Today, developer 343 Industries provided new details about the upcoming Halo show on Paramount+. The first season of the series is in post-production and the team decided it was time to reveal what the project was all about. The biggest piece of news has to be that the show takes place in an alternate Silver Timeline.
In a post on Halo Waypoint, the team explained why it decided to introduce this alternate reality to Halo.
Silver is the name of the central Spartan fireteam ... The Silver Timeline is a unique vision of the Halo universe that contains and embraces many key elements of the core canon ... but with relevant contextual and narrative details that diverge in ways appropriate ... to the storytelling opportunities presented by the TV ... As a result, we made the decision to set the Halo television series in an authentic, but independent timeline.
It"ll be interesting to see what changes the show will introduce to the Halo universe. According to Franchise Creative Director, Frank O"Connor, the show will tell a much darker story and go into detail about the creation of the SPARTAN-II Program that saw children being abducted for augmentation experiments.
O"Connor added that the existing lore of the comics, games, and novels will remain the same. However, fans shouldn"t expect events to turn out the same way they did in those forms of media. This is an alternate timeline so anything could happen.
The game canon and its extended lore in novels, comics, and other outlets is core, original, and will continue unbroken ... These will be two parallel ... but ultimately separate timelines whose main events and characters will intersect ... while many events, origins ... and outcomes will map to the Halo story fans know, there will be surprises, differences, and twists that will run parallel, but not identically to core canon.
For example, the way Master Chief and Cortana find the Halo ring will be different than the games. They won"t just randomly stumble upon it.
It"s great to see that the team was given the freedom to create the show they wanted, without any constraints. Let"s see how it"s received when it launches sometime in 2022. Additionally, the first trailer for the Halo show will debut on Sunday, January 30, 2022 as part of the AFC Championship game on CBS and Paramount+.