What’s everyone thinking so far?

Sangheili CGI looks way better though Spartan animation seems to have taken a hit. Active camo makes the Sangheili seem way more terrifying.

Story seems more interesting especially knowing we’re heading in to the Fall of Reach. I appreciate the story starting to dive into the divide between ONI and UNSC.

Hopefully the rest of the season stays strong.

  • buzziebee@lemmy.world
    3·
    9 months ago

    After turning off season 1 in disgust when it aired I thought I’d give season 2 a go. I watched season 1 to catch up and the disgust returned.

    Season 2 is markedly improved over season 1, and feels a bit like a reset, but it does still have that taint attached to it. As I was watching S2E1 I realised there’s not really anything from season 1 worth preserving, you could just start the show off here in S2 and not much would be missed.

    The show still hasn’t effectively communicated the universe it’s set in at all. There’s no info on the scale of the human or covenant empires. There’s no info on how long the war has been fought or how big a disadvantage the humans are in. There’s almost no info on the navy, and any halo fans know that the war was being lost in space, not on the ground. At this point in the timeline tens of billions are dead. Hope should be lost, except for the myth of the Spartans. Everyone’s just carrying on as if the war isn’t a big deal or existential threat.

    Halo is also meant to be a military sci-fi/space opera. But the show still spends way too long on boring interpersonal drama and people whining and feeling sorry for themselves. I’m pissed about the treatment of the marines too. The marines are supposed to be the “heart” of halo, these plucky underdogs standing and fighting against the genocidal aliens but they are always portrayed as unsympathetic jackbooted thugs. Crying about how cruel it was that the Spartans were kidnapped as kids is one of the worst things 343 have done to halo and it’s even more egregious in this show.

    Ultimately they’ve created a bit of a mess. Theres a load of really weird messaging about how humanity aren’t worth saving, how terrorists and pirates are innocent “freedom fighters”, where our heroes are new to having emotions and cry about everything, and where the soldiers supposedly defending humanity are evil fascist stormtroopers.

    The biggest flaw though is they’ve created a world with unclear stakes and unclear objectives. I’m watching an interpersonal drama with a few CGI sequences, rather than a military sci fi space opera.

    • Veedem@lemmy.worldOP
      3·
      9 months ago

      You know, that’s a great point. They never establish what the hell is going on. We know because we’re fans, but the average viewer won’t have any god damn idea.

      • buzziebee@lemmy.world
        2·
        9 months ago

        Yeah it’s maddening. Just a short couple of minute segment even would have helped massively. On the other hand they’d probably butcher that too.

        Here’s the “story so far” segment from halo CE which is pretty succinct. I still remember being excited reading it as a kid. You could cut a bunch of stuff out to do a “show don’t tell” approach in some episodes, but you can probably imagine how great a sequence it would be showing humans spreading out across our sector of the galaxy, then shots of humans getting stomped by the covenant, then cut to the present day.

        The year is 2552. Planet Earth still exists, but overpopulation has forced many of her former residents to colonize other worlds. Faster-than-light travel is now a reality, and Earth’s unified government, through the United Nations Space Command, has put its full weight behind the colonization effort; millions of humans now live on habitable planets in other solar systems. A keystone of humanity’s colonization efforts is the planet Reach, an interstellar naval yard that builds colony ships for civilians and warships for the UNSC’s armed forces. Conveniently close to Earth, Reach is also a hub of scientific and military activity.

        Thirty-two years ago, contact with the outer colony Harvest was lost. A battlegroup sent to investigate was almost completely destroyed; only one badly damaged ship returned to Reach. Its crew told of a seemingly unstoppable alien warship that had effortlessly annihilated their forces.

        This was humankind’s first encounter with a group of aliens they eventually came to know as the Covenant, a collective of alien races united in their fanatical religious devotion. Covenant religious elders declared humanity an affront to the gods, and the Covenant warrior caste waged a holy war upon humanity with gruesome diligence.

        After a series of crushing defeats and obliterated colonies, UNSC Admiral Preston Cole established the Cole Protocol: no vessel may inadvertently lead the Covenant to Earth. When forced to withdraw, ships must avoid Earth-bound vectors—even if that means jumping without proper navigational calculations. Vessels in danger of capture must self-destruct.

        On Reach, a secret military project to create cyborg super-soldiers takes on newfound importance. The soldiers of the SPARTAN-II project rack up an impressive record against the Covenant in test deployments, but there are too few of them to turn the tide of the war.

        Existing SPARTAN-II soldiers are recalled to Reach for further augmentation. The plan: board a Covenant vessel with the improved SPARTAN-IIs and learn the location of the Covenant home world. Two days before the mission begins, Covenant forces strike Reach and annihilate the colony. The Covenant are now on Earth’s doorstep. One ship, the Pillar of Autumn, escapes with the last SPARTAN-II and makes a blind jump into deep space, hoping to lead the Covenant away from Earth.