Editing Setting:Halo (section)

==The TV Show==
Eight years after being announced, Paramount+ has released their own spin on the Halo series in TV form, likely in part out of envy for Disney having their [[Star Wars:The Mandalorian|own streaming show set in a beloved space setting]]. Unlike the various books and comics that preceded it, which are supposed to exist in the same universe as the video games everyone knows, the show is in its own canon, officially called the "Silver Timeline" in reference to Master Chief leading a SPARTAN team called "Silver Team". Was drawing concern and derision even before release (as that's how these things tend to go nowadays), and has only continued its status as [[Skub|grade-A skub]] from there. Among the things folks have taken issue with are:
* The writers admitting that they didn't look at any of the games, leading to the sense that they didn't respect/know the source material enough. One such example is that they turned Oban, a UNSC research facility, into a garbage planet with child slaves in order to drive home their “UNSC is eeeeeeevil” plot line. To be fair, the UNSC got up to some dirty stuff in the main timeline, but this harsher portrayal even extends to the fan-favorite Jacob Keyes, who is much more of an authoritarian jerk than he is in canon. Basically, there's the sense that the show is overdoing it as far as highlighting the UNSC's flaws.
* The very same showrunners quit after Season 1 wrapped, long before the show even aired. That's never a good sign.
* CGI and special effects of questionable quality; clearly unfinished props/effects have made it into the final cut without any editors noticing.
* That it's not a straight adaptation of the video games or novels; fans would’ve made allowances for changes here and there, and the Halo universe is big enough that one can tell original stories while still being true to the lore. Some have taken to it as its own thing, but others feel its a generic sci-fi story with the Halo brand slapped on top (worth noting that this view isn't just held by salty neckbeards either; some critics have also found the show's tone and writing to be somewhat derivative, taking more cues from The Expanse than from Halo. Even Halo Co-Creator Marcus Lehto complained the show was nothing like what he made.). For starters, they've already spoiled the big twist about the Halo rings being weapons (which the Covenant shouldn't know, much less the UNSC) long before Reach has even fallen. Seems that the directors have chosen to discard the drama of the world and the war, in favor of manufactured interpersonal drama and political intrigue. Because that's what people got into Halo for.
* Master Chief shows his face in the very first episode, which for most Halo neckbeards is pure [[Heresy]]; then they somehow manage to top it by showing us [[wat|his naked ass.]] Hence, he has since earned the nickname Master Cheeks, which is particularly apt when the showrunners decided to give him a sex scene with Covenant Lady because reasons.
* Humans working for the Covenant, which completely undermines the Covenant’s motivations in starting the war with humanity; regardless of whatever justifications the show gives, the whole reason for the Covenant's ''genocide'' of humanity is to cover up the fact that forerunner tech marks humans as Forerunners, so having a human in their capital would make said cover up damn near impossible. The show's given justification is that only a few humans (of which the Covenant's Blessed One is one), can access and interact with Forerunner tech, so her status is more valuable. Needless to say, [[Rage|many Halo fans were still not impressed]]
* Giving Master Chief a young teenage girl sidekick with zero connection to the original lore; some feared that she is set up to replace Master Chief in his own show. A somewhat less cynical interpretation is that she's meant to be the Baby Yoda/Grogu to Master Chief's Mando. Instead, she's been given her own storyline involving the insurrection, which was just a footnote in Halo lore by the time of the covenant war. Fans aren't on board with her character as she lacks charisma and the insurrection plot is basically just a retread of The Expanse more than anything that feels like authentic Halo, and of the various plot threads its the one that has the least reason to be in the show and could have probably been removed without changing much.
* Related to the above, you may be wondering why Cortana isn’t initially with Master Chief. They decided to completely change her into a fully-grown clone of Halsey that Halsey kills to make Cortana rather than just a brain scanned AI, give her some tacked on existential angst, and rewrite AIs so that they control SPARTANs outright instead of being assistants. Chief and Cortana's relationship is also far from what it was in the games, with Chief being annoyed at Cortana rather than the two sharing a close bond; Chief even outright cuckholds her in front of her eyes with the covenant spy. I guess Master Cheeks prefers 3D to 2D. Season 1 ends with Chief apparently dead, with Cortana basically taking over his body. So it wasn't Kwan who ended up replacing John - the big twist is it was Cortana.
* Forerunner Keystones have an awful tendency of being incredibly convenient to whatever the plot demands at the time, whether its allowing a character to escape, revealing character backstories, or becoming the big macguffin revealing where to find the Halo rings. What's next, turning Cortana into a real girl?
* While the fight scenes so far have been alright...there haven't been that many of them. You can count the number of fights Master Chief has been in on one hand. The fights themselves also have a problem with consistency in terms of power balance; we first see the Elites as nigh-invulnerable to small arms fire and a minigun, but in the same scene when Master Chief shows up, that same minigun takes down Elites quite easily, no problem.
* Sgt. Johnson is a complete No-Show. Which is really strange, given that the show has already chosen to race-swap a number of characters while ignoring the most popular and well-loved black character in the whole series.

Not all of the fan buzz has been negative (it definitely hasn't done any worse for itself than the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy did in terms of backlash), and some things have gone over well enough:

*Pablo Schreiber's performance as Master Chief has been (mostly) well received. It helps that he is apparently playing his way through the franchise to learn his role.
*Spotty special effects aside, action scenes convey that the SPARTANs are one-man army badasses and also don't hold back on the blood and gore
*Jen Taylor is voicing Cortana again
*The new SPARTANs. It helps that two of them (Soren and Vannak) feel in some ways ''more'' like the game/book Master Chief than the Silver Timeline one does. 

The series has basically become ''[[Star Wars|The Rise of Skywalker]]'' of video game adaptations, [[Fail|which is one hell of a feat]]. Dumpster fire does not cut it out, it is more akin to the Firebombing of Tokyo in terms of how much the adaptation shat on the franchise. This is like, [[CS Goto|CS Goto's levels of horrid fan-fic]]; the Shyamalana-ding-dong of [[Cringe|cringy adaptations]] if you will. The most hardened of Halo fans would understandably get a brain aneurysm if they hear this within ear shot, but more casual or oldschool fans just found the adaptation to range from "So bad its good" to "So boring its meh". Either way, it no doubt helps Paramount+ that this show is its own canon, making it easier to ignore if you're not a fan, and giving them more freedom to <s>muck up the lore</s> do their own thing with the franchise.