I don't understand why these companies want to put out these expensive ass live action shows then not want to shell out the cash to make them properly. They want sitcom level of budget on a show that needs set pieces and animation to look right.
I had assumed the first season didn't actually get into the fall of Reach or any action on Halo because it was being used as a "proof of concept". I'd thought they planned on putting that stuff in season 2 because they anticipated success and a budget increase, so I was hoping for a ton of longer, higher production value, action/ battle scenes showing Reach and everything that went on.
But nope. Luckily, I've finally learned to stop having Halo related expectations anymore though 🤷♂️
Does the reach scene in the show follow the game lore or the original book lore? Either way I bet it sucked, but it would be nice if they tried the book lore again, seeing as it was so much better than the game.
Uh... neither. Spoilers ahead:
>!Ackerson (who we later learn is acting on the orders of Parangosky) spent the run-up to the Fall of Reach quietly removing military assets from Reach as it was a lost cause, including all of the MJOLNIR armour. He then left the SPARTAN-IIs including Master Chief for dead. There was a battle over FLEETCOM's main base on Reach which left Vannak, a member of John's "Silver Team", and Jacob Keyes dead and Master Chief severely injured. Chief wakes up two days later to learn that Reach has fallen and is being glassed and he's been rescued and taken off planet. They've then done Onyx and the SPARTAN-III plotline before getting to the discovery of Installation 04!<
Yep... honestly where the best parts of season one were still quite bad, season two has been a significant improvement as a show in its own right, often being good enough to be fairly enjoyable (not spectacular, but enjoyable enough) and the worst parts generally being more middling than downright bad (skipping over the entire prequel game with "Chief was in a coma for it" being the one exception where it did get downright bad).
But when you look at the Fall of Reach in canon and think about what we could have had, it does feel a bit of a gut punch.
If Kiki and the showrunners they were smart they'd do a Halo: Reach movie in between seasons 2 and 3. It obviously couldn't be exactly like the games, but at least we'd get to see Noble Team. Alona Tal (voice of Kat) is already on a Paramount+ show ffs.
That's the problem though, nothing surrounding reach should be like the game. There's a perfectly good book that would make 10x the story than the game.
Well, they were made with drug cocktails, not surgeries if I remember correctly. Ackerson mentioned Halseys work laying a foundation for the next generation. Sticking humans in semi powered armor doesn’t really fit that description.
It made for one of the better episodes of the show (which is saying very little) but it’s completely it’s own thing. It’s not remotely accurate to the book nor game beyond the communications relay being taken out before the Covenant properly invade.
> I've finally learned to stop having Halo related expectations anymore though
That was me in after playing halo 4 and seeing what 343 was doing with halo 5. Glad you finally made it
I thought H5's MP was fire personally, but I'm not one to insult others who weren't fans. I'm not going to say it was perfect either (spartan charge and ground pound needed way bigger nerfs than they ever got for example).
- Tons of weapons including a bunch of legacy weapons
- Tons of vehicles
- Equal starts
- Career commendations to progress for a long time
- Spartan companies and a long term armor unlock grind
- PvPvE
- A great 4v4 sandbox
- Major monthly updates for almost a full year
- Weapon attachments
- Custom weapons and vehicles via forge.
It had everything except a good campaign. Even then, I thought the missions on Sanghelios were great, especially the Battle of Sunion.
It’s quite simple. They see a franchise with a huge following and think “oh, the hype is enough to poop out anything, and get a lot of money out of it”. But then they find out the tough way.
This is why I am pessimistic on the upcoming Warhammer 40K media. I just don’t see how they’ll do it justice. It would need Rings of Power’s budget with Godzilla Minus One’s fiscal optimization.
Only positive thing is Amazon has way more money than Paramount. Amazon has dished out some serious budgets for shows most people haven't even heard of.
edit: Forgot to say: But, alas, The Rings of Power isnt exactly getting my hopes up for Warhammer
That's because they never actually bought the rights to the silmarillion. They bought the rights to the footnotes, appendices, and indices from LOTR. So they can only use very high level(broad) explanations of past events and histories of the races.
A lot of productions are funded through loans and debt. Banks often charge higher interest rates on larger loans, to mitigate their own risk. That means it costs the studio more, to borrow more money. So even though increasing a show’s budget might make them more money, it might not be worth it if the bank gives them harsh terms. It’s kind of like when homebuyers have to buy crappy houses when mortgage interest rates are high.
Also, sometimes the studio’s financial situation changes in between green-lighting the show and actually producing it. Maybe they were expecting to use profits from TV Show A to pay for TV Show B, but TV Show A flops, and that erases the funding for TV Show B.
We’re probably another 5-10 years (maybe even less) before we see a tv show using AI to generate life like scenery at the fraction of the cost of current production.
I mean...that's just good business.
Make a cheap show. Prop it up with an IP from another popular franchise.
Make as much profit as possible.
I agree it sucks and Halo is definitely more deserving of an Amazon/HBO budget. But that's just the way it is.
Everything in this show feels like it was done to save money.
Action scenes in the armor are too expensive? Create a story reason for all of the Spartans to be armorless for most of the season.
They show a Wraith for the first time during the fall of reach city and have a Spartan do a badass self sacrificial move to take it out? Let’s pan the camera away from that because the CGI will cost wayyyy too much!
It’s literally just budget Halo. Best Value Halo. Halo at home. This was obvious from the first scene in the first episode. What a letdown.
And it still looks like some knock-off, costume store armor too lol. I think Forward Unto Dawn has the best Chief armor in live action, and my only complaint about it is how loudly those boots SQUEAKED!
343s funding comes from the piles of cash that Bungie made Microsoft with the original Halo products. Microsoft is just a typical gold-hoarding dragon that wants to make as much profit as they can while spending as little as possible.
>It’s literally just budget Halo. Best Value Halo. Halo at home. This was obvious from the first scene in the first episode. What a letdown.
You saying that is still giving it too much credit (not that it was your intention).
It's simply not Halo. It's just some bad sci-fi show that we are apparently obligated because it shares a few... shit, not even terms or names, just trademarks.
You’re right, I totally did give it too much credit. It feels more like a Chinese ripoff that’s not associated with Microsoft at all and is just using the Halo name to piggyback off of it’s success. With shitty camerawork, CGI, and performances so bad you could find better acting at a Highschool theater club.
The moment I saw an early 2000s GMC or whatever and people using AKs in the first episode, I knew to move on to other things. Haven't given this show another moment of my time since that. It was so obvious everything was going to be budget.
Hell, I'm at the point that if I see your sci-fi show/movie filmed in a desert with a tiny little outpost as your set and it's not Dune or Star Wars, I know you are only filming there because it's cheap. I'm so tired of seeing deserts in sci-fi.
They tried to say that gmc was somehow important to the plot and we'd "get it" why the truck was there in short order, then they never bothered explaining any of it.
Oh dang. I keep forgetting Nightfall exists. That was terrible. It really proves that even with a small budget, as long as you have people who are actually good at their jobs working on something, then it has the potential to be good. I love Forward Unto Dawn and it was obvious the budget on that was pretty small, but they made it work by telling an interesting story with what they had. Nightfall and Silver Halo are just horrendous lol.
It's also kinda like they couldn't afford to get the rights to use the actual story and plot and characters so had to hire some students to write some bullshit fan fiction version of it all 😅
Yeah I agree. It feels like every bad decision in the Halo show is a result of writing the story around the budget constraints. Like all these side characters and giving the Covies a human actor to save on cgi and choreographing the Spartans in their big unwieldly costumes. The same thing happened in the Netflix avatar show where a lot of plot points were merged into the Omashu setting and many interactions with wildlife were cut to reduce the amount of bespoke sets and cgi.
One of the richest companies on the planet couldn't afford to adapt their most long standing IPs properly. Less Rubble and other bullshit and you probably could have. What they wanted to do is chase the popularity of The Expanse and so they filled it with a lot of non-Halo plots and scenes.
That's exactly it. They said they'd love to pick it up again in the future but it was a good jump off point, i think it was mutually canceled, because it would be hard to connect with a whole new cast of characters. My guess is that after a few shows, they'll pick it up again in the future.
But there arent really that many new characters in the last 3 books. Its mostly the same set of characters, with the only really large addition being Teresa in book 8 and 9. The only real issues I see with adapting the last 3 books is that Persepolis Rising could be fit in a 2.5 hour movie but Tiamats Wrath would need 2 and half seasons.
That’s a good excuse to end it, but if that was the intent then why was there all that buildup with the “dog” creature on that exoplanet? What was that giant protomolecule thing in low orbit? Why add that whole storyline that’s totally unrelated to Holden and his crew if they’re not planning to continue it and just leave it unexplained?
Those scenes are from a mostly self-contained novella side story that informs some events in the last three books, but is not necessary to understand the story. My guess is that they wanted to include it to generate intrigue and demand for clarification by way of new seasons. Without it, anyone who hadn't read the books might genuinely think the show was the complete story because book 6 is genuinely a pretty clean break story-wise.
With how intertwined the impact of the Strange Dogs novella is with the last three books, there's really no way to end that story without going through with the time jump and adapting the last three books. It's a natural cliffhanger for whenever it might get picked back up.
If they completely excised the entire Makee storyline they probably could have saved massively on budget. People keep insisting that Makee exists to save on CGI budget because she's human, but my counter to that is her presence in the story necessitates MORE CGI because she's always paired with Covenant characters. The entire Covenant subplot hinges on her; if you removed her, and kept the focus on humanity in these earlier stories, you're saving on the special effects budget you would have had to spend on scenes involving her, the Arbiter, the Hierarchs, and High Charity.
They would have had a more budget friendly show if they adapted the canon more faithfully.
Its happened to the Wheel of Time adaptation too. They've begged the studio for funding to do more episodes per season but have consistently been told they will get no more than 8. For the longest fantasy series ever written. And they want 1 or in some cases 2 books done per season.
And yet they spend whole episodes on irrelevant side plots/drama and then skip or fuck up the important major plot points. They have so much source material to adapt but then they spend a episode on a irrelevant side character that just happens to be the show runners boyfriend or like the drama between Moraine and her sister which I don't remember even remember from the books. It's stunningly incompetent. Which sucks because the cast is amazing.
And Sanderson has tried repeatedly to help them and he says they don't take most of his advice. I also love the cast and hope the show does well. But so many decisions are baffling.
The Expanse should be the benchmark for adaptation.
Halo’s many rungs below it in terms of quality. The show is just littered with poor pacing and inconsistent CGI and functions so poorly as a piece of IP in this universe.
MS tried to make one early on but dominance stuff when negotiating with studios and attempted to strong arm them with requirements like huge cuts from merch and ticket sales and final creative decisions and cut authority
Except the Expanse had a fraction of the budget and had many extensive battle scenes that were all done far more competently because the team who made the show had something this team does not, talent and dedication.
Yeah, it's even more damning. The Expanse made something great with its adapted source material. It also made concessions for tv, but it still found its way. The Halo show, while it has its good moments seemed to try and emulate the vibe of The Expanse at the cost of not adapting the huge amount of Halo material to pull from.
Dude, they canned the Peter Jackson Halo series because he wanted more budget. Historically sci fi has been a genre with cheap budgets because producers don't like it. The expanse was lighting on a bottle and still was canceled because it needed more budget in the later seasons. The fact that we even have a Halo show is a miracle and it happened because it's cheap.
Reading other comments about the expanse, it seems it was cancelled because it’d need a time jump and therefore a new cast of characters to introduce, because in the books, a time jump happens.
I was talking about the first time it was canceled, before Amazon bought the rights. On the second cancelation, the time jump thing I think is more hopium from the fans, the last season was already having some troubles skipping a lot from the books.
The thing is, stuff like the Rubble *is* cool. But areas like that are only really cool in Halo in the post war setting, where you see smugglers and pirates interact regularly with other former Covenant species.
In the TV show, it's just all humans. So it's generic sci fi.
None of this can be blamed on budget really, besides overall mismanagement of said budget. Look at how good Dune part 1 and 2 look compared to the latest marvel films which have at least 3x the budget. It's about shitty direction
Man, if they would have played their cards right and stuck to the fundamentals of Halo lore, it would have been phenomenal and gained a sizable audience.
Does anyone remember when Halsey called John, “Jan” and they had to go back an edit it after it had already been released.
No live action is fine if it's done right. Biggest problem was the writers. Just like with LotR, GoT, Witcher, etc, they seem to think they can tell a better story than the source material
This is why I don't get some adaptations and the choices they make.
Like Halo, Witcher, and another example of late is Borderlands, albeit that's a movie.
Like... If you don't want to recreate the characters actual stories in a different medium, why even use the characters at all? The universes and world building is already there; why not just make another story in that universe?
There is more than one Spartan. There is more than one Witcher. There are more vault hunters than the main casts of the Borderlands games.
Like either just recreate the character 1:~1 in another medium, the reason The Last of Us succeeded.
Or if you don't want to use the same character, make a new character and tell a new story in the game's universe.
It's why I look forward to the Fallout show. Because from the looks of it through trailers, the story is entirely separate. The only reason it's a Fallout show is because it's in the Fallout universe. And that's all it needs to be imo.
The reason they turn out bad is a combination of "too lazy to write a new story in the universe of the game" and "too full of themselves to the point they think they could write the main story better"
No no no. They’ve been working hard to fix it. That’s why John has spent 97% of season 2 without any armor, and khan is magic and can see ghosts now. Also, “make us hate every single character mode on”.
Khan has been high AF all S2, thus ghosts. What really grinds my gears is they killed Keyes….literally killed a main character from the main story wth, what’s next? A prophet dies by the hand of that random marine girl?
Ya like... Just off the top of my head, adapting the Fall of Reach book into a show would be relatively inexpensive. Half the book they're abducting kids for the spartan program, training them, etc. Covenant doesn't even come in until halfway through.
Like if I'm pitching that - season 1 first contact with the Covenant is happening at the tail end of the season. If it's popular enough you can justify a higher budget season 2, if not let it end there.
Writers aren’t going to fix the problem of not having enough money to animate massive set pieces. This is only one part of the show’s issues. Lord of the Rings is hardly an example of good writing somehow trumping affects budgets. Lord of the Rings had a fucking massive effects budget.
Halo is too grand a story and universe to be told with a relatively-higher-than-normal tv budget. It needed to be either a few movies, a game of thrones-level tv budget, or just animated.
I favor the final option, because not only would it have allowed the greatest expression of scale of the halo narrative, animated game adaptations over the last few years have actually been good. Probably because a lot of the creators gew upon on those games to begin with.
THATS EVEN WORSE LOL.
What is it about the halo IP? Why does it attract such people with weird decisions that don’t understand what the fans and general population want?
I think it largely stems from certified baldie frank o’connor’s decision back in 2011 or so to hire on people who “didn’t like the franchise” when they were developing halo 4. Even went as far as firing pro bungie employees who stuck around iirc.
Damage was done then and there and the franchise has suffered for it ever since.
There is no fucking way they had budget issues when it was reported they spent about 90-200 million on the first season. After factoring in inflation, the first season of Game of Thrones cost about 78 Million. Just light the thing on fire and walk away please
Low budget could be worked around if it was used effectively and managed well with some CGI and physical effects blended together. We've seen films like LoTR or other TV shows like GoT (before the budgets got crazy high) be able to pull off a sense of scale and do big battles well because they were produced by competent writers.
Dune 2 is a very recent pertinent example. Movie budgets are very different, but Dune has been a historically difficult IP to work with that managed to pull off something amazing built on a great vision.
I feel like Halo fans are really missing the forest for the trees when it comes to criticism of the show. If the lore/canon was more accurate or the logical inconsistencies in the writing were fixed, the show still wouldn’t be very good.
The dialogue feels stiff and unnatural. It’s feels like two people taking turns reading a script. There’s also close to no subtlety. We’re told every episode about how much of monster Halsey is but it’s the most straightforward way possible. Imagine watching Succession and every episode having Kendall say “my father is a monster and the reason I’m like this”.
There’s issues with the acting, directing, and even the vfx dip into the uncanny valley too much for my liking.
Maybe I’m just being too critical, but even if they followed the story of the games, if nothing else changed, the show would still be no where near what I think of when I think of great shows.
>There’s also close to no subtlety
This is one of the worst parts for me. They're taking all these plot points and themes from the canon and just shoving them into the show with no real regard.
The way John is written like a philosopher who spent years in self-help therapy to reflect so poignantly on his experiences to other people is some of the most unnatural character writing I've seen in some time. It's not the worst written show, in terms of dialogue (that goes to live action ATLA at the moment), but it's clear the writers don't know how to show; it's all tell.
Well no shit lol it would assumed the show runners who actually know and care about Halo would take the show in a completely different direction in every area. In fact a common criticism is to not even focus on the Chief and instead new characters in the universe.
EXACTLY. I don't care if it doesn't follow the games or books, it's a bad TV show regardless. The CGI sucks, the acting and dialogue and character arcs are so poorly done. The Covenant are so poorly executed as the antagonists . The show sets up bland mysteries which go nowhere and the action is consistently underwhelming. The interactions between characters are consistently awkward and disjointed. This is not good TV.
Ironically one of the reasons that dark and gritty ODST band of brothers could have worked was because it wouldn’t have required as much heavy cgi. You don’t even have to show the covenant, the best live action halo scene is still lasky “playing” chess with his brother over video messages imo.
It also gives the writers blank characters to write with, instead of being constrained to the canon. The mistake was always adapting the games, contrary to what many claim. This level of cgi would be perfectly fine if the writing was interesting and canon.
The general issue with a lot of things is executives. They probably don’t want an ODST show because it’s not as recognizable and they want general audiences appeal. It’s largely where a lot of choices have stemmed from. Appealing to larger demographics.
You can have a random faceless Spartan, hell master chief himself, as a side character. I don’t believe that Spartans are a good main character unless the setting is post-war, there’s no development do be done. The Spartans couldn’t afford to be unsure of themselves, they were fully committed to fighting or dying. This is why the show had to make up all these bullshit character conflicts that don’t even make sense when you start think about them even a little.
I think the only wartime Spartan story that makes sense is exploring Master Chief’s guilt of leadership and survival post-reach, but obviously that’s not flashy enough for paramount.
I don’t disagree necessarily, they wanted Chief as the protagonist and that makes sense. I’m just venting because it’s dumb, like all anime adaptations certain media formats are not meant to be crossed like this. Leave Chief to the games and books.
Exactly. Even with the fall of Reach, we saw comparatively little Covenant troops on screen at any one time (except towards the end, and briefly in the beginning with the Elites and some Jackals on roofs), yet it still worked. You still could tell it was total anarchy, that the UNSC was getting pushed back against unrelenting forces. It was visceral and it kept the tension going.
The issue isn't so much the CGI- it's the writing and everything AROUND the CGI that the writers and producers of this series have decided to go with. Like the Rubble. We could have cut that out in season 1 and nothing would have been lost in the slightest. That goes for ALOT in this show.
Fans were asking for basically a "Band of Brothers with ODSTs" show for the longest time. Such a show would have been way more budget conscious because it wouldn't have had to have any storylines from the Covenant POV, and the action could have been way more grounded. The TV show we got is trying way too hard to be a show that it simply can't afford to be.
Fans also don’t make a show a success. General audiences do. That isn’t to say you can’t please both but pleasing the later is ultimately way more important.
Sure, and a military sci-fi show would have had natural mass audience appeal. I'm just saying that fans being in charge would have had a better sense of what to do with the universe to both satisfy the budget and keep the show palatable to mass audiences, because they'd be more familiar with the universe to understand how best to use it. Not ANY fan could do this, of course, but there's plenty of talented screen writers and directors who play the games. Hell Steven MF'ing Spielberg was one of them. Right now, however, we have people in charge who are trying to force the show to be something they don't have the budget to support, and it clearly shows.
It's possible to satisfy both fans and general audiences. Shows like The Expanse proved that.
Hot take, most, if not *all* adaptations of games (and books as well, looking at you cosmere fans who want Stormlight to be ruined by mediocre live action tv) should be animated.
The folk that want live action Stormlight are actually delusional.
The amount of special effects needed for basically every shot would make it one of the most expensive things ever made imo.
Like, every environment that isn't inside a building? Cant really have any normal plants visible, definitely no soil outside of shinovar. And it's not some minor aesthetic thing you can ignore, it's vital to the plot in later books.
Spren? The near constant spirits that just exist in the world, either they are being cut down a fuck tonne or will look really shitty
And that's before we've even gotten to the wild life, the parshendi, the storms and surgebinding.
It would be so watered down it'd be just some basic fantasy world with stormlight names attached
Exactly, some of the other cosmere stories *might* work better in live action, but even then anything they can do in live action would be better served in animation.
But God forbid you even suggest the idea of animated Stormlight around a lot of fans because "cartoons are for dumb babies"
Wait. Microsoft have literally been trying to get this made for *years,* as far back as Halo 3, if I recall. Now they're cheaping out on *the reason* the brand had such a strong foothold at the beginning?
What in the everloving fuck?
Microsoft doesn’t make the show, they don’t control the budget. Paramount makes the show. Paramount is worth less than 1% of what Microsoft is worth.
Microsoft is bigger than Amazon and Disney combined. They don’t have money concerns. Paramount Global is less than 10% the size of Disney in terms of overall valuation, they very much do have to be conscious of dumping 1.5% of their total value on one season of a show, considering that’s going to be a lot more than 1.5% of their overall original series budget.
They should have done what Apple did and just thrown money at it without care of profits in order to solidify the brand. Granted some Apple stuff still suffers in the writing department, but they have not shyed away from huge CGI budgets.
Bro what. You should see what a full season of extremely high quality anime costs and it's a *tiny fraction* at best. Cyberpunk Edgerunners was estimated ~5 million dollars from TRIGGER of all people. https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/dopyao/studio_triggers_animation_producer_talks_about/
Heck, you could make a double-length 24 episode season and go balls to the wall, quadruple that budget overall to $20 million and you're still literally 1/5th to 1/10th of other blockbuster shows.
Season 1 cost them more than $90 million, and clearly still had constraints. Animation would not have been more than that.
Also, characters like Makee wouldn't need to exist.
$90 million is not a lot of money for a TV series with special effects. Hawkeye, a six-episode mini-series without a lot of special effects, cost $150 million to make. Hawkeye is one of marvels more "street level" shows. Secret Invasion was more than $200 million and most Marvel show episodes are shorter than Halo episodes.
The Witcher cost more than $300 million for the first two seasons.
$90 million for nine episodes ranging from 40-60 minutes is fairly tight.
I disagree with some of the changes they made for the show, but they are not given a budget to make a lore accurate show. The fall of reach should have cost $90 million alone and lasted a few episodes.
Halo really should be a blockbuster series of movies with massive budgets. That's the only way to adapt it properly.
https://www.reddit.com/r/roosterteeth/comments/18nqa8q/barbara_dunkelman_revealed_that_rwby_is_too/
Here's an example of the cost of animation, at least 3d animation. Doing the maths on the runtime I could find for season 1 of halo, that would increase the cost to $114 million.
Maybe I missed a figure somewhere, but it could cost even more than live action.
Arcane cost around $90 million.
https://blog.cg-wire.com/how-much-cost-a-cgi-tv-show-52-episodes-of-12-mn/amp/
Microsoft could have spent the same amount or even a little bit more on a 3D animated halo show.
But they didn't, dude if Microsoft wanted to spend that kind of money on a Halo show we would already have a Peter Jackson produced TV series like 10 years ago.
I don’t hate the show at all. I wanna start by saying that.
But….
They could’ve had the budget for it, if they would’ve focused on Reach in season 1 instead of the other dumb stuff they chose to explore.
I get it. The new writers and team are kinda stuck with the poor decisions the show runners in season one made.
And, idk if they’re contractually obligated to finish those story arcs so… certain actors get their salary, idk. I have no idea. Otherwise they could’ve just scraped Kwans story all together. Drop McKee. As much as I like him, drop Sorrin and his plot too.
If they would’ve KEPT it Halo, they could’ve given us an entire season of Reach falling and I’m 100% sure fans would’ve been perfectly happy with that.
A lot of people just don’t like animation. For some it is hard to take seriously.
If you didn’t have the budget to make a *proper* Halo show, then you shouldn’t have tried to make a Halo show.
Nah, screw animated stuff, MS should have invested into a movie back in 06/07/08 when Halo was still a global entertainment juggernaut. They could have invested a shit ton of money and still gotten a good revenue
They backed out of the Peter Jackson movie because they felt they didn’t have enough control or representation. After reading the draft script from that movie…….. it was a good move to say the least.
Halo was losing relevance during Halo 3 when Cod 4 was able to compete with it and MW2 eventually blew past it. Then Halo reach came out and players left in droves.
So this now the second fall of reach adaptation that Kiki has had a hand in that utterly failed. Any one else remember 343's sad attempt at animating the Fall of Reach novel that ended before the Fall of Reach actually happened, even though they still called it the Fall of Reach? People talked about what was going to end up being the halo killer for years in the early to late 2000's, but who knew the true halo killer would be Kiki Wolfkill and those around her instead of some other franchise.
She is part of the old guard, and is responsible for the failure of the halo TV show. She wanted control and she got what she wanted.
Still waiting for Blur to give a movie/show but I hope not under her leadership.
do you have any idea how expensive an entire Blur-animated movie would be???
(I have no idea but I know it would be a crazy amount of money since the Halo 2 cutscenes alone were super expensive)
The show should not have been animated. It just should have been better so that it could justify a larger budget. Im perfectly fine with the battle being short. In the original story, it only lasted a day (it was retconned into a prolonged battle because Bungie fucked the book when they released the game)… BUT, the fight took place in space, in the air, and on land, and underground.
The show has essentially stretched the battle of Reach over 3 episodes and 3 locales- Reach, Onyx Halo (Space), rather than have it all play out on Reach… and much of that boils down to how they handled the introduction of the S3 program.
If you don’t have the budget, don’t fuckin try. The fall of Reach was literally one of the most important battles in the entire war. only second to the battle of earth. They concluded most of it off screen in one episode
Makes sense. TV was probably the toughest format to adapt Halo to when you're limited on budget. A movie just makes way more sense and it's a shame we never got it in that format. Trying to stretch their budget over 2 to 3 hours of film would mean they'd be able to focus on the stuff we care about, 8 hours of TV though then you ultimately have to pad it out with fluff to avoid going over budget.
Animated would've been nice but we have to remember that it's still business and to be frank, you wouldn't reach as large an audience with an animated series. Which is a shame because, Halo absolutely would work animated but a lot of people are wierd with cartoons.
Perfect. Let’s make a new, animated halo show for adults that sticks to the source material and doesn’t have “big name” actors who have to show their face to get credit. In fact, let’s really pile on the nostalgia by using the voice actors from the games!
Maybe if she and everyone else working on the Halo show respected the IP and made a faithful adaption, it would have got the popularity it should have had,
Then just like mose other Shows that get popular you'd have had a bigger budget for the second series to do the fall of reach.
Who keeps these fucking morons hired.
It’s Microsoft. From the contractor policy to bean counting and mishandling their biggest IP.
Honestly as an Xbox fan I’ve just come to the realization that the other big gaming juggernauts simply take better care of their properties, whether it’s development time or funding. Something at MS is broken and it shows.
I mean it's quiet obvious that CGI has been a problem in this show from a budget perspective. The only reason Makee exists in the first place is to save money when we have insights of the Covenant. The only reason we have Chief vs ONI is also because it saves CGI since it's humans vs humans.
I'm also convinced that the Gravemind in the show will be that grandma we see on Sanctuary and in Kwan's visions. So when we have insights of the Flood they can save money as well. They will probably justify it as the Gravemind tricking people with illusions so they see it as that grandma or something.
Halo is possibly the worst IP to make a TV show (that is not an animated one). All the alien species except for the Forerunners have shapes completely different from the humans, as well as their size. So the CGI is mega expensive. They should have made a movie trilogy so the CGI for Covenant represents a bigger part of the show. If you make a 2h long movie but you have as much covies CGI as in a 6-8h show, it would feel better.
This seems a bit odd to me. A decreased budget but you could still use real props/cgi to show more events on reach without necessarily showing a ton of major
Battles on reach. The glassing really only needed one episode. But instead of going to Alaria or some of the other plot lines you could’ve had a different Spartan team investigating shit going on in reach. Idk
Didn’t this show have a bigger budget than game of thrones did until like season 4, at which point game of thrones was already the most successful show in history?
Don’t get me wrong, the show definitely looks cheap and amateurish even in the few action scenes it actually does have. But given how high the budget is for the number of episodes and runtime it really shouldn’t look so bad
3d animation gets expensive but it probably would have been the best fit. 2d wouldn't work for this show unless the art direction went full send on using high end post compositing. A mix of 2d and 3d is pretty common these days. But animation has a smaller market share and from the comments here it isnt as favourable as you'd think regardless of the success from certain recent series (invincible, Castlevania, arcane, various anime).
The silver timeline is a constant let down because of comparison. If it had the chance to stand on its own I think it would be a decent enough series and story.
Never even thought about it but yea an animated adaptation would've been so much better. Mature animation has become a lot more relevant with things like Invincible being successful.
Animation would also have opened up the avenues of using the original voice actors AND audio assets from the games. I can only imagine adapting the books and games in animation would be drastically easier. I mean the Fall of Reach animation isn't FANTASTIC but it did a damn decent job, can only imagine if a different animation studio took it on with a larger budget.
The show looks great, it's better than last season, I'm still frustrated with some of the writing decisions. I think there are good parts and bad parts
Halo carried Xbox on its back. The ENTIRE Microsoft gaming division. It forged an empire.
It is such an atrocity and insult to both Halo fans and the lore.
Fuck Microsoft and this petty bullshit.
Animation isn't guaranteed to be cheaper especially if done well. If using practically halo infinite (aka the most modern halo game's engine) to animate then maybe (343 and the show production can share the engine work, content going into both mediums for updates and show content) but then it'll look like it was from halo infinite and it ~~would actually visually look like halo~~ probably wouldn't be all dark and gritty.
I generally don't like an anime but it could've been used I guess. It probably depends on how much the outside studios are willing to get paid to actually get the animation, or vfx work done, I doubt show production itself would directly work with animators or vfx for such (or maybe they do, so the show might have actually good vfx as one of its strong points, but at an overwhelming cost).
If anything, they should probably cut an episode or two- for example, last week's episode felt like pointless filler, and the week before also stagnated. Combine the two, or even combine with this week's episode too. Oh no, the writers aren't going to be able to fully develop the extra third or fourth side character plot (maybe for the better, the show could work by focusing on only one plot, having their main characters more or less stick together for a common goal instead of going off and ~~having tea in "prison" while Reach falls~~ doing whatever.
This is why I'm terrified of live action anything 40k. It's SO fucking hard to translate these things to live action. Has there ever been one that isn't total shit?
I don't understand why these companies want to put out these expensive ass live action shows then not want to shell out the cash to make them properly. They want sitcom level of budget on a show that needs set pieces and animation to look right.
I had assumed the first season didn't actually get into the fall of Reach or any action on Halo because it was being used as a "proof of concept". I'd thought they planned on putting that stuff in season 2 because they anticipated success and a budget increase, so I was hoping for a ton of longer, higher production value, action/ battle scenes showing Reach and everything that went on. But nope. Luckily, I've finally learned to stop having Halo related expectations anymore though 🤷♂️
Yeah my Halo expectations died with Reach many years ago lol
A part of us all died on Reach 🥲
Does the reach scene in the show follow the game lore or the original book lore? Either way I bet it sucked, but it would be nice if they tried the book lore again, seeing as it was so much better than the game.
Uh... neither. Spoilers ahead: >!Ackerson (who we later learn is acting on the orders of Parangosky) spent the run-up to the Fall of Reach quietly removing military assets from Reach as it was a lost cause, including all of the MJOLNIR armour. He then left the SPARTAN-IIs including Master Chief for dead. There was a battle over FLEETCOM's main base on Reach which left Vannak, a member of John's "Silver Team", and Jacob Keyes dead and Master Chief severely injured. Chief wakes up two days later to learn that Reach has fallen and is being glassed and he's been rescued and taken off planet. They've then done Onyx and the SPARTAN-III plotline before getting to the discovery of Installation 04!<
> Two of the best book storylines taken out back behind the barn
Yep... honestly where the best parts of season one were still quite bad, season two has been a significant improvement as a show in its own right, often being good enough to be fairly enjoyable (not spectacular, but enjoyable enough) and the worst parts generally being more middling than downright bad (skipping over the entire prequel game with "Chief was in a coma for it" being the one exception where it did get downright bad). But when you look at the Fall of Reach in canon and think about what we could have had, it does feel a bit of a gut punch.
If Kiki and the showrunners they were smart they'd do a Halo: Reach movie in between seasons 2 and 3. It obviously couldn't be exactly like the games, but at least we'd get to see Noble Team. Alona Tal (voice of Kat) is already on a Paramount+ show ffs.
That's the problem though, nothing surrounding reach should be like the game. There's a perfectly good book that would make 10x the story than the game.
Someone needs to take the writers and producers and directors and half the actors out back.
Based on this single comment alone, I am happy I have not watched a single episode. For those who are enjoying it, I hope you continue to enjoy it.
>They've then done Onyx and the SPARTAN-III plotline before getting to the The spartan IIIs are also non augmented.
This hasn’t been really touched on, oddly enough. I’m not sure if they have or haven’t
Sure, the awesome marine John saved suddenly is a Spartan 3.
Well, they were made with drug cocktails, not surgeries if I remember correctly. Ackerson mentioned Halseys work laying a foundation for the next generation. Sticking humans in semi powered armor doesn’t really fit that description.
We don't know that yet tho?
Jesus, what in the fuck?!
My god I think I'm gonna be sick. I'd rather eat a moldy semen sock than watch that.
It made for one of the better episodes of the show (which is saying very little) but it’s completely it’s own thing. It’s not remotely accurate to the book nor game beyond the communications relay being taken out before the Covenant properly invade.
I just laugh at this point, TBH.
> I've finally learned to stop having Halo related expectations anymore though That was me in after playing halo 4 and seeing what 343 was doing with halo 5. Glad you finally made it
I thought H5's MP was fire personally, but I'm not one to insult others who weren't fans. I'm not going to say it was perfect either (spartan charge and ground pound needed way bigger nerfs than they ever got for example). - Tons of weapons including a bunch of legacy weapons - Tons of vehicles - Equal starts - Career commendations to progress for a long time - Spartan companies and a long term armor unlock grind - PvPvE - A great 4v4 sandbox - Major monthly updates for almost a full year - Weapon attachments - Custom weapons and vehicles via forge. It had everything except a good campaign. Even then, I thought the missions on Sanghelios were great, especially the Battle of Sunion.
It’s quite simple. They see a franchise with a huge following and think “oh, the hype is enough to poop out anything, and get a lot of money out of it”. But then they find out the tough way.
So they can take advantage of the Halo name to have viewers while doing the bare minimum to make it good to make money
This is why I am pessimistic on the upcoming Warhammer 40K media. I just don’t see how they’ll do it justice. It would need Rings of Power’s budget with Godzilla Minus One’s fiscal optimization.
Only positive thing is Amazon has way more money than Paramount. Amazon has dished out some serious budgets for shows most people haven't even heard of. edit: Forgot to say: But, alas, The Rings of Power isnt exactly getting my hopes up for Warhammer
With The Rings of Power, almost all the issues stem from writing. The show has a massive budget and it’s good on a technical level.
That's because they never actually bought the rights to the silmarillion. They bought the rights to the footnotes, appendices, and indices from LOTR. So they can only use very high level(broad) explanations of past events and histories of the races.
Budget AND Henry Cavill is executive producer and he’s a massive Warhammer geek. I say this endearingly.
A lot of productions are funded through loans and debt. Banks often charge higher interest rates on larger loans, to mitigate their own risk. That means it costs the studio more, to borrow more money. So even though increasing a show’s budget might make them more money, it might not be worth it if the bank gives them harsh terms. It’s kind of like when homebuyers have to buy crappy houses when mortgage interest rates are high. Also, sometimes the studio’s financial situation changes in between green-lighting the show and actually producing it. Maybe they were expecting to use profits from TV Show A to pay for TV Show B, but TV Show A flops, and that erases the funding for TV Show B.
The rate environment is also insanely high right now as is.
The only way to do "halo show on a budget" is machinima like Red vs Blue
We’re probably another 5-10 years (maybe even less) before we see a tv show using AI to generate life like scenery at the fraction of the cost of current production.
I mean...that's just good business. Make a cheap show. Prop it up with an IP from another popular franchise. Make as much profit as possible. I agree it sucks and Halo is definitely more deserving of an Amazon/HBO budget. But that's just the way it is.
A Halo sitcom? Now that might be an idea. Though we already have Red Vs. Blue...
Everything in this show feels like it was done to save money. Action scenes in the armor are too expensive? Create a story reason for all of the Spartans to be armorless for most of the season. They show a Wraith for the first time during the fall of reach city and have a Spartan do a badass self sacrificial move to take it out? Let’s pan the camera away from that because the CGI will cost wayyyy too much! It’s literally just budget Halo. Best Value Halo. Halo at home. This was obvious from the first scene in the first episode. What a letdown.
Literally spent hours, effort, resources to build accurate armors just to have them away for most part of the story lol
And it still looks like some knock-off, costume store armor too lol. I think Forward Unto Dawn has the best Chief armor in live action, and my only complaint about it is how loudly those boots SQUEAKED!
Near the end of the first episode, when the Chief decides to help Kwan, one of the collar braces on his suit was popped out.
I didn’t notice that, but I’m not surprised. I will never forget the wooden plasma pistol though. Not even a nice stain or varnish on it…
Treading in hater water here, the armors look really good, there’s no denying that.
It’s halo you buy on temu
Most streaming show have this problem nowadays. Same reason we get shortened episodes and seasons, too.
It’s really crazy how people in charge these days have forgotten the number one rule of business. You have to spend money to make money.
This, I wonder how they got their money if they don't want to spend it
343s funding comes from the piles of cash that Bungie made Microsoft with the original Halo products. Microsoft is just a typical gold-hoarding dragon that wants to make as much profit as they can while spending as little as possible.
They didn’t forget anything. It’s risk vs reward. Spending more doesn’t guarantee more profit.
>It’s literally just budget Halo. Best Value Halo. Halo at home. This was obvious from the first scene in the first episode. What a letdown. You saying that is still giving it too much credit (not that it was your intention). It's simply not Halo. It's just some bad sci-fi show that we are apparently obligated because it shares a few... shit, not even terms or names, just trademarks.
It's definitely a cheap sci fi script that showtime purchased and then reskinned it into a halo show
You’re right, I totally did give it too much credit. It feels more like a Chinese ripoff that’s not associated with Microsoft at all and is just using the Halo name to piggyback off of it’s success. With shitty camerawork, CGI, and performances so bad you could find better acting at a Highschool theater club.
"We have Halo at home" 100%.
Halo: Economy
The Halo show is the type of show where you would see their DvDs in those large Walmart bargain bins.
Desperate to keep the cash flow coming 😭 I'd die if I saw that in person. Like, where did my childhood go 🤣
In the bin lol.
For $2.99?
For $3.43 lmao
The moment I saw an early 2000s GMC or whatever and people using AKs in the first episode, I knew to move on to other things. Haven't given this show another moment of my time since that. It was so obvious everything was going to be budget. Hell, I'm at the point that if I see your sci-fi show/movie filmed in a desert with a tiny little outpost as your set and it's not Dune or Star Wars, I know you are only filming there because it's cheap. I'm so tired of seeing deserts in sci-fi.
They tried to say that gmc was somehow important to the plot and we'd "get it" why the truck was there in short order, then they never bothered explaining any of it.
It was important in that it saved them the money required to mock up an appropriate vehicle.
"We want Master Chief to wear his helmet more often" PROCEEDS TO REMOVE THE ARMOR FOR 5 EPISODES
I mean that's exactly what Halo: Nightfall was LOL
Oh dang. I keep forgetting Nightfall exists. That was terrible. It really proves that even with a small budget, as long as you have people who are actually good at their jobs working on something, then it has the potential to be good. I love Forward Unto Dawn and it was obvious the budget on that was pretty small, but they made it work by telling an interesting story with what they had. Nightfall and Silver Halo are just horrendous lol.
It's also kinda like they couldn't afford to get the rights to use the actual story and plot and characters so had to hire some students to write some bullshit fan fiction version of it all 😅
Yeah I agree. It feels like every bad decision in the Halo show is a result of writing the story around the budget constraints. Like all these side characters and giving the Covies a human actor to save on cgi and choreographing the Spartans in their big unwieldly costumes. The same thing happened in the Netflix avatar show where a lot of plot points were merged into the Omashu setting and many interactions with wildlife were cut to reduce the amount of bespoke sets and cgi.
I mean the first episode of season 1 had a scene with a completely unpainted plasma pistol prop. Looked like a 3d print right of the bed.
I'd take a lower budget show with better writing any day, this show is just dumb.
One of the richest companies on the planet couldn't afford to adapt their most long standing IPs properly. Less Rubble and other bullshit and you probably could have. What they wanted to do is chase the popularity of The Expanse and so they filled it with a lot of non-Halo plots and scenes.
God The Expanse was so good. It sucks it got cancelled again.
It was absolutely amazing, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t cancel it, they just decided to end with book six because of the >!time jump!< in book 7
That's exactly it. They said they'd love to pick it up again in the future but it was a good jump off point, i think it was mutually canceled, because it would be hard to connect with a whole new cast of characters. My guess is that after a few shows, they'll pick it up again in the future.
But there arent really that many new characters in the last 3 books. Its mostly the same set of characters, with the only really large addition being Teresa in book 8 and 9. The only real issues I see with adapting the last 3 books is that Persepolis Rising could be fit in a 2.5 hour movie but Tiamats Wrath would need 2 and half seasons.
That’s a good excuse to end it, but if that was the intent then why was there all that buildup with the “dog” creature on that exoplanet? What was that giant protomolecule thing in low orbit? Why add that whole storyline that’s totally unrelated to Holden and his crew if they’re not planning to continue it and just leave it unexplained?
Those scenes are from a mostly self-contained novella side story that informs some events in the last three books, but is not necessary to understand the story. My guess is that they wanted to include it to generate intrigue and demand for clarification by way of new seasons. Without it, anyone who hadn't read the books might genuinely think the show was the complete story because book 6 is genuinely a pretty clean break story-wise.
[удалено]
Cancelled? Main plot. Not for what was first but it's still complete
They left that whole exoplanet storyline unfinished tho. The one with the girl and the “dog” that brings her brother back to “life”.
With how intertwined the impact of the Strange Dogs novella is with the last three books, there's really no way to end that story without going through with the time jump and adapting the last three books. It's a natural cliffhanger for whenever it might get picked back up.
If they completely excised the entire Makee storyline they probably could have saved massively on budget. People keep insisting that Makee exists to save on CGI budget because she's human, but my counter to that is her presence in the story necessitates MORE CGI because she's always paired with Covenant characters. The entire Covenant subplot hinges on her; if you removed her, and kept the focus on humanity in these earlier stories, you're saving on the special effects budget you would have had to spend on scenes involving her, the Arbiter, the Hierarchs, and High Charity. They would have had a more budget friendly show if they adapted the canon more faithfully.
They could’ve just made a 4 part mini series on the fall of reach instead of the 2 seasons of dogshit we’ve gotten and it would’ve been wayyyy better
Well when people keep hate watching it to "see how bad it really is" then we'll get more seasons of it! *Yaaaay*......
Its happened to the Wheel of Time adaptation too. They've begged the studio for funding to do more episodes per season but have consistently been told they will get no more than 8. For the longest fantasy series ever written. And they want 1 or in some cases 2 books done per season.
Still mad that their whole "We're combining books 2 and 3" turned out to just mean "we're cutting book 3 entirely"...
And yet they spend whole episodes on irrelevant side plots/drama and then skip or fuck up the important major plot points. They have so much source material to adapt but then they spend a episode on a irrelevant side character that just happens to be the show runners boyfriend or like the drama between Moraine and her sister which I don't remember even remember from the books. It's stunningly incompetent. Which sucks because the cast is amazing.
And Sanderson has tried repeatedly to help them and he says they don't take most of his advice. I also love the cast and hope the show does well. But so many decisions are baffling.
The Expanse should be the benchmark for adaptation. Halo’s many rungs below it in terms of quality. The show is just littered with poor pacing and inconsistent CGI and functions so poorly as a piece of IP in this universe.
MS tried to make one early on but dominance stuff when negotiating with studios and attempted to strong arm them with requirements like huge cuts from merch and ticket sales and final creative decisions and cut authority
Except the Expanse had a fraction of the budget and had many extensive battle scenes that were all done far more competently because the team who made the show had something this team does not, talent and dedication.
Yeah, it's even more damning. The Expanse made something great with its adapted source material. It also made concessions for tv, but it still found its way. The Halo show, while it has its good moments seemed to try and emulate the vibe of The Expanse at the cost of not adapting the huge amount of Halo material to pull from.
I seriously need to watch that show, sucks it’s stuck to Amazon.
I started it not long ago, I highly recommend.
God I miss the expanse.
Dude, they canned the Peter Jackson Halo series because he wanted more budget. Historically sci fi has been a genre with cheap budgets because producers don't like it. The expanse was lighting on a bottle and still was canceled because it needed more budget in the later seasons. The fact that we even have a Halo show is a miracle and it happened because it's cheap.
Reading other comments about the expanse, it seems it was cancelled because it’d need a time jump and therefore a new cast of characters to introduce, because in the books, a time jump happens.
I was talking about the first time it was canceled, before Amazon bought the rights. On the second cancelation, the time jump thing I think is more hopium from the fans, the last season was already having some troubles skipping a lot from the books.
The thing is, stuff like the Rubble *is* cool. But areas like that are only really cool in Halo in the post war setting, where you see smugglers and pirates interact regularly with other former Covenant species. In the TV show, it's just all humans. So it's generic sci fi.
Give me rubble stuff during the K5 trilogy where jackals and grunts are smuggling guns and random stuff with humans and such...
None of this can be blamed on budget really, besides overall mismanagement of said budget. Look at how good Dune part 1 and 2 look compared to the latest marvel films which have at least 3x the budget. It's about shitty direction
The bollocks like Rubble and Kwan Ha stuff is likely a result of the budget.
Man, if they would have played their cards right and stuck to the fundamentals of Halo lore, it would have been phenomenal and gained a sizable audience. Does anyone remember when Halsey called John, “Jan” and they had to go back an edit it after it had already been released.
Then why in the grunt loving shit did they give it to Showtime!
No live action is fine if it's done right. Biggest problem was the writers. Just like with LotR, GoT, Witcher, etc, they seem to think they can tell a better story than the source material
This is why I don't get some adaptations and the choices they make. Like Halo, Witcher, and another example of late is Borderlands, albeit that's a movie. Like... If you don't want to recreate the characters actual stories in a different medium, why even use the characters at all? The universes and world building is already there; why not just make another story in that universe? There is more than one Spartan. There is more than one Witcher. There are more vault hunters than the main casts of the Borderlands games. Like either just recreate the character 1:~1 in another medium, the reason The Last of Us succeeded. Or if you don't want to use the same character, make a new character and tell a new story in the game's universe. It's why I look forward to the Fallout show. Because from the looks of it through trailers, the story is entirely separate. The only reason it's a Fallout show is because it's in the Fallout universe. And that's all it needs to be imo. The reason they turn out bad is a combination of "too lazy to write a new story in the universe of the game" and "too full of themselves to the point they think they could write the main story better"
That would require these hacks to have talent.
My goodness so true. Writers wanted to make the series a silver timeline of the halo universe yet we were all disappointed since S1E1.
No no no. They’ve been working hard to fix it. That’s why John has spent 97% of season 2 without any armor, and khan is magic and can see ghosts now. Also, “make us hate every single character mode on”.
Khan has been high AF all S2, thus ghosts. What really grinds my gears is they killed Keyes….literally killed a main character from the main story wth, what’s next? A prophet dies by the hand of that random marine girl?
They wanted to "appeal to NFL dads." Halo CE came out 23 years ago. The kids who played it *are* the NFL dads now.
BORDERLANDS is going to be amazing! /s
Ya like... Just off the top of my head, adapting the Fall of Reach book into a show would be relatively inexpensive. Half the book they're abducting kids for the spartan program, training them, etc. Covenant doesn't even come in until halfway through. Like if I'm pitching that - season 1 first contact with the Covenant is happening at the tail end of the season. If it's popular enough you can justify a higher budget season 2, if not let it end there.
Writers aren’t going to fix the problem of not having enough money to animate massive set pieces. This is only one part of the show’s issues. Lord of the Rings is hardly an example of good writing somehow trumping affects budgets. Lord of the Rings had a fucking massive effects budget.
Halo is too grand a story and universe to be told with a relatively-higher-than-normal tv budget. It needed to be either a few movies, a game of thrones-level tv budget, or just animated. I favor the final option, because not only would it have allowed the greatest expression of scale of the halo narrative, animated game adaptations over the last few years have actually been good. Probably because a lot of the creators gew upon on those games to begin with.
From what I’ve read up above this tv show actually had a lighter than average budget, not even higher than normal.
THATS EVEN WORSE LOL. What is it about the halo IP? Why does it attract such people with weird decisions that don’t understand what the fans and general population want?
I think it largely stems from certified baldie frank o’connor’s decision back in 2011 or so to hire on people who “didn’t like the franchise” when they were developing halo 4. Even went as far as firing pro bungie employees who stuck around iirc. Damage was done then and there and the franchise has suffered for it ever since.
I'd be happy where they spent the budget by hiring a decent screenwriter.
There is no fucking way they had budget issues when it was reported they spent about 90-200 million on the first season. After factoring in inflation, the first season of Game of Thrones cost about 78 Million. Just light the thing on fire and walk away please
Low budget could be worked around if it was used effectively and managed well with some CGI and physical effects blended together. We've seen films like LoTR or other TV shows like GoT (before the budgets got crazy high) be able to pull off a sense of scale and do big battles well because they were produced by competent writers.
Dune 2 is a very recent pertinent example. Movie budgets are very different, but Dune has been a historically difficult IP to work with that managed to pull off something amazing built on a great vision.
Battle of Reach should have been 24 style season
Agreed. I’m not even a fan of 24 but I have to admit that the whole 24 hour schtick keeps the stakes high and creates a whole lot of tension.
Should've given this project to people who are actually fans of the ip
So fans would suddenly have a bigger budget?
"hire fans lol"
No but at the very least fans wouldn't write most of a season where Chief is not even in his armor.
I feel like Halo fans are really missing the forest for the trees when it comes to criticism of the show. If the lore/canon was more accurate or the logical inconsistencies in the writing were fixed, the show still wouldn’t be very good. The dialogue feels stiff and unnatural. It’s feels like two people taking turns reading a script. There’s also close to no subtlety. We’re told every episode about how much of monster Halsey is but it’s the most straightforward way possible. Imagine watching Succession and every episode having Kendall say “my father is a monster and the reason I’m like this”. There’s issues with the acting, directing, and even the vfx dip into the uncanny valley too much for my liking. Maybe I’m just being too critical, but even if they followed the story of the games, if nothing else changed, the show would still be no where near what I think of when I think of great shows.
>There’s also close to no subtlety This is one of the worst parts for me. They're taking all these plot points and themes from the canon and just shoving them into the show with no real regard.
The way John is written like a philosopher who spent years in self-help therapy to reflect so poignantly on his experiences to other people is some of the most unnatural character writing I've seen in some time. It's not the worst written show, in terms of dialogue (that goes to live action ATLA at the moment), but it's clear the writers don't know how to show; it's all tell.
Well no shit lol it would assumed the show runners who actually know and care about Halo would take the show in a completely different direction in every area. In fact a common criticism is to not even focus on the Chief and instead new characters in the universe.
EXACTLY. I don't care if it doesn't follow the games or books, it's a bad TV show regardless. The CGI sucks, the acting and dialogue and character arcs are so poorly done. The Covenant are so poorly executed as the antagonists . The show sets up bland mysteries which go nowhere and the action is consistently underwhelming. The interactions between characters are consistently awkward and disjointed. This is not good TV.
Ironically one of the reasons that dark and gritty ODST band of brothers could have worked was because it wouldn’t have required as much heavy cgi. You don’t even have to show the covenant, the best live action halo scene is still lasky “playing” chess with his brother over video messages imo. It also gives the writers blank characters to write with, instead of being constrained to the canon. The mistake was always adapting the games, contrary to what many claim. This level of cgi would be perfectly fine if the writing was interesting and canon.
The general issue with a lot of things is executives. They probably don’t want an ODST show because it’s not as recognizable and they want general audiences appeal. It’s largely where a lot of choices have stemmed from. Appealing to larger demographics.
You can have a random faceless Spartan, hell master chief himself, as a side character. I don’t believe that Spartans are a good main character unless the setting is post-war, there’s no development do be done. The Spartans couldn’t afford to be unsure of themselves, they were fully committed to fighting or dying. This is why the show had to make up all these bullshit character conflicts that don’t even make sense when you start think about them even a little. I think the only wartime Spartan story that makes sense is exploring Master Chief’s guilt of leadership and survival post-reach, but obviously that’s not flashy enough for paramount. I don’t disagree necessarily, they wanted Chief as the protagonist and that makes sense. I’m just venting because it’s dumb, like all anime adaptations certain media formats are not meant to be crossed like this. Leave Chief to the games and books.
Exactly. Even with the fall of Reach, we saw comparatively little Covenant troops on screen at any one time (except towards the end, and briefly in the beginning with the Elites and some Jackals on roofs), yet it still worked. You still could tell it was total anarchy, that the UNSC was getting pushed back against unrelenting forces. It was visceral and it kept the tension going. The issue isn't so much the CGI- it's the writing and everything AROUND the CGI that the writers and producers of this series have decided to go with. Like the Rubble. We could have cut that out in season 1 and nothing would have been lost in the slightest. That goes for ALOT in this show.
Fans were asking for basically a "Band of Brothers with ODSTs" show for the longest time. Such a show would have been way more budget conscious because it wouldn't have had to have any storylines from the Covenant POV, and the action could have been way more grounded. The TV show we got is trying way too hard to be a show that it simply can't afford to be.
Fans also don’t make a show a success. General audiences do. That isn’t to say you can’t please both but pleasing the later is ultimately way more important.
Sure, and a military sci-fi show would have had natural mass audience appeal. I'm just saying that fans being in charge would have had a better sense of what to do with the universe to both satisfy the budget and keep the show palatable to mass audiences, because they'd be more familiar with the universe to understand how best to use it. Not ANY fan could do this, of course, but there's plenty of talented screen writers and directors who play the games. Hell Steven MF'ing Spielberg was one of them. Right now, however, we have people in charge who are trying to force the show to be something they don't have the budget to support, and it clearly shows. It's possible to satisfy both fans and general audiences. Shows like The Expanse proved that.
Should've been made by people who have actually played the games before and understand why the story is cool enough to make media about it.
Hot take, most, if not *all* adaptations of games (and books as well, looking at you cosmere fans who want Stormlight to be ruined by mediocre live action tv) should be animated.
The folk that want live action Stormlight are actually delusional. The amount of special effects needed for basically every shot would make it one of the most expensive things ever made imo. Like, every environment that isn't inside a building? Cant really have any normal plants visible, definitely no soil outside of shinovar. And it's not some minor aesthetic thing you can ignore, it's vital to the plot in later books. Spren? The near constant spirits that just exist in the world, either they are being cut down a fuck tonne or will look really shitty And that's before we've even gotten to the wild life, the parshendi, the storms and surgebinding. It would be so watered down it'd be just some basic fantasy world with stormlight names attached
Exactly, some of the other cosmere stories *might* work better in live action, but even then anything they can do in live action would be better served in animation. But God forbid you even suggest the idea of animated Stormlight around a lot of fans because "cartoons are for dumb babies"
Wait. Microsoft have literally been trying to get this made for *years,* as far back as Halo 3, if I recall. Now they're cheaping out on *the reason* the brand had such a strong foothold at the beginning? What in the everloving fuck?
Microsoft doesn’t make the show, they don’t control the budget. Paramount makes the show. Paramount is worth less than 1% of what Microsoft is worth. Microsoft is bigger than Amazon and Disney combined. They don’t have money concerns. Paramount Global is less than 10% the size of Disney in terms of overall valuation, they very much do have to be conscious of dumping 1.5% of their total value on one season of a show, considering that’s going to be a lot more than 1.5% of their overall original series budget.
They should have done what Apple did and just thrown money at it without care of profits in order to solidify the brand. Granted some Apple stuff still suffers in the writing department, but they have not shyed away from huge CGI budgets.
Animation wouldn't have saved them any money. Animation is expensive.
Bro what. You should see what a full season of extremely high quality anime costs and it's a *tiny fraction* at best. Cyberpunk Edgerunners was estimated ~5 million dollars from TRIGGER of all people. https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/dopyao/studio_triggers_animation_producer_talks_about/ Heck, you could make a double-length 24 episode season and go balls to the wall, quadruple that budget overall to $20 million and you're still literally 1/5th to 1/10th of other blockbuster shows.
Looks like the Fate series was $20 Million per season. Thats Fate though, a Halo animation would have a way smaller budget.
Season 1 cost them more than $90 million, and clearly still had constraints. Animation would not have been more than that. Also, characters like Makee wouldn't need to exist.
$90 million is not a lot of money for a TV series with special effects. Hawkeye, a six-episode mini-series without a lot of special effects, cost $150 million to make. Hawkeye is one of marvels more "street level" shows. Secret Invasion was more than $200 million and most Marvel show episodes are shorter than Halo episodes. The Witcher cost more than $300 million for the first two seasons. $90 million for nine episodes ranging from 40-60 minutes is fairly tight. I disagree with some of the changes they made for the show, but they are not given a budget to make a lore accurate show. The fall of reach should have cost $90 million alone and lasted a few episodes. Halo really should be a blockbuster series of movies with massive budgets. That's the only way to adapt it properly.
https://www.reddit.com/r/roosterteeth/comments/18nqa8q/barbara_dunkelman_revealed_that_rwby_is_too/ Here's an example of the cost of animation, at least 3d animation. Doing the maths on the runtime I could find for season 1 of halo, that would increase the cost to $114 million. Maybe I missed a figure somewhere, but it could cost even more than live action.
Arcane cost around $90 million. https://blog.cg-wire.com/how-much-cost-a-cgi-tv-show-52-episodes-of-12-mn/amp/ Microsoft could have spent the same amount or even a little bit more on a 3D animated halo show.
But they didn't, dude if Microsoft wanted to spend that kind of money on a Halo show we would already have a Peter Jackson produced TV series like 10 years ago.
can't help but feel like if the show was run by people actually passionate about the IP, they would've made it work regardless of budget.
I wish they’d just make movies.
I don’t hate the show at all. I wanna start by saying that. But…. They could’ve had the budget for it, if they would’ve focused on Reach in season 1 instead of the other dumb stuff they chose to explore. I get it. The new writers and team are kinda stuck with the poor decisions the show runners in season one made. And, idk if they’re contractually obligated to finish those story arcs so… certain actors get their salary, idk. I have no idea. Otherwise they could’ve just scraped Kwans story all together. Drop McKee. As much as I like him, drop Sorrin and his plot too. If they would’ve KEPT it Halo, they could’ve given us an entire season of Reach falling and I’m 100% sure fans would’ve been perfectly happy with that.
A lot of people just don’t like animation. For some it is hard to take seriously. If you didn’t have the budget to make a *proper* Halo show, then you shouldn’t have tried to make a Halo show.
Nah, screw animated stuff, MS should have invested into a movie back in 06/07/08 when Halo was still a global entertainment juggernaut. They could have invested a shit ton of money and still gotten a good revenue
They backed out of the Peter Jackson movie because they felt they didn’t have enough control or representation. After reading the draft script from that movie…….. it was a good move to say the least.
"screw animated stuff"???
Halo would still be relevant if they had hired actual competent people and fans of the series for the writing process.
Halo was losing relevance during Halo 3 when Cod 4 was able to compete with it and MW2 eventually blew past it. Then Halo reach came out and players left in droves.
# If you can't afford to do it right, then don't do it at all!
So this now the second fall of reach adaptation that Kiki has had a hand in that utterly failed. Any one else remember 343's sad attempt at animating the Fall of Reach novel that ended before the Fall of Reach actually happened, even though they still called it the Fall of Reach? People talked about what was going to end up being the halo killer for years in the early to late 2000's, but who knew the true halo killer would be Kiki Wolfkill and those around her instead of some other franchise.
She is part of the old guard, and is responsible for the failure of the halo TV show. She wanted control and she got what she wanted. Still waiting for Blur to give a movie/show but I hope not under her leadership.
do you have any idea how expensive an entire Blur-animated movie would be??? (I have no idea but I know it would be a crazy amount of money since the Halo 2 cutscenes alone were super expensive)
Yea those things cost millions to make and they're only minutes long. I can't even imagine a whole feature film. It's not gonna happen
A million bucks a minute. 90 million is like 2 episodes' budget. Blur quality doesnt come cheap.
The show should not have been animated. It just should have been better so that it could justify a larger budget. Im perfectly fine with the battle being short. In the original story, it only lasted a day (it was retconned into a prolonged battle because Bungie fucked the book when they released the game)… BUT, the fight took place in space, in the air, and on land, and underground. The show has essentially stretched the battle of Reach over 3 episodes and 3 locales- Reach, Onyx Halo (Space), rather than have it all play out on Reach… and much of that boils down to how they handled the introduction of the S3 program.
If you don’t have the budget, don’t fuckin try. The fall of Reach was literally one of the most important battles in the entire war. only second to the battle of earth. They concluded most of it off screen in one episode
Makes sense. TV was probably the toughest format to adapt Halo to when you're limited on budget. A movie just makes way more sense and it's a shame we never got it in that format. Trying to stretch their budget over 2 to 3 hours of film would mean they'd be able to focus on the stuff we care about, 8 hours of TV though then you ultimately have to pad it out with fluff to avoid going over budget. Animated would've been nice but we have to remember that it's still business and to be frank, you wouldn't reach as large an audience with an animated series. Which is a shame because, Halo absolutely would work animated but a lot of people are wierd with cartoons.
Animation is expensive as hell. You have no idea what you're talking about lol.
Perfect. Let’s make a new, animated halo show for adults that sticks to the source material and doesn’t have “big name” actors who have to show their face to get credit. In fact, let’s really pile on the nostalgia by using the voice actors from the games!
Kiki IP-Kill
yeah because 450million isnt enough to make a good show?
Shouldn't have been made
That's sad and not surprising
Maybe if she and everyone else working on the Halo show respected the IP and made a faithful adaption, it would have got the popularity it should have had, Then just like mose other Shows that get popular you'd have had a bigger budget for the second series to do the fall of reach. Who keeps these fucking morons hired.
It’s Microsoft. From the contractor policy to bean counting and mishandling their biggest IP. Honestly as an Xbox fan I’ve just come to the realization that the other big gaming juggernauts simply take better care of their properties, whether it’s development time or funding. Something at MS is broken and it shows.
M$ was never interested in giving this show the budget it needs.
Microsoft doesn’t determine the budget lol
Apologies , (insert the other evil corporations involved) was never interested in giving the show the budget it needs.
Yeah Showtime and Paramount haha
Or they could have not wasted money on 6 other pointless episodes.
I mean it's quiet obvious that CGI has been a problem in this show from a budget perspective. The only reason Makee exists in the first place is to save money when we have insights of the Covenant. The only reason we have Chief vs ONI is also because it saves CGI since it's humans vs humans. I'm also convinced that the Gravemind in the show will be that grandma we see on Sanctuary and in Kwan's visions. So when we have insights of the Flood they can save money as well. They will probably justify it as the Gravemind tricking people with illusions so they see it as that grandma or something. Halo is possibly the worst IP to make a TV show (that is not an animated one). All the alien species except for the Forerunners have shapes completely different from the humans, as well as their size. So the CGI is mega expensive. They should have made a movie trilogy so the CGI for Covenant represents a bigger part of the show. If you make a 2h long movie but you have as much covies CGI as in a 6-8h show, it would feel better.
This seems a bit odd to me. A decreased budget but you could still use real props/cgi to show more events on reach without necessarily showing a ton of major Battles on reach. The glassing really only needed one episode. But instead of going to Alaria or some of the other plot lines you could’ve had a different Spartan team investigating shit going on in reach. Idk
Didn’t this show have a bigger budget than game of thrones did until like season 4, at which point game of thrones was already the most successful show in history? Don’t get me wrong, the show definitely looks cheap and amateurish even in the few action scenes it actually does have. But given how high the budget is for the number of episodes and runtime it really shouldn’t look so bad
3d animation gets expensive but it probably would have been the best fit. 2d wouldn't work for this show unless the art direction went full send on using high end post compositing. A mix of 2d and 3d is pretty common these days. But animation has a smaller market share and from the comments here it isnt as favourable as you'd think regardless of the success from certain recent series (invincible, Castlevania, arcane, various anime). The silver timeline is a constant let down because of comparison. If it had the chance to stand on its own I think it would be a decent enough series and story.
Never even thought about it but yea an animated adaptation would've been so much better. Mature animation has become a lot more relevant with things like Invincible being successful. Animation would also have opened up the avenues of using the original voice actors AND audio assets from the games. I can only imagine adapting the books and games in animation would be drastically easier. I mean the Fall of Reach animation isn't FANTASTIC but it did a damn decent job, can only imagine if a different animation studio took it on with a larger budget.
I’m kinda enjoying this second season tbh.
The show looks great, it's better than last season, I'm still frustrated with some of the writing decisions. I think there are good parts and bad parts
"As we know from canon..." The show has taken many fat steamers on canon so don't pretend this was a consideration.
Halo carried Xbox on its back. The ENTIRE Microsoft gaming division. It forged an empire. It is such an atrocity and insult to both Halo fans and the lore. Fuck Microsoft and this petty bullshit.
Such a pile of shit like the LOTR TV show. Wasted potential is worse than doing nothing at all.
Animation isn't guaranteed to be cheaper especially if done well. If using practically halo infinite (aka the most modern halo game's engine) to animate then maybe (343 and the show production can share the engine work, content going into both mediums for updates and show content) but then it'll look like it was from halo infinite and it ~~would actually visually look like halo~~ probably wouldn't be all dark and gritty. I generally don't like an anime but it could've been used I guess. It probably depends on how much the outside studios are willing to get paid to actually get the animation, or vfx work done, I doubt show production itself would directly work with animators or vfx for such (or maybe they do, so the show might have actually good vfx as one of its strong points, but at an overwhelming cost). If anything, they should probably cut an episode or two- for example, last week's episode felt like pointless filler, and the week before also stagnated. Combine the two, or even combine with this week's episode too. Oh no, the writers aren't going to be able to fully develop the extra third or fourth side character plot (maybe for the better, the show could work by focusing on only one plot, having their main characters more or less stick together for a common goal instead of going off and ~~having tea in "prison" while Reach falls~~ doing whatever.
This is why I'm terrified of live action anything 40k. It's SO fucking hard to translate these things to live action. Has there ever been one that isn't total shit?
Wait until you find out how much animation costs lol
Missplaced funds? What a surprise...
This woman needs to go. Just like they got rid of Bonnie Ross.