So much of me is wrong, out of place. You might be... *SP*. (Fan Creations)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Tuesday, March 26, 2024, 18:03 (31 days ago) @ ManKitten

My dad, who never played Halo but who watched me and my brother playing it growing up, liked the 1st season. And so did I. Sure, I explained that there were some significant differences between the story I knew and the one the tv show was telling, but the gist of it was intact. The Covenant were looking to destroy humanity while searching for the Halos. Humanity was caught up in a civil war on one side and the Covenant on the other. Etc. And the Spartan IIs were super soldiers conscripted to help solve that civil war who happened to be in the right place at the right time to save humanity from the Covenant.

It wasn't the same story, but even as it pulled events forward or rearranged things, or added completely new characters who had no counterparts in the original telling, I at least felt they were heading towards the same end goal as the version of the Halo stories I knew.

I liken it to the very recent live action version of Avatar: The Last Airbender on Netflix. It too rearranged events, swapped around which characters were where/when/why. I didn't agree with every decision, I thought some were worse than the original telling, but I at least understood why each decision was made. Some were from not being able to do some things as well in live action. Some were to put more weight on characters sooner so they'd have room to really drive things home in future seasons. Some things were done just because they were cooler! But, the cartoon and live action series did hit the same basic themes. The story was intact and seemed to be told by people who enjoyed that original story.

I can't say the same for this Season 2 of Halo TV. We went to Visegrád but wrote out Noble Team. We had Reach fall, but completely changed the why. We had a world named Onyx and a UNSC training facility called Camp Currahee, but they were no longer on a Shield Word, and the Spartan IIIs they were training were no longer angry, determined war orphans ready to do whatever it took to extract some revenge. We had an Arbiter who was a fool tricked and lied to by a human, instead of being an honest warrior who was betrayed and found out the real truth about his sides lies and atrocities. We had Captain Keyes and even the Pillar of Autumn completely written out of the story.

It's not even that I didn't agree with some of the decisions but could see they were going towards the same end goal like the Avatar tv show. It's that nearly ever decision these Halo writers made was contrary to the original story... and deliberately so. At every point along the way, this felt like a version of Halo told by people who did not enjoy the original story. And that makes me both sad and angry.

This season wasn't a best effort to tell the Halo story. It was a best effort to make up something else while using changes to the Halo story to shock and frustrate their long time fans.