Review: Halo: The Fall of Reach Animated Series

 

Halo fans, the time has come. After surely playing a crap ton of the Master Chief Collection, we finally have a new Halo experience on the Xbox One. Halo 5: Guardians has been receiving excellent reviews thus far, which is amazing! Personally, Halo 4 was a huge disappointment for me, so I’m glad to hear this is an improvement. But we aren’t here to talk about the game! If you have deep pockets and shelled out the extra cash to get any of the limited editions, or deluxe digital edition, then you received access to this special animated series based on the novel of the same name.

This is a three part animated series that you can access after buying those editions I had mentioned before. All you have to do is go to the Halo Channel app on your Xbox One, and it’s a quick find. It’s always great getting extra content, but is this series worth buying a more expensive version? Let’s get into the review to find out. There will be spoilers below, so if you just want a quick review without any of the details, it’s an alright series. Uninteresting characters, but the story is okay, the writing is great, and the animation looks wonderful. Check it out if you’re a hardcore fan and then come back to read the rest. Now if you’ve seen the series and want to go a little more in depth, keep on reading…

SPOILERS BELOW

ACT 1
The first Act of this series is the real origin story of John/Master Chief. It focuses on his early childhood and his kidnapping *cough*, I mean, conscription into the UNSC’s Spartan program. This episode shows John on his earliest missions with his fellow cadets.

The first act was an excellent start to this series. It wasted little time getting to the point and got us straight into John’s story. The animation style is really beautiful to look at, especially the scenery of the various planets. I’ll say that the animation style doesn’t lend itself well to the characters, but the backgrounds and scenery are gorgeous. The story structure is tight, rushed, but tight. You see John’s character developed a lot in this first Act. His development did end up feeling a little rushed. He went from being one form of himself to another in a day. So it begs the question, if he can be disciplined so easily, why did he ever misbehave to begin with? There was absolutely no resilience on his part to what was going on around him. He and none of the other six year old children seemed upset at all that they had been kidnapped *cough* conscripted into this program. The story had to progress, so these characters had to be rushed into accepting everything around them.

But as far as a rushed story goes, it wasn’t bad at all. The writing was great, the animation was great, and it’s easy to buy into the world they are presenting to you. By entering this world with John, this episode can serve as a good entry point for anybody wanting to learn about the Halo mythology. Also, for you Halo: Reach fans, Jorge/Noble 5 is in this episode for a tiny bit.

ACT 2
The second act is really where things start to come together for the series. It takes place six years later and now the recruits are fourteen years old. The Spartans in training have just undergone their body augmentations, but the process is so taxing on the body that only half of them survived. What I like about this act is now John is starting to question what is going on around him. Half of his men and women had died and he doesn’t know how to handle it. On top of that, he accidentally kills a fellow soldier in a dispute.

This episode builds on the training that we saw the kids go through in the previous Act, but now we’re starting to see the characters become wiser to the world around them. Where this Act and series as a whole lacks is with it’s supporting cast. Halo has always lived and died with Master Chief. The spotlight is usually always on him and how that makes the Act suffer is that every character Chief interacts with just comes across boring. We see a lot of this in this episode. John is being developed and becoming more interesting, but his peers and higher ups are as bland as they come. John lives forh is soldiers, but it’s hard to see why since they’re incredibly boring. I haven’t read the “Fall of Reach” novel, but I hope these characters are better handled in that book than they are here. Also, it seems John keeps getting promoted for doing the wrong things. That isn’t really a criticism, I just find it weird.

Towards the end of the Act we really start to see the teens become Spartans. They go on a mission, and the action sequences are kind of bad, but from a story stand point it’s showing us that these kids are now becoming something more. They have truly become super soldiers. They put their skills to the test and prove themselves. Now for the final conflict…

ACT 3
It has all come down to this. It’s time for the Spartans to put their training to the rest. It’s been a slow build up to any real action, so this Act doesn’t waste time getting into the battle. There is a space battle that looks pretty gorgeous, a lot of vibrant colors and cool ships. They sure know how to animate ship battles, it’s a shame it doesn’t translate well to ground combat.

The classic Spartan suits are introduced in a really interesting way. They explain that not just anybody can wear the armor. The average human would have their bones broken. Only those who have undergone the body augmentation can wear the armor. It adds some weight to the significance of the Spartans. These guys are the real deal and this scene explains why. Additionally, the Spartan armor makes the characters look much better.

Finally, they move on to the final battle as official Spartans. The final conflict feels like classic Halo. Spartans fighting the Covenant. It does trigger a sense of nostalgia, but it was anti-climatic. This episode tries to emphasize the relationships between the Spartans, but it doesn’t come across very effective since the previous two acts didn’t do a good job of establishing and developing these friendships. It all good very pretty, but there isn’t much substance.
The final moments of the episode do have the most emotion. After the loss of one of their own. There is a pretty nice tribute. Well animated and written.

Overall, Halo: The Fall of Reach series isn’t that great. If you’re a hardcore fan of the franchise, check it out right away because I’m sure you’ll take something away from it. But for everybody else, this may just be a case of looking at something pretty and listening to something pretty. And I forgot to mention the music, but the score throughout this series is beautiful. If the characters don’t trigger any emotions in you, chances are the music will. Ultimately, there isn’t much to take away from this though. It’s a little bonus content for those who pay more, and if you treat it like that, it isn’t terrible. There is good in this, don’t get me wrong, but it could have been much more. In the grand scheme of things it just made me feel sad that we haven’t actually had a true Halo movie yet. Get to work Hollywood. The clock is ticking.

How did you like “Halo: The Fall of Reach”? Like it? Not so much? Make sure to share your thoughts with us. Hope you all enjoy Halo 5! Happy gaming!

Halo 5: Guardians is in stores now!