The show’s many mysteries remain locked behind Abrams-esque mystery boxes, which feels like an obligation in the streaming era than a purposeful creative choice. None of its ongoing plot threads seem to think beyond the heartstrings. Nauseating CG aliens dull the show's action it’s a bad sign when the games’ live-action trailers from over a decade ago feel more visceral than the actual series. Halo doesn’t excel at all of those qualities. It’s a story trope that’s trendy in the ether but never wears out as long as the stories are exciting, fresh, and smart.
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It’s Logan and Leon the Professional in space. Though she is a political fugitive, Master Chief decides to protect her, taking her on a journey to discover the nature of an ancient relic that can reveal to Master Chief the dark truth of his origins. Early in Halo, Master Chief - an elite soldier classified as a “Spartan,” famously equipped with specialized armor - meets a teenage girl, Kwan (Yerin Ha), the daughter of an anti-UNSC rebel, after the Covenant massacres her village. What you do get is another entry in the “hardened warrior escorts young companion” narrative. Halo is an adaptation of the Xbox games that tells a new sequence of events, called the “Silver Timeline.” Proof of that is the fact Master Chief is no longer the only Spartan soldier around, but the leader of a small fireteam. It’s not a full-on conflict just yet it’s an invasion. The antagonistic aliens, called “The Covenant,” have only just surfaced. For Halo purists, this may be disappointing the show doesn’t open with Master Chief awakening to a firefight, as he did in the original game. Abrams-helmed Star Trek movies that adhere to the alternate “Kelvin Timeline”). Those behind it call it the “Silver Timeline” (evocative of the J.J. In stark contrast to the games, the show explores a totally new sequence of events.
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Halo is an adaptation of the Xbox games, a series of sci-fi first-person shooters that depict a battle between humanity’s military - the United Nations Space Command (UNSC) - and a race of aliens faithful to a religion centered around ring-shaped planets, called “Halos.” In short, Halo is quite good, though expectations will need to be recalibrated. But like a hands-on game demo, it’s not impossible to muse on the experience. Because of this, we at Inverse felt it’s a bit unfair to “review” the show based on a small sampling. The press were given just two out of 10 total episodes to preview. On March 24, Halo will begin streaming on Paramount+. I don’t know if Halo will succeed in the end, but I’m liking what I’ve seen so far.
The show represents a strange compromise of tailoring a story made specifically for a video game to a new medium while ensuring what actually makes it special remains on the surface. Twenty years later, the Halo TV series on Paramount+ is the very definition of a mountain out of a molehill. The integrity of the story took a backseat to function.
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When Halo was in development by studio Bungie for the original Xbox, the stressed-out programmers prioritized the technical side of things because they were designing for a console no studio knew how to make games for. Never mind that, in reality, he was a cut-corner in the game’s production. (It’s sadly never been that smart, as its existence as a video game necessitates sweet, gun-toting action.)Īll of this has added to the allure of who Master Chief was and what he represented. His story about a stolen childhood - what innocence costs in the face of conflict - could inspire readings that Halo is a stealthy, anti-war epic. Only tangential Halo books and comics revealed a fuller picture of Master Chief beneath his helmet. For years, players felt invincible as Chief because, in a way, they were him. Before The Mandalorian, Master Chief was the galaxy’s coolest masked badass. It’s the blank space that’s allowed gamers of the Halo series to fill in gaps themselves.
It’s not just the sleek shape of his bulky armor or the dryness in voice actor Steve Downes’ gruff voice. For a generic space soldier, Master Chief is the most interesting of them all.