Halo - US Pace - Paramount+ (***Spoilers***)

fritzelly

Episode 2 is far better (without all the dodgy CGI)

Slydice

2: I think this is gonna be a solid science fiction action show.

It's not that it's changed up and got deeper or grittier.. just that it looks to be holding at it's own level.

The writers I think are unrolling a mystery and building the world and keeping it feeling the same.

Some of the space and tech effects are really good too.

So.. I'm guessing then

Spoiler Warning

This woman with the aliens.. maybe she'll be related to John.. maybe a sister.

The ring that keeps getting mentioned. That reminds me of a trailer for the Halo game of a Ringworld.. dunno if that could be linked.

The aliens don't seem to be out to wipe out humans, seems like they're just on their way somewhere. Also noticed that there seems to be more than one or two races/types of them too.

I liked how Soren (Bokeem Woodbine) brought some humour to the story.

Burn Gorman brings a mean feeling baddie as Vinsher

Varik

Reading now this is fully different than the games, and it's set in the year the games start with the war ending near the end of that year. But in the show the covenant attack on humanity doesn't seem to be to the same level and the insurrection is still going when it should have ended 25 years ago when the covenant attacked. Here it seems a lot outside the UNSC don't even know about the covenant from the first episode while other do.

Spartan program doesn't seem to have been expanded either.

Thought this was going to end with john getting zapped with some other alien whatnot, and then the previously known events unfolding with him arriving at the Halo.

CastorTroy

I guess anyone complaining about him removing his helmet really loved episode 2.

Agent Coulson

Only just recognised that Makee is Charlie Murphy.

Varik

If this was some random book that Paramount could just do whatever they wanted with then I'd not be surprised, but I don't see how Microsoft thought this was a good idea. Unconnected to the games, and Chief is so different.

Homelander

As an absolutely huge fan of the games I actually am finding this pretty good. Yeah, it's very different from the games and while I'd still argue that the actual plot the first game would make an incredible show, being honest I expected that and what they're doing is compelling so far. Still not the show I would've liked; watch "Halo Landfall" or "Deliver Hope" on YouTube to see an example of what a Halo show should look like.

They've been extremely faithful to the art design of the game. They've also nailed some core aspects really well, like Cortana, and I like other new aspects like Charlie Murphy's character which adds a nice layer of intrigue. Iconic characters like Halsey and Keyes present, and presented well enough so far. Pablo is good as Master Chief; once I got past his Mandalorian channeling in the first episode.

Decent job done at putting pieces on the board in a compelling way and it's nice to see a gritty undertone to it as well as shades of grey with regards the Spartans and how they operate.

What really confuses me is how rough and inconsistent the first episode is, particularly the opening scene on the planet - really cheesy with some glaringly bad CGI and horrible sound design and weak direction. Surely other people noticed this as well.

Yet episode 2 and 3 are perfectly fine and look the part of an expensive production. Not sure what that's about - it's almost like the first 10 minutes of the pilot were actually filmed on a limited budget as a "proof of concept" or something and were tacked on.

First half of the first episode I won't lie I was wincing thinking it looked cheap and half-baked, but by Ep3 it'd crawled to an easy 7/10 for me and I was left wanting more. Just confused by how off the first episode is in spots. Thumbs up so far anyway.

Slydice

3: Jeez! The start of this one was a bit dark as I think about it.. killing a kid, surgery stabbing an eye and burning a brain out while the person is alive, followed by burning the body in acid!

Definitely feels like all the mystery around this artifact is to find a that ringworld I remember seeing in trailers for the video game.

After that.. not sure where the show is going.. maybe just a big fight with the Aliens.

Spoiler Warning

That invasion of the human ship by Makee .. well it got across her power but at the same time showed the that the show is bumping up at the limits of their budget. I'd assume they wanted those worm-like creatures a bit .. I dunno.. less easy to see as computer generated?

Varik

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118908616#Comment_118908616

Episode 3 spoiler

Spoiler Warning

Worms aren't her power, they're just another of the covenant species. In the games we usually only see them inside a giant suit of armour moving it around.

Makee's power in the show vs game stuff.

Spoiler Warning

She's not a game character but her power is being able to use forerunners (ancient alien) technology, something that in the games most if not all Humans could do. This is why the covenant went genocidal on humans as their gods/space buddha like us better.

Overheal

Episode 3 took some of the lore and seemed to mate it with some themes from Red vs Blue: Reconstruction (TLDR: 'Is it really a crime against humanity if I do it to myself?'). Really liked it, Cortana's tainted birth will be long remembered I think. John's origin backstory also has significant alteration. Clearly, this character is not just an avatar any more for a Rail Shooter game - badass as that avatar certainly was, and will always be remembered for. And Halsey is being sold off as a bit evil/sociopathic (down to the Evil Scientist Gloves in episode 1), it took the Halo games many sequels to backfill that oh yeah, Halsey was kind of a dick. She was always kind of a dick in the books though, but seemingly not for the reasons as in the show - I get vibes that the Spartan/Cortana program was, originally, Halsey's hairbrained scheme to achieve a form of immortality, but I could also be calling that wrong.

I'm surprised to see all the hate for the show: ranging from 'OMG it isnt Canon' to quips about the CGI being rough in a couple places (eg., Chief when removing his helmet... they use a CGI helmet because, I guess, visor reflection issues?) This is easily forgivable though, the story is reasonably tight and doesn't go exactly where we expect, which is you know, great, because I'd hate to know everything that happens next. It's still a TV show, guys, they don't have an Endgame budget and it still looks like hot **** (that extra budget is usually where you can buy your 10th, 15th, or 20th CGI quality pass). Each season will maybe focus on reusable sets and **** (Already seen the Rubble set a few times now, you don't build a whole cart/rail system for one shot), this is our TV life. It's very comparable to The Expanse so far, so I don't see much cause for alarm here.

I have read many Halo books and played many Halo games and I've been listening to people talk about adapting Halo as a movie since Combat Evolved sold a million copies. I don't have any sense of entitlement to what they are making but I know they've been trying to make this work for, literally, 20 years, (God, we got old), so many people have taken a crack at this including Peter **** Jackson. I'm on board for what they all finally settled on, it's fresh, it has interesting threads, and a bunch of moments that deliver goosebumps and ****.

Yeah I don't see that as a spoiler it was in the trailer: Lekgolo, aka. Hunters, are Worm Colonies, not single creature. iirc Lekgolo colonies bond in pairs, which is why in the games they always adhere to the Rule of 2. The games do a poor job of communicating their real nature, as a bunch of worms holding together bits of armor and a friggin cannon. Expect Chief to showdown with them soon I reckon. Now that they have a lot of the character establishment set up, we're bound to get some more actions sequences soon and casual fans (or really, haters who wanna hate) can quit complaining about its pacing. Makee isn't doing anything special to them.

What really confuses me is how rough and inconsistent the first episode is, particularly the opening scene on the planet - really cheesy with some glaringly bad CGI and horrible sound design and weak direction. Surely other people noticed this as well.

True but this was also the pilot. Not always, but typically with scifi shows the pilot lacks the polish of the remainder of the show, plot holes can happen, etc. (Stargate broke its own wormhole canon in the first 5 minutes. Finally retconned with the re-release, 10+ years later). My single biggest complaint might be not the CGI helmet or anything but a plot hole (explained with bullshit) that the Madrigal forces guns are the same as chiefs etc. but the Elites shields just brush them off - EVEN FROM THE MINIGUN. Of Course, a Spartan using the exact same weapons drops them like flies, because 'weak points.' I only noticed this inconsistency on my 2nd watch, but it does become glaring after that. That's another thing Stargate did too. Serpent Guards used to be bullet proof, until they weren't ('We got armor piercing rounds, sir!'). I can only hope they'll tighten up on their choreography.

Pilots can be greenlit before shows and this is where they figure the most **** out. In the Madrigal sequence I think what they hopefully figured out is that First Person Chief View isn't actually that exciting to watch, and was produced cheaply (Find ILM's Iron Man HUD people, pls lol). But yeah, it shouldn't be confusing that the pilot is a bit rough, many pilots are, and I wouldn't cast a verdict on the show based on the totality of the first episode - that said, the climax of the first episode managed to excite and prove the shows potential, setting up a moment where you didn't know what was going to happen next even when you knew it might have something to do with the MacGuffin (The Artifact), because you didn't know if Silver Team was going to go FUBAR either.

silverharp

first episode was very underwhelming, like a generic CW show. no likable characters and goes downhill from there.

pixelburp

Finally got around to having a look at the first episode, and oof. Naw, not for me. I was bringing in a broad apathy for the games, and a general dislike of the Master Chief aesthetic, but I put that aside for the sake of the episode. Even so, nothing grabbed me and I just can't buy into Generic Military Archetypes as a character set. While the civilian character was all sorts of annoying. Hard pass on this one.

Slydice

So far, I think this show has a big Saturday morning tv show feel to it and it works well if they had gone for it. Just they've included some small amounts of blood, gore and types of violence that I think might push the show into a not-for-kids age range. It's wierd.. they probably could've had a bigger audience, sold more merch, saved on the costs of some violence effects if they had thought it through. It has a lot going for it otherwise.

4: This felt like an episode for the other Spartans and Kwan more than anything else. The bigger story moved a little but not hugely. I will say though that I thought the banter with the Spartans done well. I like the way Kai is developing and thought the one word replies from quips from the others were very funny. For Kwan

Spoiler Warning

it was more of a hardening I guess to the situation she's found herself in. I'm thinking she might end up a fighter for some other group but the big signs for me point to her moving towards the Spartans path or group. Maybe she's not in the right place/time though to train to be one.. just to join the group somehow.

Overheal

It's interesting how the show is exploring the significant but subtle changes by not having your emotional hormones chemically suppressed, how emotions connect us to memories yes but also small things like, the texture of gun oil driving Kai to color her hair, the small talk they've never done before that suddenly opens up the fact eg. hey these Spartans know more than anyone about Covenant language, let's ask them. Emotionally suppressed they have had no reason to volunteer information or speak unless spoken to. The interaction with Miranda was ultimately, wholesome, and there was a moment there she probably wished she had a chemical suppressant (awww).

I don't mind Kwans story but I'm not as invested in it, right not, the way they're telling it. I know we're at the head of a season 1, things are really just getting established for future set pieces. But IDK, it just doesn't feel very cohesive, especially because the audience knows or at least deeply suspects she is on a Fools Errand to rebuild her dads rebellion, it's hard not to regard her as foolish, it makes it more difficult to relate to her right now. But I have enjoyed her so far.

We can see why this is a hit and miss thus far, it doesn't have the highest budget, it looks great, but inconsistently, and there is thus far a lot of exposition dump, in a show IP that should be largely about kinetic action, given the source material. I think we will see big payoffs soon, and headlines about the show have gotten steadily more positive over the last couple weeks.

Overheal

Makee (Charlie Murphy) is great, but I also see a lot of fanboi hate against her character, eg. "ugh, Chief could snap her neck how is that a confrontation." Video game superfans forget, she has 2 Lekgolo colonies (and, a whole Sanghelli battlecruiser + compliment) bodyguarding her. Again, these goombas are horribly undershadowed in the video games - and in the video games, they are mini boss fights. The show has already demonstrated their potential right out of the booklore, they aren't bound to armor, and in a REAL fight, they could discard part or all of the armor in an instant, or operate as 100s of individual targets, or one Kaiju-like target. That has never been reflected by the games, and why would it: very hard to code, script, would be buggy as hell, and not always fun, the design of the games is Bound to making sure the player is having fun in a gameloop. Also, the 2002 Xbox had ZERO hope of doing the GPU/CPU chugging for such a potential game entity (NPC AI loops for 100s of worms per frame... ew), it would have brought the system to a crawl which was optimized to play against, IIRC, usually 16-64 targets in scene at any given time, and performance suffered when Flood spores/mites spawned in (their AI loop was the simplest of all, worms would be way more so, they have to work in Formations and hold Shapes to make sense).

The show isn't tied to that, and I think they have a golden opportunity to reframe these enemies in a way that can't or hasn't been reflected in the games like that and I think the show will suddenly start clicking with a lot more game fans (The show has to start showing game fans things the games never have, or could); to date what we've seen is, great, but it's also all reproducible by playing the games and for a lot of viewers all they feel like they've seen is one short intro mission and then like 3 episodes of cutscenes (which is the wrong way to think about it IMHO but I'm a trekkie not an xbox superfan)

CastorTroy

I know why they're filmed that way but I do always find it strange when people in tv shows and films have memories of themselves from a third person perspective. Though when he started moving around the house it reminded me of Robocop when he walked around his old house, stomping included.

You would think with their technology, they would have some way of finding something buried that doesn't involve digging a load of holes.

I don't think the other 2 Spartans will remove their chips but Super-Starbuck will go rogue.

I know it says "Spoilers" in the thread title but I would assume that's for the series. Any chance of marking game talk in spoiler tags? I know it's not copying the plot but I'm sure some of the stuff is from the games.

B.A._Baracus

I am actually really enjoying this show so far. By the time the episode is over you are left wanting more.

fritzelly

That was a decent episode - the alien cgi still leaves a lot to be desired tho

McDermotX

How bloody cheap did that look ?

Suppose at least there was some action. Still very much stuck in the mire.

Agent Coulson

The CGI is below even SYFY standards at times

Slydice

5: Now THAT! was a fight!

Definitely to my mind, this show is locking in as Saturday Morning TV but with the not-for-kids age range stuff included.

Spoiler Warning

Yeah that was totally cool how he managed to swing the one-on-one fight to grabbing a fighter style ship to crashing it into the bomber/tank style ship.

Definitely a bit of 😲 when he kicked down through the aliens face.

Then this huge Alien who dropped to collect the artifact! If covenant have a bunch of them! Uh oh!

More of the back story and side stories explored.

At this point it looks like the covenant are going to get their story developed

Spoiler Warning

and use this artifact for whatever they need it for .. and so get some kind of win

For the quality of the effects.. like I've said.. they've kept their look and feel consistent since episode one so it's not like they've spoofed. They've definitely hit their budget limits repeatedly.

Homelander

With regards the budget, this is absolutely not a low or mid budget show. It's reported the season cost $200m so you're talking megabucks by the standards of TV, and this regularly looks like a show with a budget a fraction of that so I do find it baffling at times.

Having said that I'm enjoying it and it has its moments. Ep5 was superb fun.

Slydice

doubt it has $200m

haven't seen any solid figure for a budget except wiki putting it around 90m

Homelander

That's fair enough I think, there are different estimates and possibly the larger figure was including marketing and other non-production costs but even if it was $9-10m per episode. The show looks far below that very often. I say very often because it looks the part a lot of the time. It's the inconsistency is jarring.

At $10m per episode, that's roughly still double the cost of say, The Expanse....which looks not only far slicker and better despite having a metric ton of CGI, but is also completely consistent.

Again not crapping on the show, I genuinely do like it, but there is glaring inconsistency. I think part of it is possibly down to weak direction, which emphasizes the weak CGI.

First episode is a good example. There's some awful CGI in there, but it's compounded and made truly noticeable by bad and tacky action choreography.

fritzelly

Look at Boba Fett - 14 million or so per episode - had even worse CGI, one particular scene was like something from the 70's

Yet some shows can seem to do amazing stuff with very little budget

Slydice

This show is definitely not hitting the level of special effects that it feels like it wants to.

Feels like they've got two sides of budget to cater for on it because they've got space and tech and action scenes to pay for and then on the other side they've got practical effects to build their off-planet sets.

It's hugely noticeable to me where the practical side is and separately where the computer generated sides are.

Overheal

At $10m per episode, that's roughly still double the cost of say, The Expanse....which looks not only far slicker and better despite having a metric ton of CGI, but is also completely consistent.

The expanse spends its budget on the practical ship sets and ferrying your wan off to fields to commiserate about politics in the wind. I don't think that's an accurate comparison, there's a lot different between the CGI they're doing (newtonian spaceship battles, clips thereof) and the gritty explosions everywhere aliens everywhere worm aliens everywhere action this show contends with. No two animation houses will get it quite up to everyones standards either: they could go completely michael bay and you wouldn't think 'wow such realism' you'd think wow what was that blur. I don't know how much more polish people thought it needed though - did you see that Brute? The Expanse doesn't rely on CGI characters at all (with perhaps extremely limited, pointed exception - but that was fairly mechanical, unless you count also floaty lights)

There are only estimates online, but no hard facts about what the Expanse cost to produce.

sioda

This is starting to grow on me tbh. Yes it's slow and the CGI is dodgy but it's getting better.

How many EPs are we getting?

fritzelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118990029#Comment_118990029

9

GottaGetGatt

No Boring Kwan Storyline. Good Episode.