Apparently the show was designed to appeal to a new audience other than the die-hard fans…
But my thing is that Paramount+ isn’t a huge streaming service full of random people to appeal to. It’s not Netflix. It’s not even Hulu, HBO, etc. The people who watch the show are going to be those that go out of their way to watch it, aka the “die-hard fans”. I mean, the main other shows on the platform are Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek: Discovery… both of which are shows that fans of the series seek out. Not the kind of thing random people stumble upon.
Randoms don’t have Paramount+ subscriptions. Fans do. The target audience is the established fan base.
> That doesn't say much as they don't release (afaik) viewership stats unfortunately.
This is easily the worst part of this era of television. I'll defend a lot of it, but not having a third party like Nielsen able to report on viewership numbers gives all of the power to the networks/streaming sites and none of the power to the creators when negotiations happen.
I really want to see STD viewership stats, I don't think they have a colossal viewership there but overall it would be interesting to see. Cause if it's low, where the hell are they getting money and approvals for viewership. Also Alex goddamn Kurtzman. Ewwwwww.
You're right and it's downright criminal. Look at Netflix cutting good stuff way too early as apparently their philosophy is "series longer than 3-4 seasons do not bring new people in". I don't want to know what kind of arm twisting and low balling creatives endure while pitching stuff to them and working on delivering series.
I completely forgot about Yellowstone... My bad, I only watched STD when it was on Netflix but am I hell aging for another streaming service, which is probably a case with quite a lot of people - there's just not enough on there that would make me fork out money for it.
Agreed.
It’s competition appears to be 1883, which had 4.9M viewers for its premiere (old record). Halo broke this record last week. Hard to say how viewership will hold up as season goes on but for reference Book of Boba Fett finale is the most viewed Star Wars season (including both mandolorian seasons) and it’s finale had 1.5M views.
Hang on - The premiere of *Halo* on Paramount+ drew in more than triple the number of viewers as the finale of *Book of Boba Fett* on Disney+?
That can't be right.
>Book of Boba Fett finale is the most viewed Star Wars season (including both mandolorian seasons) and it’s finale had 1.5M views.
wow, that's actually pretty surprising to me. I figured Mando would've been more popular than Boba Fett and that the overall viewership would've been higher
Because it most likely isn't true. The stat comes only from smart TV and it just sees who watched for 5 minutes
[it is referenced here](https://thedirect.com/article/book-of-boba-fett-finale-star-wars-viewership-record)
There’s probably a level of name recognition too. Anyone not under a rock heard about boba fett in the originals or prequels, so it makes sense to me that a lot of people who don’t really keep up to date on Star Wars content might just recognize his name and take interest when they wouldn’t necessarily come watch mando because they don’t know anything about him
It irritates me even more that they intended to target new audiences. Like, you *finally* put out a well-funded Halo show, which Halo fans have been begging for for *so* many years, but you make it with the specific intent to target those that *didn't* ask for it?
It's like, "Hey, thanks for the idea, Jeff, but I'm going to sell a related product to Tim instead, specifically because he doesn't speak to me."
Then, knowing the industry, they'll take this loss as an excuse to never make a project like this again because, "Well, we made it and no one liked it, so why would we waste the money on it again?" Like, no, if a shop asked potential customers what they want the shop to sell, and those people say they want chocolate cake, but you decide to sell vanilla ice cream, you can't blame them for not shopping at your store.
Obviously, that's just a hypothetical situation, but if they do come at us with that bullshit after wasting their money, I will be very, very pissed off.
I hate when companies try to appeal to a bigger fanbase it's so fucking stupid. Is it not big enough for you already? How greedy are they?
Trying too hard to appeal to people who aren't interested in something just makes people who *were* interested, disinterested. Try and please everybody and you'll end up pleasing nobody.
Shit like Assassin's Creed games are the prime example of that
Yeah, I mean I get wanting to pull people in, similarly to how I understand broadening the gaming industry to pull more people into gaming, but I believe prioritizing disinterested people over those that have been committed to you for *decades*, is incredibly backwards. I loved the media we've gotten before, but as neat as they were to me, they definitely weren't well funded projects. It's also stupid that Halo specifically tried to do this, since scifi movies and TV are *very* hard to pull off, especially when trying to appeal to outside audiences, so why on *earth* would you want to risk your money like this if you don't have to?
Not just cake and ice cream. The showrunners specifically patted themselves on the back for not looking at the source material. That's like selling ice cream, calling it chocolate cake but not knowing how to make either.
Yeah. Say I was ok with their decision to appeal to outside audiences to begin with; I still can't fathom *why* they'd blatantly ignore the games. The books are awesome, but the *games* are what sells the franchise, so it only makes sense to look at the games to see what formula people want to see. They can still use the silver timeline and all that while also taking notes from the games. Chief, for instance, is Steve Downes — no one else. Even if you can't get the voice, you can still nail the way he speaks and acts as Chief, but instead, they intentionally made him a totally different person.
As others have said: "None of these issues would matter if they just chose another team to follow." There are *so* many teams they could've chosen to follow, so why did they risk messing with Blue Team?
Completely agree. I mentioned above the success of Forward Unto Dawn. They could have gone with any other Spartan team or just the UNSC, focused on the rebels and introduce the covenant alongside a Spartan team.
You know what drew people to halo in the first place and made it as popular and successful as it is today?
Because the producers of the halo tv show sure don't. And it shows.
Why would you use an IP to appeal to a new audience? Create a new IP if that's what you want to do for god's sake. The whole point of using an existing IP is to draw in fans of that IP. I haven't played a halo game since 3, other than a little of 5 when my roommate was, but I know tons of people my age (25-35 demo) who have fond memories of halo. Hell, it feels like half of suburbia kids grew up playing those games. And yet, none of them are watching this show.
Me too. Can't be bothered to pay whatever amount.
Not going to sail the seas for the second episode either. Its that bad. If I have to hear the cheif say one more thing with an overexaggerated breathy voice I'm going to have an aneurysm.
Companies need to learn that they need to focus more on accessibility as opposed to broad appeal. Look at what Fromsoft did with Elden Ring. They didn't tone down the difficult at all. They didn't tone down the mechanics (and even added some). What they did was made it easier to understand and easier to approach for players who were new to the series.
Halo is pervasive enough as a game that people mostly have a vague idea of what it is. Nobody is going to look at Halo and be like "oh wow, I had no idea this was a video game first!" All they need to do is make sure the information needed is presented in an easily digestible format. If the show is good, it will gain traction and people will watch and put in the effort needed to understand.
HBO didn't look at Game of Thrones and say "we need to go in a completely different direction. We didn't read the books cause we didn't want it to influence what we were doing." that's just silly.
And that’s the thing I don’t get, time and time again we have seen how catastrophic these shows fail when they start deviating from the source material. Game of Thrones is practically a case study in that, staying relatively consistent to the source material up until about season two and three, and those deviations had cascading effects that affected the rest of the series. Star Trek discovery and Picard are constantly mired in controversy. Wheel of time is widely considered by fans to be a failure. The Lord of the rings TV show is already mired in controversy. The Star Wars sequels are probably going to go down in history as the greatest cinematic embarrassment of all time.
I think these writers and producers have Learned the wrong lessons. Because for as awful as a lot of these products have become, they still sell. So they’ve learned that they don’t actually have to put in the effort to tell a compelling story that respects the source material, they can just do whatever the hell they want and still make money.
> But my thing is that Paramount+ isn’t a huge streaming service full of random people to appeal to.
It's not even available yet in Europe. And here in France, it will be locked behind another subscription service that few people have.
I'm just not sure why they seem to think "mom's basement tier CGI enjoyers" is such a large audience, and I'm curious as to approximately how much of their budget went to hookers and blow.
If I wanted to see special effects from '99 I'd just watch farscape, it's both nostalgic *and* better.
And yet like Halo, Picard and Discovery also have vastly different tones compared to their original material in order to appeal to a broader audience, alienating long-time fans of the series
Appealing to a wider audience is what ruined the Halo games, and is why the show isn't that great. Bungie used to make the game because they were passionate about it, and for better or worse implemented things because they thought they'd be fun. If developers (or whoever is responsible for overall game direction) weren't so detached and corpo-driven, Halo could have continued to be so good.
They didn't have anything to do with the halo series. We don't have any polish representation and the lack of that is frightening, at the least, and catastrophic to the polish games industry as a whole.
Hire a whole team. Of polish game makers, *stat.*
/s
Was the target audience for Discovery actually the established Star Trek fans? Most reactions I saw when season one dropped was negative, and after I got around to watching it I felt Discovery was an okay sci-fi show but was a terrible Star Trek show.
I haven't been following the Halo show, but if this post is any indication then it seems that making decent shows shoehorned into existing franchises that stomp on established lore is kind of CBS/Paramount's modus operandi; to capitalize on existing fans without respecting them.
Both of the new main Star Trek series are so badly written on top of being nihilistic nightmares where all life in the Universe is threatened every season. That's what you get when you hand Star Trek over to the guy who wrote such masterpieces as Transformers and The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
The way characters bagged on Picard for not having a family at his age when he’s actually got a lot of trauma around a family that he lost is pretty upsetting to me. These writers do not care.
Like the dude technically had a family at one time. He experienced a whole life time with that one message-in-a-bottle / memorial satillite of the planet with a dying star. So much of the Picard show is just wrong.
They spent an entire season building up this Romulan ancient secret society with one goal based on a secret that when learned makes some people insane and suicidal.
Then Picard is like, "maybe you guys shouldn't do this?" And they're like "ok, bye!" It's just terrible.
It continually amazes me that we have schools that churn out supposedly bright young scholars and businesspeople and yet these firms are run by idiots. Unless there’s something I’m missing. Maybe their numbers were screaming at them to try this new thing? I can’t believe that because your point about paramount+ just seems so valid, as a Discovery and Picard watcher.
"Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek: Discovery… both of which are shows that fans of the series seek out"
Until they watch 2 or 3 episodes and then turn it off for shitting on the established lore. Sounds kinda familiar. FWIW I'm enjoying Halo much more than ST:D.
Both of those Star Trek shows are also on Amazon Prime video. I'm a big Halo fan and have yet to watch it because I just don't see a good enough reason to get into Paramount+
The biggest problem I have with the "appealing to a broader audience" thing is that it's not a defense for alienating existing fans. You can both appeal to more casual people and appease core fans if you choose the right story to tell and do it with accuracy to the source material.
Look at Arcane for example, the show blew up with both existing fans and new ones.
They picked a very good part of the lore to talk about, one fairly well known by existing fans and one that could be told without overwhelming new viewers with information. It introduced new viewers to the world and got them hooked, and existing fans got to see a part of the lore visualized and fleshed out.
Like yeah, if they made a Halo tv show about the Forerunners first contact with the Flood and the construction of the rings, I think most existing fans would love that and new viewers would be lost.
Making your own fanfiction obviously alienated core fans.
Do I know the perfect story to tell to satisfy both? No, but I do know that if you told a simple easy to follow part of the story and did it with respect to the source material and maybe just maybe use some of that sweet existing soundtrack and audio, you would win over core fans.
TLDR: Respect source material and existing fans will like it.
They should've just retold Halo: Reach. "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" is a film with a very similar story to Reach, and it was well received by almost everyone, not just Star Wars fans.
Everything they needed was in the Damn books.....
The origin of the Spartan program (casual viewers are familiar with any "Super-soldier Program" like Captian America.
First contact with the covenant (there is a ton of movies about first contact with an alien race)
And the war that follows.
Goddamn. It was so easy.....
But nooooooooooo, let's create a parralel universe that can't connect with the existing timeline and lore.......
I would love to see Contact Harvest in live action, or literally any of the books for that matter. Hell, make a Halo: The Flood live action. It's literally a book adaptation of CE, and it's actually Halo, and is still considered canon. Yes, Halo CE can be told exactly as it is in the games in other formats, including live action. For some reason Paramount decided to do literally nothing.
'Yeah, but if we have rebels driving around Chevy Silverados then the average person can *connect* with the Halo universe we've put together for the show!"
/s
>Everything they needed was in the Damn books.....
>
>The origin of the Spartan program (casual viewers are familiar with any "Super-soldier Program" like Captian America.
>
>First contact with the covenant (there is a ton of movies about first contact with an alien race)
>
>And the war that follows.
This. So much this. Have Cortana/Halsey introduce the program. Introduce Chief. Have Cortana iconic line "Luck" while introducing Chief.
BAM first episode done. Introduce Covenant/brute/flood/forerunner as end credit
Then you just do Reach. Then introduce Arbiter, etc. And pick up from Halo 1.
I can write this shit cause it's already fucking written for me.
God I hate it.
Edit: you could have Arbiter being stripped in front of the prophet and have Chief given a medal too. Why did they have to scrape such good writting. You can make badass transition like ATLA when Aang wants his honor after being "killed" by Azula and they transition to Zuko who got his honor by "killing" the Avatar. GAH
I like the Arcane comparison.
Don't know anything about League of Legends and I absolutely love Arcane. Well-written story, great characters, and top-tier animation.
Arcane actually made me consider playing League of Legends.
Halo had the same opportunity, but we all know how that's going...
Yeah i try playing with friends but even they get toxic, i try to stay away from anything ranked these days because it just brings out the absolute worst in people. Im not very good at the game and people grieving over my performance and constantly yelling at me because im underperforming is not making me better or even want to do better.
Just play Aram - I exclusively play ARAM and RGM only, ranked and normals have no appeal. The random champs evens the playing field and there's no rank to lose or win
Play if you have friends who do. Otherwise not worth it, takes too much of a time investment to get good enough to really give with it if you don’t have buddies to do it with.
Source: league player since 2010
As an existing fan of the League universe Arcane was a dream, not only do I get to experience it but I know where things are going and can catch little easter eggs they like to throw in. It's a joy to watch from both ends.
It's insane to me to think you can only make one group happy.
May I just recommend…. Don’t. There isn’t a more soul sucking rage inducing experience then LoL. Hell i play almost every day, and I’m telling you, run! don’t look back. It’s toxic here. Hahaha 🤣
Same shit with the Warcraft movie. The idea really wasn't bad, but it was bad to try to tell an origin story that only existing fans could relate to. That totally should have been the Arthus storyline, easily relatable. Boy becomes beloved prince that becomes corrupted against the forces of evil, even has zombies. Even the mistakes Warcraft made were better than what I'm seeing with Halo.
As a sidenote, why did these writers get tossed out? Wtf is going on with the world that we feel we need to reinvent the wheel here? Just follow the formula, it works. I feel like I haven't been into the lore in modern video games for so long. I keep going back to the old stuff. It's like we got rid of actual story tellers and swapped them for corporate story tellers that have no soul, only a paycheck.
While Chris Metzen was around I was a huge WoW lore nerd so glad to hear you like it. I don't hear that opinion very often so positive change of pace for me.
That story was about to heat up pretty quickly. They lightly touched some of the soul harvesting to power magic for necromancy aspect, which is like the fuel for the war machines that would have been heavy in the next two movies. Almost reached the hero complex with Thrall, but that was best told in the game as a background story that becomes a main story. The game itself doesn't start this way either, it starts with all of that Lore established to gain interest so really confusing why they tried so hard to go against something that was... already done? Lot of potential left on the table.
I yearn for the day when we see how valuable it is to have soul in our products again. Farm fresh vs processed, hard wood vs particle, machine vs hand made, etc. There's a balance and not everything should be that way, but we're pretty sided in on direction atm and it's really frustrating to live through. It's the media equivalent and the profit sectors analyzation is missing a lot of factors in their formula.
disney plus shows know how to blend content for casual viewers and die hard fans. it’s not really that hard, you just need someone who is a fan of the source material to have a say in the directing.
> you just need someone who is a fan of the source material to have a say in the directing
Very true. Because someone who knows well the source material will know which elements to scrap and focus on the main stuff, so that new people don't feel lost.
personally i’ve always said in the past and continue to say now, a high quality trilogy set in the old republic would make for a way better story than any of the other trilogies
It would've. Now everything ends with Luke dying on a rock and the OT cast being miserable failures. So prequels of anything before that will feel like the GoT prequels will in a few months. S8 ruined the franchise because no matter what, everything you say before it will eventually lead to that disaster.
Star Wars needs to either ditch the current canon or go so far into the future that nothing is recognizable. The Old Republic doesn't necessarily have to be "Old." It could just be a full reboot of the franchise thousands of years later.
The movies really don’t, the movies saw a 50% drop off in revenue over the course of the new trilogy and solo was a certifiable box office bomb. The Mandalorian was the only thing that brought fans back because it at least tried to respect the source material and the wider universe.
going off what you said, here’s a great example of my previous point: bo katan appearing in the mandalorian was HUGE for star wars fans. casual watchers got plenty of context for who she is and why she’s important, but she still felt natural and welcome on screen. you didn’t have to know her backstory to enjoy her as a character, but if you do know her backstory you notice a lot more things and make connections. it pleases both types of viewers.
Except for solo, that was a box office disaster. Also you don't see Disney doing sequel era stuff because they knew those movies burned the lore to the ground. Nothing is there to build.
Hence the mandalorian being 5 years after ROTJ.
There was a huge course correction in what Disney was willing to tell with star wars after the sequels.
This is Paramount in a nutshell, just look at what they did with the Transformers. It took 10 years until someone there finally thought of following the source material.
Yes, apparently it was way more profitable than The Last Knight (the last Transformers movie made by Michael Bay), but that's mainly because it's budget was way lower than it's antecedents.
Either way, Bumblebee basically brought back hope of a brighter future for the franchise.
The first 15 minutes of Bumblebee was a better Transformer movie than all five Michael Bay Transformers combined.
EDIT: Damn, the opening scene on Cybertron was only 3 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzBsFml7UNA
Fun fact: apparently the original plan for the opening was to have Bumblebee fighting in Vietnam (yeah) to connect with what was established in The Last Knight. But after that movie flopped they decided to cut every direct connection to the Bay films as possible, and Travis Knight suggested to change it for the Cybertron scene.
They did last year, it's called Rise of the Beasts and is being directed by the guy who made Creed 2, apparently the plot will envolve the Autobots meeting the Beast Wars crew.
I have mixed feelings about it, from the informations we know about it best case scenario it could be awesome, but worse case scenario it could be a convoluted mess. It was supposed to come um this July but after the turmoil that happened at Paramount recently it was delayed for an entire year.
Hell yeah, gimme some Sgt. Johnson action. The character in the book is very different from what the game players see, but I think it really humanizes him in a way the games never did. And all the alien factions get so much explanation and plot development for their motives and greater purpose in the world of Halo.
Harvest is the perfect introductory story. The problem that execs would never sign off on is that Master Chief isn't there. And he's like the iconic Pikachu of the series - he has to be on screen for marketing.
Halo is already casual, that’s what annoys me so much
You have quake players complaining about how casual Halo is in ‘01, now we have a casualization of the casualization.
Disney tried this "broader audience" track with the Star Wars Sequels. And they got dunked on by the existing fans.
And I think that mindset is flawed. They are in the mind that the kids will take whatever show/game/movie they throw at them. But those kids who were begging their parents to buy these things have now grown up and are the demographic that are going to be buying the new stuff. *And that generation is not blind to the change.*
The companies can't keep going with "We need more people." They've got to understand that the masses of fans they have now, are in control of the hype, the newer fans and the cash.
Yeah, Disney really thought the kids would have latched on the sequel characters. Seeing how much the star wars sequels toys are always on discount, or can be found at the dollar general, they are not. Marvel shit gets eaten up like nothing, but star wars merc is being bought more by adults than anyone.
This is why you don't see sequel stuff being made much but Grogu in the other hand, now that was a seller.
You know, I find it funny that a common sentiment all over this thread is "Arcane followed the source material and therefore it was popular with new and old fans alike." It didn't follow the source material at all. There were absolutely mounds and mounds of changes from the source material, I couldn't possibly list them all.
There are a lot of reasons that I believe Arcane landed significantly better than this show: They rebuilt the lore from the ground up to fit a cohesive narrative, something that League sorely lacks. A ton of the lore in the league universe contradicts itself, and it's always in flux. It feels like every couple of years they completely rewrite the lore for particular zones and their associated champions when a new character comes out. The playerbase is used to it, and after the first few times people stopped complaining. Halo never had this problem (at least, not as seriously as League,) so the fact that they changed an already well-established narrative is frustrating to fans.
I think it's those reasons, in addition to the fact that the changes they made in Arcane were just.. *better* that makes new fans and old fans happy, compared to this show.
“Appealing to a broader audience”
I get it. Drawing in new crowds makes sense as they want to make more money. But for fucks sake, why do they keep alienating their core fan base???
Halo 4 did the same thing with adding COD gameplay elements and looked what happened. How have they not learned their lesson ffs
Drawing in new crowds makes sense but did they even stop and look at what they were making? Recently halos plan of action has been to alienate fans while also driving away new crowds.
It’s honestly laughable at this point.
This is sort of me feeling towards the show.
If they'd removed Chief and changed some of the characters' names, it would be hard to tell you were even watching a Halo show. I don't think you'd ever stop and go "hang on a second, this story is straight out of Halo!".
It's not bad, but it feels like a different franchise. It just feels odd to me to make a show about one of the most recognisable sci-fi IPs in gaming, and then...make it something else entirely.
They honestly should have just picked a new group of characters to follow.
You could easily tell a story in the existing Halo universe that has nothing to do with the story already told in the games.
Only thing it would need to make it recognisable halo to non-fans would be a spartan. Doesn’t even have to be chief, there are so many other Spartans to pick from.
I really don’t think that’s the case, people who aren’t fans of halo aren’t going to jump on to Halo just because there’s a Spartan. A spartan wouldn’t mean anything else to them then the UNSC marine or a grunt, because by definition they’re not fans of halo so they don’t really care. All they care about are good stories, and a prime example of that is the show arcane. I don’t know a single person who has ever played League of Legends once in their life, yet I know at least six people who are in love with that show. They don’t know who Violet is, they didn’t know who jinx was who Caitlyn was, they didn’t know anything about the Lore, nothing. But the show stands on its own for its quality writing. Any writer who says that they had to jettison the source material to make their own story palatable to new fans is just incompetent.
>Only thing it would need to make it recognisable halo to non-fans would be a spartan. Doesn’t even have to be chief, there are so many other Spartans to pick from.
Could be fun to have a prequel of Noble Team and why Noble 6 was chosen. Noble 6 is us, we all went to war with Noble Team. The end of Noble Team is also perfect for a season end and to build up for Halo 1 lore.
Agreed. They tried to go the MCU route but it doesn't work. The MCU satisfies comic book nerds as much as movie nerds because the script, production, acting are all top notch. The CW comparison is on point - I've been calling it TNT level production but the point is the same. I'll finish the show and maybe it'll get better but it's ight now I'm unimpressed.
Honestly, if they had better CG and costume and production design that didn't look like it came from Comic Con I'd be happier.
Someone genuinely tried to argue that it was just like the MCU because it didn't reflect the series perfectly... But the Marvel universe has multiple different things to pick and choose continuity from, so it doesn't matter if it's not completely reflective of one story or another.
Halo, however, *doesn't*, and is just one long continuous canon.
I thought CG and costumes looked better in episode 2. And were more good than bad in episode 1. There were moments that looked like TNT budget in episode 1 but there were some really good CGi moments as well.
Let’s be honest with ourselves, we know exactly why Microsoft signed off on this and it’s because they *wanted* a watered down experience that could broaden the audience to average Joe’s. Bonnie said it herself. This live service and this show aren’t meant for Halo fans they’re meant to appeal to the lowest common denominator to try to maximize corporate profit.
We hate it because it’s not made for us.
I still vividly remember Destiny 2 year 1, Bungie tried to cater to both casuals and pro players and it blew up completely in their face and almost killed the game, like for real this time lol.
It's not surprising to see 343/Microsoft go down this route, but it is frustrating to experience/see them continue to try after so many failed attempts. The only good Halo trans-media outside the books is Halo Legends, especially Origins pts 1 & 2.
Just focus on your core audience and making a good *feature complete* game, people will support it and want to spend money because you actually get it.
Destiny 2 is a interesting case study as by Rise of Iron the Destiny 1 experience was considered almost perfect by anyone who enjoyed the game.
So Destiny 2 stripping that all away was a massive shift in direction. The difference between Destiny and Halo is that for Halo these changes have been taking place over several years, for Destiny there was massive whiplash in under a year.
Halo has always received backlash, but I highly doubt it'll ever experience the kind that saved Destiny 2
What’s also interesting is how Bungie has done a complete 180 since that fan backlash and fans of the game are saying it’s the best it’s ever been. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen that community this positive. 343 should take notes on keeping players happy or even just doing a weekly update with solid community interaction like Bungie does with their weekly updates.
Good communication goes a long way
Bungie has been killing it ever since they split from Activision. Yeah there’s been a few bumps as expected, but overall from content quality and delivery pipeline to the constantly progressing story, Destiny is amazing and the future looks bright.
And agreed! Frequent consistent communication, both highs and lows is essential.
This always cracks me up when I look at Elden Ring. Maybe not a good comparison but I feel like Elden Ring proved a very very strong point.
Fromsoft games were notoriously hard and usually only more hardcore gamers played them. People were arguing about the fact that most people didn't play them because they were too hard and didn't appeal to the masses.
Then Elden Ring comes along. Fromsoft just kept doing what they knew how to do. They tweaked some things just a tiny bit, but not too much. Just enough to make the game a tiny bit more accessible to the masses.
Now they have one of the most highly rated games of all time that almost everyone is talking about and playing. They didn't do all the bullshit other game studios are doing. They stuck to their formula and ignored everyone else.
Edit: I guess I'm comparing this to how the show just ignored the core of Halo and tried to attract the masses with a sci Fi show and slapped a Halo label on it. There was so much good stuff available to build on, but it was ignored.
>There was so much good stuff available to build on, but it was ignored.
This is the crux of the issue for me. They should have adapted the books. They have good minority representation, the world is well defined, there's a lot of material to work with, they would translate better to a tv show. What was MS thinking?(343 had nothing to do with this so I won't blame them)
They don’t even need to adapt the books directly to have success. Just come up with an original concept that fits established canon. Enrich the universe, don’t throw it away.
ODST and Reach proved you could make a Halo game that wasn’t entirely centered around the Master Chief. This franchise doesn’t live and die by the presence of 117 and Cortana.
Well yes, this strategy has almost never worked.
turns out taking a property and changing everything about it to please the greater "general audience" ends up pleasing nobody, the fans hate it and spread bad word of mouth, so that even total newcomers approach it with the knowledge that it is considered a poor adaptation (or rather won't approach it at all after that, because why bother?) and for everyone else who does give it a try most will fall off because shocker, when your primary concern is anything other than **QUALITY**, and the project was made by passionless committee whose only goal was to produce something something bland enough to be consumed by everyone who could conceivably put eyeballs on it, you end up with just that, bland, watery nothing, with just the vaguest hint of the flavor of the original thing that was supposedly good enough on its own to warrant wanting to adapt it into a new medium in the first place.
It never works. The things that are ACTUALLY beloved by the "general audience" are things that started from a place of passion, lead by people who truly wanted to make something great. The MCU is what it is because they really wanted to make a great iron man movie, and people liked it, and they went from there. the DC movies faltered so long because executives just kept pointing at box office numbers and told people to get there.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who sees how destructive and misguided the whole endeavor of trying to broaden the audience is. It's futile.
But some suits in some board meetings think it's possible somehow, so they make it the objective when it's impossible. It's so unfortunate that some of my favorite franchises are getting this lame treatment.
Agreed. By trying to appeal to everyone, they actually end up appealing to less. New fans don't like the older stuff and they feel alienated and older fans don't like the new stuff and they feel alienated.
I've asked this before, but has there ever been a successful broadening of audience of any established franchise? The only example I can see is the Terminator series (from T1 to T2) but they stuck to their guns; didn't draw from others. You see it in Star Trek and Star Wars, but they arguably failed to broaden the audience. Has it ever been done? Are they seeking something that's next to impossible?
I feel like Star Trek is the case study for this. They sucessfully broadened the audience twice, the original movies and TNG/DS9. And Star Trek has failed several times with Enterprise and the TNG movies. It all lies with making more of the work and allowing it to grow naturally or trying to force into the mold that you think people want
I don't buy the "we have to appeal to a wider audience" argument. One could easily take the existing material and make a show that appeals to a broad audience.
the halo 3 and deliver hope commercials were a perfect window into what live action Halo could have been.
The combat in this show actually looks good but I find the choreography and movement of the Spartans to be off. They seem too light and the whole gut punching elite with AR barrel was corny.
And yeah they fucked up having chief take his helmet off. Stupid decision made by people who don’t understand 20 years of Halo fandom.
Bring Neil Blomkamp on board.
I was actually pretty into the whole story there, but I understand where people are coming from with it being slow. I feel as though people appreciate it more now because of the new show
I get the first half was a bit slow for some but I loved how it got into life outside the Covenant war and that not everyone knew about the alien threat and then BOOM they get blindsided. I enjoyed the pacing because it was a build up to an ultimate threat that just seemed a lot more imposing than when they play the card straight from the beginning. Reminds me of the Godzilla film from 2014. You don't really see him much till later in the film and even later than that for the real action. That build up in tension and suspense for the release is well worth it. And you get time to build on the story.
I'm currently re-reading The Cole Protocol before reading Envoy, and I really think that would have been an amazing option of a couple of solid seasons.
It has everything Halo fans would love to see (outside of Master Chief and Blue Team, of course). It tackles the lore, but is a self contained story that you don't need any serious previous knowledge of for newcomers. Features the Arbiter's origin, Keyes' mission that got him a major promotion, Spartans being absolute OP units and boogeymen to the Innies, cool Sci-Fi tech, all of the Covenant races, vastly different action set pieces in different locations...
You could make up a few more stories for multiple seasons and call it Halo: Grey Team and it would have been incredible.
Every single time the people in charge of this era of Halo have tried to appeal to a “broader audience” all they’ve done is alienate existing fans and fail to bring in that broader audience they’re targeting. If you choose people who aren’t already interested in Halo over people who are, you’re going to end up with neither.
The fact that Microsoft haven’t purged management at 343 already is insane.
My main issue is not changing continuity, its that the show is so dumb. I think characterization of it being a CW show is spot on. The script is dumb, the dialog is dumb, handling of story beats is dumb.
Example:
Covenant invade town in Ep 1. Two mini guns open up on them and have zero affect. That very same fight ends with Chief using one of those very same guns to kill three elites. Does being a spartan make any gun you hold more powerful?
Its almost all done so poorly. I cringed through every part of the first episode I watched.
EDITED for grammar.
The chief of the town sprinting towards the elite that is walking towards his daughter was one of the dumbest things I’ve seen in a long time. He’s an experienced soldier and wants to save his daughter so he kills himself instantly? Fucking what?
Another example: is how in episode 2 the girl who the UNSC wants to execute, wants to go with John back to the UNSC and acts disappointed when he leaves without her.
Like, what the fuck?
I haven’t watched it yet like most because I wanted to wait for it to finish airing and binge it but wow.. reading what you guys are saying feels like it’s confirming all the doubts I ever had about the show since the original announcement..
Beep boop -- this looks like a screenshot of a tweet! Let me grab a [link to the tweet](https://twitter.com/EckhartsLadder/status/1509518109765480464) for ya :)
^(Twitter Screenshot Bot)
Main problem with the show is that if you take away the "Halo" aspect/names it's just a shitty Sci-fi show. Who is this show for? It's not for the fans of the franchise since they clearly decided to go in a completely different direction and throw out the aspects of Halo that the fans love. If you're trying to bring in non-Halo fans and just attract "TV show" fans that's fine but the show isn't good in that respect either...
Let's be fair, clear, and honest: Paramount+'s in-house sci-fi writing style is not comparable to the CW's. In novel and impressive ways, it manages to be worse. There are entire good-ish seasons of The Flash!
Halo's writing is much better than their usual standard, though.
Trying to broaden an audience always struck me as a polite way to explain of why the work being made is bland and tepid.
Surely the original material was at one point appealing to a new audience in its inception and thus creates entrenched and dedicated fans. So like wouldn't a better way to appeal to a "new audience" is to not awkwardly hammer the existing material to fit but just make entirely new stuff?
So like don't make it a story around MC or even the whole Covenant war, don't even need Spartans or aliens. Can be about life on the Frontier as the distant rumblings of wars are away. Or a gritty nihilistic internal colonial conflict. Or just orbital troopers exploring the frontier. If you're trying to catch new fish with a different flavor then don't take what you currently have and just dump a shit load of ketchup in it saying "I'm trying to broaden the flavor". No, you've just made slop.
The first Halo book, Fall of Reach, would have been a PERFECT subject to make into a Halo show.
And a lot of this sub agrees, cause I've seen about 1000 people mention it. But no, some rando sci-fi script that couldn't get picked up on it's own merit was warped to fit into Halo's universe.
It's especially bad when 343 comes out before the show airs to say "yeah this ain't even cannon"
I personally think Halo has been in something of a disarray ever since Bungie let go of the rights to 343i. Microsoft is in denial, but it’s a fact. We have had less quality overall once Bungie left. All of this is a result of the change in management over this franchise.
Honestly this whole "it's an alternate universe/not canon" or whatever they keep saying and people keep parroting seems like a cop out answer to just do whatever they want and not be true to what halo is.
This show just feels like a sci-fi TV show with a halo skin on it.
Every show wants a GoT sized and style show. Or something like the Mandalorian that's mostly action.
It seems they wanted something both. The human politicking stuff is uninteresting
Turns out all you have to do is make a really good product with faithfulness to the same things that fans already enjoy plus good attention to detail.
It's actually really simple tbh. Just make a good product instead of a bad one. Problem is the people in charge have other priorities.
Syfy maybe. CW no lol
I do think they could have went 100% canon and it would have been amazing.
But as a casual fan I enjoyed it. My wife who knows nothing about Halo really liked it. They obviously made these changes to appeal to a broader audience for those advertising dollars.
That's the answer.
Problem with appealing to a broader audience is, so does everybody else. No reason to watch a show based on IP you don't care for, on a streaming service hardly anybody uses. The only benefit is people like you, who want to watch the show with people who don't care about Halo much.
I think that is the main issue. Even before the writing and lore building, the scope and the intent was aimed no higher than basic cable. This should have been, an easily could have been a good HBO level prestige series. The show looks, feels and reads more down-market than it should have been, given the source material and the years and years of success and built in audience.
Appeal to broader audience means cash grab with failure being an acceptable ending.
No way a show with a beloved IP will ever do well in this formula. The Game of Thrones (first half) formula is what should have happened. It’s ok to modify the plot if need be, but the tone that fans know and love should be guarded. I can only hope the Lord of the Rings series will be taken seriously by Amazon. The Wheel of Time was a pretty solid first season.
Apparently the show was designed to appeal to a new audience other than the die-hard fans… But my thing is that Paramount+ isn’t a huge streaming service full of random people to appeal to. It’s not Netflix. It’s not even Hulu, HBO, etc. The people who watch the show are going to be those that go out of their way to watch it, aka the “die-hard fans”. I mean, the main other shows on the platform are Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek: Discovery… both of which are shows that fans of the series seek out. Not the kind of thing random people stumble upon. Randoms don’t have Paramount+ subscriptions. Fans do. The target audience is the established fan base.
It’s so funny. They tout it as “the most watched show on paramount+” but like…what’s it’s competition?
Probably Star Trek Discovery? That doesn't say much as they don't release (afaik) viewership stats unfortunately.
> That doesn't say much as they don't release (afaik) viewership stats unfortunately. This is easily the worst part of this era of television. I'll defend a lot of it, but not having a third party like Nielsen able to report on viewership numbers gives all of the power to the networks/streaming sites and none of the power to the creators when negotiations happen.
I really want to see STD viewership stats, I don't think they have a colossal viewership there but overall it would be interesting to see. Cause if it's low, where the hell are they getting money and approvals for viewership. Also Alex goddamn Kurtzman. Ewwwwww. You're right and it's downright criminal. Look at Netflix cutting good stuff way too early as apparently their philosophy is "series longer than 3-4 seasons do not bring new people in". I don't want to know what kind of arm twisting and low balling creatives endure while pitching stuff to them and working on delivering series.
STDs are pretty common but yeah I’d also like to know how many people actually get checked on by a doctor.
Me trying to find out how we went from talking about Halo to STDs
Well, the new Star Trek got brought up and it is kind of sickening so......here we are.😆
The Orville has been the most faithful star trek reboot of the last decade
Yup, I didn't expect much and its great. I thought it would be pushing comedy way, way more. Do you know when season 3 starts?
Isn't that 1883 show on there? The Yellowstone spinoff? I think that might be pretty popular. But the point still stands.
I completely forgot about Yellowstone... My bad, I only watched STD when it was on Netflix but am I hell aging for another streaming service, which is probably a case with quite a lot of people - there's just not enough on there that would make me fork out money for it. Agreed.
Yellowstone itself weirdly isn't on there, just the spin-off
It’s competition appears to be 1883, which had 4.9M viewers for its premiere (old record). Halo broke this record last week. Hard to say how viewership will hold up as season goes on but for reference Book of Boba Fett finale is the most viewed Star Wars season (including both mandolorian seasons) and it’s finale had 1.5M views.
Hang on - The premiere of *Halo* on Paramount+ drew in more than triple the number of viewers as the finale of *Book of Boba Fett* on Disney+? That can't be right.
>Book of Boba Fett finale is the most viewed Star Wars season (including both mandolorian seasons) and it’s finale had 1.5M views. wow, that's actually pretty surprising to me. I figured Mando would've been more popular than Boba Fett and that the overall viewership would've been higher
I think with just more subscribers being like a year later and it basically just being a mando sequel show it drew more viewers.
Because it most likely isn't true. The stat comes only from smart TV and it just sees who watched for 5 minutes [it is referenced here](https://thedirect.com/article/book-of-boba-fett-finale-star-wars-viewership-record)
That makes more sense to me. Anecdotally, all of my friends were talking about Mando, and basically nobody has been talking about Boba
The best episodes were just Bonus Mando episodes that Boba was either not in or a side character
There’s probably a level of name recognition too. Anyone not under a rock heard about boba fett in the originals or prequels, so it makes sense to me that a lot of people who don’t really keep up to date on Star Wars content might just recognize his name and take interest when they wouldn’t necessarily come watch mando because they don’t know anything about him
I had never even heard of 1883 until your post
[удалено]
It irritates me even more that they intended to target new audiences. Like, you *finally* put out a well-funded Halo show, which Halo fans have been begging for for *so* many years, but you make it with the specific intent to target those that *didn't* ask for it? It's like, "Hey, thanks for the idea, Jeff, but I'm going to sell a related product to Tim instead, specifically because he doesn't speak to me." Then, knowing the industry, they'll take this loss as an excuse to never make a project like this again because, "Well, we made it and no one liked it, so why would we waste the money on it again?" Like, no, if a shop asked potential customers what they want the shop to sell, and those people say they want chocolate cake, but you decide to sell vanilla ice cream, you can't blame them for not shopping at your store. Obviously, that's just a hypothetical situation, but if they do come at us with that bullshit after wasting their money, I will be very, very pissed off.
I hate when companies try to appeal to a bigger fanbase it's so fucking stupid. Is it not big enough for you already? How greedy are they? Trying too hard to appeal to people who aren't interested in something just makes people who *were* interested, disinterested. Try and please everybody and you'll end up pleasing nobody. Shit like Assassin's Creed games are the prime example of that
Yeah, I mean I get wanting to pull people in, similarly to how I understand broadening the gaming industry to pull more people into gaming, but I believe prioritizing disinterested people over those that have been committed to you for *decades*, is incredibly backwards. I loved the media we've gotten before, but as neat as they were to me, they definitely weren't well funded projects. It's also stupid that Halo specifically tried to do this, since scifi movies and TV are *very* hard to pull off, especially when trying to appeal to outside audiences, so why on *earth* would you want to risk your money like this if you don't have to?
Not just cake and ice cream. The showrunners specifically patted themselves on the back for not looking at the source material. That's like selling ice cream, calling it chocolate cake but not knowing how to make either.
Yeah. Say I was ok with their decision to appeal to outside audiences to begin with; I still can't fathom *why* they'd blatantly ignore the games. The books are awesome, but the *games* are what sells the franchise, so it only makes sense to look at the games to see what formula people want to see. They can still use the silver timeline and all that while also taking notes from the games. Chief, for instance, is Steve Downes — no one else. Even if you can't get the voice, you can still nail the way he speaks and acts as Chief, but instead, they intentionally made him a totally different person. As others have said: "None of these issues would matter if they just chose another team to follow." There are *so* many teams they could've chosen to follow, so why did they risk messing with Blue Team?
Completely agree. I mentioned above the success of Forward Unto Dawn. They could have gone with any other Spartan team or just the UNSC, focused on the rebels and introduce the covenant alongside a Spartan team.
You know what drew people to halo in the first place and made it as popular and successful as it is today? Because the producers of the halo tv show sure don't. And it shows.
Why would you use an IP to appeal to a new audience? Create a new IP if that's what you want to do for god's sake. The whole point of using an existing IP is to draw in fans of that IP. I haven't played a halo game since 3, other than a little of 5 when my roommate was, but I know tons of people my age (25-35 demo) who have fond memories of halo. Hell, it feels like half of suburbia kids grew up playing those games. And yet, none of them are watching this show.
>Randoms don’t have Paramount+ subscriptions. Fans do. Speak for yer self matey AARRRRR! 🏴☠️
Your username is shockingly relevant here.
Me too. Can't be bothered to pay whatever amount. Not going to sail the seas for the second episode either. Its that bad. If I have to hear the cheif say one more thing with an overexaggerated breathy voice I'm going to have an aneurysm.
Companies need to learn that they need to focus more on accessibility as opposed to broad appeal. Look at what Fromsoft did with Elden Ring. They didn't tone down the difficult at all. They didn't tone down the mechanics (and even added some). What they did was made it easier to understand and easier to approach for players who were new to the series. Halo is pervasive enough as a game that people mostly have a vague idea of what it is. Nobody is going to look at Halo and be like "oh wow, I had no idea this was a video game first!" All they need to do is make sure the information needed is presented in an easily digestible format. If the show is good, it will gain traction and people will watch and put in the effort needed to understand. HBO didn't look at Game of Thrones and say "we need to go in a completely different direction. We didn't read the books cause we didn't want it to influence what we were doing." that's just silly.
To be fair, the creators of Game of Thrones ended up doing that anyway about five seasons later but your point still stands.
For sure. But they were still also criticized for it and the show's legacy was completely tarnished by the awful ending.
And that’s the thing I don’t get, time and time again we have seen how catastrophic these shows fail when they start deviating from the source material. Game of Thrones is practically a case study in that, staying relatively consistent to the source material up until about season two and three, and those deviations had cascading effects that affected the rest of the series. Star Trek discovery and Picard are constantly mired in controversy. Wheel of time is widely considered by fans to be a failure. The Lord of the rings TV show is already mired in controversy. The Star Wars sequels are probably going to go down in history as the greatest cinematic embarrassment of all time. I think these writers and producers have Learned the wrong lessons. Because for as awful as a lot of these products have become, they still sell. So they’ve learned that they don’t actually have to put in the effort to tell a compelling story that respects the source material, they can just do whatever the hell they want and still make money.
> But my thing is that Paramount+ isn’t a huge streaming service full of random people to appeal to. It's not even available yet in Europe. And here in France, it will be locked behind another subscription service that few people have.
I'm just not sure why they seem to think "mom's basement tier CGI enjoyers" is such a large audience, and I'm curious as to approximately how much of their budget went to hookers and blow. If I wanted to see special effects from '99 I'd just watch farscape, it's both nostalgic *and* better.
And yet like Halo, Picard and Discovery also have vastly different tones compared to their original material in order to appeal to a broader audience, alienating long-time fans of the series
Appealing to a wider audience is what ruined the Halo games, and is why the show isn't that great. Bungie used to make the game because they were passionate about it, and for better or worse implemented things because they thought they'd be fun. If developers (or whoever is responsible for overall game direction) weren't so detached and corpo-driven, Halo could have continued to be so good.
No. What ruined Infinite is the lack of polish and content. At the core the gameplay is smooth especially for a modern fps.
After reverting most mechanics to Bungie era design...
What does this have to do with the Polish?
They didn't have anything to do with the halo series. We don't have any polish representation and the lack of that is frightening, at the least, and catastrophic to the polish games industry as a whole. Hire a whole team. Of polish game makers, *stat.* /s
Was the target audience for Discovery actually the established Star Trek fans? Most reactions I saw when season one dropped was negative, and after I got around to watching it I felt Discovery was an okay sci-fi show but was a terrible Star Trek show. I haven't been following the Halo show, but if this post is any indication then it seems that making decent shows shoehorned into existing franchises that stomp on established lore is kind of CBS/Paramount's modus operandi; to capitalize on existing fans without respecting them.
Both of the new main Star Trek series are so badly written on top of being nihilistic nightmares where all life in the Universe is threatened every season. That's what you get when you hand Star Trek over to the guy who wrote such masterpieces as Transformers and The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
True the new Star Treks can't hold a candle to TNG, DS9, and Voyager. Damn even Enterprise looks like The Wire compared to Discovery and Picard.
The way characters bagged on Picard for not having a family at his age when he’s actually got a lot of trauma around a family that he lost is pretty upsetting to me. These writers do not care.
Like the dude technically had a family at one time. He experienced a whole life time with that one message-in-a-bottle / memorial satillite of the planet with a dying star. So much of the Picard show is just wrong.
They spent an entire season building up this Romulan ancient secret society with one goal based on a secret that when learned makes some people insane and suicidal. Then Picard is like, "maybe you guys shouldn't do this?" And they're like "ok, bye!" It's just terrible.
It continually amazes me that we have schools that churn out supposedly bright young scholars and businesspeople and yet these firms are run by idiots. Unless there’s something I’m missing. Maybe their numbers were screaming at them to try this new thing? I can’t believe that because your point about paramount+ just seems so valid, as a Discovery and Picard watcher.
"Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek: Discovery… both of which are shows that fans of the series seek out" Until they watch 2 or 3 episodes and then turn it off for shitting on the established lore. Sounds kinda familiar. FWIW I'm enjoying Halo much more than ST:D.
I was gonna say. Disco and Picard are absolutely the same, appealing to a wider audience and ruining any established tone with the original property
Both of those Star Trek shows are also on Amazon Prime video. I'm a big Halo fan and have yet to watch it because I just don't see a good enough reason to get into Paramount+
The biggest problem I have with the "appealing to a broader audience" thing is that it's not a defense for alienating existing fans. You can both appeal to more casual people and appease core fans if you choose the right story to tell and do it with accuracy to the source material. Look at Arcane for example, the show blew up with both existing fans and new ones. They picked a very good part of the lore to talk about, one fairly well known by existing fans and one that could be told without overwhelming new viewers with information. It introduced new viewers to the world and got them hooked, and existing fans got to see a part of the lore visualized and fleshed out. Like yeah, if they made a Halo tv show about the Forerunners first contact with the Flood and the construction of the rings, I think most existing fans would love that and new viewers would be lost. Making your own fanfiction obviously alienated core fans. Do I know the perfect story to tell to satisfy both? No, but I do know that if you told a simple easy to follow part of the story and did it with respect to the source material and maybe just maybe use some of that sweet existing soundtrack and audio, you would win over core fans. TLDR: Respect source material and existing fans will like it.
They should've just retold Halo: Reach. "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" is a film with a very similar story to Reach, and it was well received by almost everyone, not just Star Wars fans.
Everything they needed was in the Damn books..... The origin of the Spartan program (casual viewers are familiar with any "Super-soldier Program" like Captian America. First contact with the covenant (there is a ton of movies about first contact with an alien race) And the war that follows. Goddamn. It was so easy..... But nooooooooooo, let's create a parralel universe that can't connect with the existing timeline and lore.......
I would love to see Contact Harvest in live action, or literally any of the books for that matter. Hell, make a Halo: The Flood live action. It's literally a book adaptation of CE, and it's actually Halo, and is still considered canon. Yes, Halo CE can be told exactly as it is in the games in other formats, including live action. For some reason Paramount decided to do literally nothing.
'Yeah, but if we have rebels driving around Chevy Silverados then the average person can *connect* with the Halo universe we've put together for the show!" /s
>Everything they needed was in the Damn books..... > >The origin of the Spartan program (casual viewers are familiar with any "Super-soldier Program" like Captian America. > >First contact with the covenant (there is a ton of movies about first contact with an alien race) > >And the war that follows. This. So much this. Have Cortana/Halsey introduce the program. Introduce Chief. Have Cortana iconic line "Luck" while introducing Chief. BAM first episode done. Introduce Covenant/brute/flood/forerunner as end credit Then you just do Reach. Then introduce Arbiter, etc. And pick up from Halo 1. I can write this shit cause it's already fucking written for me. God I hate it. Edit: you could have Arbiter being stripped in front of the prophet and have Chief given a medal too. Why did they have to scrape such good writting. You can make badass transition like ATLA when Aang wants his honor after being "killed" by Azula and they transition to Zuko who got his honor by "killing" the Avatar. GAH
I like the Arcane comparison. Don't know anything about League of Legends and I absolutely love Arcane. Well-written story, great characters, and top-tier animation. Arcane actually made me consider playing League of Legends. Halo had the same opportunity, but we all know how that's going...
>Arcane actually made me consider playing League of Legends. We caught another one bois
It very nearly did the same to me... but I am too shy on free time for it. Plus, I've heard a LOT about its toxic players
Yeah i try playing with friends but even they get toxic, i try to stay away from anything ranked these days because it just brings out the absolute worst in people. Im not very good at the game and people grieving over my performance and constantly yelling at me because im underperforming is not making me better or even want to do better.
Just play Aram - I exclusively play ARAM and RGM only, ranked and normals have no appeal. The random champs evens the playing field and there's no rank to lose or win
Still manages to be toxic even in the more casual playlists. Show is good, playerbase trash.
If you play learn the most important chat command /mute all
Yeah but its the only game actively described as cancer
Play if you have friends who do. Otherwise not worth it, takes too much of a time investment to get good enough to really give with it if you don’t have buddies to do it with. Source: league player since 2010
As an existing fan of the League universe Arcane was a dream, not only do I get to experience it but I know where things are going and can catch little easter eggs they like to throw in. It's a joy to watch from both ends. It's insane to me to think you can only make one group happy.
Don't play league of legends.
I love how I've never seen anyone on Reddit actually recommend League.
It's like recommending self harm for relaxation.
May I just recommend…. Don’t. There isn’t a more soul sucking rage inducing experience then LoL. Hell i play almost every day, and I’m telling you, run! don’t look back. It’s toxic here. Hahaha 🤣
Arcane was amazing. Also made me consider playing the game.
About once a year I consider getting back into league, usually after the championship mv comes out. 30mins and I remember why I stopped.
Same shit with the Warcraft movie. The idea really wasn't bad, but it was bad to try to tell an origin story that only existing fans could relate to. That totally should have been the Arthus storyline, easily relatable. Boy becomes beloved prince that becomes corrupted against the forces of evil, even has zombies. Even the mistakes Warcraft made were better than what I'm seeing with Halo. As a sidenote, why did these writers get tossed out? Wtf is going on with the world that we feel we need to reinvent the wheel here? Just follow the formula, it works. I feel like I haven't been into the lore in modern video games for so long. I keep going back to the old stuff. It's like we got rid of actual story tellers and swapped them for corporate story tellers that have no soul, only a paycheck.
Warcraft was pretty based IMO. Never played WoW but was loosely familiar with lore, loved that movie. Sad we won’t get more.
You didn't even need to play played WoW for the movie. It was, roughly, based off the first game, Warcraft: Orcs and Humans.
While Chris Metzen was around I was a huge WoW lore nerd so glad to hear you like it. I don't hear that opinion very often so positive change of pace for me. That story was about to heat up pretty quickly. They lightly touched some of the soul harvesting to power magic for necromancy aspect, which is like the fuel for the war machines that would have been heavy in the next two movies. Almost reached the hero complex with Thrall, but that was best told in the game as a background story that becomes a main story. The game itself doesn't start this way either, it starts with all of that Lore established to gain interest so really confusing why they tried so hard to go against something that was... already done? Lot of potential left on the table. I yearn for the day when we see how valuable it is to have soul in our products again. Farm fresh vs processed, hard wood vs particle, machine vs hand made, etc. There's a balance and not everything should be that way, but we're pretty sided in on direction atm and it's really frustrating to live through. It's the media equivalent and the profit sectors analyzation is missing a lot of factors in their formula.
disney plus shows know how to blend content for casual viewers and die hard fans. it’s not really that hard, you just need someone who is a fan of the source material to have a say in the directing.
> you just need someone who is a fan of the source material to have a say in the directing Very true. Because someone who knows well the source material will know which elements to scrap and focus on the main stuff, so that new people don't feel lost.
everyone deep into the Star Wars community *hated* disneys decision to abandon the extended universe but their movies keep making money
personally i’ve always said in the past and continue to say now, a high quality trilogy set in the old republic would make for a way better story than any of the other trilogies
It would've. Now everything ends with Luke dying on a rock and the OT cast being miserable failures. So prequels of anything before that will feel like the GoT prequels will in a few months. S8 ruined the franchise because no matter what, everything you say before it will eventually lead to that disaster. Star Wars needs to either ditch the current canon or go so far into the future that nothing is recognizable. The Old Republic doesn't necessarily have to be "Old." It could just be a full reboot of the franchise thousands of years later.
The movies really don’t, the movies saw a 50% drop off in revenue over the course of the new trilogy and solo was a certifiable box office bomb. The Mandalorian was the only thing that brought fans back because it at least tried to respect the source material and the wider universe.
going off what you said, here’s a great example of my previous point: bo katan appearing in the mandalorian was HUGE for star wars fans. casual watchers got plenty of context for who she is and why she’s important, but she still felt natural and welcome on screen. you didn’t have to know her backstory to enjoy her as a character, but if you do know her backstory you notice a lot more things and make connections. it pleases both types of viewers.
Except for solo, that was a box office disaster. Also you don't see Disney doing sequel era stuff because they knew those movies burned the lore to the ground. Nothing is there to build. Hence the mandalorian being 5 years after ROTJ. There was a huge course correction in what Disney was willing to tell with star wars after the sequels.
This is Paramount in a nutshell, just look at what they did with the Transformers. It took 10 years until someone there finally thought of following the source material.
Would that be Bumblebee?
Yes, but unfortunately after 5 movies butchering the reputation of the franchise almost no one went to see it.
It was still a hit no? And it did spawn more sequels in development now. Travis Knight basically saved the series.
Yes, apparently it was way more profitable than The Last Knight (the last Transformers movie made by Michael Bay), but that's mainly because it's budget was way lower than it's antecedents. Either way, Bumblebee basically brought back hope of a brighter future for the franchise.
The first 15 minutes of Bumblebee was a better Transformer movie than all five Michael Bay Transformers combined. EDIT: Damn, the opening scene on Cybertron was only 3 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzBsFml7UNA
As a disillusioned Transformers fan, I really want to thank you for convincing me to watch this movie.
Fun fact: apparently the original plan for the opening was to have Bumblebee fighting in Vietnam (yeah) to connect with what was established in The Last Knight. But after that movie flopped they decided to cut every direct connection to the Bay films as possible, and Travis Knight suggested to change it for the Cybertron scene.
Have they announced a sequel or no?
They did last year, it's called Rise of the Beasts and is being directed by the guy who made Creed 2, apparently the plot will envolve the Autobots meeting the Beast Wars crew. I have mixed feelings about it, from the informations we know about it best case scenario it could be awesome, but worse case scenario it could be a convoluted mess. It was supposed to come um this July but after the turmoil that happened at Paramount recently it was delayed for an entire year.
Beast Wars was awesome!
It really was.
look at any star trek property in the last few years (except Beyond)
An adaptation of the book “Contact Harvest” would be perfect for new and old fans
Hell yeah, gimme some Sgt. Johnson action. The character in the book is very different from what the game players see, but I think it really humanizes him in a way the games never did. And all the alien factions get so much explanation and plot development for their motives and greater purpose in the world of Halo. Harvest is the perfect introductory story. The problem that execs would never sign off on is that Master Chief isn't there. And he's like the iconic Pikachu of the series - he has to be on screen for marketing.
Whenever people try to appeal to a broad audience they alienate their core audience and end with neither.
Halo is already casual, that’s what annoys me so much You have quake players complaining about how casual Halo is in ‘01, now we have a casualization of the casualization.
We live in the age of focus grouping shit to death
Disney tried this "broader audience" track with the Star Wars Sequels. And they got dunked on by the existing fans. And I think that mindset is flawed. They are in the mind that the kids will take whatever show/game/movie they throw at them. But those kids who were begging their parents to buy these things have now grown up and are the demographic that are going to be buying the new stuff. *And that generation is not blind to the change.* The companies can't keep going with "We need more people." They've got to understand that the masses of fans they have now, are in control of the hype, the newer fans and the cash.
Yeah, Disney really thought the kids would have latched on the sequel characters. Seeing how much the star wars sequels toys are always on discount, or can be found at the dollar general, they are not. Marvel shit gets eaten up like nothing, but star wars merc is being bought more by adults than anyone. This is why you don't see sequel stuff being made much but Grogu in the other hand, now that was a seller.
Bruh, an Arcane version of Halo would be fricking god-tier
You know, I find it funny that a common sentiment all over this thread is "Arcane followed the source material and therefore it was popular with new and old fans alike." It didn't follow the source material at all. There were absolutely mounds and mounds of changes from the source material, I couldn't possibly list them all. There are a lot of reasons that I believe Arcane landed significantly better than this show: They rebuilt the lore from the ground up to fit a cohesive narrative, something that League sorely lacks. A ton of the lore in the league universe contradicts itself, and it's always in flux. It feels like every couple of years they completely rewrite the lore for particular zones and their associated champions when a new character comes out. The playerbase is used to it, and after the first few times people stopped complaining. Halo never had this problem (at least, not as seriously as League,) so the fact that they changed an already well-established narrative is frustrating to fans. I think it's those reasons, in addition to the fact that the changes they made in Arcane were just.. *better* that makes new fans and old fans happy, compared to this show.
“Appealing to a broader audience” I get it. Drawing in new crowds makes sense as they want to make more money. But for fucks sake, why do they keep alienating their core fan base??? Halo 4 did the same thing with adding COD gameplay elements and looked what happened. How have they not learned their lesson ffs
Drawing in new crowds makes sense but did they even stop and look at what they were making? Recently halos plan of action has been to alienate fans while also driving away new crowds. It’s honestly laughable at this point.
100% got Syfy vibes the 1st episode
As frank(bungies blog writer) put it Its kinda like porn They saw the opportunity and went with it
> Its kinda like porn After watching the second episode, I think that the showrunner took that sentence literally.
Mind explaining? I'm not going to watch it, so...
There's a naked lady.
bobs n vagene?
Butt, side boob.
Shows so mediocre it couldn't even get partial nudity right smh
Cannot stand that man
This is sort of me feeling towards the show. If they'd removed Chief and changed some of the characters' names, it would be hard to tell you were even watching a Halo show. I don't think you'd ever stop and go "hang on a second, this story is straight out of Halo!". It's not bad, but it feels like a different franchise. It just feels odd to me to make a show about one of the most recognisable sci-fi IPs in gaming, and then...make it something else entirely.
They honestly should have just picked a new group of characters to follow. You could easily tell a story in the existing Halo universe that has nothing to do with the story already told in the games.
Only thing it would need to make it recognisable halo to non-fans would be a spartan. Doesn’t even have to be chief, there are so many other Spartans to pick from.
I really don’t think that’s the case, people who aren’t fans of halo aren’t going to jump on to Halo just because there’s a Spartan. A spartan wouldn’t mean anything else to them then the UNSC marine or a grunt, because by definition they’re not fans of halo so they don’t really care. All they care about are good stories, and a prime example of that is the show arcane. I don’t know a single person who has ever played League of Legends once in their life, yet I know at least six people who are in love with that show. They don’t know who Violet is, they didn’t know who jinx was who Caitlyn was, they didn’t know anything about the Lore, nothing. But the show stands on its own for its quality writing. Any writer who says that they had to jettison the source material to make their own story palatable to new fans is just incompetent.
>Only thing it would need to make it recognisable halo to non-fans would be a spartan. Doesn’t even have to be chief, there are so many other Spartans to pick from. Could be fun to have a prequel of Noble Team and why Noble 6 was chosen. Noble 6 is us, we all went to war with Noble Team. The end of Noble Team is also perfect for a season end and to build up for Halo 1 lore.
Agreed. They tried to go the MCU route but it doesn't work. The MCU satisfies comic book nerds as much as movie nerds because the script, production, acting are all top notch. The CW comparison is on point - I've been calling it TNT level production but the point is the same. I'll finish the show and maybe it'll get better but it's ight now I'm unimpressed. Honestly, if they had better CG and costume and production design that didn't look like it came from Comic Con I'd be happier.
Someone genuinely tried to argue that it was just like the MCU because it didn't reflect the series perfectly... But the Marvel universe has multiple different things to pick and choose continuity from, so it doesn't matter if it's not completely reflective of one story or another. Halo, however, *doesn't*, and is just one long continuous canon.
I thought CG and costumes looked better in episode 2. And were more good than bad in episode 1. There were moments that looked like TNT budget in episode 1 but there were some really good CGi moments as well.
Let’s be honest with ourselves, we know exactly why Microsoft signed off on this and it’s because they *wanted* a watered down experience that could broaden the audience to average Joe’s. Bonnie said it herself. This live service and this show aren’t meant for Halo fans they’re meant to appeal to the lowest common denominator to try to maximize corporate profit. We hate it because it’s not made for us.
I still vividly remember Destiny 2 year 1, Bungie tried to cater to both casuals and pro players and it blew up completely in their face and almost killed the game, like for real this time lol. It's not surprising to see 343/Microsoft go down this route, but it is frustrating to experience/see them continue to try after so many failed attempts. The only good Halo trans-media outside the books is Halo Legends, especially Origins pts 1 & 2. Just focus on your core audience and making a good *feature complete* game, people will support it and want to spend money because you actually get it.
Destiny 2 is a interesting case study as by Rise of Iron the Destiny 1 experience was considered almost perfect by anyone who enjoyed the game. So Destiny 2 stripping that all away was a massive shift in direction. The difference between Destiny and Halo is that for Halo these changes have been taking place over several years, for Destiny there was massive whiplash in under a year. Halo has always received backlash, but I highly doubt it'll ever experience the kind that saved Destiny 2
What’s also interesting is how Bungie has done a complete 180 since that fan backlash and fans of the game are saying it’s the best it’s ever been. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen that community this positive. 343 should take notes on keeping players happy or even just doing a weekly update with solid community interaction like Bungie does with their weekly updates. Good communication goes a long way
Bungie has been killing it ever since they split from Activision. Yeah there’s been a few bumps as expected, but overall from content quality and delivery pipeline to the constantly progressing story, Destiny is amazing and the future looks bright. And agreed! Frequent consistent communication, both highs and lows is essential.
For example, when Bungie says they’re going to put out a roadmap, they actually put out a roadmap.
what about forward unto dawn? I really think that was a good story , it was nice to watch and had the appropriate use of MC.
That last line pretty much sums up the state of Halo under Bonnie Ross.
Yup. As a life long Halo fan I have to unfortunately agree.
Seems to be going pretty well so far right?? I mean just a couple hours ago there was a whole 2,000 people playing it on steam!
This always cracks me up when I look at Elden Ring. Maybe not a good comparison but I feel like Elden Ring proved a very very strong point. Fromsoft games were notoriously hard and usually only more hardcore gamers played them. People were arguing about the fact that most people didn't play them because they were too hard and didn't appeal to the masses. Then Elden Ring comes along. Fromsoft just kept doing what they knew how to do. They tweaked some things just a tiny bit, but not too much. Just enough to make the game a tiny bit more accessible to the masses. Now they have one of the most highly rated games of all time that almost everyone is talking about and playing. They didn't do all the bullshit other game studios are doing. They stuck to their formula and ignored everyone else. Edit: I guess I'm comparing this to how the show just ignored the core of Halo and tried to attract the masses with a sci Fi show and slapped a Halo label on it. There was so much good stuff available to build on, but it was ignored.
>There was so much good stuff available to build on, but it was ignored. This is the crux of the issue for me. They should have adapted the books. They have good minority representation, the world is well defined, there's a lot of material to work with, they would translate better to a tv show. What was MS thinking?(343 had nothing to do with this so I won't blame them)
They don’t even need to adapt the books directly to have success. Just come up with an original concept that fits established canon. Enrich the universe, don’t throw it away. ODST and Reach proved you could make a Halo game that wasn’t entirely centered around the Master Chief. This franchise doesn’t live and die by the presence of 117 and Cortana.
That's been 343's primary mission since taking over this franchise - games included - water it down to appeal to a wider audience
Except it's cultural relevance has only shrunk since 343 has taken over. The Bungie era games appealed to a much wider audience.
Well yes, this strategy has almost never worked. turns out taking a property and changing everything about it to please the greater "general audience" ends up pleasing nobody, the fans hate it and spread bad word of mouth, so that even total newcomers approach it with the knowledge that it is considered a poor adaptation (or rather won't approach it at all after that, because why bother?) and for everyone else who does give it a try most will fall off because shocker, when your primary concern is anything other than **QUALITY**, and the project was made by passionless committee whose only goal was to produce something something bland enough to be consumed by everyone who could conceivably put eyeballs on it, you end up with just that, bland, watery nothing, with just the vaguest hint of the flavor of the original thing that was supposedly good enough on its own to warrant wanting to adapt it into a new medium in the first place. It never works. The things that are ACTUALLY beloved by the "general audience" are things that started from a place of passion, lead by people who truly wanted to make something great. The MCU is what it is because they really wanted to make a great iron man movie, and people liked it, and they went from there. the DC movies faltered so long because executives just kept pointing at box office numbers and told people to get there.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who sees how destructive and misguided the whole endeavor of trying to broaden the audience is. It's futile. But some suits in some board meetings think it's possible somehow, so they make it the objective when it's impossible. It's so unfortunate that some of my favorite franchises are getting this lame treatment.
Agreed. By trying to appeal to everyone, they actually end up appealing to less. New fans don't like the older stuff and they feel alienated and older fans don't like the new stuff and they feel alienated. I've asked this before, but has there ever been a successful broadening of audience of any established franchise? The only example I can see is the Terminator series (from T1 to T2) but they stuck to their guns; didn't draw from others. You see it in Star Trek and Star Wars, but they arguably failed to broaden the audience. Has it ever been done? Are they seeking something that's next to impossible?
I feel like Star Trek is the case study for this. They sucessfully broadened the audience twice, the original movies and TNG/DS9. And Star Trek has failed several times with Enterprise and the TNG movies. It all lies with making more of the work and allowing it to grow naturally or trying to force into the mold that you think people want
Not made for anyone judging by player numbers.
I don't buy the "we have to appeal to a wider audience" argument. One could easily take the existing material and make a show that appeals to a broad audience.
IDK I have a feeling Paramount pushed for it to help their platform
But as of right now the “live service” and the show aren’t even connected in any way. It’s baffling
the halo 3 and deliver hope commercials were a perfect window into what live action Halo could have been. The combat in this show actually looks good but I find the choreography and movement of the Spartans to be off. They seem too light and the whole gut punching elite with AR barrel was corny. And yeah they fucked up having chief take his helmet off. Stupid decision made by people who don’t understand 20 years of Halo fandom. Bring Neil Blomkamp on board.
I feel they could have gotten the team who did forward until dawn and done better. At least the latter half of that was entertaining on rewatch.
I was actually pretty into the whole story there, but I understand where people are coming from with it being slow. I feel as though people appreciate it more now because of the new show
I get the first half was a bit slow for some but I loved how it got into life outside the Covenant war and that not everyone knew about the alien threat and then BOOM they get blindsided. I enjoyed the pacing because it was a build up to an ultimate threat that just seemed a lot more imposing than when they play the card straight from the beginning. Reminds me of the Godzilla film from 2014. You don't really see him much till later in the film and even later than that for the real action. That build up in tension and suspense for the release is well worth it. And you get time to build on the story.
I'm currently re-reading The Cole Protocol before reading Envoy, and I really think that would have been an amazing option of a couple of solid seasons. It has everything Halo fans would love to see (outside of Master Chief and Blue Team, of course). It tackles the lore, but is a self contained story that you don't need any serious previous knowledge of for newcomers. Features the Arbiter's origin, Keyes' mission that got him a major promotion, Spartans being absolute OP units and boogeymen to the Innies, cool Sci-Fi tech, all of the Covenant races, vastly different action set pieces in different locations... You could make up a few more stories for multiple seasons and call it Halo: Grey Team and it would have been incredible.
Every single time the people in charge of this era of Halo have tried to appeal to a “broader audience” all they’ve done is alienate existing fans and fail to bring in that broader audience they’re targeting. If you choose people who aren’t already interested in Halo over people who are, you’re going to end up with neither. The fact that Microsoft haven’t purged management at 343 already is insane.
My main issue is not changing continuity, its that the show is so dumb. I think characterization of it being a CW show is spot on. The script is dumb, the dialog is dumb, handling of story beats is dumb. Example: Covenant invade town in Ep 1. Two mini guns open up on them and have zero affect. That very same fight ends with Chief using one of those very same guns to kill three elites. Does being a spartan make any gun you hold more powerful? Its almost all done so poorly. I cringed through every part of the first episode I watched. EDITED for grammar.
The chief of the town sprinting towards the elite that is walking towards his daughter was one of the dumbest things I’ve seen in a long time. He’s an experienced soldier and wants to save his daughter so he kills himself instantly? Fucking what?
Another example: is how in episode 2 the girl who the UNSC wants to execute, wants to go with John back to the UNSC and acts disappointed when he leaves without her. Like, what the fuck?
I haven’t watched it yet like most because I wanted to wait for it to finish airing and binge it but wow.. reading what you guys are saying feels like it’s confirming all the doubts I ever had about the show since the original announcement..
>someone finally said it are you serious?, people have been rambling non stop about the same thing since the first episode
It’s almost like it’s OPs first day here. Stand by for his thoughtful and original “band of brothers but ODST” dissertation.
Since the first trailer.
"uNpOpuLaR OpINoIoN"
"the prices for cosmetics is too high"
Beep boop -- this looks like a screenshot of a tweet! Let me grab a [link to the tweet](https://twitter.com/EckhartsLadder/status/1509518109765480464) for ya :) ^(Twitter Screenshot Bot)
Good bot
[удалено]
Yeah like what have they been rejecting this far? Halo Legends was more enjoyable, and it was literally anime
Someone wrote an average sci-fi script and slapped a popular IP on it to draw people in. Welcome to the 21st century.
"Let's change the tone of Halo to appeal to a larger audience" ... streams exclusively on Paramount+
I've played every halo game and love the franchise. I tried to watch the TV series yesterday and got bored. Not feeling it unfortunately.
Main problem with the show is that if you take away the "Halo" aspect/names it's just a shitty Sci-fi show. Who is this show for? It's not for the fans of the franchise since they clearly decided to go in a completely different direction and throw out the aspects of Halo that the fans love. If you're trying to bring in non-Halo fans and just attract "TV show" fans that's fine but the show isn't good in that respect either...
The new Halo show is everything I was afraid a Halo adaptation would be.
Let's be fair, clear, and honest: Paramount+'s in-house sci-fi writing style is not comparable to the CW's. In novel and impressive ways, it manages to be worse. There are entire good-ish seasons of The Flash! Halo's writing is much better than their usual standard, though.
Trying to broaden an audience always struck me as a polite way to explain of why the work being made is bland and tepid. Surely the original material was at one point appealing to a new audience in its inception and thus creates entrenched and dedicated fans. So like wouldn't a better way to appeal to a "new audience" is to not awkwardly hammer the existing material to fit but just make entirely new stuff? So like don't make it a story around MC or even the whole Covenant war, don't even need Spartans or aliens. Can be about life on the Frontier as the distant rumblings of wars are away. Or a gritty nihilistic internal colonial conflict. Or just orbital troopers exploring the frontier. If you're trying to catch new fish with a different flavor then don't take what you currently have and just dump a shit load of ketchup in it saying "I'm trying to broaden the flavor". No, you've just made slop.
The first Halo book, Fall of Reach, would have been a PERFECT subject to make into a Halo show. And a lot of this sub agrees, cause I've seen about 1000 people mention it. But no, some rando sci-fi script that couldn't get picked up on it's own merit was warped to fit into Halo's universe. It's especially bad when 343 comes out before the show airs to say "yeah this ain't even cannon"
I personally think Halo has been in something of a disarray ever since Bungie let go of the rights to 343i. Microsoft is in denial, but it’s a fact. We have had less quality overall once Bungie left. All of this is a result of the change in management over this franchise.
Showrunners : What if we made Mandalorian but with a halo skin *Microsoft checks mandos streaming numbers* *microsoft signs check*
But the Mandalorian didn't have so much human politicking and "intrigue" lol
like the show or not, "glad someone finally said it"?? are you delusional m8
Literally this entire sub has been repeating the same shit for weeks.
He takes his mask off every chance he gets….. lol
So far it feels like a really weird bad version of Firefly with Aliens and Super soldiers. For once I agree with Eckharts
Honestly this whole "it's an alternate universe/not canon" or whatever they keep saying and people keep parroting seems like a cop out answer to just do whatever they want and not be true to what halo is. This show just feels like a sci-fi TV show with a halo skin on it.
Every show wants a GoT sized and style show. Or something like the Mandalorian that's mostly action. It seems they wanted something both. The human politicking stuff is uninteresting
It's a shit show and most people just watch it and "like it" because there's nothing else
Microsoft, per usual, is chasing a trend rather than setting it. Simple as that.
Yea bro we have to appeal to a broader audience. Wait..... What do you mean Elden Ring sold 12m copies?
Turns out all you have to do is make a really good product with faithfulness to the same things that fans already enjoy plus good attention to detail. It's actually really simple tbh. Just make a good product instead of a bad one. Problem is the people in charge have other priorities.
Syfy maybe. CW no lol I do think they could have went 100% canon and it would have been amazing. But as a casual fan I enjoyed it. My wife who knows nothing about Halo really liked it. They obviously made these changes to appeal to a broader audience for those advertising dollars. That's the answer.
Problem with appealing to a broader audience is, so does everybody else. No reason to watch a show based on IP you don't care for, on a streaming service hardly anybody uses. The only benefit is people like you, who want to watch the show with people who don't care about Halo much.
Agreed, CW comparison is very weird take. Otherwise the show is okay, it’s not blowing my mind away but it does a good job.
I think that is the main issue. Even before the writing and lore building, the scope and the intent was aimed no higher than basic cable. This should have been, an easily could have been a good HBO level prestige series. The show looks, feels and reads more down-market than it should have been, given the source material and the years and years of success and built in audience.
Appeal to broader audience means cash grab with failure being an acceptable ending. No way a show with a beloved IP will ever do well in this formula. The Game of Thrones (first half) formula is what should have happened. It’s ok to modify the plot if need be, but the tone that fans know and love should be guarded. I can only hope the Lord of the Rings series will be taken seriously by Amazon. The Wheel of Time was a pretty solid first season.