Warning: this review consists of complete spoilers for Halo: Episode 7! If you require a refresher on where we ended, here’s IGN’s review of Halo: Episode 6 – “Solace.”
Everything features an expense. And for Halo, it appears the rate of enjoying the program’s finest episode to date is to right away follow it with the worst. “Solace” makes the error of focusing completely on the program’s weakest story. Worse, the series is still no closer to exposing why that story matters in the very first location.
“Solace” didn’t be successful entirely since it neglected Yerin Ha’s Kwan Ha and Bokeem Woodbine’s Soren -066, however their lack definitely didn’t injured, either. Since Master Chief and Kwan Ha parted methods Episode 2, the series has actually regularly stopped working to validate the choice to keep the latter in the spotlight. Why, with all the drama afoot within the UNSC and the progressively intensifying scale of the war versus the Covenant, does this random flexibility fighter matter? Why is Madrigal so essential to the larger image? The computer game tradition definitely provides fans little to go on, as because variation Madrigal is simply a small world that turns into one more casualty of war.
One would definitely hope that an episode completely committed to Kwan Ha’s mission to free her house would respond to those concerns. Eventually, she and Soren need to end up being more than simple side characters without any concrete connection to the bigger story. But even with all the allusions to the tricks of Madrigal and the real fate of the Ha household in Episode 7, this story stays dull and lifeless. It stumbles upon as a a lot more dull and formulaic sci- fi series crudely implanted onto the Halo mythos.
And that’s truly the sticking point here. It’s not merely that Kwan Ha’s arc feels so entirely separated from whatever else going on in theseries Even in a vacuum, it merely does not produce engaging tv. This episode is cluttered with dull sci- fi tropes that have actually been carried out far much better in other places. Kwan Ha’s charge into the sandstorm is Mad Max: Fury Road without any reward. The sage ladies of the desert are generally deal- basement Fremen, there to do little however spout cliches and send out Kwan Ha on a book desert vision mission. And all so she can learn she needs to “go back to where it started”?
That tail end speaks with a strange pattern in the series where characters are required to take a long, ambiguous journey to end up right back where they began. Take Soren, who goes on a whirlwind mission of his own that appears to total up to really little. The opening does not make it clear just how much time has actually passed given that Episode 5, so there’s a preliminary sense of confusion regarding whether we’re seeing Soren hallucinate or if he in fact made the journey back completely offscreen. And by the climax, he’s best back on Madrigal, as the episode rely on an accessory to these 2 characters that truly hasn’t formed at all.
If absolutely nothing else, the climax does a minimum of separate all the sci- fi cliches with a little action. Though it needs to be stated that enjoying Soren shoot, stab, and punch generic thugs is a bad alternative to the Spartan vs. Covenant fights one would generally anticipate from a Halo series.
The one emphasize of Episode 7 isBurn Gorman’s Vinsher Grath Mind you, Grath is a one- note bad guy with absolutely no depth, however there’s something to be stated for Gorman’s desire to simply toss care to the wind and chew every piece of surroundings he can discover. He’s generally simply playing a psychopathic Space Nazi here and plainly having the time of his life. That might not even come close to validating the significant plot detour today, however it’s something.
