I recently just finished Secret Level, the new Amazon anthology focused on specific video games in the vein of Love, Death and Robots on Netflix, which makes sense, given that they share a creator in Tim Miller.
Many franchises both new and old appeared in the series, from Pac Man to Warhammer to new mobile hits like Honor of Kings and Crossfire. Sony also had a big presence with an extremely unfortunate episode focused on its instantly-killed Concord shooter, and they also had the last episode of the season, a very, very bad segment featuring a number of PlayStation icons in a way that felt like an overly long ad rather than a coherent story.
But Sony’s rival Microsoft did not show up in the same way (well, sort of with Spelunky), even when they could have. And it turns out there was a great idea for an episode that involved a crossover between Master Chief and the Doom Slayer. An idea Microsoft apparently killed, according to the show’s creator. Here’s Miller speaking to Collider:
“I get a little chafed when I read online, and they’re like, “Hold on, these assholes took Spelunky when they could have taken Halo?” Or something like that. I’m like, “Man, you think that we didn’t talk to Halo or something?”
And director Dave Wilson:
“The creative director at id [Software] is a good friend of ours, and so are folks at Microsoft, so we made a big plea because one of the things both Tim and I would love to do is do something that isn’t currently available in the games, like crossovers. We wanted to make a Master Chief/Doom Slayer crossover episode, and I spent a whole weekend crafting this impassioned letter of my childhood. And it’s exactly what Tim said; they were like, “Nah.”
Whenever something like this gets shot down, it’s usually in the name of “brand safety” if you do or don’t want your IP represented in a specific way (Microsoft now owns both properties after acquiring Bethesda). This seems like an incredibly bad call on their end. Doom has a new game coming out in 2025, The Dark Ages, and Halo? Well, Master Chief really needs a win after the last few years.
- Halo Infinite was delayed a year and arrived with a somewhat underwhelming launch. It’s made improvements to multiplayer over the years but remains largely ignored.
- Halo has been entirely left out of Microsoft’s vast showcases of future games the next few years. Work continues behind the scenes on…something, but we have no idea if we’ll see Master Chief again before the end of the decade.
- The most significant presence of Master Chief lately was the very bad Halo live-action series that was just cancelled after two seasons and lambasted by fans for constant inaccuracies, including a John-117 that was constantly out of his helmet and armor.
But a Master Chief/Doom Slayer crossover? I mean come on, that’s a slam dunk if I’ve ever seen one. Now that Secret Level is a hit, I hope Microsoft changes its mind for next time on that concept.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
