The official trailer for the Halo TV series on Paramount Plus has been released, and it looks incredible — for fans of the games and sci-fi fans in general. It gives us our first look at Cortana, the artificial intelligence who assists players in the games and who was sadly missing from the teaser released last year. She’ll be played by Jen Taylor, the original Cortana voice actor from the games. We also see lots of Master Chief in action and finally hear Pablo Schreiber’s take on the character’s iconic, gruff voice.
The trailer also gives us a better look at famous Halo characters like Dr Halsey, played by Natascha McElhone, and locations like High Charity, the Covenant’s capital city space station. Fans of the games will also recognise an energy sword, plasma pistol, Warthog and Phantom, as well as several alien races. The Elites and Jackals look incredible so far, with fans on Twitter sharing their excitement for Master Chief’s enemies.
The Elites look especially menacing, with one quick scene showing Master Chief battling two at once. They tower over the Chief, wielding energy swords and taking a chunk out of his shields. It already looks like the combat in the show will be as action-packed as the games.
As for the story, the Halo TV series will loosely follow the events of the games but will tell a unique story. According to a blog post by 343 Industries, they decided to set the show in a new timeline so they could keep it separate from the games. “Basically, we want to use the existing Halo lore, history, canon, and characters wherever they make sense for a linear narrative, but also separate the two distinctly so that we don’t invalidate the core canon or do unnatural things to force a first-person video game into an ensemble TV show.”
“To be clear: these will be two parallel, VERY similar, but ultimately separate timelines whose main events and characters will intersect and align throughout their very different cadences.”
Of course, the fans’ reactions on Twitter have been the best part of the trailer.
The Halo TV series will stream on March 24 on Paramount Plus.
