The Halo show isn’t the game, and that’s a good thing

It just took a Speilberg exit and a decade of development hell, but a show based on gloriole is finally here. I can’t believe I’m writing this: it’s really good. Surprisingly, although there’s nothing to worry about.

Perhaps this is a case of low expectations. Early trailers teased a bloated project that looked about as cheap as a YouTube fan film. In the last remarks made too diversity, the show’s creator appeared to be completely copying the source material. Sure, a first feedback has glowedboth off fans and criticismbut I, a die-hard fan of the games, still had my doubts. I fully imagined it gloriole would be the kind of show you half-watch with your friends while cracking jokes. And indeed, that’s how it started.

“Oh cool, Another Showset on Tatooine.”

“You can tell this isn’t based on the game because the plasma gun is actually useful.”

“Wow, those randos are even worse marksmen than Ari!” (Uh, no comment.)

However, the good-natured ripping stopped briefly when gloriole has quickly established itself as a show that doesn’t fiddle around.

Halo: Not the Game: The Show begins with a group of teenagers dropping space acid in the forest. A friend joked how brave it would be if the show chose this moment to introduce the Covenant – alien zealots who serve as the primary antagonist faction for the games – who would then likely do what the Covenant does best (every human kill in sight). ). No way, I thought. There are under no circumstance A show based on a popular property of best-selling video games would be so bold. It would meticulously curate every plot point so as not to alienate even a fraction of its audience.

nope The Covenant really does appear then. A child is torn to pieces. Another had his limbs ripped off. An extended fight scene later is even overly violent, featuring beheadings, stakes, charred skin from energy weapons. gloriole doesn’t hold back from flaunting his gut-wrenching brutality. For 20 years the gloriole games have shown you his universe and enemies through the first-person lens of a super soldier named Spartan, protected by near-impenetrable titanium armor where futuristic small arms fire from enemies practically ricochets off you. Watching the Alliance take action against ordinary people is pure terror.

Between the shots, a message comes through crystal clear: gloriole the show is expressly not gloriole the game.

We see a bustling metropolis on the planet Reach in the year 2552 that has not been reduced to a pane of glass by an interstellar armada. We get a glimpse of High Charity’s Covenant base, only to learn that it’s also home to what appears to be a human – in an ostensible leadership position, at that. In a UNSC command center, we see Miranda Keyes remark in a series of painfully clumsy remarks on how Dr. Catherine Halsey is her mother.

If you are not on the narration of the gloriole play, these statements mean nothing to you. However, if you are, you understand how the show differs from its source material.

What matters is how the United Nations Security Council, the primary human faction, gets involved gloriole games shown. In the games, the UNSC are the infallible heroes. You fight the good fight. They can do no wrong against the existential threat of plasma weapons and power swords. (Remember the first gloriole came out in 2001, at the height of modern American hooray jingo.) But in gloriole, the show, the UNSC is far from virtuous, venturing into offensive territory that’s not just a gray area. It’s terrible.

It’s a territory the Games will never…could never, really – address. But in TV format, where you’re not actively running missions side-by-side with these soldiers who are all struggling to survive, gloriole can take these risks. Yes, this leads to some genuinely groaning dialogue, stuff about how we can’t “protect” humanity if we “sacrifice ours” and blah blah blah, but it’s a welcome departure. (It is also consistent with depictions of the UNSC from second tier source material, the books and comics and the like that fill in gloriole Lore outside of the games.)

Less welcome than a deviation is Mr. John Halo himself, the Master Chief. Actor Pablo Schreiber is believable a Spartan super soldier, just don’t the certain Spartan Super Soldiers that we met through the games. To be fair, some of this is a script error. (At least when we meet him in the premiere, the Master Chief follows orders to the letter, even when it comes to murdering civilians without question.) Some of this, however, is Schreiber’s line delivery, perhaps at the orders of director and showrunner Otto Bathurst. (During a tense moment, he actively loses his calm and panics.)

In any case, this guy isn’t like the Chief we’ve met through six mainline video games. I applaud the show’s break with the tone and lore of the games elsewhere, but focusing on a Master Chief who is so different from our ingrained understanding of who Master Chief is feels misguided. Why should he even be the main character? Aside from the obvious interest gained by plastering “117” throughout marketing, why lead with such an established character when you’re not clinging to what made that character so established in the first place? Why, in an adaptation that goes where no gloriole has gone before, not with a spartan we’ve never met? By centering on Master Chief – every take on the character – the show implicitly invites comparisons to the games, and it’s a comparison doomed to disappoint fans. Of course, the Chief, which has been around for two decades, has the leg up as the definitive version.

If anything, that’s what worries me the most. in many ways gloriole finds it ready to break out of shape, but it’s still being held back by the same shape. For me the question after the premiere is not where the plot will go next. It’s about whether or not gloriole, the show, may be something other than what it is based on. An episode later, the answer is obviously still up in the air. But somewhere between the cleverly produced title sequence and the hammer drop of its credit crawl, I was eager to find out.