Halo has been cancelled by Paramount after simply two seasons. The difference of Microsoft’s flagship shooter by no means set the world on hearth, so I can’t say I’m shocked.
From the very first second, it appeared decided to throw away sacred items of canon because it desired to do its personal factor. Pulling not simply from the video games, however spin-off comics, books, together with its personal interpretation of lore that has continued for many years.
At first look, I liked the way it needed to place on a regular basis folks within the highlight as a substitute of focusing purely on an unstoppable supersoldier, however weak writing and inconsistent characterisation meant this by no means actually received off the bottom. Adjustments to Attain, The Flood, and Grasp Chief cemented its destiny way back.
However the second season confirmed gradual indicators of enchancment, to the purpose that followers who had watched it from the very starting had been tuning again in and appeared hopeful. However even when that new trajectory may have led someplace, except the present is picked up by one other community, we’ll by no means be capable to see it. I favored what it was doing with The Flood, and appreciated the way it needed to develop characters, flesh out areas, and make you care earlier than recreating enormous canon-shaking occasions like Attain in stay motion. Higher pacing, nice motion, and story beats I began to care about meant the second season had potential.
Whether or not it will ever attain that idealised greatness was one other matter completely, as a result of at each flip, despite apparent enhancements, the Halo TV present was each too devoted and too enamoured to be its personal factor. Nearly all of folks coming to the difference desperately needed to see the area marine energy fantasy translated to stay motion, but in addition have iconic relationships between characters like Grasp Chief and Cortana delivered to life in exhilarating new methods, not have our protagonist depicted as a cussed hardass with little to no coronary heart.
It sucks as a result of, on an aesthetic degree on the very least, Halo had the whole lot going for it. All of its costumes, spaceships, weapons, and units felt pulled straight from Ahead Unto Daybreak however with a bigger, extra formidable finances. Should you spent too lengthy staring on the background you’d discover a handful of inconsistencies, however within the thick of it, when Chief didn’t say a phrase, it felt like classic Halo.
After a long time caught in improvement hell and early teething issues, Paramount was onto one thing. Nevertheless it was evidently too costly and never well-liked sufficient to maintain alive, so it’s onerous in charge them for pulling a plug when, outdoors the present, Halo just isn’t the dominating franchise it was once. Iconic, however hardly blazing a path in 2024.
Rising up as a Halo child by way of and thru, an adaptation was all the time being teased with each gaming journal I picked up. Names like Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg discovered themselves connected to movies and TV exhibits as Microsoft did not get issues off the bottom. I gave up hope for a very long time, till an ill-fated tv division introduced in the course of the daybreak of the Xbox One promised that it will lastly change into a actuality. Then it didn’t, and eight lengthy years glided by earlier than an precise present arrived on Paramount.
All these years later, I’d nonetheless like to see what Peter Jackson or Steven Spielberg would have completed with Halo, or in the event that they had been merely simply massive names to assist get it off the bottom.
Nevertheless it was doomed from the beginning, due to each a lacklustre exhibiting from Halo Infinite and its press cycle saying all of the fallacious issues. Pablo Schreiber was a weak match for Chief, whereas interviews made it clear the person didn’t fairly perceive the character he was portraying nor the worth of maintaining his helmet securely mounted. He seems like a distinct individual, and when your complete franchise revolves round a single man, you’ll want to get that proper. Even when its new and returning characters had been nice – they usually typically had been – first impressions had been made and informal and hardcore followers alike had been by no means going to provide Halo the good thing about a doubt.
Perhaps that’s why The Final of Us and Fallout proved so profitable. They both had a powerful central story to inform already, or had been assured sufficient within the universe and its new characters that spinning a contemporary yarn wasn’t solely welcome, however made them a lot stronger. Halo is a reasonably customary science fiction story with some glorious lore and iconic parts, however making an attempt to recreate that simply isn’t fascinating, whereas followers are passionate sufficient concerning the canon that daring to vary it’s a recipe for catastrophe.
On the daybreak of its cancellation, Halo is each a large achievement and a failure that each one of us noticed coming. Both as a result of we recognise its evident flaws no matter its ambition, or merely wrote it off within the first place. If it was launched on the peak of Halo fever over a decade in the past, we’d be having a really completely different dialog proper now, however it didn’t, and except it finds some new dwelling away from Paramount, this imaginative and prescient of Grasp Chief will probably be misplaced without end.
