Any adaptation is all the time going to should tweak its supply materials to suit the scope and format of no matter medium it finds itself in—however the workforce behind Halo, each the long-running recreation franchise and the upcoming live-action streaming collection—have gone to nice lengths to set expectations amongst followers about the truth that issues will change when Master Chief jumps from Xboxes to streaming TV.

In a lengthy new blog post this week, 343 Industries’ head of transmedia Kiki Wolfkill and Halo artistic director Frank O’Connor took to the official Halo website and dove into the creation of what has been dubbed the “Silver Timeline” for Halo: The Series, a very separate however adjoining department of continuity diverged from the Halo video games and their accompanying novels from the previous 20 years of Master Chief saving the galaxy and infrequently being reminded that he was a toddler soldier. The separate timeline for Halo: The Series is known as for one of many key tweaks between the sport collection’ continuity, Silver Team, the trio of Spartan-II troopers that may accompany Pablo Schrieber’s Master Chief within the present—even when, 343 hinted, that the members of Silver Team do additionally exist someplace on the market within the continuity of the video games.

Which is attention-grabbing partly as a result of Wolfkill and O’Connor additionally explicitly reassured followers that whereas the Silver Timeline is a unique strand of Halo canon, it’s not radically totally different to the purpose that it’s unrecognizable to individuals who have devoured the ancillary Halo materials that has fleshed out the universe of the video games for years at this level. “Basically, we want to use the existing Halo lore, history, canon, and characters wherever they make sense for a linear narrative, but also separate the two distinctly so that we don’t invalidate the core canon or do unnatural things to force a first-person video game into an ensemble TV show,” O’Connor defined. “The game canon and its extended lore in novels, comics, and other outlets is core, original, and will continue unbroken for as long as we make Halo games.”

For essentially the most half, because of this the broader narrative beats Halo: The Series will cowl will already be acquainted to followers of the video games and books—glimpses of which we’ve already seen within the present’s trailers, just like the Spartan-II’s function in quelling resistance from colonial insurrectionists earlier than the alien armies of the Covenant make themselves recognized to humanity. But to be able to have time to flesh out sure factors or to suit the necessity of constructing a brand new TV collection, sure particulars to get between these bigger beats shall be new. One attention-grabbing tweak that O’Connor talked about comes from the very first episode of the present, and one in every of Halo’s most iconic early moments: the invention of one of many titular Halo ring buildings. In the primary Halo recreation, Master Chief and his A.I. companion Cortana’s warship comes throughout the Halo by chance, escaping the fallen human planet Reach on a random soar vector to keep away from being tracked by the Covenant. But based on O’Connor, the “coincidence” of that discovery won’t be the case within the collection.

Thankfully, giving the collection a complete continuity of its personal doesn’t imply that the present will keep away from among the darker ethical nuances about Halo’s world that had been expounded upon in its authentic tie-in novels to provide a distinction to the in any other case conventional “human vs. sinister alien bad guys” plots of the primary few video games, both. “Most Halo lore fans are aware of the origin story of Chief, the Spartan program, and the machinations and outcomes of that program, but haven’t seen it through the eyes of the kids who experienced it, or the adults tasked with making it happen,” O’Connor burdened. “We get to do that, and also tell a story about a fairly dark period in the Halo universe, and unblinkingly look at the ethics and morality–but with the advantage of perspective. We know why the SPARTAN-II program happened and also why it may have been necessary, but the moral ambiguity of both events and characters is going to act as a prism for how we view things we thought we already knew.”

So whereas followers of the video games can have a relative consciousness of what instructions the Halo present will go in—particularly these accustomed to the storytelling past the video games themselves—there’ll nonetheless be some surprises and added depth alongside the best way. Hopefully by making it clear that it is a totally different, however nonetheless acquainted line of continuity, they gained’t annoy too many Halo diehards when issues do change. Halo: The Series is ready to hit Paramount+ sooner or later in 2022.

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