Hacker Cinema
Halo
2022 · TV series · 2 seasons
Created by Kyle Killen, Steven Kane
Science FictionFantasyActionAdventure
Depicting an epic 26th-century conflict between humanity and an alien threat known as the Covenant, the series weaves deeply drawn personal stories with action, adventure and a richly imagined vision of the future.
10 negative1 mixed5 neutralfrom 16 commenters
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No streaming data for this title.
Videos commenters linked
From YouTube links in the comments below. Most are clips and trailers; “Full” means the uploader says so.
17 comments on Hacker News
Halo Infinite was the moment I knew Xbox was gone. The core game engine was the best Halo has ever felt, but everything around it reeked of incompetent management.
Giving a player a reward for putting in effort is one of the fundamental principles of game design. If you remove all the rewards, what incentive do they have to play?
Their response to player backlash which was essentially “deny, defer, gaslight and ignore” killed the online community for it within a couple of months, and I think they dropped what little content support it had within two years as well, after initially marketing it as a long-term “live service game”.
Blatant incompetence, how Microsoft ever let itself get in this state I’ll never understand.
Also I can’t even remember the campaign story. Was there an angel or something? It was a cliffhanger about some new enemy, as if they’ll ever make another game?
I just remembered the monstrosity that is the Halo TV series as well now, ah god… it’s been a rough decade.
People make a similar defense of Paramount's Halo.
>An emotionless supersoldier mary sue? It would never work as a TV series, we need to explore the spartans' emotions!
And so we get some garbage that misses what was beloved by fans and features Master Chief with his helmet off, being sad on the subway. Feels like it's written by people totally unconcerned with the source material, just like Apple-Foundation.
Unlike Apple-foundation, glimpses of what a proper Halo adaptation could have been exist:
https://youtu.be/XRMUYpH7bQk https://youtu.be/SyOAdrxlPVs https://youtu.be/40jdpzrpIps https://youtu.be/P63er_GRH1o
I'd trade the whole apple-foundation series for two minutes of content by people who cared about the books.
A rendition of this idea can be seen in the Halo TV adaptation. I can’t remember which episode(a) or find a good YouTube link right now, but there’s a settlement in an asteroid belt where the people move around on cars attached to rails/tethers between the asteroids.
I haven't seen the TV show but does anybody actually think that the Halo games have a good storyline? The worst part of the games is the story- it's no wonder they changed it and I can't imagine them making it any worse.
There is a reason most adaptations are terrible, for hollywood and tv producers it mostly a name/brand, nothing more. They most often don't bother reading/playing it, let alone making sure they like and/or understand it.
And books are not even the sorry chaps here they're actually much better treated than video games, there are a ton of "prime for massive tv/movie success" video games brand that have been ruined by people who clearly didn't know what they were about.
We got Halo AND Last of US at roughly the same time, both being massive brand from either side of the Microsoft/Sony, one (LoU) was done by the original game director and got beloved by fans of the games and newcomers, the other could not even respect one thing about its licence and then got surprised fans of the game hated it (Halo).
Really nice.
I'd love to eventually have voice models that sounds like AI's from movies or games such as Sunshine, Dead space, Halo etc.
>has been one of maybe only a couple "great" stewards of the gaming industry for consumers
I'm not sure I'd give them much credit on this, since MS/Xbox hasn't achieved much at all in the gaming industry over recent years. Maybe there's not much egregious evil there a-la Activision's leadership scandals, but the track record is not great.
As a gaming industry consumer who's been playing Microsoft consoles and games my entire life, MS has recently:
- Ruined the Halo franchise
- Stymied the current console gen with the Series S' weak memory capabilities
- Acquired multiple beloved studios and released little to nothing over 5+ years, with their highest profile release being Starfield, the game Bethesda was already developing when MS bought them and made it a platform exclusive
- Edit: Forgot trying to turn the Xbox One into an always-online TV set-top box
Spinning off Xbox might be a good idea, if it's MS' senior leadership that keeps hamstringing their success. Because if the Activision acquisition proceeded like their previous studio acquisitions, we would see one or two Activision games release in the next decade, along with maybe a mediocre COD TV show.
That is truly terrible. Not just from a "think of the children" perspective, but also from a "this doesn't fit the lore or the tone of the source material in the slightest" perspective.
I get it. It's hard to adapt a silent protagonist. But did they have to overcompensate so badly and make him an obnoxious sounding pervert?
I was furious about what Paramount did to Halo when they recently made that into a TV series (partly also for including the sexual desires and activities of the main character that were not accurate or relevant). But you know what?... at least I wasn't a Zelda fan in 1989.
Sometimes tight control over IP is a good thing. That's what I remind myself every time I'm sad there's no Half-Life 3 -- it's a shame there isn't more, but on the other hand at least we're not suffering from two mediocre reboots and an awful unfaithful TV series complete with a gratuitous Alyx-Gordon sex scene.
I haven't watched the Last of Us series yet but perhaps, considering the success of that and Sonic, the tide is turning on awful videogame adaptations. They'll never stop being mostly awful, but perhaps they'll stop being entirely awful.
Any story need have start, middle end. Halo me played maybe back in 2001? It now over twenty year later story should ended long ago. but they focus on make more money even if it no purpose.
many company do this. was big fan of avengers and infinity movies. very nice build up and conclusion. then they throw water on it all and because of multiverse it make everything cheap.
these companys no passion or respect. do what it take to make some more dollars. very sad.
Yeah superhero movies are not quality TO ME. But I have family members who do and will see every single marvel thing made. Even the ones they dont love they will enjoy because its the characters they enjoy and its building a universe they are invested in.
They are well filmed. The action tends to be good. They have stars in them. They have characters in them people care about. Those are all things that will draw a lot of people towards them.
Halo has 1-2 characters people give a shit about and zero stars. The LOTR show seems to be the same...
I'm not saying you HAVE to have those things for something to be quality but to keep people coming back those things help a lot.
Because those do have quality to them. Actors and directors people have heard of, no money held back on production budget, and people actually think they are good movies. Avengers infinity war has a 91% fan rating on rotten tomatoes and an 85% critic rating. These marvel movies aren't one offs, they are a constant cash cow of seemingly consistent quality in the eyes of their fans who fill these theaters.
Meanwhile with the halo series you just don't have that. No one has heard of the actors or directors. It's been widely panned by critics and fans. It probably will be cancelled before long once paramount can no longer ride off the success of the first episode which if it doesn't continue means people were baited into watching it with the Halo IP more than anything.
Quality matters if you care about having a cash cow and not just a one off. Paramount+ is big on telling us halo TV's first episode set records on their service, but I haven't seen any data from other episodes which is telling. I don't think that a series scoring 6 on rotten tomatoes can continually smash records and continue to look like a sound investment for media buyers.
Personally, I would think there are two answers to this:
a) the "we" in the question is exclusive, i.e, it only includes those that are part of the deal. In this case, I think "maybe". It brings to mind a perhaps slightly seemingly unrelated tale of how, prior to the current Paramount+ show, Halo was to be a film made by Niel Blomkamp, when that project was killed due to paramount's acquisition of the rights after years in development hell, a celebration was held by those rightfully glad to be free of shit management and the chance to move on. I have seen similar incidents in tech, but I don't want to elaborate.
If the "we" is inclusive, than the answer is no, no one is even slightly obligated to celebrate other's business deals, society, as is, seems to demand we celebrate far too much already.
Funny as paramount+ has done a better job of adding new content than netflix these past few months. The Halo TV show and Picard while C to B- are still miles better than much of the newer netflix content.
I think if this was a decade ago, when Facebook was younger (newly post-IPO!), hungrier, and had a better reputation with the public, that might have happened.
But nowadays Meta is older and much more disreputable, many of their new products seem to be clones of other things that exist, from Clubhouse to HQ Trivia, and users are far more jaded towards the company.
Not to mention, mobile and tech in general has matured to a state that a brand new app store, at least from a tech giant everyone knows about, coming to iOS isn't as exciting as it used to be. What does another mobile app store offer the average consumer? They barely download as many new apps from the actual official App Store. Having to deal with another platform account, even if expedited through Facebook login would be another friction point for users, another set of confusing permissions to juggle, another payment system to hook up to, another downloads history to keep track. Users are already getting burned out by having to deal with so many video streaming platforms that piracy is making a comeback, why would they be willing to put up with a Facebook Store just to get Instagram? At least signing up for Paramount+ lets you watch the Halo television show, what does signing up to the Facebook Store do besides let you use Facebook- which you already can?
No, I believe that even if Meta really does launch such a store, they would not be willing to pull their official apps away from the actual App Store. They will hedge their bets because it is unlikely that all, or maybe even most, Facebook users will switch to their app store. If forced to have to use a whole new store for no good reason, many consumers will just stop using Facebook, and find substitutes to Instagram instead.
Have you seen the first episode of Halo, there are multiple outdoor scenes where you feel sure it's a recording than a CGI render. The uncanny valley is almost crushed
Facebook and YouTube has all their original user-generated-content, and Microsoft has their failed 'Xbox Originals', like the Halo television series.
'YouTube celebrities' are very successful, and Facebook has actively been been trying to court these YouTube celebrities to post exclusively on Facebook.
Apple is seemingly the odd out not creating their own original video content, but Beats One is interesting as original _audio_ content, which no one else is doing.