Halo game co-creator speaks on show: “Not the Halo I made”

We’re living in a resurgence of video game adaptations. The most recent was Halo on Paramount+, a show the streaming platform wants to become one of their new flagship series. Halo adapts the iconic Xbox video game franchise, but only kind of. The show’s producers have stated time and again that it is set in the “Silver Timeline,” aka it’s an alternate version of the Halo universe that isn’t tied to the canon of the games or tie-in novels.

As you might guess, that hasn’t gone over especially well with a lot of gamers, who have grown attached to the Master Chief over the past couple of decades. Halo makes some bold choices specifically with that character, most notably by having him frequently remove his helmet so star Pablo Schrieber can act with his face. It works for the story, but has been a hard pill to swallow for many fans who already had a version of this beloved character in their heads.

Halo co-creator weighs in on the Paramount+ TV show

It’s not just fans who are confused about the choices made by Paramount+’s Halo adaptation. In the midst of a spirited Twitter debate about the show, one fan tagged in Marcus Lehto, who served for many years as the Creative Art Director at Bungie Studios, the company behind the Halo franchise for most of its life. Lehto worked on the first four installments of Halo, so he knows his stuff. “Yeah, I’m not sure where the inspiration for the show comes from now. Not the Halo I made,” Lehto wrote, responding to a fan who claimed the show strayed too far from the heart of the game series.

Of course, on the internet, any small comment will be immediately seized upon, with many seeing this as a validation of their complaints about the show. “I never said I didn’t like it. It’s just so different than the Halo I helped make–like it’s a different universe,” Lehto later clarified.

Whether you liked Halo, hated it, or were somewhere in between, it’s definitely different from the source material. We’ll see where that story leads when the show returns for its second season.

Halo season 1 is available now on Paramount+. Season 2 is expected to start shooting later this summer.

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h/t Gamespot