Thursday, February 11, 2010 4:43 AM
Halo Legends premieres in San Francisco
It’s Wednesday night, and I just returned to my hotel room in San Francisco (I’m in the City by the Bay to attend X10, Microsoft’s annual showcase of upcoming video game wares) after sitting through the world premiere of Halo Legends, a series of seven Halo shorts created by a quintet of Japanese anime studios.
Available on DVD and Blu-ray—which means, amusingly, that a lot of folks will probably be playing the disc on a PlayStation 3 rather than an Xbox 360—as of Thursday, the project was overseen by Frank O’Connor, franchise development director with Microsoft Game Studios. He was on hand to introduce and provide insight into the making of the films, and noted that each piece is essentially an “answer to a question people have been asking about the Halo universe.”
The collection begins with an origins piece starring Cortana, Halo’s ever-likable artificial intelligence. She quickly and succinctly lays out millions of years of Halo history, including the doings of the forerunners and the beginnings of the Flood and the series’ titular space rings. She also reveals that—minor spoiler alert—humanity is actually on its second go around. It isn’t particularly affecting, but fans should find it informative.
The next film, dubbed “The Duel,” is the most visually arresting of the seven. It features a style that seems a mixture of Japanese painting and the work of fantasy artists such as Ken Kelly and Frank Frazetta (imagine the iconic covers of old Conan the Barbarian books done up with an Eastern influence). However, the story, which concerns a righteous Arbiter who stands against Covenant higher-ups, is predictable and largely uninteresting.
The next couple of shorts—one about a soldier reclaiming his humanity shortly before sacrificing himself, and another focusing on the SPARTANs—are forgettable as well. I’m struggling to remember plot details for both, and I saw them less than a couple of hours ago. Not a good sign.
Then things take a turn for the bizarre with "Odd One Out" (a play on the name of one of Halo’s multiplayer modes). It’s a parody starring a misfit SPARTAN identified as 1337 who fights a dinosaur. ‘Nuff said.
The collection doesn’t hit its stride until the final two films, both of which feel as though they could actually fit nicely into a Halo game or novel.
“Babysitter” focuses on the story of a cadre of Orbital Shock Drop Troopers who play backup to a mysterious SPARTAN who’s on a mission to take out a Covenant bigwig. It’s got some terrific action sequences and an unexpected and satisfying reveal near the end.
The final short, called “The Package,” is the only one of the seven to be completely rendered in CGI, making it feel almost like an extended cut-scene from one of the games. It even stars Master Chief. He and several other elite marines launch a space assault on a Covenant flagship to rescue a VIP. It features loads of highly stylized fight choreography and a few bravely heroic sacrifices.
Halo Legends won’t be the best filmed entertainment most of us will watch this year (or probably even this month), but hardcore fans will likely get enough morsels of Halo mythology to make it worth viewing. A couple of my colleagues suggested that it’s the Halo equivalent of The Matrix’s The Animatrix, and that sounds about right to me. Its appeal may be niche, but it’s real.
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