The show is meh. Which for a franchise with as much cultural impact as Halo is, in itself, damning. They have taken a franchise which has lasted for 20 years, 8 mainline games, 2 RTS titles, 2 mobile games, an arcade experience and countless books and comics, with a story which keeps fans intrigued and debating years after that story was first told, and turned it into a fairly flat tale of mystic artifacts, oppressive militaristic regimes, rebellions, and a sandy out of the way planet that seems to be strangely central to goings on in the galaxy…..stop me if this is all sounding familiar.
There have been some excellent recent examples of genre works being adapted to the small screen. Both Game of Thrones and Arcane stand out for their ability to draw in viewers outside of their core audiences. How will Halo fare? This is a review of the entire season. I’m not going to review every episode but I’m going to explore what went right and wrong with the first season as a whole. I’ll be discussing the choices the writers have made and at the end discussing whether there is any hope for Season 2.
The Silver Timeline. Let me just get this out of the way. Changes to the existing cannon are fine if done for the right reasons. If events need to be changed for dramatic tension or pacing, then this makes sense. Game characters aren’t always the most fully realised so additions or tweaks to their motivations or actions are fine if the payoff is dramatically satisfying. Unfortunately, the show seems to have made some decisions which have to be reconciled as the show goes on. For me these are bad choices to have made which I feel have painted the writers into the corner they find themselves in. Characters sometimes bear little resemblance to their in-game counterparts, which would be fine if the choices made the show more compelling or surprising. Sadly, the show feels bland and generic. Still, it’s not all bad. So, let’s start with what’s good about the show……
What’s good
Some of the FX shots are incredible. The Prophets are amazing. The mix of animatronics and CGI is very convincing. We just haven’t seen enough of them for reasons I’ll get on to in a minute.
Some of the combat is impressive. There are a few set pieces which really pop and the Covenant in combat are formidable. The violence is also surprisingly graphic given the young teen tone of the rest of the show.
Cortana, despite my initial criticism is well done but i give most of the credit for this to Jen Taylors acting rather than the animation and look they have given her.
Halsey is the right kind of crazed sociopath. I find her scenes very watchable perhaps because she is the most like her character from the games.
The scene where Makee is rescued by the Covenant is well done. Its dramatic and looks good and is generally well done.
Establishing shots across the show are well done, High Charity in particular looks incredible to me.
The physical sets are well done. The props and Spartan armour are on point and the Warthogs look exactly as they should. The show looks expensive (in places) and so far, it hasn’t been a reason to pull me out of the world.
What’s bad
Let’s start with the worst aspect of this show….
Chief as the chosen one. Quite literally missing the point of the entire Halo story. In the games many humans have the abilities which in the show make chief special. This is a minor point in the games but underpins lots of the story in a subtle way. By setting Chief apart as some sort of messiah, who was fated to be chosen by Halsey, become the ultimate warrior, and save humanity strips chief of one of the most iconic things about him. He wasn’t born special. He became extraordinary through augmentation and training. What makes him special isn’t his genes, or fate. It’s his ability to always continue the fight no matter the odds. The TV show seems to be building the entire story around John 117 being “special”
Makee / The Covenant Human. Why did we need to put a human face on the Covenant? Perhaps it was for budgetary reasons. The mix of animatronics and CGI on the Prophets looks expensive and for a show with this setting could have taken a significant part of the budget. By making the Covenant have a human face they keep the threat, or conflict front and centre without spending half the budget on CGI. I get it. It just does nothing for the story and is a whole lot less interesting for casual viewers. The villain of the piece is a short blonde with a killer finger.
The mad guy/story reveal. The reason we all still remember Halo CE, outside of the gameplay and compelling setting, is the story. A straight up and down shooter against an alien race, set in a futuristic setting, takes a massive left turn when the flood is encountered, and the true nature of the Halo ring is revealed. In these moments, the true scale of the universe is revealed (or at least hinted at). Imagine had we known about the flood and the nature of the ring at the beginning of the game? It’s a whole lot less interesting and this is where we find ourselves in the show. Why do we need to know about the ring at this stage at all? It would be enough to know that the Covenant are on a genocidal crusade against humanity. We don’t need this story element just yet as we work towards the fall of Reach.
The Rubble. This entire setting is where the show goes off the rails for me. Its uninteresting and generic and serves little purpose than giving Chief somewhere to go to that isn’t the UNSC. This is an awful example of world building. And why the fuck is there always a guy on a motorbike? Is that supposed to make it gritty? This setting demonstrates one of the core problems with the show – Generic characters, have generic encounters, in generic locations.
Soren. What is the point of this character other than to give Kwan a connection to the chief and some plot (and Spartan) armour against the army trying to kill her? This entire side story could have been cut completely and the show would be better for it.
Forced nudity. So unnecessary and completely misses the tone of Halo. Nothing wrong with sex and personal relationships. Afterall, they add to the emotional punch when some of our characters inevitably lose their lives (show red wedding) but intimacy isn’t to be found in the crack of this man’s arse.
Dialogue. There are very few conversations that aren’t about moving the plot forward. No one talks like a real person which leads me to feel little for any of these characters. As late-night gaming says, “everyone talks like they’re in a trailer”.
Madrigal. The full significance of this planet will be fleshed out in the fullness of time but right now what is the point of this planet and its people? If they needed to show a Civilian human side, why wasn’t it humans / civilians on Reach? When the fall happens, we will care. Now when they glass the planet what consequence is there for the audience. The main characters should all survive. So, we are left with the destruction of a generic future city being destroyed. It would have been far more impactful to see if the homes of characters we are familiar with are destroyed. Instead, all we are losing is a generic looking Futurescape and the UNSC headquarters.
Its rushed. Characters are thrown together when they should be kept apart, given time to breathe and develop on their own so that we can understand their motivations. When they finally come in to contact, we would understand what they both want and the resulting tension or momentum to the story feels earned. Game of Thrones did this expertly for 5 seasons with many more factions and characters (GOT clip here). Instead in Halo Kwan and the chief are thrown together in the opening minutes. The problem is we don’t know this person. Why should we care if she dies alongside the rest of her family or not? The show then waits a further 6 episodes before explaining why Kwans father was fighting the UNSC in the first place.
The problems were there from the beginning. In many ways the problems for the entire season are present in the opening episode.
Exposition heavy dialogue, Random characters we don’t care about, characters whose actions bear little resemblance to their in-game counterparts, inconsistent CGI and precious little of what makes Halo, Halo.
- Kwan and friends introduced and quickly killed. An entire group of people killed in quite a graphic way, but we know nothing about them so why should we care?
- Spartans, the UNSC, the Rebellion are all explained in an exposition dump. And then 5 minutes later everyone is killed. We know little about these characters, except save for Kwan and her father so why should we care?
- Then rather than build a story based on interpersonal relationships during a galactic conflict we introduce a Magic McGuffin which makes our hero act completely out of character as way to kick start the story.
The episode ends with two characters with nothing in common are thrust together by magic stone, front, and centre to the TV show. Normies are wondering what’s going on and Halo fans are wondering why a series with such a massive cast of characters needs an entirely new one for the chief to play off.
This feels like it was made by people who have little understanding of Halo or why we, the fans stick by the franchise through thick and thin. Compare the comments of the show runners before Halo was made to those made by Peter Jackson before making LOTR. They wanted to understand the world and not put their own stamp on it. They understood why the books worked and were able to distil that essence into a new medium that pleased the vast majority of fans. They didn’t, or couldn’t, include every aspect of the books and the films are better for it. They worked to understand the themes and characters and made them central to the story. In contrast the makers of the Halo TV show have taken the basic premise of Halo and set it in an alternate timeline. This makes sense if all they wanted to do was change the order of events from the games for pacing or dramatic effect. But to completely twist it to make something generic makes little sense to me. Other than to appeal to a “broader audience” or perhaps because they dislike the source material, or even because they just aren’t talented enough to make it work? Who can say? What baffles me more is that we have seen recent examples of fantastic genre titles being adapted. The core concept for Game of Thrones is about as geeky as it gets and Arcane is niche even for me. But both succeed in being adapted from their source material in a thoughtful, dramatic, and satisfying way which rewards the watcher for their patience with great writing, well-paced episodes, characters to love and hate and a visual quality rarely seen in small screen adaptations.
Will Halo improve for season 2? Does anyone care?
Twice the bits 
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