Halo – Episode 1 impressions

Didn’t plan to watch this considering the recent track record of Halo (Yes, even Halo Infinite), and in general games to movie adaptations… But, as a fan of Halo at least one time long ago, I had to give it a go. I have always liked the universe, the struggle and the military aspect of it – so if enough of that stuff gets transferred over it should be an okay watch, right? Well, what can I say, it does keep some details of the games, like names and the general universe setting, overall, though, I found the whole thing pretty abysmal with it being Halo on a visual level only.

The episode starts on some random colony I forgot the name of. Here we get to see people living outside the UNSC and as such are considered rebels. They talk about the struggle, and these mythical creatures called SPARTANS coming to murder them. It’s a pretty clear setup, these people are going to experience these augmented warriors in a very near future, and hey ho, here comes the Covenant. A slaughter ensues, but the SPARTANS come to save them, or well, one of them. It would have been more of an effective scene if more than one survived, but at least we get to see one or two rebels react to the SPARTANS in surprise with them being on their side before getting melted by alien plasma fire. Two things here, the Elites are way too brutish, they remind me more of, well, Brutes. They are big as houses and not the tall slender warriors as depicted in the games. I saw one of them ram a moving jeep, like a crazed bull. Yeah, no. A funny thing I noticed was that these rebels were using old AK-variants. I mean, I understand they won’t be having top of the line weapons, but old AK-variants? Come on, really, Microsoft? With all your money, you couldn’t have come up with something here. Am I to believe, hundreds of years in the future there are still dudes using ancient AK-rifles, belonging in a museum… for combat.

I’m not going to go through the whole episode step by step, but from here out, things only get worse. For some reason, the Covenant are working with a human girl. Chief is apparently a comedian now with jokes as “nuts, bolts… microchips” when asked what he eats – totally going against his character. Chief removing his helmet triggers some kind of alarm that ONI monitors. The UNSC is apparently evil now with Chief ditching his loyalty and going rogue – in the first damn episode. Also, there is a magical MacGuffin that does something never seen before in Halo. Not to mention a few woke aspects of the show too, like Captain Keyes and his daughter suddenly being black. What the hell is going here?

Yeah, this is terrible, and has nothing to do with Halo except being Halo on a surface level. This all takes place before the fall of Reach, so technically they have an infinite amount of stories to pick and choose from, but for some weird reason they felt it would be better to make their own atrocious thing that seemingly have nothing to do with the Ring so far.

Avoid like the plague. I won’t be watching episode 2. It would have to make a magical course correction to get me to watch more of this tripe, and we all know that won’t happen. This thing is already set in stone, and you can tell it’s a story they really want to tell, ditching the military aspect for a more “human story” – which to me is not Halo.

/Thanks