Master Chief

I find Paramount+’s Halo TV show painful to watch.

Not only does it stray significantly from its video game-based source material, at times, it doesn’t even feel like it has anything to do with Halo at all. Pablo Shreiber, the actor who plays the chief, does an admirable job of attempting to carry the TV show on his reinforced bones, but even he can’t save it from its B-level production and schlocky sci-fi script.

Then there’s the less than stellar CGI effects, annoying characters that feel entirely out of place in Halo’s world, and now, a sex scene involving the Master Chief.

Beware, spoilers below:

Yes, you read that correctly — John-117 literally gets it on in episode 8 of the Halo TV Show. You may assume that this act of coitus was with his one true love, Cortana, but that’s not the case, though the AI is involved on a rather creepy level.

In the episode, Master Chief and Makee (Charlie Murphy) — a human that was kidnapped by the covenant at a young age — have grown closer due to their ability to communicate with an alien artifact, resulting in them removing their shirts, touching each other’s scars and engaging in sexual intercourse, all while Cortana (Jen Taylor) watches them from within John’s brain. It’s believed that this partnership eventually results in the fall of the planet Reach.

To be clear, I haven’t actually watched the episode, so this is just a third-party account of the steamy action based on my extensive research.

Other pivotal moments from the Halo TV show include the reveal of Master Chief’s face and, of course, also his butt.

I gave up on the Halo TV show several episodes ago, but I’d be lying if this didn’t make me want to check it out again, if only for morbid curiosity’s sake. In a sense, I’m glad my green space boyfriend is finally getting some after serving humanity for so long, though part of me also wishes this TV show didn’t exist at all.

Seems like today is a day for trailers. First, Google dropped the Pixel 6 trailer, and then the new Matrix trailer arrived. Now, it’s Microsoft’s turn with a short teaser for Windows 11 featuring Master Chief.

The short ad features an actress walking through halls of apps, touching things to interact with them. First, she goes into the Xbox Game Pass app and starts Halo Infinite, which brings Master Chief into the ad. He blasts a banshee out of the sky with a rocket launcher, kick-starting the transition into the Windows 11 widgets interface.

From there, the actress looks up hummingbirds, then leaps into a Teams chat via the new taskbar integration in Windows 11. We briefly see the fancy new Windows 11 wallpaper before transitioning to a dance video. Finally, we see the actress back at her computer watching the dance video and opening a Teams call using Windows 11’s new window management system.

Overall it’s a nice little ad that does a decent job showing off some of what’s new in Windows 11. However, I wonder if people who don’t follow Windows news will get all the little hints about features peppered throughout.

Microsoft plans to launch Windows 11 on October 5th, likely alongside new Surface devices the company will probably unveil at its September 22nd event. And while I’m generally excited, I’m also concerned for the upgrade process — Microsoft has already made a mess of it with confusing system requirements and a stunning lack of clarity, and it doesn’t look like the situation will improve before October.