Halo has existed as a thriving universe for the past two decades, and while various novels and other forms of media have spun-off from the core games, the Paramount+ TV show feels like the first serious attempt to adapt the games and tell their story in a whole new way. That's the task before Kiki Wolfkill, one of the executive producers, and Steven Kane, who wrote and developed the show alongside Kyle Killen, while also serving as an executive producer. I spoke to Wolfkill and Kane about the direction the show has taken, including the decision to remove Master Chief's helmet.
"I think we're going to see a range of reactions," Wolfkill says. "For some people, this has been 20 years in the making. We showed glimpses of the eyes in Halo 4, and we've shown him as a child in multiple executions. For others, they feel very protective of the mystery of the Master Chief that they have in their head. They own part of who Master Chief is, by virtue of playing him as a character. It was a hard decision, knowing that there were such strong feelings about that. On the other hand, it was also a straightforward decision once we really started to understand the story, knowing that it was always a goal to tell a story about the Master Chief, but to really tell a story about John, which isn't something that we're actually able to do in the games, or haven't done in the games. Having the benefit of this amazing longform storytelling medium in television, where we can really do great character development, meant it was important for the helmet to come off, it was important to see the man inside the armour, and really experience his journey, right there in front of you."
There is a sense of freedom to the show, seeing as it's not part of the games' canon. However, that's not exactly how Kane describes it, so that opens a whole new set of possibilities. "I wouldn't say it's non-canonical, I'll just say it's canon adjacent," Kane says. "It's very much inspired by and includes most of canon, to the extent that changes are made deliberately in conjunction with 343 to serve the story. There was never a sense of 'I want to do this', and there was pushback against that. It was more they've given us this world, and this ethos, and this spirit of what Halo is, and we bought into it. So the story we wanted to tell was in keeping with that, and so then it became more about just asking for deeper questions from 343 about canon to make sure we were getting certain stuff right. But we were also given so much freedom to just pursue the stories we want[ed] to tell. There was never a sense of real disagreement or conflict about that kind of stuff."
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However Kane might view the show's relationship to the canon, it's clear this is new ground, and that comes with new challenges. "We started with, as Kiki said, a story about John, and his journey of self discovery," Kane says. "So from that point on, we were committed to telling our own story that existed within the universe that people know of Halo. It gave us a chance to build out worlds - either some new ones, or in many cases, worlds that were canonical in a way that allowed fans who know the game to really get the chance to visit those places like Madrigal. And of course, for people we initiated into Halo, a chance to see new worlds for the first time at all. So we didn't consciously run away from retelling stuff from the games, we also realised that 'why tell you the stuff you see in the games, when we can tell you a story of our own?'. It started organically with the story of John. And then from that point, figuring out our themes, and the themes are everything from what does it mean to be human? How much of your own humanity are you willing to risk to save humanity? Questions of warfare, questions of sacrifice come in. And then in the Halsey story, she was just as fascinated with what humanity could be, and her own vision of how to preserve it. Her ideas of what artificial intelligence can do for that and 'is AI as human as a human?', so it just snowballed. It took on its own momentum."
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As well as the games, Kane also brings experience from The Last Ship, another show that mixes sci-fi and military storytelling. This, Kane says, provided the groundwork for how Halo was constructed from the ground up. Since it uses real iconography of the US Navy, he compares the idea of a canon too, although The Last Ship is in fact based on the fictional novel by William Brinkley. "First of all, we did have a Master Chief on both shows, The Last Ship has a master team as well," Kane says. "I think what that show taught me was how to work with a canon, because I was working with the US Navy's canon, trying to honour their spirit and their ethos of honour, courage and commitment, and tell those stories. I think that certainly the knowledge I got from the military perspective helped with the UNSC. Writing that dialogue and knowing how they think, and how they talk. I think that The Last Ship and Halo are similar in the sense that we are building worlds that feel real, even outside the frame. So you feel like if you go on in any direction, you feel like it's authentic. Halo just was on a scale even even larger."
This interview๊ was held in conjunction with journalists from Sci-Fi Vision, Shacknews, Comic-Con.com, LRM Online, and PಞopCulture.com. Halo premieres on Paramount+ on March 24
