Jeremy Ng

as a lifelong fan of Halo (having played every single game released), i can confidently say that this is *not* Halo as much as Earth is *not* Jupiter. the only similarity is the naming and usage of main and some supporting characters, such as the Master Chief, Dr Halsey, Admiral Parangosky, Cortana, and a few more. the only good point of the entire series seems to be the usage of the Halo intellectual property from 343 Industries, and sharing of the beloved first-person shooter science-fiction universe with non-Halo gamers. while i understand that the genre of science fiction necessitates using creative thinking, maybe even adopting science fiction, this series departs so far from the source material, the books, the games, even the comics, that this can only be called Halo in name and not substance on to the cons. the main characters - covered at length in other reviews. suffice to say, Master Chief is not like in the games: he is supposed to be silent, strong, tortured internally, yet always the consummate cyborg. Pablo, while putting on a.. performance, is not worthy of that title. he does not portray the character well. how can the Master Chief ever take off his helmet? the entire point of the character is to allow everyone to see themself in the role, not put a face to the man. other main characters are used in the wrong way - Miranda Keyes is supposed to be a naval officer, not leading a science division. the other Spartans of Silver Team do not exist in canon the storyline - it just comes across as fan fiction. given that it’s meant to be based on the games and lore, the least the scriptwriters could do is read the source material. this would have given them an idea of who the characters are, even if they created new ones. by changing the story behind the Fall of Reach, the encounter on Madrigal, even the timeline - it’s just pure fan fiction written by someone who spun their own version and expects others to enjoy it when it’s clearly not in line. even in S1E1, how can the Master Chief talk so much? how can Silver Team doubt anyone else but the Master Chief? the premise - why deviate from the source material? why not adapt the books and games into the screenplay instead, just like other book series (ie Harry Potter) have done? this would solve the problem of deviation, while still attracting attention from non-gamers. as an example, you can retell the events of the book Fall of Reach by combining the events from Blue Team’s perspective together with the in-game events from Halo: Reach. this would literally give all Halo fans tons of material to fanboy over, while drawing in new watchers and even encourage them to explore the games the CGI - again, much has been said. just follow the visual cues from the games, why not? the gamers don’t see an issue, the non-gamers won’t know, and the CGI engineers(?) will have an easier time designing the Covenant overall, a very bad, terrible, and disappointing adaptation. i can only hope that Netflix re-engineers season 3 (if any) to finally be true to the source material, and wipe seasons 1 and 2 from everyone’s mind. it’s bad enough that the newer games are not great, or different; it’s worse when you market this as *the* show from the science-fiction genre that defined so many people’s view of the genre, but it isn’t do not recommend to watch seasons 1 and 2 if you are a Halo fan (as most people have said). watch out for a future if any