The Halo’s story is spread over ten games and thirty novels since the last 20 years, but the new TV Show has decided to adapt this story to tell a completely different one. This will inevitably bring many confusions and as a big fan of Halo, I will explain you the difference between the “Original Timeline” and the “Silver Timeline” from the TV Show.
The Master Chief face : First of all, the most obvious difference is the Master Chief’s face. He rarely takes off his helmet in the games and we only see his eyes at the end of Halo 4. Books describe his eyes as serious but pensive, a firm mouth, a strong jaw and the last vestiges of his childhood freckles. Decades of fighting inside his armor have deprived his skin of sunlight that has become very pale. However, no beard was ever mentioned
As for his personal life, he never encountered a forerunner artifact in his childhood, just as he never had a love or sexual relationship to our knowledge, and certainly not with a covenant human spy.
Silver team: They don’t exist in the “Original Timeline” and are replaced by Blue team. As the Silver team was a pure invention, fans often call the universe of the TV Show the “Silver Timeline” to differentiate it from the “Original Timeline”.
Spartan program : The doctor Halsey and the ONI did kidnap children for the program, but they never erased their memories or hid their abduction from them. Halsey convinced them that they were the future saviors of humanity to motivate them to forget their old life.
Several children rebelled against the Spartan project, but John was never part of it. He set an example for the other children, of whom he quickly became the leader after two years of training. He also had a deep respect for Doctor Halsey and he certainly never tried to kill her.
As for Soren, he fled the Spartan program alone without telling it to anyone and this was the last time we see him.
Emotions : Also very important, the Spartans don’t have implants in their back to deprive them of their emotions, so there is no magic button to make them more human. It’s their training since they were six years old that taught them how to handle emotions.
Even if they are less social and sentimental than others and never had romantic relationships, they still have their own personality and strong ties with the Spartans whom they consider as their family.
As for the story about company animals killed by Halsey, it’s also an invention.
Space landing : Last difference on the Spartans, when they jump from space and land on a planet, their armor absorbs the shock and keeps them alive most of the time, then they wake up after a few minutes. They are certainly not able to land on their legs and continue the fight.
Cortana : In the TV Show, she seems to be the first AI of her generation, but it’s not the case in the “Original Timeline”. Conscious AI was invented before the war against the covenants and Cortana is just more sophisticated than the others. She was created in 2549 and served Halsey for three years before meeting John.
In the games, Cortana is not inserted into the skull of the Master Chief. Like other IAs, Cortana resides in a chip and the Master Chief’s armor can receive and remove it at any time. She improves the bond between him and the armor, but she’s not able to take control of it or even knock out the Master Chief. To be clear, no AI has ever been able to control a human or his armor.
Miranda Keyes : In the “Original Timeline”, she’s also the daughter of Captain Keyes and Doctor Halsey, but instead of becoming a scientist like her mother, she joined the navy like her father and became commander of a frigate. Her father and she speak rarely with Doctor Halsey and don’t work in her building.
Halsey sins : she is particularly evil in the TV show. She tryied to kill John to replace her with Cortana and mounted the spartans against each other, two horrible things that she never did in the “Original Timeline”
UNSC : the organization is shown in a particularly cruel way in the TV Show when they brutalize children in a forced labour camp, killing Makee’s friend. In the “Original Timeline”, the UNSC has never been so cruel, even though they remain an authoritarian organization that refuses the independence of outer colonies on other planets.
As for Kwan Ha, she is an invented character who has no equivalent in books and there is no space portal under the surface of the planet Madrigal.
The blessed one: forerunners are an old extinct species with superior technology. Both in the “Silver Timeline” and in the “Original Timeline”, the blessed one, or the Reclaimer, are humans with genes that enable them to activate forerunner technology. In the “Original Timeline”, there are a lot more of Reclaimer, like all of the Spartans, Catherine Halsey and Miranda Keyes.
One of the main differences with the TV Show is the fact that the prophets do not use Reclaimers. When they discovered the privileged bond that humans shared with their forerunners gods, they were afraid of losing their prophet’s status and ordered the extermination of humanity to hide this reality.
Covenant’s technology : the energy swords of the jackals and the energy blade of Mackie’s finger don’t exist in the “Original Timeline”, but it wouldn’t be an impossible technology.
Then, even if the Hunters, called «Lekgolo», are composed of orange worms, we have never seen these worms separate themselves to fight humans.
As for the chairs of the prophets, they are not only used to levitate but also to attack or defend themselves by pulling a powerful laser beam, something that the three prophets don’t try in the last episode of the series.
The forerunner artifact : Finally, the last difference is the forerunner artifact that doesn’t appear anywhere in games. The Master Chief never had a vision of the Halo before going there. In the first game “Halo CE”, no one aboard the ship «Pillar of Autumn» expected to find a giant ring in space.
So now you know all the differences between the TV Show and the games.
But that did deal with a super soldier programme where he’s emotionally stunted but he gets stranded on this scrap planet and ends up joining the community and sort of brought into this family. It can be done and none of this is new. There are tropes that they could look at. But I am sure in that the whole idea is that he’s a stoic guy characters are trying to reach out to and it’s the events that push them together through shared adversity.
suggesting that they might look at neural interface stuff. Like every human has one implanted so they can be tracked and controlled. Very dystopian society sort of stuff. But, that’s evil Cortana and not really one for one body possession. She’s not the Borg!