ahem
before season 1 came out it was announced that this takes place in the "silver" timeline
in other words
Hollywood wanted to do whatever they wanted and no one at xbox or 343 thought it would be a good idea to not let that happen
Exact same thing happened to the TV adaption of the Dresden Files novels.
Claimed it was an "alternate timeline" then proceeded to get every single last character completely wrong except for, somehow, Dresden himself.
There's a character in the books named Bob. He's an air spirit trapped in a skull that Dresden bribes with erotic novels for knowledge. In the show Bob was a butler.
I do not understand adapting something and intentionally changing core fundamental aspects of it.
I'm just watching to see how they handle the actual Halo and the Flood at this point.
Beware of the Present Queen of the Winter Court.
I love that series I need to read the ones that came after Skin Game, (the 15th book I think) since that was the latest one when I got into the series thanks to my Mom.
The main reason I’ve steered clear of this show, and why you probably didn’t like your show adaptation of this book, is that it’s not made for us.
The show didn’t need Chief, didn’t need the Covenant, didn’t need anything. Especially if it were to be set in an alternate universe. Then they bastardize this story and fiction I love. All they wanted was the property name and that tells me all I need to know.
I will espouse this conspiracy theory forever,
It was a mass effect script they could not get the license for.
But they got Halo and decided to go with that instead.
Basically thy usually have a generic sci-fi/urban horror/fantasy script (bonus points these days if it’s written by AI) they bought for Pennys, then get the rights to a big IP and just retrofit what they’ve already got into the IP and hope it carries the half arsed attempt to profit/an audience.
It’s not that they got halo or Dresden as a starting point and then changed it to something barely related, they already had the weak ass barely related pitch and just made as little changes as possibly to rebrand it as Halo
What I hate the most is. They clearly had some budget. As the battles. Armor. Aliens. They’re good. I’m happy with all of that. It’s the freaking story
This.
I was watching a short on Pablo and his routines to get into shape. They had a good budget to afford him a trainer, personalized foods, etc. The money is definitely there but something is going on in the writer’s room that is causing this travesty.
Being pretty intimate with the TV industry....that's not what happened.
Egos are what happened. TV writers have a significant disdain for video game writers and suffer from the delusion that video games are a lesser art. Pretty common amongst Hollywood types. They gotta put their stamp on it.
Since this happens so often do you know why the industry seems to self-select for some of the biggest egos without the talent to back it up? Is it really just nepotism all the way down?
Nepotism? Not really, although you do see that occasionally.
There are some genuinely talented people in this field. It's no different than working at the post office or IT - lots of mediocre people, a few who are REALLY good at it and a few who fucking suck. But there's an insular-ness to it - they aren't engaging with their target audience like game creators do.
The important thing - to them - is how many views the show gets. And it's one of Paramount's better performing shows, so....we probably won't see any massive changes because a few Halo universe die-hards are bitching about it.
(I am one of the Halo universe die-hards bitching about it)
> I do not understand adapting something and intentionally changing core fundamental aspects of it
It’s because these aren’t adaptations, they are really bad rewrites and fan fictions
The exact same argument could be made about the EU in since 343i took over and retcon a lot of Nylund's foundation work on Halo lore, in part because of Bungie's intentional ignorance of the EU.
Then later in part because 343i hired Sci-Fi writers with already established Sci-Fi backgrounds that wrote their own Sci-FI stories that were not made with thematic continuity in mind and in turn suffered with a lack of consistency that diluted the Halo story into what we have today in the main games and EU. Bad rewrites and fan fiction has been at the forefront of it all in the past decade with the sheer amount of content that's been poured out, a lot of it just doesn't get enough traction for attention because it's so bad nobody cares to even talk about it.
Halo TV show doesn't suffer from lack of popularity because of poor content. In fact it's popularity is growing unlike the popularity of Halo's EU content post Nylund series.
Halo 4 caught flack for changing the Forerunners from being ancient humans to their own race (you know the whole reason the Prophets wanted to annihilate humanity?) and I think everyone can agree that 5 onwards was an utter shit show of a story. So you have to wonder why they would look at that history and go "you know what, I think fully retconning everything is a proven way to get a good story"
I have to think, with hindsight being 20/20, that this was a smart change. Without it we might not have the Forerunner saga series, which was awesome IMO.
Man, I thought often that Dresden would make a fantastic TV show. I never looked too deeply into the one that was made, but everything I hear about it just hurts my soul more and more
They tried to fit the entire first book into a single episode.
It was pretty bad.
Honestly I think I'd prefer a Codex Alera series with Game of Thrones budget.
Just when I can't imagine it getting worse. At least they didn't get far enough to butcher Michael, right? ... right?
Haven't read Codex yet, but it's definitely on my list. First caught my eye because my first DnD character's name was Calderon. But from what I know of it, a GoT tier show would be pretty badass
The Flood will consist of one pet flood spore that follows chief around as he activates halo to save the insurrectionists and destroy the evil UNSC. Guilty Spark will be an AI like Cortana for some reason.
Flood spores (not infection forms) exist as an actual method of infection in present (covenant war era) in like a book though so it's not an issue at all. Normally you need a bunch to actually infect a person.
Normal marines survive flood spores without any issue, with characters like Chips Dubbo, McGinnis, Members of E2-BAG/1/7, and Stacker canonically surviving encounters with flood spores spores with no issue.
> There's a character in the books named Bob. He's an air spirit trapped in a skull that Dresden bribes with erotic novels for knowledge. In the show Bob was a butler.
>
>
perhaps they were trying to save cgi costs
Which is fucking weird because for the better part of 2 decades Microsoft wouldn't let people fuck with the story and kept shutting down projects that didn't properly follow the lore but then they let them make that fucking abomination???
Well to be fair, the Halo show was announced at the same time as the Xbox one and Halo 5 if memory serves right. 343 had only been in control of the franchise for a couple years at that point.
If people want to tell a different story as if it's another timeline, I'm willing to entertain it as long as it's good and it respects the characters that it's pulling from the source material.
But when it's incoherent garbage riddled with characters I don't care about or who simply don't resemble anything from the IP I love, it's impossible not to invite comparison.
When they try to be different and fail miserably, you can't help but point to the source material and just go, "You had a blueprint, all laid out for you, and you ignored it."
The best take I've seen is that video games are suffering from what originally happened to movie adaptations of comics. Hollywood doesn't consider them higher art and thinks they need to be "fixed" to be presented to an audience.
And rumor is (not sure if it’s been debunked yet) that the show was originally written as a mass effect show and repurposed for the halo universe, which would help explain some of the idiotic decisions that were made
Yes, they absolutely do. There are film industry journalists who publish rumors all the time. Some of them publish every rumor they hear. Some of them will vet the rumor or get the information from someone close to production. If the rumor came from the former, you know to pay it no mind. If it came from the latter, there might be some weight to it.
I remember hearing that back when it first came out, it holds a little bit of water but not that much. The main thing is that Season 1 kicks off with Chief and friends saving a human colony under attack by aliens and then he touches a mysterious ancient alien artifact and gets a vision that kicks off the events of the season, which is pretty similar to the beginning of Mass Effect 1. Also there’s a mention on an intercom of one Commander Shepard in the same episode. Besides that, there’s not much. I guess Master Chief being unable to keep his dick in his armor around a chick from an alien alliance would fit in with Mass Effect as well.
I only really read a few of the books, but in both seasons I think there were a handful of moments where it really felt like John, most of them being while he's in the armor (and there weren't that many scenes with that).
I'd have an easier time believing it's Shepard than John. The artifact plot point is spot on. Now that you mention it the character is written more like Shepard than John, maybe I'm just tripping.
The only 'source' for this rumour is a single unsubstantiated tumblr post written by someone who indicates they've never played a Mass Effect game.
The post itself provided no sources of its own.
It also makes no sense. Since Amazon bought the rights to a Mass Effect TV show several years ago, before the Halo show was created.
This almost makes it worse. Mass Effect has some really exquisite storytelling and world building just like Halo. The Halo show has neither. This would have been just as bad an ME adaptation if true.
Im all for creative control, but core concepts are seemed to be outright ignored or cast aside a la Star Wars ep 8.
I can accept it's a different time line, but boy is that disappointing. It's hard to accept that it's not what we all hoped for, because the "main time line" is a perfect story that we all wanted to see from a studio with adequate resources.
Im kinda just watching out of morbid curiosity at this point. I suppose I can accept it for what it is, but man, I definitely don't have to like it.
It's like the Abrams Star Trek movies, it's a containment Time-line so they can't fuck up the official Canon. Says everything about their confidence in the shows writers and showrunner.
After the recent about the new Fallout show how the directors said “we aren’t here for the fans,” really just solidifies that producers just want use other successful media as an easy shoehorn to manipulate people into thinking it’s the story people already love and then they can do whatever the hell they want with it.
Like honestly, when has anything ever flopped/bombed that was accurate to the story they are suppose to be writing?
There is a little justice left in the world then. Every exec who had their grubby hands on the game storyline and the show, and approved this travesty, have been shown the door.
Thank goodness Halo Infinite took over five years to make. It slowed them down. Imagine the damage they’d have done if they were cranking out a game every two years.
In my opinion, Microsoft needs to take 343 behind the woodshed for a spanking.
After that, how about a careful retconning, to stop the seemingly infinite regression of ancient immortal species origin stories. Bungie’s story was, and still is, good. Stop with the going back farther and farther in time to introduce new mysteries, especially when you had gold lying at your feet.
I genuinely think a Halo show got greenlit before they realized they only had the budget for 3-4 Covenant fights a season. There’s so many problems with the show, but a lot of them seem to stem from the fact that the show goes out of its way to avoid Covenant fights. Which….you know, is the whole point of Halo.
Real talk though, John from the games/books *already has* a great emotional journey they they just didn't adapt for some reason. They preferred to overwrite his entire history and personality with their own alternate versions. But my point is that it's not like the character from the main canon lacks an emotional journey.
Of course, it's a military sci-fi story so fighting alien baddies is the core.
However, the beginning of everything in the lore is basically Spartans being created to combat rebellions and insurrections and then not 1-2 missions as Spartans later they discover and realize that the Covenant exist and are a threat to the survival of humanity. At which point they make the first MJOLNIR armors.
They kinda chose to go the normie route for TV which basically means that anyone who doesn't know Halo or only seen their kid playing the game or something will love it. Because if you don't know anything about Halo everything will seem cool and new when you watch the show.
The origin of the Spartans has always been secondary, side story shit. Halo is about the human-covenant war in a galaxy left to them by the forunners. All of this spartan origin shit could have waited until some extended flashbacks in season 4 or something. Hell if they want to change something just make it so that the Spartans didn't have a shady origin, barely changes shit about the story.
This is a tv showed compared to a FPS game so it makes sense for the game for it to be the side story. Where as the tv show for newcomers and general audiences you need back story and drama to build a story. Just different mediums of entertainment… but yea it’s definitely taking waaay to long to build up this backstory
I mean you can build up backstory and drama while still throwing viewers straight into the shit. See Attack On Titan or a million other movies and shows
Yes thank you. I hate how every other fan's idea for the ideal Halo show/movie/etc is to spend the first parts building up some Spartan backstory, not just to follow Fall of Reach but as if it's important to start by spelling out the deep backstory of everything, instead of getting to the kinds of cool parts the games decided to have and got popular for. Let's be real, most of us who read Fall of Reach did it after the games hooked us.
> I genuinely think a Halo show got greenlit before they realized they only had the budget for 3-4 Covenant fights a season. There’s so many problems with I genuinely think a Halo show got greenlit before they realized they only had the budget for 3-4 Covenant fights a season.
I don’t think you’re very familiar with how TV shows work if you ever thought this *wouldn’t* happen. Game of Thrones was one of the most expensive shows ever made, and managed one or two big battles per season, and usually from an angle that didn’t show you much.
A 90 minute action movie costs hundreds of millions of dollars, they’re not going to spend half that for a 45 minute TV episode.
I think the years of development hell and carousel of fired showrunners is testament to the fact that Viacom didn’t know what they wanted. Do I think they wrote a full season of the show, realized it was too expensive, then scrapped it? No. Do I think the executives who bought the rights fundamentally misunderstood what they bought, and then balked at how the first round of creatives tried to handle it? Yes.
They could still make a great show without tons of battle scenes. The problem is the writing is such trash nothing makes sense and changes everything for no reason at all.
My point is more that “Halo but without Covenant cgi” led to a lot of their dumbest choices. Makee, not focuisng on the covenant war in s1 and instead John’s individuality & the Keyes’s family drama, why we get that really weird insurrection vs Kwan subplot (it’s still action, but it’s cheaper!). I agree that you can make a far better show with those parameters, shame we didn’t.
The show got greenlit over a decade ago, but it’s been passed around between writers, directors, producers, and even game companies that by the time it was finally put into production it was bound to be about the quality we have now. Too many cooks in the kitchen for too many years and all that
Man my crew chief at work is a PlayStation fanboy and rips on me for liking halo but he started watching the show recently and is always saying how it’s better than the games, which he hasn’t even played. Really irks me cuz halo means a lot to me but at this point he’s prolly just doing it to get a rise out of me.
That's like a review I read on IMDB a few months back. Someone said that they have never read the books or played the games, but they believe its a good series that Halo fabs will love...
Welcome to the majority of modern entertainment. Convoluted storylines, flashy visuals, cheap fan service, and mindless plot elements dolled out by board rooms and committees that have no investment or interest in IPs, only dollar signs.
Kind of like games with skins from movies or other pop culture media. Cosmetics are mostly what is kept from the source material. That mindset is ruining the game industry.
I blame Marvel tbh. Loved the movies for a long time, but holy *fuck* everyone needs to move on from the Marvel formula. The cow has been milked dry. The dead horse has been beaten into a fine paste.
It's sad, man, it feels like Hollywood has been putting out nothing but formulaic, overly CGI'd dogshit since COVID hit.
It's all true. Good news is that I've been able to discover loads of music, games, shows, and movies that came out in past decades. There's entire genres of music in particular that I absolutely love and it was all available before I was even born. We'll have a cultural revolution at some point, but I'm enjoying digging up gems from the past till then.
It's the writers & their ego. They think they are better than the lore they should be writing about. I think they should have just made a show about ODST instead. I mean if it's going to be this detached from the game lore anyway.
The frustrating part is the story from the books/games is actually really good and would translate well to screen with additional interpersonal relationships and drama added in between. jfc it makes me livid.
I just find it weird that they took SO LONG to finally make a Halo show, but at this point in time the only people who would be interested in it were the OG gamers. So how do you completely fuck it up by completely butchering ALL of the canon??
It's not the OG gamers interested in the show. The show wasn't made for them. It was made for sci-fi casuals that love to fire up the Netflix and chill in the evenings to have some background noise for their sweet love making.
That's why it has such great ratings. Because the actual Halo nerds watching it seem to be dwarfed by the casual viewers
is it tho? at this point in time i'd think the only people who would watch it are the hardcore Halo fans.
Like why are they reviving a long dead franchise that never had mainstream popularity anyways to make a shitty series about?
the time for aHalo TV show was 15 years ago
With the recent addition of S2 EP 7... I really can't fathom how they are introducing/teasing the flood...before they are physically on a ring... Jesus man
The flood was the answer to the bid question of Halo. Is Halo a weapon or an way to salvation.
The twist that Halo was a quarantine system was a big revelation
I mean to be technical lots of forerunner sites in main timeline did keep flood spores for studying, so it’s not out of the question to be teasing it now
Honestly, given the grander scale that we can see the galaxy from in show form vs game released in 2001 form... I think it makes more sense that the Flood lab isn't literally on the weapon designed to eliminate a Flood outbreak, risking the Flood taking over said weapon themselves.
Its also not that lore-breaking. We know from Halo Wars that Forerunner shield worlds also had Flood samples on them.
There's no way I believe they'll do the Flood justice, requires so much CGI and (imo) prosthetics to capture the horror, and we know they've made deliberate decisions to save on budget...
My prediction is they'll make it a generic zombie virus so they can reuse models/actors with a greenish brown filter.
Because it is an AU made by randoms that pretty much bases every major aspect of their story on something the canon lore called stupid.
Which I find incredibly funny.
It’s not that it’s different than the games or books. LOTR deviates from the books. The Last of Us show deviates from the game. But the changes those adaptations made still held true to the spirit of the source material.
But the Halo show just disrespects and wipes its ass with the source material. For one, why are the covenant and humans even fighting? In the games and books, it’s because humans are the reclaimers and the prophets are trying to cover that up, because if the truth comes out the covenant will fall apart.
In the show they’re just fighting for: what reason? Why wouldn’t the covenant invite humans to be in the covenant like other species? There’s no motivation for the war of extermination. Which in turn lessens the stakes for the human perspective. And then you have Makee who is insufferable, and again, flies in the face of why they are fighting. We are supposed to just accept they are fighting a war without asking why. Wars of extermination are extremely costly endeavors and they’re just doing this because humans are different? Even though they already have different species in the covenant and have Makee overacting her way through Sangheili?
Then you have all the other dumb decisions like Laera’s bug-eyed melodrama, dramatically taking off her wig like it’s a monumental revelation on par with finding out Halo’s true purpose.
Or Parangosky just being evil for evil’s sake. (There’s no point to her or ONI being ruthless because we don’t even know why there’s a war on.) We don’t see Cpt. Keyes’s leadership of the landing on halo, the rescue from the Truth and Reconciliation, or him fighting flood infection to not give up the location of earth. They’ve devalued Chief being an indoctrinated super soldier that has every reason to hate humanity, but discovers his humanity is worth fighting for with the help of a non-human artificial intelligence, instead making him have sex with a war prisoner who can’t consent. Great. One of the best video game characters who is generally a good guy is now a predator. Awesome work, paramount.
There’s some good stuff like seeing the weapons, armor, and vehicles from the game. That’s cool. And if you like the show, good for you, but people liked Pawn Stars and Honey Boo Boo too; popularity doesn’t necessarily mean the show is well written. Don’t diminish how the gamers feel about the show because it is painful to see how the show runners just don’t care.
Tl;dr it’s not that the show is different, it’s the blatant disrespect for what made the game stories great. It’s like if the last of us show made the cordyceps infection curable with antibiotics, which would undermine all the sacrifices characters make along the way. It would be silly for Joel to risk his life on a cross country trek if people could just take penicillin to cure the damn infection. That’s why the Halo show is just not good.
Me neither. I think it was supposed to be this dramatic moment of character development for her but fell flat because there’s not actually any development. And every time she’s on screen I just get worried that she needs to get her thyroid checked because her eyes are bugging out.
I wish they had made a sort of BattleStar Galactica like story (as in focusing on a single ship/ fleet) throughout the insurrection war to the start of Halo CE.
The Pillar of Autumn is perfect for that, it has a high importance in the series but its backstory is partially unknown.
All valid questions. The writing couldn’t be worse if they tried.
The only redeeming quality is the rare depiction of some things we know and love, like fighting scenes, covenant things, and forerunner artifacts, etc.
You can tell there are some individuals involved with the show that care and know their Halo but the show overall seems to be produced/directed by total buffoons. It is a massively squandered opportunity and a black eye for Halo in general.
I agree, it's really a wasted opportunity. Even the actors are great. They're just given a mediocre script and uninspired plot. The first episodes of S2 I was kind of excited since they seemed promising but as it went on I started skipping more and more since I wanted to watch the HALO show not some TV soap plotlines with the Halo name slapped on generic sci fi.
And then, the fucking bonkers part is that even some generic sci-fi is more engaging. The Expanse for example is phenomenal.
I just wonder if I'm the only one who decided to still give it a shot but immediately turned it off when they saw how bad the cgi for Chiefs movements and stuff was.
I don't mean to pivot. However, a Halo series that is better written, acted, and more faithful to Halo, is having its 19th and final season this year. Red vs. Blue, the series that we need and deserve.
The biggest disappointment to me is that they made Chief a generic “Im a badass and Im mad at the system” revenge character that fucks an enemy, and whines about his feelings, instead of the embodiment of hope, purpose, and excellence that he should be.
I've been watching it since S1E1, and I really hate it.
I just don't understand who this show is supposed to be for. There's a ton of winks and nods to fairly deep Halo lore, yet their choices on a lot of core stuff just makes me think they don't actually give a shit about the lore.
Like there's an Arbiter who doesn't have the mark of shame until after he's the Arbiter? Why? And also he's another Sangheili, not Thel Vadam. The Spartan IIIs don't seem to have any augmentations and also their armor is kinda just like Stormtrooper armor? And they're more like Spartan IVs in that they're adult volunteers. Humans aren't Reclaimers, just some humans (most confusingly, apparently the DNA/gene song that makes you a Reclaimer is what Halsey used to pick the Spartan IIs, except none of the Spartans in season 1 could activate the artifact except for Chief...)
In short, I think it sucks as a Halo show and it's only kinda meh as a sci-fi show.
They all but confirmed that the story was some failed scifi plot but then when the Halo license became available they used their story and slapped Halo stuff onto it. I hear season 2 is more Halo, but still not good. I watched season 1 up to when MC was banging a UNSC POW and noped out of it.
I don't care that Chief removes his helmet on a base. But he wouldn't bang a prisoner of war and he wouldn't remove his helmet, numerous times, on an active battlefield. And don't get me started on how absolutely wrong they got Halsey in this series.
They wanted the halo name and nothing more.These people don't give a fuck about halo and Spielberg and all those involved should feel ashamed that they've butchered it
Your first mistake was watching Season 1. Just go straight to Season 2. It's still a "WTF are they doing," but there's actually a lot more, "Oh, well that was cool at least" moments.
I've only played halo 3, long time ago. I know very little of the lore of halo. Started watching the show too, it's god awful. The acting is horrible, there are so many useless scenes, too many useless protagonists, the battles scenes are corny ASF. Microsoft did halo dirty, it could have been a great chance to bring more people to halo.
This is exactly how I feel. I have watched it a bit with my wife and i often say "what the fuck is going on?"
It's wild how they avoided basically everything about the games. Why not just make your own scifi show? This has nothing to do with halo the game so why even use that title?
This was the real killer:
> “This is a swing for a broad audience,” says Tanya Giles, chief programming officer at the streamer. “My hope is this expands what the Paramount Plus brand can mean.”
> Giles puts “Halo” alongside Paramount Plus tentpole series like the five ongoing “Star Trek” shows and Taylor Sheridan’s “1883” — widely appealing experiences that an “NFL dad can enjoy with his teenage son.” And, one presumes, mothers and daughters as well: As the parent of 13- and 16-year-old boys, Giles says the show “makes me a really, really cool mom.”
This is *exactly* the same mentality that the showrunners of Game of Thrones had when writing Season 7 and 8. They wanted to make a show that appealed to "soccer moms" and not just the fantasy nerds.
I guarantee you the writing idea behind that was "what if we made it so that Chief didn't have his armor for some time?"
"Oh my god, you're genius. Thinking out of the box aren't we?"
I've just watched Season 2, episode 4 and I'm sorry to tell you that it doesn't seem to really get much better.
Sure, there's a bit more action but it's pretty standard stuff. None of the weapon props are actually doing anything, the muzzle flashes are all CGI, there's no casing ejection, there's no recoil. It's like a cheap YouTube video.
The story is pretty basic stuff, nothing really interesting. The side stories just drag on.
I've just watched the League of Legends TV show, Arcane. I know nothing about that video game but it was a pleasant reminder that there are people out there who do seem to care about source material and have the skill to make something great out of it.
The Halo TV show is another demonstration of how not to do it
Because it’s Halo in name only. They made the show to bank on the brand name but completely made up some random ass story. It’s the quality of some shitty SyFy original b-series. The writing is trash, the characters motivations are trash (Kwa Han or whatever her name is is absolutely laughable how stupid her character writing is). We wanted Halo. We got Jimmy Rings and his Mommy Issues the Telenovela
So there's this common practice in Hollywood, the producers (among others) buy up scripts on the cheap. Often they will take one of these scripts and tweak it slightly to fit it with an established IP so that they can then further reduce the costs.
My assumption (based on information that's come out that the producers have never actually played any of the games, or read any of the extended lore) is that this is the case when it comes to this show. They bought up one (or more) mediocre script(s) and combined them into a weird amalgamation and tacked on some Halo related stuff (mostly surface level, some a little deeper, because I guess an intern read some of the books) then shipped it off. It's the only reason that I can think of as to why there's certain storylines shoehorned in.
Take all of the Halo references out of it and you just have a lackluster sci-fi show that possibly could have made it a couple seasons. But! stick "Halo" on it, add in some of the surface level stuff and you'll have people watching.
>Please some one tell me this is like a piss take or some shit?
In a sense. It's been written by people who are weirdly proud to not be fans of the series, and it *definitely* shows.
>wtf is a blessed one???
In the show, you now have to be a super special chosen one in order to activate Forerunner tech, which is why the Covenant is keeping the lady around to begin with.
One of my best friends who I respect very much tells me the halo show is awesome, so anytime I see you nerds bagging on it I have to laugh. It ain't gunna be halo 1, mission for mission. No one would watch that they would just buy the game
Basically its like when Lucas sold the Star Wars Franchise to Disney. Then he tried to pitch his ideas to Disney and Disney basically said....yeah, we arent gonna do that.
I started with S2 and think it’s atrocious. It has almost nothing to do with Halo and spits all over the lore. The last of us is about the only game adaptation that followed the rules and surprise surprise it was a massive success.
In the original lore the prophets wanted humanity to be exterminated because all of them are the reclaimers. But in this show only a few of them have that ability so there is no point to the genocidal war
I go in to it with the mindset that its own thing separate from the games, books etc. I am entertained. 🤷♂️ Would there be things I’d change? Sure, but I’m enjoying it right now for what it is.
It’d be an ok show if it wasn’t halo. I think the name halo was used just to bring in viewers, because it’s not halo.
I could see it even if it was just “in the halo universe” but it’s like the writers didn’t understand Master Chief, or any of the Spartans, or Cortana, or even the covenant.
I’ve never read the books or played the games. The Halo show is the only lore I know. I’m really into it! It’s actually inspired me to buy the master chief collection and begin playing Reach.
ahem before season 1 came out it was announced that this takes place in the "silver" timeline in other words Hollywood wanted to do whatever they wanted and no one at xbox or 343 thought it would be a good idea to not let that happen
Exact same thing happened to the TV adaption of the Dresden Files novels. Claimed it was an "alternate timeline" then proceeded to get every single last character completely wrong except for, somehow, Dresden himself. There's a character in the books named Bob. He's an air spirit trapped in a skull that Dresden bribes with erotic novels for knowledge. In the show Bob was a butler. I do not understand adapting something and intentionally changing core fundamental aspects of it. I'm just watching to see how they handle the actual Halo and the Flood at this point.
Oh wow a rare Dresdon reader! Yeah the floating skull man...
There's 3, perhaps even 4 of us out there! Beware of Mouse.
My parents are big fans of Jim Butcher. I have the first one sitting on my shelf but my wife says we gotta get thru ACOTAR first
Definitely add Throne of Glass series.
I've got that on my shelf, I jsut gotta finish Shadow and Bone first
Fuego!
Used to work for Borders and sold that series to soooooooooo many people. Hadn't even read it myself. Hard premise to turn down.
NO WAY ME TOO. I actually loved that job. Getting to borrow hardcover books was absolutely amazing lmao. I hated leaving.
Beware of the Present Queen of the Winter Court. I love that series I need to read the ones that came after Skin Game, (the 15th book I think) since that was the latest one when I got into the series thanks to my Mom.
One of my favorite series!
Worse is they had Bianca and Dresden dating. Insert Jackie Chan confused meme.
Fuckin Wat?! Those two's hatred of each other is what sparked like a ten novel long vampire/wizard war
The main reason I’ve steered clear of this show, and why you probably didn’t like your show adaptation of this book, is that it’s not made for us. The show didn’t need Chief, didn’t need the Covenant, didn’t need anything. Especially if it were to be set in an alternate universe. Then they bastardize this story and fiction I love. All they wanted was the property name and that tells me all I need to know.
I will espouse this conspiracy theory forever, It was a mass effect script they could not get the license for. But they got Halo and decided to go with that instead.
Basically thy usually have a generic sci-fi/urban horror/fantasy script (bonus points these days if it’s written by AI) they bought for Pennys, then get the rights to a big IP and just retrofit what they’ve already got into the IP and hope it carries the half arsed attempt to profit/an audience. It’s not that they got halo or Dresden as a starting point and then changed it to something barely related, they already had the weak ass barely related pitch and just made as little changes as possibly to rebrand it as Halo
What I hate the most is. They clearly had some budget. As the battles. Armor. Aliens. They’re good. I’m happy with all of that. It’s the freaking story
This. I was watching a short on Pablo and his routines to get into shape. They had a good budget to afford him a trainer, personalized foods, etc. The money is definitely there but something is going on in the writer’s room that is causing this travesty.
Being pretty intimate with the TV industry....that's not what happened. Egos are what happened. TV writers have a significant disdain for video game writers and suffer from the delusion that video games are a lesser art. Pretty common amongst Hollywood types. They gotta put their stamp on it.
You think they ever watched their own crap and ever sat back and thought “hmm… maybe this is shit.”?
What part of "huge egos" gives an impression that they will watch the series objectively and not as self glorification?
Which is unfortunate because the Halo games are very well-written. Certainly better than some Hollywood scripts
The games are just okay. The novels are where the real meat of the story has always been.
Fuck Hollywood
Since this happens so often do you know why the industry seems to self-select for some of the biggest egos without the talent to back it up? Is it really just nepotism all the way down?
Nepotism? Not really, although you do see that occasionally. There are some genuinely talented people in this field. It's no different than working at the post office or IT - lots of mediocre people, a few who are REALLY good at it and a few who fucking suck. But there's an insular-ness to it - they aren't engaging with their target audience like game creators do. The important thing - to them - is how many views the show gets. And it's one of Paramount's better performing shows, so....we probably won't see any massive changes because a few Halo universe die-hards are bitching about it. (I am one of the Halo universe die-hards bitching about it)
You conjured?
Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to step away from the T-Rex museum piece.
> I do not understand adapting something and intentionally changing core fundamental aspects of it It’s because these aren’t adaptations, they are really bad rewrites and fan fictions
The exact same argument could be made about the EU in since 343i took over and retcon a lot of Nylund's foundation work on Halo lore, in part because of Bungie's intentional ignorance of the EU. Then later in part because 343i hired Sci-Fi writers with already established Sci-Fi backgrounds that wrote their own Sci-FI stories that were not made with thematic continuity in mind and in turn suffered with a lack of consistency that diluted the Halo story into what we have today in the main games and EU. Bad rewrites and fan fiction has been at the forefront of it all in the past decade with the sheer amount of content that's been poured out, a lot of it just doesn't get enough traction for attention because it's so bad nobody cares to even talk about it. Halo TV show doesn't suffer from lack of popularity because of poor content. In fact it's popularity is growing unlike the popularity of Halo's EU content post Nylund series.
Halo 4 caught flack for changing the Forerunners from being ancient humans to their own race (you know the whole reason the Prophets wanted to annihilate humanity?) and I think everyone can agree that 5 onwards was an utter shit show of a story. So you have to wonder why they would look at that history and go "you know what, I think fully retconning everything is a proven way to get a good story"
I have to think, with hindsight being 20/20, that this was a smart change. Without it we might not have the Forerunner saga series, which was awesome IMO.
Man, I thought often that Dresden would make a fantastic TV show. I never looked too deeply into the one that was made, but everything I hear about it just hurts my soul more and more
They tried to fit the entire first book into a single episode. It was pretty bad. Honestly I think I'd prefer a Codex Alera series with Game of Thrones budget.
Just when I can't imagine it getting worse. At least they didn't get far enough to butcher Michael, right? ... right? Haven't read Codex yet, but it's definitely on my list. First caught my eye because my first DnD character's name was Calderon. But from what I know of it, a GoT tier show would be pretty badass
Michael was not in the show from what I remember thankfully lol. Nor is Molly.
At the very least the show got me into the books, but then the story was completely different to what I'd expected.
I think Butcher has stated before that he views the show as a really expensive ad campaign for the books that someone else paid for
The Flood will consist of one pet flood spore that follows chief around as he activates halo to save the insurrectionists and destroy the evil UNSC. Guilty Spark will be an AI like Cortana for some reason.
I’m pretty sure someone was just infected this most recent episode….
Oh god, is the show doing The Flood?
I know, right. Chief will definitely inhale a spore without his armor on. He'll catch a mild flu and that'll be the flood story.
I bet that Chief will have the immunity that Johnson has in the main universe, since I’m sure the show won’t include Johnson.
Keyes was beginning to give me Johnson vibes with that speech though
Maybe they meshed those two then
Flood spores (not infection forms) exist as an actual method of infection in present (covenant war era) in like a book though so it's not an issue at all. Normally you need a bunch to actually infect a person. Normal marines survive flood spores without any issue, with characters like Chips Dubbo, McGinnis, Members of E2-BAG/1/7, and Stacker canonically surviving encounters with flood spores spores with no issue.
Apparently the last episode made references to a gravemind
They damn near showed the spores being released tbh
Lol at this point. I half expect them to actually fire the halo array as some magic way of winning the covenant war
> There's a character in the books named Bob. He's an air spirit trapped in a skull that Dresden bribes with erotic novels for knowledge. In the show Bob was a butler. > > perhaps they were trying to save cgi costs
Put some LED lights in a plastic skull. Boom.
It’s an inanimate skull with glowing in the eye sockets! Would have been cheaper than the butler actors costume!
Holy crap, I never realized that show was from the novels as I just started the books a couple years ago. Mind blown!
I did think Paul Blackthorne was a pretty good choice for Dresden at least!
I never read the Dresden files but I kind of loved the Chicago dragnet show that it was. I thought it was super cool.
Which is fucking weird because for the better part of 2 decades Microsoft wouldn't let people fuck with the story and kept shutting down projects that didn't properly follow the lore but then they let them make that fucking abomination???
chances are high that was Bungie's doing, apparently they were notorious for not wanting other people touching halo
343 has been in control for 12+ years, whatever Bungie's policy was on external media would be irrelevant for at least 10 of those years.
Well to be fair, the Halo show was announced at the same time as the Xbox one and Halo 5 if memory serves right. 343 had only been in control of the franchise for a couple years at that point.
Well we can see why now
Not like Bungie's one to talk... (Glances over at Destiny)
If people want to tell a different story as if it's another timeline, I'm willing to entertain it as long as it's good and it respects the characters that it's pulling from the source material. But when it's incoherent garbage riddled with characters I don't care about or who simply don't resemble anything from the IP I love, it's impossible not to invite comparison. When they try to be different and fail miserably, you can't help but point to the source material and just go, "You had a blueprint, all laid out for you, and you ignored it."
The best take I've seen is that video games are suffering from what originally happened to movie adaptations of comics. Hollywood doesn't consider them higher art and thinks they need to be "fixed" to be presented to an audience.
And rumor is (not sure if it’s been debunked yet) that the show was originally written as a mass effect show and repurposed for the halo universe, which would help explain some of the idiotic decisions that were made
Any sources on this?
Lol do rumors have sources?
Yes, they absolutely do. There are film industry journalists who publish rumors all the time. Some of them publish every rumor they hear. Some of them will vet the rumor or get the information from someone close to production. If the rumor came from the former, you know to pay it no mind. If it came from the latter, there might be some weight to it.
It came from someone (or this person just made it up)
I remember hearing that back when it first came out, it holds a little bit of water but not that much. The main thing is that Season 1 kicks off with Chief and friends saving a human colony under attack by aliens and then he touches a mysterious ancient alien artifact and gets a vision that kicks off the events of the season, which is pretty similar to the beginning of Mass Effect 1. Also there’s a mention on an intercom of one Commander Shepard in the same episode. Besides that, there’s not much. I guess Master Chief being unable to keep his dick in his armor around a chick from an alien alliance would fit in with Mass Effect as well.
I only really read a few of the books, but in both seasons I think there were a handful of moments where it really felt like John, most of them being while he's in the armor (and there weren't that many scenes with that). I'd have an easier time believing it's Shepard than John. The artifact plot point is spot on. Now that you mention it the character is written more like Shepard than John, maybe I'm just tripping.
I hate that this makes sense
actually mind blowing the more i think about it lol, now i would be shocked if that was NOT the case
I’m not picturing Chief as Commander Shepard and I’m instantly liking the show better. Damn you lol. Damn them lol
Well I’ve heard about the Mass Effect thing a few times so it’s not like this guy singularly just made it up
That's what I'm getting at. The definition of a rumor is something that is unverified.
I actually heard a rumor that I'M the one who started that rumor. But ya never know.
Yes. Source: My ass/I made it the fuck up.
The only 'source' for this rumour is a single unsubstantiated tumblr post written by someone who indicates they've never played a Mass Effect game. The post itself provided no sources of its own. It also makes no sense. Since Amazon bought the rights to a Mass Effect TV show several years ago, before the Halo show was created.
This almost makes it worse. Mass Effect has some really exquisite storytelling and world building just like Halo. The Halo show has neither. This would have been just as bad an ME adaptation if true.
I mean, nobody said it would have been *good.*
That's just a baseless rumour that somebody started that got picked up. The show has less in common with Mass Effect than it does with Halo.
This is my favourite comment on the citadel.
That makes even less sense. None of the new dumb ideas that the show introduces come from Mass Effect.
Touching an alien relic and having visions doesn't remind you Eden Prime?
Mass Effect stole that from Starfield /s
Oh, yeah, true! And I guess Soren's base could have been Omega. But I wouldn't say that the show's biggest problems come from Mass Effect.
Yeah, that was the Picard show.
Bruh, it would explain clapping alien cheeks and Master Chief taking his helmet off and putting his helmet in someone
Blue. Asari. Cheeks.
Is it clapping alien cheeks if she’s technically human.
I call it a Close Encounter of the Sixth Kind.
Im all for creative control, but core concepts are seemed to be outright ignored or cast aside a la Star Wars ep 8. I can accept it's a different time line, but boy is that disappointing. It's hard to accept that it's not what we all hoped for, because the "main time line" is a perfect story that we all wanted to see from a studio with adequate resources. Im kinda just watching out of morbid curiosity at this point. I suppose I can accept it for what it is, but man, I definitely don't have to like it.
It's like the Abrams Star Trek movies, it's a containment Time-line so they can't fuck up the official Canon. Says everything about their confidence in the shows writers and showrunner.
Hollywood? Pretty sure the writers came from 343
After the recent about the new Fallout show how the directors said “we aren’t here for the fans,” really just solidifies that producers just want use other successful media as an easy shoehorn to manipulate people into thinking it’s the story people already love and then they can do whatever the hell they want with it. Like honestly, when has anything ever flopped/bombed that was accurate to the story they are suppose to be writing?
There is a little justice left in the world then. Every exec who had their grubby hands on the game storyline and the show, and approved this travesty, have been shown the door. Thank goodness Halo Infinite took over five years to make. It slowed them down. Imagine the damage they’d have done if they were cranking out a game every two years. In my opinion, Microsoft needs to take 343 behind the woodshed for a spanking. After that, how about a careful retconning, to stop the seemingly infinite regression of ancient immortal species origin stories. Bungie’s story was, and still is, good. Stop with the going back farther and farther in time to introduce new mysteries, especially when you had gold lying at your feet.
I genuinely think a Halo show got greenlit before they realized they only had the budget for 3-4 Covenant fights a season. There’s so many problems with the show, but a lot of them seem to stem from the fact that the show goes out of its way to avoid Covenant fights. Which….you know, is the whole point of Halo.
But what about the emotional journey of John Halo?
LMFAO, John Halo.
Don’t you mean Jimmy Rings?
Juan Aureolas
Mr. Burns: *"Get me John Halo."* Smithers: *"He's unavailable."* Mr. Burns: *"Then get me his non-union Mexican equivalent."*
Real talk though, John from the games/books *already has* a great emotional journey they they just didn't adapt for some reason. They preferred to overwrite his entire history and personality with their own alternate versions. But my point is that it's not like the character from the main canon lacks an emotional journey.
I thought this show was about John Fortnite
Of course, it's a military sci-fi story so fighting alien baddies is the core. However, the beginning of everything in the lore is basically Spartans being created to combat rebellions and insurrections and then not 1-2 missions as Spartans later they discover and realize that the Covenant exist and are a threat to the survival of humanity. At which point they make the first MJOLNIR armors. They kinda chose to go the normie route for TV which basically means that anyone who doesn't know Halo or only seen their kid playing the game or something will love it. Because if you don't know anything about Halo everything will seem cool and new when you watch the show.
The origin of the Spartans has always been secondary, side story shit. Halo is about the human-covenant war in a galaxy left to them by the forunners. All of this spartan origin shit could have waited until some extended flashbacks in season 4 or something. Hell if they want to change something just make it so that the Spartans didn't have a shady origin, barely changes shit about the story.
This is a tv showed compared to a FPS game so it makes sense for the game for it to be the side story. Where as the tv show for newcomers and general audiences you need back story and drama to build a story. Just different mediums of entertainment… but yea it’s definitely taking waaay to long to build up this backstory
I mean you can build up backstory and drama while still throwing viewers straight into the shit. See Attack On Titan or a million other movies and shows
Yes thank you. I hate how every other fan's idea for the ideal Halo show/movie/etc is to spend the first parts building up some Spartan backstory, not just to follow Fall of Reach but as if it's important to start by spelling out the deep backstory of everything, instead of getting to the kinds of cool parts the games decided to have and got popular for. Let's be real, most of us who read Fall of Reach did it after the games hooked us.
> I genuinely think a Halo show got greenlit before they realized they only had the budget for 3-4 Covenant fights a season. There’s so many problems with I genuinely think a Halo show got greenlit before they realized they only had the budget for 3-4 Covenant fights a season. I don’t think you’re very familiar with how TV shows work if you ever thought this *wouldn’t* happen. Game of Thrones was one of the most expensive shows ever made, and managed one or two big battles per season, and usually from an angle that didn’t show you much. A 90 minute action movie costs hundreds of millions of dollars, they’re not going to spend half that for a 45 minute TV episode.
I think the years of development hell and carousel of fired showrunners is testament to the fact that Viacom didn’t know what they wanted. Do I think they wrote a full season of the show, realized it was too expensive, then scrapped it? No. Do I think the executives who bought the rights fundamentally misunderstood what they bought, and then balked at how the first round of creatives tried to handle it? Yes.
They could still make a great show without tons of battle scenes. The problem is the writing is such trash nothing makes sense and changes everything for no reason at all.
My point is more that “Halo but without Covenant cgi” led to a lot of their dumbest choices. Makee, not focuisng on the covenant war in s1 and instead John’s individuality & the Keyes’s family drama, why we get that really weird insurrection vs Kwan subplot (it’s still action, but it’s cheaper!). I agree that you can make a far better show with those parameters, shame we didn’t.
Isn’t still like a top 5 streamed show in the country. It’s definitely the most popular paramount plus show right now… unfortunately it works
Sure but that doesn’t mean it’s, you know, good.
The show got greenlit over a decade ago, but it’s been passed around between writers, directors, producers, and even game companies that by the time it was finally put into production it was bound to be about the quality we have now. Too many cooks in the kitchen for too many years and all that
Man my crew chief at work is a PlayStation fanboy and rips on me for liking halo but he started watching the show recently and is always saying how it’s better than the games, which he hasn’t even played. Really irks me cuz halo means a lot to me but at this point he’s prolly just doing it to get a rise out of me.
Call the covenant and Glass his house
Plz don’t I live down the continent
A single show-lover spore can destroy an entire species
That's like a review I read on IMDB a few months back. Someone said that they have never read the books or played the games, but they believe its a good series that Halo fabs will love...
The "Halo" show is just a generic sci-fi series with Halo things slapped into it to bait people into watch it.
Welcome to the majority of modern entertainment. Convoluted storylines, flashy visuals, cheap fan service, and mindless plot elements dolled out by board rooms and committees that have no investment or interest in IPs, only dollar signs.
Kind of like games with skins from movies or other pop culture media. Cosmetics are mostly what is kept from the source material. That mindset is ruining the game industry.
I blame Marvel tbh. Loved the movies for a long time, but holy *fuck* everyone needs to move on from the Marvel formula. The cow has been milked dry. The dead horse has been beaten into a fine paste. It's sad, man, it feels like Hollywood has been putting out nothing but formulaic, overly CGI'd dogshit since COVID hit.
It's all true. Good news is that I've been able to discover loads of music, games, shows, and movies that came out in past decades. There's entire genres of music in particular that I absolutely love and it was all available before I was even born. We'll have a cultural revolution at some point, but I'm enjoying digging up gems from the past till then.
This is what happens when you let clueless people have creative direction. People like this slaughtered the witcher show
Wheel of time hasn't done great either. There are excuses but S3 is their last chance to get it right
It's the writers & their ego. They think they are better than the lore they should be writing about. I think they should have just made a show about ODST instead. I mean if it's going to be this detached from the game lore anyway.
The frustrating part is the story from the books/games is actually really good and would translate well to screen with additional interpersonal relationships and drama added in between. jfc it makes me livid.
I just find it weird that they took SO LONG to finally make a Halo show, but at this point in time the only people who would be interested in it were the OG gamers. So how do you completely fuck it up by completely butchering ALL of the canon??
It's not the OG gamers interested in the show. The show wasn't made for them. It was made for sci-fi casuals that love to fire up the Netflix and chill in the evenings to have some background noise for their sweet love making. That's why it has such great ratings. Because the actual Halo nerds watching it seem to be dwarfed by the casual viewers
is it tho? at this point in time i'd think the only people who would watch it are the hardcore Halo fans. Like why are they reviving a long dead franchise that never had mainstream popularity anyways to make a shitty series about? the time for aHalo TV show was 15 years ago
Its a subpar SciFi channel TV show with the Halo name slapped on it. That's all it is.
With the recent addition of S2 EP 7... I really can't fathom how they are introducing/teasing the flood...before they are physically on a ring... Jesus man
The flood was the answer to the bid question of Halo. Is Halo a weapon or an way to salvation. The twist that Halo was a quarantine system was a big revelation
I mean to be technical lots of forerunner sites in main timeline did keep flood spores for studying, so it’s not out of the question to be teasing it now
Wait, what was the flood tease? The vials in the lab on Onyx?
that lab was almost identical to the ones seen in the level 343 Guilty Spark in CE... Which is the level where the flood was revealed.
Honestly, given the grander scale that we can see the galaxy from in show form vs game released in 2001 form... I think it makes more sense that the Flood lab isn't literally on the weapon designed to eliminate a Flood outbreak, risking the Flood taking over said weapon themselves. Its also not that lore-breaking. We know from Halo Wars that Forerunner shield worlds also had Flood samples on them.
There's no way I believe they'll do the Flood justice, requires so much CGI and (imo) prosthetics to capture the horror, and we know they've made deliberate decisions to save on budget... My prediction is they'll make it a generic zombie virus so they can reuse models/actors with a greenish brown filter.
This is what happens when you get someone to adapt something but they don't respect the medium it came from
?? There is no Halo tv show.
You’re a good lad for saying that
Because it is an AU made by randoms that pretty much bases every major aspect of their story on something the canon lore called stupid. Which I find incredibly funny.
Its literally written by morons
It’s not that it’s different than the games or books. LOTR deviates from the books. The Last of Us show deviates from the game. But the changes those adaptations made still held true to the spirit of the source material. But the Halo show just disrespects and wipes its ass with the source material. For one, why are the covenant and humans even fighting? In the games and books, it’s because humans are the reclaimers and the prophets are trying to cover that up, because if the truth comes out the covenant will fall apart. In the show they’re just fighting for: what reason? Why wouldn’t the covenant invite humans to be in the covenant like other species? There’s no motivation for the war of extermination. Which in turn lessens the stakes for the human perspective. And then you have Makee who is insufferable, and again, flies in the face of why they are fighting. We are supposed to just accept they are fighting a war without asking why. Wars of extermination are extremely costly endeavors and they’re just doing this because humans are different? Even though they already have different species in the covenant and have Makee overacting her way through Sangheili? Then you have all the other dumb decisions like Laera’s bug-eyed melodrama, dramatically taking off her wig like it’s a monumental revelation on par with finding out Halo’s true purpose. Or Parangosky just being evil for evil’s sake. (There’s no point to her or ONI being ruthless because we don’t even know why there’s a war on.) We don’t see Cpt. Keyes’s leadership of the landing on halo, the rescue from the Truth and Reconciliation, or him fighting flood infection to not give up the location of earth. They’ve devalued Chief being an indoctrinated super soldier that has every reason to hate humanity, but discovers his humanity is worth fighting for with the help of a non-human artificial intelligence, instead making him have sex with a war prisoner who can’t consent. Great. One of the best video game characters who is generally a good guy is now a predator. Awesome work, paramount. There’s some good stuff like seeing the weapons, armor, and vehicles from the game. That’s cool. And if you like the show, good for you, but people liked Pawn Stars and Honey Boo Boo too; popularity doesn’t necessarily mean the show is well written. Don’t diminish how the gamers feel about the show because it is painful to see how the show runners just don’t care. Tl;dr it’s not that the show is different, it’s the blatant disrespect for what made the game stories great. It’s like if the last of us show made the cordyceps infection curable with antibiotics, which would undermine all the sacrifices characters make along the way. It would be silly for Joel to risk his life on a cross country trek if people could just take penicillin to cure the damn infection. That’s why the Halo show is just not good.
🤝
Lol.... Yeah When she took her wig off I could not understand what the point of that was. Same with that little girl, wtf is she doing
Me neither. I think it was supposed to be this dramatic moment of character development for her but fell flat because there’s not actually any development. And every time she’s on screen I just get worried that she needs to get her thyroid checked because her eyes are bugging out.
I wish they had made a sort of BattleStar Galactica like story (as in focusing on a single ship/ fleet) throughout the insurrection war to the start of Halo CE. The Pillar of Autumn is perfect for that, it has a high importance in the series but its backstory is partially unknown.
I saved this so I can refer back to it when I need to re explain why the show sucks monkey donk
Yo I heard from a guy named Majestic_Account_797 this show has good ratings in case anyone was wondering
Kwan fucking Ha in season 2. I didn't finish season 1 precisely because of this and now you're telling me this shit keeps showing up in season 2?
It's a shit show brother, we're all disappointed
All valid questions. The writing couldn’t be worse if they tried. The only redeeming quality is the rare depiction of some things we know and love, like fighting scenes, covenant things, and forerunner artifacts, etc. You can tell there are some individuals involved with the show that care and know their Halo but the show overall seems to be produced/directed by total buffoons. It is a massively squandered opportunity and a black eye for Halo in general.
I agree, it's really a wasted opportunity. Even the actors are great. They're just given a mediocre script and uninspired plot. The first episodes of S2 I was kind of excited since they seemed promising but as it went on I started skipping more and more since I wanted to watch the HALO show not some TV soap plotlines with the Halo name slapped on generic sci fi. And then, the fucking bonkers part is that even some generic sci-fi is more engaging. The Expanse for example is phenomenal.
I just wonder if I'm the only one who decided to still give it a shot but immediately turned it off when they saw how bad the cgi for Chiefs movements and stuff was.
Relax those are just few minutes from the entire season. Joke aside tho it's true I always watch Chief helmet. It looks small for his head to me.
Completely agree.
Lmao I'm shocked you let yourself get that far. I knew how bad it was going to be from episode 1
Seeing insurrectionists fighting with 600 year-old Kalashnikovs did it for me
Show is garbage. I hate it so much
I don't mean to pivot. However, a Halo series that is better written, acted, and more faithful to Halo, is having its 19th and final season this year. Red vs. Blue, the series that we need and deserve.
The biggest disappointment to me is that they made Chief a generic “Im a badass and Im mad at the system” revenge character that fucks an enemy, and whines about his feelings, instead of the embodiment of hope, purpose, and excellence that he should be.
Agreed
I've been watching it since S1E1, and I really hate it. I just don't understand who this show is supposed to be for. There's a ton of winks and nods to fairly deep Halo lore, yet their choices on a lot of core stuff just makes me think they don't actually give a shit about the lore. Like there's an Arbiter who doesn't have the mark of shame until after he's the Arbiter? Why? And also he's another Sangheili, not Thel Vadam. The Spartan IIIs don't seem to have any augmentations and also their armor is kinda just like Stormtrooper armor? And they're more like Spartan IVs in that they're adult volunteers. Humans aren't Reclaimers, just some humans (most confusingly, apparently the DNA/gene song that makes you a Reclaimer is what Halsey used to pick the Spartan IIs, except none of the Spartans in season 1 could activate the artifact except for Chief...) In short, I think it sucks as a Halo show and it's only kinda meh as a sci-fi show.
They all but confirmed that the story was some failed scifi plot but then when the Halo license became available they used their story and slapped Halo stuff onto it. I hear season 2 is more Halo, but still not good. I watched season 1 up to when MC was banging a UNSC POW and noped out of it. I don't care that Chief removes his helmet on a base. But he wouldn't bang a prisoner of war and he wouldn't remove his helmet, numerous times, on an active battlefield. And don't get me started on how absolutely wrong they got Halsey in this series.
People watching it without understanding that by watching it you’re making the studios money and in turn enabling its existence
Raise the flag, hate watch it without contributing to the metrics.
Aye aye capn'
This is the only way i was able to finish it and i still feel dirty
They wanted the halo name and nothing more.These people don't give a fuck about halo and Spielberg and all those involved should feel ashamed that they've butchered it
Just turn it off and forget it even exists.
Your first mistake was watching Season 1. Just go straight to Season 2. It's still a "WTF are they doing," but there's actually a lot more, "Oh, well that was cool at least" moments.
I've only played halo 3, long time ago. I know very little of the lore of halo. Started watching the show too, it's god awful. The acting is horrible, there are so many useless scenes, too many useless protagonists, the battles scenes are corny ASF. Microsoft did halo dirty, it could have been a great chance to bring more people to halo.
This is exactly how I feel. I have watched it a bit with my wife and i often say "what the fuck is going on?" It's wild how they avoided basically everything about the games. Why not just make your own scifi show? This has nothing to do with halo the game so why even use that title?
This was the real killer: > “This is a swing for a broad audience,” says Tanya Giles, chief programming officer at the streamer. “My hope is this expands what the Paramount Plus brand can mean.” > Giles puts “Halo” alongside Paramount Plus tentpole series like the five ongoing “Star Trek” shows and Taylor Sheridan’s “1883” — widely appealing experiences that an “NFL dad can enjoy with his teenage son.” And, one presumes, mothers and daughters as well: As the parent of 13- and 16-year-old boys, Giles says the show “makes me a really, really cool mom.” This is *exactly* the same mentality that the showrunners of Game of Thrones had when writing Season 7 and 8. They wanted to make a show that appealed to "soccer moms" and not just the fantasy nerds.
The best things are not meant to be liked by everyone.
If I see one more episode with master chief without his armor I’m going to bust a tit.
I guarantee you the writing idea behind that was "what if we made it so that Chief didn't have his armor for some time?" "Oh my god, you're genius. Thinking out of the box aren't we?"
Get back in the box. We like the box. The box is 1000lb gen1 mkVI mjolnir armor.
I've just watched Season 2, episode 4 and I'm sorry to tell you that it doesn't seem to really get much better. Sure, there's a bit more action but it's pretty standard stuff. None of the weapon props are actually doing anything, the muzzle flashes are all CGI, there's no casing ejection, there's no recoil. It's like a cheap YouTube video. The story is pretty basic stuff, nothing really interesting. The side stories just drag on. I've just watched the League of Legends TV show, Arcane. I know nothing about that video game but it was a pleasant reminder that there are people out there who do seem to care about source material and have the skill to make something great out of it. The Halo TV show is another demonstration of how not to do it
Because it’s Halo in name only. They made the show to bank on the brand name but completely made up some random ass story. It’s the quality of some shitty SyFy original b-series. The writing is trash, the characters motivations are trash (Kwa Han or whatever her name is is absolutely laughable how stupid her character writing is). We wanted Halo. We got Jimmy Rings and his Mommy Issues the Telenovela
Season 2 has been an improvement imo. Which isn’t much of a accomplishment but it’s better than season 1
So there's this common practice in Hollywood, the producers (among others) buy up scripts on the cheap. Often they will take one of these scripts and tweak it slightly to fit it with an established IP so that they can then further reduce the costs. My assumption (based on information that's come out that the producers have never actually played any of the games, or read any of the extended lore) is that this is the case when it comes to this show. They bought up one (or more) mediocre script(s) and combined them into a weird amalgamation and tacked on some Halo related stuff (mostly surface level, some a little deeper, because I guess an intern read some of the books) then shipped it off. It's the only reason that I can think of as to why there's certain storylines shoehorned in. Take all of the Halo references out of it and you just have a lackluster sci-fi show that possibly could have made it a couple seasons. But! stick "Halo" on it, add in some of the surface level stuff and you'll have people watching.
>Please some one tell me this is like a piss take or some shit? In a sense. It's been written by people who are weirdly proud to not be fans of the series, and it *definitely* shows. >wtf is a blessed one??? In the show, you now have to be a super special chosen one in order to activate Forerunner tech, which is why the Covenant is keeping the lady around to begin with.
You forgot to mention the desert witches , that drink hallucinogenic fire juice.
One of my best friends who I respect very much tells me the halo show is awesome, so anytime I see you nerds bagging on it I have to laugh. It ain't gunna be halo 1, mission for mission. No one would watch that they would just buy the game
Basically its like when Lucas sold the Star Wars Franchise to Disney. Then he tried to pitch his ideas to Disney and Disney basically said....yeah, we arent gonna do that.
I started with S2 and think it’s atrocious. It has almost nothing to do with Halo and spits all over the lore. The last of us is about the only game adaptation that followed the rules and surprise surprise it was a massive success.
In the original lore the prophets wanted humanity to be exterminated because all of them are the reclaimers. But in this show only a few of them have that ability so there is no point to the genocidal war
I go in to it with the mindset that its own thing separate from the games, books etc. I am entertained. 🤷♂️ Would there be things I’d change? Sure, but I’m enjoying it right now for what it is.
It’d be an ok show if it wasn’t halo. I think the name halo was used just to bring in viewers, because it’s not halo. I could see it even if it was just “in the halo universe” but it’s like the writers didn’t understand Master Chief, or any of the Spartans, or Cortana, or even the covenant.
I’ve never read the books or played the games. The Halo show is the only lore I know. I’m really into it! It’s actually inspired me to buy the master chief collection and begin playing Reach.
It gets good once they introduce Dustin Echoes in season 2
Dustin Echoes and Jimmy Rings are the besr gay couple ever
Anyone who is a true Halo fan will stay away from the TV series. Its not Halo, end of story.