Halo TV series early review: the first 2 episodes were a fascinating mess

At E3 2013 Steven Spielberg announced he and Microsoft are planning to adapt Halo on a TV show. Nine games, nine years, network switch and lots of memes At moment laterand Halo finally premiered. The Paramount Plus show debuted two episodes at SXSW on Monday before making its wider online debut on March 24.

From the start, the talent involved resisted calling it an exact adaptation, preferring instead to think of it as a built world. framework of the game Halo: an interstellar war between religious aliens called Indenture and the United Nations Space Command for Humans. In the midst of it all are Spartan soldier Master Chief (Pablo Schreiber) and rebel Kwan Ha (Yerin Ha), both of whom find themselves at odds with the war raging around them.

With only two episodes shown to critics, it’s hard to tell Halo hopefully at this point, especially when it comes to franchises going through her own self-assessment. But there’s certainly plenty of thread to pull in the show’s first two seasons. For example:

Is it Halo or is it Halo?

Image: Paramount Plus

Halo like an adaptation of a series of video games as handled by someone who played a few levels of it once in college. Or maybe he just watched his friend play, he just can’t remember. Definitely yes a guy in recognizable green armor, and he’s definitely fighting some aliens, but other than that it’s a bit fuzzy. There are several types of relic, it may or may not be related to the ring world, can also be a weapon. It’s really hard to say.

This is a program for those who are at least familiar with the games. There is little or no actual explanation of who or what is going on, so you should know better Master Chief and the Covenant. But it’s also not a show to let people know too much, because otherwise you might be confused why none of these seem right for you. story of the game has been released in the last 20 years. It’s a very tight window.

In other words, if your concept of Halo is a guy in green armor making a monster in space; Congratulations, you finally got it Halo only. –Austen Goslin

More aliens, please

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Like my colleagues suggested, it was quite difficult to make these first two episodes of Halo and find a reason to keep going. Even for those who, like me, are willing to sign up for 40 minutes to an hour of anything as long as there’s some pretty spatial stuff involved. Unfortunately, the space has disappeared Halo? Sub par value. Not very legendary. A real overheating plasma pistol, if you keep up with my pace.

What’s particularly interesting, however, is that they dedicated themselves to making Halo’s armor and aliens look like exact game as possible in environments where none of the imagination is shown in Bungie’s games. It’s all steel and concrete corridors, along with some crowded space stations that look like they’ve been huddled together from The Expanseof leftovers. Combined with this, Master Chief’s perfectly recreated armor looks incredibly comical, and Prophet Mercy looks like a weird cartoon, like Annoying Orange herself just appeared on another regular TV show. The elites have also been slightly redesigned to appear bulkier, more like strapped guardians and less like skinny warriors. It’s all possible in any sci-fi show. –Joshua Rivera

CBS of all may be a feature, not a bug

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The intro for Halo made one thing clear to fans: the way Paramount Plus puts the material will be different from Game of Thrones, The Witcherand Another giant series is determining the cult era of television. Halo like NCIS, Criminal psychologyand other CBS content dotted across the platform – which should leave those wanting to watch the franchise on a large scale with a $300 million-a-season treat.

But consider I’m heating up with choices. In an era that live action movies videos can do smarter stunts rather than epic Hollywood blockbusters and where digestive programs after a hard day’s work are running out, decided to make Halo a reality CBS show could benefit it in the long run. The story is a bit fuzzy at first, but one can imagine Halo clicking a SWAT mold, or even become really deranged in mode Paramount Plus’ Evil. Neither show is held back by the budgets or traditional one-hour dramas that have defined network television.

If anything, it helped make the character aspects of those stories more relatable, and the genre-twisting elements, to emerge. this is not Halo program that I expected, but it could be Halo shows I’m still watching, in the hopes that I’ll stick to the characters and plot dramas during the week of it all. There’s also room for it to be trash and still entertaining; display as Babylon 5, Jack of All Trades, Xenaand Parcel-Next generation Walking programs thrive in category rentals, lower rents. Maybe Halo can too? There’s enough character-driven babble and the right production design to think it’s possible. –Matt Patches

Master Chief bears the burden of bad handwriting

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Master Chief has always been a fragile character; his It’s all by design. He was taciturn, sly, and he went into business. There might be a joke in there, but mostly he has our point of view, so he doesn’t risk much personality. In the pilot of Halo he does what he has never done before: defy orders. But without the larger Halo lore, it’s hard to know who we assume he is up to this point. A docile soldier for sure, but everything about him (and his emotional journey) is told to us, rather than through his actions. Almost as fast as him introduced to the audiencehe’s shaken by his vision of a normal life, and then revolts against a system he (maybe?) has subjugated all his life.

Nowhere in there can we understand who he is enough to care about, and sci-fi story he’s leading feel as generic as he does. The world lacks any urgency or color to counter the Master Chief’s wooden manners. When he takes off his helmet, he’s not a mutated child soldier, he’s just a guy. HaloMaster Chief is all stiff dialogue and tortured stares, but the pain behind it fades away in translation. –Zosha Millman

Episode 2 shows promise

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I think Halo would be best served as a string because the program is not adjusted correctly to game. I don’t want a shot to recount what I’ve seen or read. I want to love Halo in a new way, and live in parts that I haven’t had the chance to before. So while the first episode was a bit lackluster, the second episode actually picked up a bit. I think Master Chief is actually one of the least interesting characters for Halo to deal with; like a long time Halo player and book readerI know a lot of about Master Chief. The newer characters are the most interesting to me – I want to know more about the politics in Madrigal and the chaos in The Rubble.

The world of The Rubble, a rebellious society built from asteroids, is more vivid and darker than anything in the test. I appreciate seeing a part of the Halo world I’ve never had before and Bokeem Woodbine (Ghostbusters: Afterlife) as Soren-066, a Spartan veteran who ran away from training camp as a child. The other thing is that episode 2, if I remember correctly, doesn’t have any scenes through Spartan vision. There was a lot of perspective on first-person video games in the first episode, and it was a confusing decision. –Nicole Carpenter

They picked the wrong Halo theme song

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Anyone who’s been anywhere near Halo knows how Sound background music. That soundtrack and its muted “ohs” angel choir instantly takes you right back to the loading screen. While iconic number played at least once in the first two episodes of Halo, it’s about fighting an uphill battle rather than just playing it through the credits to really get us in the mood. –ZM