Inside the Halo TV show’s plan for Master Chief and going beyond the games

Everybody wants to discuss the Chevy Tahoe.

The first large trailer. Halo, Paramount Plus’ big-budget adaptation of the decades-spanning Xbox sci-fi shooter, a rust-colored SUV appears tucked inside a mining compound. The vehicular prop got just enough airtime during the Super Bowl spot that people recognized the model as a GMT800 Tahoe, produced by General Motors from 2001 to 2006 — more than 500 years before Halo’s hero, Master Chief, was even born.

The Tahoe wasn’t what Halo’s creative team expected people to notice in a two-minute trailer full of Warthogs, Phantom dropships, a couple Mongooses, and a number of other fancy space vehicles. The Tahoe was noticed by people and became a viral sensation.

“It’s both frightening and exhilarating to know people care that much,” Halo showrunner Steven Kane tells Polygon.

Kane says that the Tahoe exists for a purpose. 343 Industries was the studio that developed Halo. It spent almost a decade making it a top-rated TV series. Paramount Plus’ production team worked with 343 to review every option. Every prop was thoughtfully planned and placed with intent. Something like a car couldn’t make it on set by accident.

“For people who haven’t spent time in the game industry, there’s no such thing as too fast a shot to notice something,” says Kiki Wolfkill, a studio head at 343 and Halo’s executive producer. “We have to assume every single frame will be examined.”

Kane, and the HaloTeam knew that the series would be alive down to its smallest details and debated all aspects, from plates used by humans to economics for Halo world producers. However, making the Series alive is not an easy task. HaloA television program is all about matching the micro and macro. Although the premiere of the show was March 24, not much is known. HaloThe reality of show is. Paramount Plus, 343 Industries, and Paramount Plus were careful to not share too much. However, in new interviews with the creators one key point is repeated over and again: Halo The show is not Halo The game. But not quite.

“What people see will be different from what they’ve expected,” executive producer and director Otto Bathurst tells Polygon. “And hopefully a strong percentage [of fans]You will love it. But listen, I’m sure it’s going to ruffle some feathers.”

Combat, evolved

Steven Spielberg called his shot at E3 2013: In a pre-recorded video, the Oscar-winner announced his and Microsoft’s intention to adapt Halo into a TV series. It was not clear what the plans were. The show would be exclusive to Xbox Live, with Microsoft spending all of it. a lot of money on it — on the level of Game of ThronesAccording to one source, it could be. After years of being kept under wraps, the show was finally revealed in 2019, when Microsoft made it public. Wake upKyle Killen, creator of the mount. HaloShowtime has Spielberg as executive producer. The dramatic shift to streaming television and years of work behind it has led to a significant change in business. HaloThis has happened again. HaloParamount Plus Exclusive: Kane is the new Paramount Plus star, his credits including The Last Ship The Nearer, Bathurst and co-showrunningBlack Mirror and Robin HoodDirector of the two first episodes of the nine episode season was )

Since the beginning, 343 Industries and Spielberg’s Amblin Television have described the series as taking place during the 26th-century intergalactic war between humans and a hyper-religious alien group called the Covenant. All involved with the series resist calling. Halo an exact adaptation, but it carries on the legacy of the 2001’s Halo: The Evolution of Combat, developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft — the company that owns the franchise today. As Master Chief Halo: The Evolution of CombatA lot of players shoot aliens. But behind all the weapons and military jargon, there’s a story there, one of a very powerful soldier, stacked with a sassy AI computer program called Cortana, tasked with saving humanity from aliens that desperately hate humans. The Halo, which is believed to either be part of an escalating prophecy or life-ending weapon, drives the war.

It is the idea of HaloShow was to be centered on Master Chief. Now played by Orange is The New Black’s Pablo Schreiber. That was always the key for Wolfkill, who’s been attached to the project from the early days in her role as Halo’s transmedia executive.

“When I think about what the series is, it’s a story of the Master Chief understanding who he is as John,” Wolfkill says. “It is introducing a lot of Halo elements, introducing the world of Halo, with its places, its look, feel, and the value system that sits underneath it that pervades all of our things we do in the Halo universe, which is a story about heroism and hope and humanity, and the idea of humanity being something worth saving.”

The TV series’ story won’t be identical to the story established in the seven core games and swath of canon spinoffs; instead, Halo will exist like an alternate universe, in a story referred to by 343 Industries as the “Silver timeline.” In a lengthy post published in January, the company explained some of the story divergences delved into in the trailer: For one, Master Chief is no longer the only Spartan alive at the time of the events of the first game, 2001’s Halo: The Evolution of Combat. In Combat EvolutionMaster Chief was hailed as the last Spartan. In the TV show, he’s got a new crew, dubbed the Silver Team; the lineup includes Vannak (Bentley Kalu), Riz (Natasha Culzac), and Kai (Kate Kennedy). Plus, there’s a human woman involved with the Covenant: Bathurst says Makee, played by Charlie Murphy (Peaky Blinders() is a holy Reclaimer of immense value to the Covenant. She captured her at eight years old and raised her as theirs.

Kane states that Kane believes the Halo show’s timeline was built to protect the franchise’s original canon, while still using it to build out new stories in unexplored “nooks and crannies” of the galaxy, and ground an intergalactic war in an ensemble of characters. Master Chief is a huge part of that; in Halo’s core games, players These are Master Chief — locked into and controlling his body to enact the ultimate power fantasy, being the world’s hero. He’s never been a man of many words, but this new format will change that.

“You really don’t know who this person is. We took that as an opportunity to have the character himself figure out who he is, while we learn who he is at the same time,” Kane says.

Master Chief is not the only Spartan who can be questioned. The expansion of the Spartan Program allows for the show’s ability to address larger questions. Master Chief’s fellow Silver Team Spartans have that same complex backstory: As kids, they were trained and augmented to be controllable human weapons. HaloThis is ultimately the story of how this realization affects the lives of Vannak Kai, Riz, and Riz, as well as their creator Dr. Catherine Halsey. Natascha McElhone plays the role.Californication).

“There’s so much to explore in terms of the rights and wrongs when humanity is at stake,” Wolfkill says. “How far are you willing to go to save it? That’s what it means. That is why the Spartans are so emblematic. John, in particular, watching him understand his origins lets us as an audience reflect on the decisions that were made for him — to reflect on that very basic human state, which is, when there is an existential crisis, what are the ethics?”

These are the world’s building blocks

343 Industries senior franchise writer Kenneth Peters, essentially the Halo team’s lore expert, tells Polygon that the show’s overarching plot and Master Chief’s deeper backstory fall in line with what fans have learned over the years. “We do touch on origin stories. Either they’re directly taken from what’s been established before, or it just fleshes out what’s been shown before. We tried not to change things like origin stories,” he says.

Whereas the games centered around Master Chief “shooting aliens in the face,” as Peters puts it, the TV show isn’t only focused on military operations: The civilians of these colonies and their struggles — against the Covenant and the United Nations Space Command — are interwoven with the Spartans. Wolfkill describes the end product as similar in structure to HBO’s Game of Thrones where the story spans “sprawling locations” as multiple storylines “cross and diverge” throughout the nine episodes.

One of Halo’s branching storylines follows the insurrectionists of Madrigal, the dry, dusty outer colony planet that’s also harboring a 500-year-old car. Kwan Ah (Yerin Ha) is a young insurrectionist’s daughter.Reef Break), enters the picture, and allows Kane to pull from stories that originate in Halo lore but haven’t been explored in the games. The established Halo story reveals that insurrectionists were fighting both the United Earth Government (and the United Nations Space Command) for a long time before the Spartans existed. Earth, as well as other planets, are preferred by the government. Outer Colonies citizens, including Madrigal often feel under siege by an imperialist regime.

HaloSophie Becher is the Madrigal’s production designer. She describes it as an island with no other uses than for deuterium (which is mostly used to make military equipment). All of the stuff on Madrigal was first discovered by UNSC, so the inhabitants had to survive. “They had to build their environments out of what was there, which is the soils,” Becher says. “On this particular planet, everything is adobe-built apart from the components that would have been flown in up the shop. You have an amalgamation of stuff they’ve created on that planet and other things that have come from the UNSC itself.” Like a Chevy Tahoe.

In the show’s timeline, humans on Madrigal and other Outer Colony planets like it, banded together to rebel against the Earth government — essentially starting an intergalactic war. That leads to Spartan-II. “Their backstory is pretty dark,” Kane says. “They were designed to quell a human rebellion, and they were killing humans before the aliens even showed up. It’s definitely a testament to Halo that we’re able to tell a complicated, morally ambiguous story like that.”

Bathurst tells Polygon that Kwan Ah and Master Chief’s relationship, a core component in season 1, is driven by the insurrectionist story. Long ago, before the Covenant arrived, Master Chief was responsible for killing her mother — wiping out insurrectionists was his mission, after all. Madrigal is defended by Master Chief. Halo’s first episode, when the Covenant attacks in search of an Halo ancient artifact.

Looking deeper into the human aspect of things HaloThe game required a new level of visual innovation and world-building beyond what was already familiar. “What does a house look like in the Outer Colonies?” Peters remembers asking. “What does urban life look like in Halo?” “We have, for example, New Alexandria from Halo Reach, but that’s a very limited slice needed for the games,” he says. “We had to invent and extrapolate a lot of material for civilian life in the Halo universe to flesh out the stories we’re telling.”

Becher worked with Kane and director Bathurst to build out sets with lived-in design and as many practical environments as possible — the right environment only helps the actors fighting an alien war in combat suits behave in a more believable way. “I felt that if there was mud, you had to have mud,” Becher says. “And if it was very dry in an area, we would make it as dusty as possible.” Of course, that doesn’t mean there wasn’t VFX involved; the show is set on multiple futuristic planets were alien spaceship landings are the norm.

Journeying beyond the known Halo universe meant Becher wasn’t beholden to cemented canon. She and her team started by thinking about the planet’s microclimates and how a human would survive. “I was very keen to make each planet feel very individual in its environment,” Becher said. “I started literally not from referencing anything in the game, but actually how people would live on these individual planets.” The production designer said fans should expect to see quite a few different locations, but pointed out a few of her favorites that Halo fans would recognize: Arizona, an agricultural planet built around hydroponics; the Rubble, a renegade community set up inside an asteroid; Fleetcom, the militarized base; and, of course, Madrigal.

Kane and his crew had to adapt the Sangheili language spoken by Covenant aliens in season 1, because of the direction it was heading. Covenant aliens are an inter-related group, and not a single race. They’re bonded as religious zealots, worshiping a mysterious group of god-like figures called Forerunners and the Prophets. 343 Industries created rules to help them all learn the common language that they speak. But the show makes it accessible. “We actually built it out as a total language that could be taught on Duolingo,” Kane says. David J. Peterson was the one who created Dothraki’s language structure. Game of Thrones, created the rules and taught humans how to speak it — a challenge that was hard, given that it was built out to make sense from an alien’s mouth.

“He did it for the mouth, the throat, and the vocal cords of an alien,” Kane says. “It’s very guttural with lots of tones and clicking and clacking, because the mandible of a Sangheili has like four or five tentacles, like [how] a starfish opens up.”

The Halo Is a Halos is the Halo

Though things have evolved past the games, the two decades of design work from the Halo games’ art teams hasn’t gone to waste. “Every fusion coil, every ammo crate … there’s actually shipping labels and manufacturers all over that stuff,” Peters says. “And I would say 99% of the time I don’t even think super-Halo fans would even really notice a lot of that. But when you’re on set, and you’re just walking around, there’s ammo crates and they have Misriah Armory on them. Then you look really closely and see it’s carrying 200 7.62 mm rounds in this case […]We donated [the production team]The reference material was given to them and they analyzed it. They probably know Halo manufacturers and companies better than I do.”

Peters pointed out that this was a spot where the show had an impact on the latest game releases. Halo Infinite: “We actually backported a lot of that into the game,” he says, noting that the sidekick pistol in Halo InfiniteThe logo of Emerson Tactical Systems is featured, which was originally designed for the show.

There’s potential for the show’s timeline — even though it’s not the “core” canon — to continue to influence the future of Halo games, too. The new Spartans, Vannak, Riz, and Kai, aren’t necessarily going to be in Halo Infinite 2, Peters says, but they’re characters that exist in that canon.

“They might have died on Reach in our core canon, but they might not have,” Peters says. “We try not to change things where we didn’t need to change things. We try not to add things to either the game or the show that weren’t useful.”

Jen Taylor plays Cortana again. For her to make sense to TV viewers, Bathurst says the team focused on Cortana’s creation — she’s essentially an AI clone of Dr. Halsey — and Halsey’s agenda in creating her. The character herself has become an important figure in Halo’s story, even taking center stage in Halo Infinite. She started as an UI conduit to the player, but you could say she began. Halo: The Evolution of CombatSomeone to help you navigate the game. A television show doesn’t need that.

“If a character like Cortana hasn’t been contextualized, if she hasn’t been given a strong reason, she might appear sort of gimmicky, sci-fi, and a bit gamey and silly,” Bathurst says.

Bathurst says structurelly Halo veers away from the combat-driven action of the video games, because it has to — especially if it’s going to appeal to people who are simply fans of sci-fi or drama. The series will feature action and big-scale battles. Bathurst states that he expects three major battles. Other smaller skirmishes are included in the nine-episode series. The question was posed to Bathurst about the who. HaloEverybody had an identical answer. The team wants Halo franchise fans to love it, but for it also to be welcoming to new viewers — the idea is that rich stories and big sets allow for both kinds of viewers to find something in Halo.

“It’s been a long time in the waiting,” Bathurst says. “There’s a lot of pressure on it. There are many people with very high expectations. It’s going to be a tough crowd, that’s for sure.”

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