I’ve really enjoyed the story for the Halo games. Not just the front-and-center plot, but also the extra content in the games and even the books that have been written to expand that story. Some of them have been surprisingly good, although others…not so much. So, when it was announced that Paramount was producing a Halo TV show, after years of false starts for any kind of live-action Halo production, I was curious how they would adapt it.
I’ve only seen the first episode of the series, which is airing every Thursday on the Paramount Plus streaming service. And it’s… different. It looks very much like Halo, and actually sometimes it looks a lot more like a video game than a TV show. It borrows the first-person view from the game, numerous weapons, and even some of the sound effects. But somehow, it still doesn’t feel like Halo. It’s hard to really qualify what I mean by that, but there are a few elements, like the ‘bad guy’ aliens working with a human, and the way some of the established characters react, that just don’t jibe with the established lore.
On top of that, the story doesn’t really match up with what has been seen in the games and the books around it. With basically all the work already done for the writers, it’s hard to see why they would choose to create something just different enough to not fit in with the events in the games, while still borrowing enough that it’s clear they’re more than familiar with that material.
All that said, I’m interested enough that I’ll keep watching. The biggest advantage to having this separate, independent interpretation is that I have no idea what is coming next.