Halo showrunner Steven Kane says that they "didn’t look at the game" when creating the show.
Leading up Paramount's Halo series, it was revealed that the show would have its own "Silver Timeline", essentially allowing the show to diverge from the games and create its own canon and events without interfering with what has already happened. As it turns out, the games weren't much of a concern for the team and didn't factor much into the production of the show.
In an interview with Variety, Steven Kane spoke about the creative process behind Paramount's take on Halo, revealing that they didn't look at or think about the games. Kane said, "We didn’t look at the game. We didn’t talk about the game. We talked about the characters and the world. So I never felt limited by it being a game.”
Executive producer Kiki Wolfkill expanded on that point, saying, "Early on, we were thinking about doing something that could tie very closely with the game. What we were finding was, trying to verbatim stay with everything that’d come before wasn’t serving the medium. It also wasn’t serving the creative teams and their need to express a story and build the world through their eyes.”
Director Otto Bathurst also spoke about the show's relationship with the games, There’s no way I was ever going to grasp the whole thing, so there was a lot of phone-a-friend. They were extraordinary in their acceptance of the fact that they couldn’t just try to square-peg-round-hole their 20 years of history. Gaming is a completely different medium.”
TheGamer had the chance to speak to several of Halo's cast members and creators earlier in the week, including the man behind Master Chief, Pablo Schreiber, the show's executive producers, Jen Taylor, Yerin Ha, Natascha McEhlone, and Olive Gray. We also have impressions up for the show's first two episodes.