Halo has been talked about on social media ever since the newest game in the franchise (Halo Infinite) was released on December 8th, 2021. There’s also a lot of buzz surrounding it thanks to the franchise’s TV adaptation coming out this year premiering in Paramount+, with a trailer coming out on Sunday during the AFC Championship game of the NFL between the Buffalo Bills and the Kansas City Chiefs.
But what is Halo?
Halo is a military science fiction media franchise owned and published by Xbox Game Studios, created by Bungie, and now managed and developed by 343 Industries. It tells the story of Master Chief Sierra-117’s (also known as “John”) experiences, a super-soldier part of a group code-named Spartans, along with his artificial intelligence (AI) named Cortana.
The main story of the franchise is told in video games, currently, there are six, which are divided in two: the original trilogy and the reclaimer saga. They’re in the genre of first-person shooter, as the players experience the action from Master Chief’s perspective.
All the games in the main series have been critically acclaimed and considered as the reason to buy the Original Xbox. This led to the creation of the term “Halo killer” to describe console games that aspire or are considered to be better than Halo. It currently sits as one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time.
It also has spin-off games, alternate reality projects, and an expanded universe in books, graphic novels, comic books, short movies, animated movies, feature films, and the upcoming TV show on Paramount+. Here, we’ll explain about the main games, and then about the live-action TV show.
The Original Trilogy
This trilogy centers on an interstellar war between humanity and an alliance of aliens known as The Covenant, which are led by their religious leaders called Prophets, who worship an ancient civilization known as the Forerunners, who perished while defeating the parasitic Flood.
The Halo Array is a group of immense, habitable, and ring-shaped superweapons that were created by the Forerunners to destroy the Flood, but that the Covenant mistakes for religious artifacts that, if activated, would transport them on a Great Journey to meet the Forerunners. These Halos are the inspiration for the name of the game.
The story follows Master Chief, accompanied by Cortana, to help and save humanity from the actions of the Covenant and the awakening of the Flood.
It is composed of Halo: Combat Evolved (2001), Halo 2 (2004), and Halo 3 (2007). You can currently play them in Halo: The Master Chief Collection, available for Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
The Reclaimer Saga
Originally called the Reclaimer Trilogy, starts with the aftermath of Halo 3, where Master Chief accidentally releases the Ur-Didact, a Forerunner commander that plans to have all humans imprisoned or destroyed, with only Master Chief and Cortana to stop him.
It’s composed of Halo 4 (2012), Halo 5: Guardians (2015), and Halo Infinite (2021). You can play Halo 4 and Halo 5 as part of Halo: The Master Chief Collection, but Halo Infinite is not part of this bundle. All of them are available for Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
The television series
In 2013, Xbox Entertainment Studios and 343 announced that a live-action television show of Halo would be produced, nevertheless, with the shutdown of Xbox Entertainment Studios, it was part of development hell.
In 2018 it was announced that the series would start filming late that year and that rumors started spreading about it airing during 2019. Problems continued when in 2019 Rupert Wyatt, the director, and executive producer, stepped down from the project, with Otto Bathurst taking the role.
The same year the cast would be announced: Pablo Schreiber as Master Chief, Natascha McElhone as Cortana and Dr. Catherine Halsey, Bokeem Woodbine as Soren-066, Shabana Azmi as Admiral Margaret Parangosky, and Yerin Ha as Kwan Ha. Along with a new release schedule: early 2021.
In 2020, the role of Cortana was given to Jen Taylor, who voiced the character in every major game in the Halo franchise.
With all of this, the show started filming in February 2021, with no official release date yet, but with an official trailer coming out this Sunday.
According to official sources, the show won’t be a direct adaptation of the first game, but more of an adaptation that “contains and embraces many key elements of the core canon (…), but with relevant contextual and narrative details that diverge in ways appropriate (and necessary) (…) [for] the TV medium”.
Lots of fans of the video games are excited and hope that the show is a true adaptation of the material they have loved for a little more than two decades. It also seems like it could attract a lot of new fans because it isn’t necessary to play the games to enjoy them.
