Halo Legends Panel Recap

The original description for the Halo panel at this year’s Comic-Con went like this: “Frank O'Connor (franchise development director for Halo) will be joined by a number of special guests to discuss how Halo is evolving into a robust entertainment franchise and what's coming in the future.” As you can tell, they were coy about today’s big reveal of Halo Legends, the upcoming series of anime films set in the Halo universe. With that news officially broken this morning, Frank O’Connor and friends took some time to explain a little bit more about Legends this afternoon.

Who Was There: On the panel were Frank O’Connor, head of 343 Industries (the newly formed all-things-Halo division of Microsoft), Halo Legends managing editor Kevin Grace and producer Joseph Cho, as well as a handful of representatives from the various Japanese animation companies involved in the project.

What They Talked About: Initially, not very much. O’Connor started with a general overview of the project, explaining that the decision to expand Halo into animated features wasn’t a “marketing push,” but rather a desire to explore more of the fiction that's possible in the game. Of all the media they could do that with, they settled on anime because of the humanizing element that particular art form brings. After that, the animation studio reps went on to talk about what big fans of the series they are and how excited they are to work on Legends. Yes, it was all very safe and friendly stuff that didn’t shed any more light on the project than what was revealed earlier today.

However, once it came time for audience questions, we got to see hear interesting tidbits. Here’s a rundown of some of the more interesting responses: Legends will explore the stories of many other Spartan soldiers besides Master Chief, including at least one female Spartan. They haven’t finished casting yet, which is why they haven’t talked about actors involved. Sergeant Johnson won’t be featured in any significant way. At least one episode will delve very deeply into the history of the Covenant. A lot of the settings in the anime are directly inspired by the multiplayer maps in the series. The episode by Casio Entertainment will be purely CG rather than hand drawn. Every episode will be considered canon except for Toei’s, which O’Connor said "are fun" rather than official fiction.

Best Audience Question: One guest asked whether the story from I Love Bees would be considered in the establishment of this fiction. O’Connor answered “absolutely.” Talk about remembering your Halo history!

Worst Audience Question: Another guest asked whether the anime would unlock Halo 3 recon armor. O’Connor told him there was some under his chair.

The Takeaway: All the big details are still very much under wraps at the moment, but what they showed of Halo Legends--including the debut teaser trailer--looked very interesting. It’s clear Microsoft is ramping up the establishment of Halo as a full-fledged entertainment universe that stands on its own apart from Bungie’s games. We’re eager to see where it goes from here.