This week, it was reported that 343 has completely no plans to proceed Grasp Chief’s story in Halo Infinite, and virtually all present plans for the Halo sequence are multiplayer targeted, primarily based on present PvP seasons, Forge and an upcoming battle royale-type recreation in-built Unreal Engine 5.
That makes it appear to be we could also be headed into one other extraordinarily lengthy interval the place Grasp Chief himself is put into hibernation, solely this time, he has somebody to switch him. It appears that evidently with 343 shelving Grasp Chief, the one new Chief/Cortana tales we’re going to be getting over the following few years are from the Paramount Plus Halo TV sequence, which most followers contemplate one thing of an abomination, given how the character of Chief has been dealt with.
Now we have a primary instance in media proper now of the right way to correctly deal with beloved recreation characters once they transition between recreation and the display screen. The Final of Us has the standard and finances of an HBO manufacturing, the sensible, TV-focused thoughts of Chernobyl author Craig Mazin and one of many authentic creators engaged on the variation, Neil Druckmann. In distinction, it appears like Halo and Grasp Chief have been shoveled off to Paramount’s group and so they have been allowed to do completely something they needed to vary the character, the supply materials, all of it.
The result’s that we are actually getting into an period the place there shall be no recreation tales for Grasp Chief indefinitely, which leaves season 2 of this present (and presumably extra, given its good-for-Paramount-Plus viewership) as the principle portrayal of chief in media. Non-helmet sporting, sex-having, war-crime-committing Grasp Chief, who ended the second season really lifeless with Cortana distant piloting his corpse.
If I have been Microsoft, I’d hold a tighter leash on the character that’s speculated to be its flagship icon for its whole model. Even with all Microsoft’s new acquisitions, Grasp Chief is all the time going to be the face of Xbox, however it positive appears like they don’t care concerning the character or his legacy in any respect, given latest occasions. I do know Halo Infinite’s marketing campaign obtained some reward at launch, however I used to be within the camp that didn’t prefer it, as means, means an excessive amount of occurred offscreen (together with Cortana’s supposed loss of life) and it felt like an interlude between two way more fascinating chapters. It additionally ended on an enormous cliffhanger that now has completely no return date connected to it.
As a substitute, Microsoft is content material to let Paramount bulldoze Chief’s legacy with a portrayal of the character so wacky and weird it appears like a wholly completely different sci-fi sequence. If The Final of Us is a mannequin of the right way to do a online game justice with an adaptation, Halo is the alternative in each means, much more so, I’d argue, than one thing like Netflix’s Resident Evil. There, no less than, a few of the onscreen absurdity was warranted, and there was not a central iconic hero like Grasp Chief they have been turning right into a meme. What the Paramount present has achieved to Grasp Chief, what 343 and Microsoft have let them do, is fairly horrific, and so they could destroy the character altogether with out some type of coherent plan to carry him again to his previous glory days. A plan which they very clearly do not need.
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Decide up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller sequence and The Earthborn Trilogy.