Is there a world in which the Halo TV show was actually good? It’s a question I’ve been asking myself since I watched the first, disastrous episode on a plane ride last week, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the answer is ‘no’. A TV show that explores the Halo universe might work, something like Andor is to Star Wars, but at what point does it stop being a Halo TV show and devolve into generic science fiction with a famous IP slapped on the poster?

At this point in time, after the immense success of The Last of Us’ TV adaptation, every game and their mothers are getting greenlit for the small screen. Some games, like Naughty Dog’s narrative zombie duology, seem perfect for the transition. Many others don’t. Halo, for instance. Or even God of War.

via Paramount

Narrative games are an easy option. TV executives can greenlight a shot-for-shot remake of the game without any of the interactivity that makes games special. This works for The Last of Us, which has incredibly emotional narrative beats and plenty of characters ripe for further exploration. I don’t think it’ll work quite so well for God of War, for instance, as the story isn’t as strong and needs to be backed up by solid action gameplay to keep players engaged – it will also mean ditching the famous single-camera trick that helps God of War’s narrative stay focussed.

This is also the case for Halo. The story of any Halo game is secondary to the feeling of the Assault Rifle in your hands, or the serotonin of clearing out an encampment of Banished. The Halo games have clever level design and, for the most part, inventive multiplayer modes to keep things interesting and exciting. What’s the story of Halo Infinite? No, I don’t know either.

TV execs need to stop and think before beginning production of any more video game TV shows. They need to ask themselves: “Will this really work?” and then work out how.

It’s not just about picking narrative games. I’m sure Final Fantasy 7 would make an excellent TV show, but so would Celeste. You don’t want to replicate the intense platforming on screen, but you want to make viewers feel the tension of the exhausting climb in ways unique to television. You want the protagonist slipping on a crumbling foothold, a long shot of pebbles falling hundreds of metres below. Raise the stakes. Celeste’s ghostly personification of Madeline’s doubts and fears could just as easily be shown through intense monologuing or state of the art special effects. A Celeste TV show would go hard, but it wouldn’t be about platforming.

This is where Halo went so wrong. It thought it had to be a first-person shooter TV show. It even cuts to a first-person view from Master Chief’s helmet, complete with annoying HUD, multiple times in the first episode. Doom just about got away with that reference in 2005, but doing it more than once two decades later?

TV shows about war work. Band of Brothers, Sharpe, and even Dad’s Army are all good examples of this. But do you know what none of them do? Put a camera on the main character’s helmet and try to replicate a first-person shooter. Just because your source material comes from video games, doesn’t mean the resulting adaptation should look like a video game.

The success of The Last of Us will undoubtedly have TV executives foaming at the mouth, primed to turn any mediocre gaming IP into a prestige show. But it doesn’t just work like that. The Last of Us might be the only video game in the world that works with such a 1:1 adaptation. Halo needs a different treatment, perhaps more along the lines of Edge of Tomorrow or even Star Trek, where Master Chief is on a mission of exploration rather than just a frontline trooper in a series of endless wars. The up-against-the-odds Band of Brothers thing doesn’t work so well when your protagonist is a super soldier, after all.

God of War has a chance of doing well. It’s got strong characters, at least, but I’d like to see Kratos in a fresh story made specifically for TV. We’ve just got to hope it’s more akin to Vikings than the third-person action RPG source material.

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