Fans of Halo are enraged and grabbing their Energy Swords after seeing how outstanding the Fallout TV series is in comparison.
The Fallout TV series has hit the world harder than the bombs dropped on The Commonwealth with thrilling reviews, giving much hope for the future of video game adaptations. However, another TV series based on a iconic first-person shooter has been caught in the crossfire of criticism.
The beloved pioneer of console gaming, the Halo franchise, received a live-action TV adaptation from Paramount in 2022. However, if you look around, you’ll soon find waves of abysmal reviews.
The Halo TV series quickly received poor reviews and negativity from fans of the gaming franchise due to its poor take on the series and hesitation to double down on the source material. The first season of Halo received a 51% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes versus Fallout’s amazing 89% rating.
So, seeing another massive gaming title get a live-action TV show and be a gigantic success while the one for your favorite game’s adaptation is lackluster; can feel like catching a Plasma Grenade with your shield down. However, Halo’s second season is looking to be a welcome improvement.
One fan said, referring to the Fallout praise, “You see this, Microsoft? Fallout got this score while giving a s**t about the source material, and is actually considered canon. This could’ve been the Halo TV show. Instead, we got Master Cheeks for people that don’t even care about Halo. Thanks. Thanks a lot.”
For those blissfully unaware, “Master Cheeks” refers to the scene in the Halo TV series where Master Chief is involved in an intimate scene, and we see everything beneath the helmet if you take my meaning.
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“Even if the Fallout show wasn’t canon it would still be head and shoulders above the Halo show in every way. And that’s because actual care and effort went into making it a Fallout show, not a post-apocalyptic show with a thin veneer of Fallout.” another fan stated on Reddit.
More viewers continued the tribute to Fallout’s attention to detail: “It’s actually wild how wholistically the Fallout show embraces the source material. Like even things like how when guns are being shot by the protagonists the sequence is filmed like a VATS kill cam.”
Adding fuel to the fire, the production team of the Halo TV series has openly admitted to not playing any of the games or reading any books in preparation for the series. Not a good look when adaptating a beloved video game.
Similarly, Walton Goggins, who plays Cooper the Ghoul, confessed to not playing Fallout in preparation for his role. However, if Goggins did, most of what he would find is mindless near-zombie folk roaming the wasteland, with few exceptions of sentient ghouls, very different from his character.
Fans reiterate Paramount’s hesitation to engage with the lore and design of the source material as the Fallout TV series does but come up short to avoid alienating the audience that isn’t fans of the Halo games.
While Halo’s third season has yet to be confirmed, the Fallout TV series has been confirmed for a second season from Amazon. So fans can expect much more post-apocalyptic wasteland wandering adventure but may miss out on more guns-blazing action from the Spartan.