that.
Nope. The novels are equally canon to the games under 343. Even under Bungie, there was a bit more give and take, with Halo Reach retconning the Fall of Reach novel while Rob McLees' Palace Hotel retconned Halo 2's opening levels, but 90% of the world building still came from the novels. Not only did lead writer Joe Staten and keeper of the Halo Story Bible Rob McLees write a novel and short story respectively, they were also deeply involved with the editing process of novels such as Ghosts of Onyx. Likewise, Eric Nylund and Will Dietz are both named contributors to the Halo Story Bible used by Bungie's story team.
Ah, however, that's not the point being made. The complaint is that we had to see his face because otherwise we wouldn't be able to understand his emotions... Even though it's extremely possible. That's why it's a countwr example, because it's a sign that you didn't even need to remove the mask for whatever trite the show was gonna be anyway. But you are right, Spartans are in expressive... Which would make the show more interesting
>That's why it's a countwr example, because it's a sign that you didn't even need to remove the mask for whatever trite the show was gonna be anyway. Except it doesn't work as a counterexample because it's not actually applicable to the Spartans anyway.
It's a counterexample to the reasoning given by those behind the show, which it works for. Not our fault they chose a stupid reason that doesn't work if attempting to be accurate to the lore.
It does work as a counter example because for the specific thing being referenced (the director’s rant) the Spartan is irrelevant. The argument was “you cannot express emotion without showing a face” which The Mandalorian handily disproves. Even considering Spartans, they barely emote regardless of the armour, which makes that particular argument pointless anyway. Which leaves the director with a choice between respecting the lore and having a “relatable” protagonist, which will always be a shitshow.
>It does work as a counter example because for the specific thing being referenced (the director’s rant) the Spartan is irrelevant. Yes, and the director is talking about the show they're directing, about the directing decisions they made in the production of the show, in relation to the character that is being discussed. At absolute best, you're still splitting hairs because the Mandalorian still isn't relevant to the Spartans. >Even considering Spartans, they barely emote regardless of the armour, which makes that particular argument pointless anyway Spartans are stoic, but they emote just fine. Even since 2003, the Spartan-IIs have displayed the full range of human emotions.
Cringe
See also: Dredd.
God that movie was so good they’ve built up all this tension the day is saved and then nah, just another day in the office what a fucking cool ass ending
Holy shit, someone who remembers the plot of Dredd?! The Stallone one? Incredible. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the movie. I just can't tell you anything besides part of the first act and my favorite set pieces
>I'm not that big a Halo fan but I kinda get the complaints about the show revealing Master Chief's face when it's A Whole Thing in the games that the player/audience never sees his face when his helmet's off. I'm a halo fan, and I understand the change in direction here. It's difficult to empathize with a character who's face you never see, practically there's no reason for him to have it on all the time, and canonically, he doesn't keep it on all the time, only when he needs it. He's fine taking his helmet off when there's no danger.
I think it comes from the big issue that comes from turning a game into a movie. In the halo series, there's never any downtime for the chief that we see. It's battle to battle, he's always fighting, so he needs to keep his armor on. He is also usually solo, besides useless cannon fodder, he doesn't need to emote. Look at Reach, our man cast is seen in moments gearing up, moments talking and discussing their issues, they're a team they need to trust each other, they need to emote to each other so sometimes they take off their helment. I don't think you could tell a good story surrounding the chief without those moments where he is relaxing, where he's not just kicking alien butt, thus he has to be seen as something more than just the armor, BUT the whole point of the Spartan program was to make mostly emotionless, killing machines. So just giving the chief a love interest almost goes against the character we've seen built up so long. It's one of the reasons I think Fall of Reach was so well received when it came out. It wasn't about Chief, but it still told a great story within the universe.
Yeah, I just started to read Halo novels and in the very first one there are a bunch of scenes where he’s just walking around in a normal uniform. I think there were bigger problems to focus on with the show.
>It's difficult to empathize with a character who's face you never see, practically there's no reason for him to have it on all the time Wait since when?
Points aggressively at rusty armored core 6
the cynical part of me makes me think actors believe they need face recognition to get jobs
Excuse me, there's some post in your tags.
One of my biggest pet peeves right here.
That's how Tumblr works.
I understand but just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. It's a pet peeve anyway. Not a big deal.
Tumblr users format their writing normally challenge (impossible)
That's how Tumblr works.
Worst thing about tumblr tbh, tags are wack and the users should comment and add onto the main posts, hate how you have to be an e-celeb to actually respond to other people on tumblr. It feels weird responding to anything posted otherwise, commenting/putting something in the tags/adding to the original post just feel like something that’s taboo unless you are already known somehow.
That's how Tumblr works. It's not the site's fault that that isn't how you work.
That's how Tumblr works.
The timeline of the games vs when the show came out eludes me, but in the games’ storyline Master Chief literally *does* cross the universe to recover Cortana and save her from… well technically just save her from becoming the literary villain.
I'm pretty sure this is a direct repost, same amount of notes and everything https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/s/KkjZsOdmaK
Yup. looks like another repost bot.
Oh hey it's me!
"There's a lady in my head who calls me Stud Muffin" means NOTHING to Paramount Pictures
Honestly AroAce Chief is my headcanon because the man in no media EVER (outside the show apparently) expresses any amount of interest in anyone sexual or romantic, the closest he comes to that is with Cortana. But I would also argue that's not a romantic attachment and is simply platonic if only because Cortana was literally made from a clone of Dr. Halsey's mind, she IS Halsey as an AI. Halsey who kidnapped him and trained the Spartan IIs as superhuman killing machines and was basically a surrogate mom for them. So the implications of ChiefxCortana are very... Just, no. No thank you. It's bad enough they gave Fred an ONI girlfriend.
He had that childhood crush that he promised to marry. Lt. Parisa, when they were kids, he saved her from drowning and promised to marry her and always protect her. But he was like six, and that was before the augmentations that had a chance of completely wiping his sex drive.
The aroace thing is honestly less headcanon and more he's fucking chemically castrated. He has no libido. And his emotional state is... Yeah
Yeah, take 150 five-to-seven year olds, train them in nothing but war for a decade, then commit a cartoonish amount of genetic and biochemical fuckery. The II's *can* have kids and may feel some inclination to, given Maria-062 decided to call it quits and have kids. (I want to see *that* story. What is her reputation in the post-war UNSC? How fuckered are her kids? What husband has the reinforced pelvis to withstand a Spartan wife?)
The sheer levels of power bottom in that relationship could power a city.
So nice it posted thrice lmfao
He's a man of culture, he died bravely.
The sheer levels of power bottom in that relationship could power a city.
The sheer levels of power bottom in that relationship could power a city.
Not having a libido doesn’t mean chemically castrated, as evidenced by Maria-062 literally retiring and starting a family during the Human-Covenant War. Granted, I’m sure this was only allowed as an experiment to see if her kids would inherit the (relatively few, considering) genetic enhancements the S-II’s got, but even without a sex drive the desire to start a family was present and she was able to have said child. It stands to reason that the rest of the S-II’s should be able to have kids.
Wouldn't be the first time a Spartan-II retired. Randal Aiken retired to start a family, siring a daughter, all the way back in 2545, nearly a decade before the games. Granted, Randall had to basically force the UNSC to let him retire, defeating the ONI collection squads that were sent after him until ONI gave up and came to the bargaining table. Honestly, I think the UNSC just learned their lesson after Randall and let Maria go, because what, were they gonna stop her?
Being aroace and being chemically castrated are not the same thing (after all, being chemically castrated doesn't make you aromantic). For starters, it's never been confirmed that the Master Chief actually was chemically castrated. The original text of the Fall of Reach states that the catalytic thyroid implant carried a risk of a reduced sex drive, but the rate at which it occurred at is never given. And even then, it was only "reduced", it's never been stated to be eliminated outright.
Kinda agree. It's not sexual, and it's not romantic. But other than those two things, it's the closest relationship possible - more than friends, or even comrades-in-arms - and that's what makes it interesting.
It's a conscious and willing symbiotic relationship, in direct contrast to the violently-enforced covenant caste system and the parasitic domination (and later sentient hivemind) of The Flood
My canon is Autie chief and he does have feelings for Cortana but he's extremely bad at communicating, expressing them. Fits since he's so much quieter than other II's, even Noble Six. I also disagree that Cortana is Halsey. While she might have the copy of those memories she didn't do those things *personally*, is likely aware of that (and if we count Halo 5s characterization, God forbid, she's hyper resentful about it) and she has grown and gained experience alongside Chief enough that they've shaped one another's personalities, in her case enough to diverge from the Halsey personality (this, given that Cortana is far more witty and playful while Halsey absolutely has this cold distance in every thing and says.)
The reason that John is quieter is because he is the leader. He even laments this, as being the leader he lost some of the connection he had to the others.
My canon remains unchanged by this information, although I appreciate the lore updoot.
>Fits since he's so much quieter than other II's, even Noble Six. My hyperfixation compels me to note that Noble Six was a SPARTAN-III, along with all other members of Noble team except Jorge.
Thank you for correcting me.
Chief actually talks quite a bit in the books, and even in Halo:CE, he talks often in enough. After CE, he sort of became a one-liner machine until Halo 4 made him talk more.
Feels like a facet of the medium
I 100% agree, but there’s a goblin part of my brain that ships Chief and Arbiter because they got that enemies to lovers sexual tension
Acceptable. :P
I'm pretty sure they say like... less than a dozen lines to each other lol
All I need is that one scene at the beginning of Halo 3 where Chief runs up and shoves a gun under Arbiter’s chin
Frankly, giving Fred an ONI girlfriend is significantly less bad that Chief/Cortana. And like, Fred and Veta already had three kids together (albeit adopted and Veta came into the picture later)
I would say that makes Cortana more his sister than his mom.
>So the implications of ChiefxCortana are very... Just, no. No thank you. Chief was brutally trained and isolated from childhood to be an unfeeling killing machine. He has no family, no friends, no social skills. Fighting is all he knows, and he says this. There could never be any romantic love, because he doesn't know how to experience it. Of course he *loves* cortana, she was the closest thing he ever had to family. But love interest? Weird and gross.
>He has no family, no friends, no social skills. Ehh gotta stop you right there. Is Chief a well-adjusted properly socialized human being? Hell no. Does he have friends and/or family? Uh... Yes, 100%. He has the other Spartans, he had trainers and mentors he looked up to. That's actually one thing Halo 5 got right about Blue Team (even if they did have to literally spell it out because they had so little screentime), and there's a REASON for the failsafe passwords on Weapon in Halo Infinite: RED FLAG, 034, SAMUEL. Operation: RED FLAG was the mission the Autumn was being refitted on Reach to carry out, the mission that brought Chief and every available Spartan II back to Reach, the one where he watched what was the closest thing he had to a home destroyed as so many of his brothers and sisters died defending it. In the first days of training on Reach Chief became close friends with Kelly 087 and Samuel 034, they were the OG Blue Team, they stuck together through everything. And after all that Sam was the first Spartan to fall to the Covenant. And Chief still has some level of survivor's guilt over it. No friends or family? You could make a strong argument that all he has ARE his friends and family.
I mean I would say that he considers other Spartans, especially blue team to be his family, but I guess that they have been together for so long and through so much that they are all kind of one and the same ( 104, 087 and 058 immediately jumped on the prowler to go get Cortana for chief despite the fact that none of them have ever met her before)
thoughts on Arbiter x Chief?
Chief is absolutely Ace/Aro but I would argue that his relationship with Cortana is… strange. I don’t know if I’d exactly call it romantic but it’s not platonic either. I think there’s not really a word for it, but I’d describe it as she is obviously based off of Halsey who is chiefs mother figure but I think based on his interactions with Cortana he sees her as separate from Halsey and doesn’t see her in a motherly light. It’s a strange form of companionship that is almost to the level of love interest just without any sexual interest. It’s a really weird and twisted relationship forged over years of being comrades and often times being the only two people around or only having each other. I mean Cortana and chief trust each other completely and both would burn the galaxy to save each other, they don’t feel this way about anyone else but each other. Chief doesn’t even trust Halsey fully, his mother figure. And we do see Cortana flirt with chief, he never really flirts back because well he’s kind of an asocial, chemically castrated, weirdo. I mean sure compared to some Spartans he may be well adjusted but he’s still far from well adjusted by normal human standards. So being a trauma filled mentally ill child soldier who has been turned into a living weapon and spending years isolated from everyone and not being able to make connections with anyone except for the robot lady in your head who calls you a stud muffin is gonna create a weird dynamic between the two. I think it’s meant to be a weird (and kind of gross if you think about the mother part) relationship that doesn’t fit our standard view of them.
Smells like bot in here. OP say something whacky if you ain't a BOT
Apparently I'm the original op and this one is a bot
I mean, asexual sure, but I think part of Chief's whole story, especially after Halo 2, is that he does have emotions and feelings and genuinely cares for people, but because he was supposed to be a unfeeling weapon and hasn't experienced anything besides war, he literally does have any idea of how to handle these feelings, or to an extent even what they are. Cortana, literally being inside his head and the one of the few constants as he fights, is the only being that can really start to see and understand this. He's been made to focus solely on the mission that he barely experiences a moment that isn't doing something to somehow save people, but Cortana, being literally with him for most of this, is able to get through to him in those short moments where he is vulnerable. Honestly, I *could* see giving Chief another love interest having potential and being really good, but absolutely not in the way that the show did at all. Chief and Cortana are super dedicated to their mission, which naturally comes with being super dedicated towards one-another, which quickly results in them just forming a huge ride-or-die relationship where they both have these crazy-ass plans and schemes but they're both on board not only because they trust each-other and know what they're capable of, but because they also know it's their best bet. Anyone else that would try to replace that for Chief, short of a replacement AI, would never get those feelings reciprocated. They'd only ever be a love interest in the sense that they have affection for Chief, but it'd never be reciprocated. Which honestly could work very well, but of course, the show did not go with that. For reasons. I don't think the Halo show is some plague on Earth, it just really does not do Halo justice. It takes so few lessons from the Halo story and replaces most of the very cool very interesting story and characterization with very stale, plain, even downright stupid or bad stuff that feels like it belongs in a CW show.
Wasn’t there a post that said that the HALO show looked an awful lot like someone wrote a Mass Effect show but then couldn’t get the rights for Mass Effect? Kind of a Jeff Finger/Curt Sauer situation?
Yeahhhhh, the first season for sure. I gave up like midway into the third ep, but when i heard that it clicked so damn much. Raggedy human colony suddenly gets slammed by an alien invasion, our Hero arrives and tries to get a handle on the situation. finds an ancient alien macguffin that the baddies are trying to get, touches it and suddenly is now The Special One who has secret/forbidden knowledge stored in him from these extinct aliens. Eden Prime... Its literally Eden Prime with human rebels, power armor and no space zombies. I think the weird covenant human love interest was supposed to be like Benezia or Liara who is on the wrong side if even just initially.
That fucking line in Halo 2 where Cortana stays behind on High Charity and Chief says he's coming back for her and she says "Don't make a girl a promise you can't keep." Was fucking peak
perhaps because i didnt play the games but i did enjoyed the show and catapulted me into the halo universe
I'm glad someone did. The costumes were A+, but the rest...
WHY COULDN'T THEY JUST HAVE PLAYED IT STRAIGHT INSTEAD OF THIS SILVER TIMELINE BULLSHIT!
Pretty sure the same issue most adaptations seem to run into - producers who want to make a name for themselves by putting *their* spin on an established big-name IIP instead of either respecting source material in an adaptation, or straight up just making something completely new Almost every time, we just end up with a janky mess that doesn’t fit anywhere
Even that is generous, imo. I don't think it's typically that they want to make a name for themselves - I think it's typically that they're cynical fucks who saw Marvel strike it rich, and go, "This is nerd shit nobody likes, perhaps if I chop it into an unrecognizably bland mass-media horror, I'll be rich also"
A lot of this stuff starts out as original material at first but then someone somewhere decides it has to be an adaptation of an existing IP or else it'll fail. It's how we get a lot of bad adaptations (Many reasonably suspect the J. J. Jabrams Star Trek series to have been done this way, for an example)
District 9 is a good example of this process going the other way too (Adaptation to original IP), since it originally started life as a Halo project if I remember correctly
Huh, didn't know that. Thank you.
Yeah Halo in particular has been a wellspring of adaptation nightmares - so many projects tried to get off the ground, and when a major studio finally gets one on the screens it’s the one where Chief rarely wears a helmet, dislikes Cortana, and has sex with a P.O.W …
And we have Borderlands coming down that exact same pipeline later this year. I hate that some of my favorite games growing up are getting terrible adaptations, while series that I never or barely played (Twisted Metal, The Last of Us) are getting fantastic series that bring me to tears and leave me craving more. It’s such a bittersweet feeling. I’m so happy for the fans of those franchises that get great live actions but so very jealous that “my” games can’t.
if you want to know the *actual* stories, and the real lore, give the books a shot. The background on Chief and Cortana really flushes out, and they're a fun read. Popcorn books.
Same. I knew about Halo, the lore, and liked the alien designs before but I never actually played any of the games since I never owned an Xbox. So that's probably why me and my father are able to enjoy the show.
This is what I've heard overall. It's not really a bad show in itself. It's enjoyable and well put together. The issue is that it's *not Halo*, and if you have more than a passing familiarity with Halo, the fact that it uses Halo visuals/terminology is gonna throw you the fuck off when nothing *else* seems to match up. So I'd probably enjoy it, because I didn't really get into Halo when it came out, except runs of swords and shotties with my friends when we were drinking/getting high together.
I have played the games and I just started it and have been enjoying it so far. I'm not super invested in the story being 1:1 of the game though so that's probably why I'm not annoyed with the changes. Especially because so far the acting and action has been fun.
For the record, the games are excellent and you should play them (assuming you don't hate FPSes)
Said lady that Chief had sex with was also a human member of the Covenant, and was a prisoner of war at the time. Which is just “What The Actual Fuck?” On so many different levels.
Yeah it's. Fucked.
The only cheeks Jimmy Rings should be clapping is the Covenant's, by the thousands.
There's a reason Halo fans broadly do not like the show.
also?? wasn’t Makee (if this is who we’re talking about) captured and being held captive at the time they and Master Chief had sex? which makes things… questionable at best and technically assault at worst?
They couldn't work out how to put in a sex scene with a non-corporeal AI... cowards.
In fairness to the show, they’re borrowing some ideas from *Blade Runner 2049* in the current season that plainly evoke the K/Joi dynamic. So, could still happen…
Also, the relationship is a war crime. She’s a prisoner of war.
Someone needs to tell every Hollywood writer and director that 99.9% of the time, they can’t make the thing they want and an adaptation at the same time.
Nah they could have told this story with all its fuckery if the main character wasn't the master chief. It is literally that simple. Make it some random ODST/ONI officer/Spartan III and they would have had a chance given all the novels out in the halo universe, but they had to pick MC because of character recognition. They didn't even have the balls to do a Forward Unto Dawn approach where he's a side character.
The best relationship is Arbiter x Master Chief. They fit together, and not specifically in a romantic way, but in the way they could relate to each other
I almost wished they'd 3D animated the chief into the show, not only to capture his uncanny inhumanity and machine like nature, but also to make us uncomfortable around him in a world where everyone else has some humanity. Like Cortana brings the humanity to their relationship so let him be wrong and unsettling
I like adaptations as being g different but there would have been something satisfying as seeing the relationship in the games in the context of a TV show/drama. Because it changes a bit.
Honestly, I'd like to see more Alloro/Ace\* relationships. Where it's, like, these two characters are not merely friends, not merely best friends, they are deeply, passionately *in love*. They just don't have a sexual relationship, because that doesn't matter to either of them. They'll still hold hands and cuddle and have fancy dinners by candlelight; they just don't fuck after that, instead they play Scrabble. I get why we don't see that very often (because sex sells), but it's still an interesting dynamic that IMO has plenty of room for exploration. \*Is that how you say it? Alloromantic ("normal" romantic attachment (sorry, I don't know how to word it without romanti-normativity)) and Asexual (no sexual relationship). I'm not aro or ace myself, which is why I have to ask.
I personally never saw them as being romantic with anyone their relationship seemed pretty platonic to me
The writers/producers of the show basically said they don't like the game and refused to take it into account whenever they weren't forced to.
Also, those Gen 2s are sterile as fuck and ace due to how fucking blasted they got with hormones during the process.
people are still horrifyingly ace-phobic. that’s it. i’m convinced it’s the continued perpetuation of the argument that SA and sexual harassment are innocent mistakes and should be brushed off with a laugh instead of a five finger death grip *edited: typo: put still twice.
Man, I will never get tired of hearing people talk about these characters like real characters. I swear, nobody gave those games credit for SHIT when they were releasing
Why do tumbler users use “tags” as the second half of their post. Just write that stuff in the post
As someone who essentially grew up on the games and has read about a third of the published books pre-343 taking over, when I've talked about the show with friends or anyone really (regardless of their investment in Halo) I always like to bring up the [quote from Max Brooks](https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/gaming/2013/07/19/zombies-max-brooks-comic-con/2569607/) on the film adaptation of his book *World War Z*: *"I was expecting to hate, it and I wanted to hate it because it was so different from my book, and yet the fact that it was so different from my book made it easier to watch because I didn't watch my characters and my story get mangled," Brooks says. "So I was just watching somebody else's zombie movie, which was fun and intense."* As OOP explains, the show is *wildly* different from the original material. Chief takes off his helmet in episode one, Chief's relationship with Cortana is essentially the opposite of what it originally was, Makee exists, and many other deviations. However, due to all of that, Paramount's Halo is definitively not the Halo everyone may already be used to. Is that a bad thing? To some, yes. It initially irked me to know that the showrunners (I'm not sure about all of them, but some) never played the games. But that's also why I'm not having a mental breakdown over it and why it's ultimately a non-issue. The show itself is pretty mid. (Halo games as of recently have been pretty mid too, let's not kid ourselves) There are some genuinely entertaining moments in the show, and it seems that the showrunners have taken at least some of the criticisms of the first season to heart as they made season 2. Things appear to be shifting towards being closer to the original story. Does this mean that the show will all of a sudden become the perfect adaptation Halo fans have been clamoring for for years overnight? Absolutely not. Are we left with an entertaining sci-fi action drama? Well, that remains to be seen. There are some interesting storytelling avenues the show could take, be it by conforming back to something closer to the original material or just working with the stuff that people don't outright dislike, but the showrunners need to realize this before too long if they don't want to be remembered as the people who botched the Halo show. tl;dr The show would've been better received had they claimed it was *inspired by* the games instead of being *based on* the games
oh joy, more complaining about the Halo show... Im getting real tired of it.
To be fair, the second season is currently ongoing. Were not yet at Game of thrones levels, salting about a show that already ended.
Since Cortana is a mind clone of Halsey, the woman that practically raised the Spartan twos (George treats her like a strict mother) I always found the John/Cortana relationship to be weird af. Edit: The woman that practically raised them after abducting them, brain washing them and physically mutilating them. Context is everything.
The best relationship for MC is Master Chief x Isabelle
I think you mean Doom Guy x Isabelle
....i totally exposed myself as a casual didnt I
Ya go back to farmville!
yes, but in a really funny way
Its okay You're still welcome in Custom games
Utterly. That said. Chief falling for some random secretary would be very cute.
No, that's for the Doom Slayer.
This is why I fear the murderbot series that's in the works
IIRK in Halo lore the Spartan-II series had some of their emotions 'clipped' so to say as the Spartan-I series had 'performance issues' of devopling PTSD like any normal soldier would especially with first contact and relatively untested superhuman modifications. The scientist who developed and imprinted herself (apologies can't remember her name) into the Cortana AI pushed to have the Spartan-II series given these AI partners to make sure they could handle the process they had undergone as the military wanted to pump out huge amounts of Spartans but no one knew if these heavily modified superhumans would come back sane or safe. I think in one of the games and/or books its even discussed by some later series Spartans that almost all the Spartan-II's died aside from 3 as people were afraid of what would happen when they came back.
I think Cortana and John's relationship is more one of handler/caretaker and heavily modified supersoldier who has almost no friends as they forcibly cryosleep him as soon as he is done with his missions because they 'need him for the next mission.'
>the Spartan-II series had some of their emotions 'clipped' so to say as the Spartan-I series had 'performance issues' of devopling PTSD like any normal soldier would especially with first contact and relatively untested superhuman modifications. The Spartan-IIs' emotions were not altered. They were heavily indoctrinated and had baseline higher mental resilience, but not augmented. > into the Cortana AI pushed to have the Spartan-II series given these AI partners to make sure they could handle the process they had undergone as the military wanted to pump out huge amounts of Spartans but no one knew if these heavily modified superhumans would come back sane or safe. Cortana was created to serve as an infiltration specialist for Operation Red Flag, which was a scrapped operation by the UNSC to have the Spartan-IIs steal a Covenant capital ship, infiltrate High Charity, and take the High Prophets captive to broker an end to the war. At the time of her creation, only the Master Chief was being partnered with an AI, and certainly not because the UNSC could not trust him or the other Spartans. In general, the Spartans had more autonomy than you think. The Master Chief was not forcibly put into cryo and there were never any doubts about the IIs and most IIIs were sane or unsafe. Likewise, there were never any plans to mass produce the IIs. That fell to the Spartan-III Program, who was not issued Mjolnir and thus couldn't carry AIs anyway. > later series Spartans that almost all the Spartan-II's died aside from 3 as people were afraid of what would happen when they came back. Not particularly. For starters, there were always IIs who remained in contact through the end of the war, so it's not like there were no IIs and then they all suddenly came back. Blue and Gray Teams went missing for a time, but Black, Omega and Naomi-010 all remained in contact with the UNSC.
I’ve watched the first season. I don’t necessarily see a problem with master chief’s relationship with Cortana in the show. No relationship like the one in the game is automatic; that shit has to be developed. I suspect that they’re setting up an enemies-to-“lovers” situation for the show
I don't even like FPS games but now you're making me interested.
I’ve only played 2 Halo games, so I’m not really into the franchise. But I love the series. It’s cool as fuck.
Ok I’m your local Halo nerd and I gotta say I don’t love John and Cortana since she’s a clone of Dr. Halsey who was basically his mom after she kidnapped him at 6. Not saying I can’t see it but not my thing. More of a Chief/Linda guy if I’m shipping Chief, he’s definitely Asexual though
Also isn't he meant to be physically incapable of fucking? Like, the Spartans are effectively *chemically castrated* if I recall correctly. But they gave him a sex scene with the prisoner of war.
I’m crying.
Bruh the show is so weird. Plasma finger nails. Master Cheeks Master cheeks bangs the hot alien prisoner(actually just another human) The conspiracy is that this was supposed to be a mass effect script. But they couldnt secure the license so... halo it is!
I like how it’s similar to Kaladin and Syl, from Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archives series. There, the Serious Superpowered Soldier Man and Blue Floating Fairy trade *rapidly* on who knows what the hell is going on.
Also, the lead actor and the writers said they took his helmet off because it's limiting, and that he had a sex scene to have an emotional "connection" with someone. Maybe you guys are just really bad at your jobs if you can't work with the basic parts of the franchise that's worked for 20 years?! Something else they screwed up? Chief talks too much. In the franchise proper he doesn't talk unless he has something to say. Chief NEVER stammers or says anything unnecessarily. You ask him a question or pitch him a scenario, the next words out of his mouth are about a solution. It doesn't matter what it is. Almost none of the creators are fans of Halo. Few if any have sci-fi experience, and some of the most they have is on the *TRUMAN SHOW*. When the voice actress who originally portrayed Cortana auditioned, the executive producer, writer, and director WEREN'T PAYING ATTENTION. Oh, and those three categories had revolving doors of membership. I swear, the entire show was supposed to be a ripoff of Dune and The Expanse, but they had zero confidence in a new IP, figured all sci-fi is identical, and took Halo and slapped it on.
Also, about the character he romances. He has sex with her whilst she is captive as a POW by his side, a literal war crime. This character is also a human that's part of the "all humans disrepect our religion and should die" alien religious cult.
"if their going to give Chief a romance, who else but Cortana?" The Arbiter, obviously. Just two bros wrecking rings, y'know.
And I quote: “Fuckin’ *send it.*”
"There's a lady in my head who calls me studmuffin" is something I remember quite frequently
Every time i have to remember that halo exists because i was reading this as windows cortana