YMMV / Halo: Nightfall

• Ass Pull: They can determine that the human-killing element exists only on a certain fragment of the original Alpha Halo ring versus a trillion other possible locations in the universe.
  • Didn't they trace the path of Axl's ship to the Alpha Halo fragment?
• Broken Base: As one can see on this very page, the fans are split between whether the show get better once the plot on the Alpha Shard gets underway, or whether it remains consistently mediocre throughout.
  • On a more specific note, does the show's character drama make up for the relatively predictable plot, or do the characters come off as too bland and underdeveloped?
  • Do the Second Stories (which have generally been better received than the actual show) help bolster the main plot, or are they just not enough?
• Growing the Beard: The first episode is generally disliked by most people for almost seeming fan made at parts, with sub-par CGI and questionable cinematography. That said, some people consider the show to get much better when they finally get to the Halo fragment and the story actually picks ups and reveals itself as not an explosive/action type of series as might be expected from a video game spin-off, but a show about suspense and character development. It was also much darker than most Halo works, on par with "The Mona Lisa".
• So Okay, It's Average: The most common complaint is that once you get past the novelty of visiting the Halo fragment, there is nothing that really stands out.
• The Scrappy: Axl, not so much for his character, but because his design comes off to a lot of people as being lazy and too close to People in Rubber Suits.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: A lot of viewers felt this way about Randall, whose background as a former Spartan-II has little, if any, bearing on the plot. True, he doesn't have his augmentations anymore, but even then, the IIs were supposed to have been selected from people who would have been special even without them (and that's not even getting his backstory of being in the military since he was six).
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Do you think the human-killing element on the Alpha Shard will produce any revelations about the greater Myth Arc revolving around the Forerunners, Flood, and Precursors? Apparently not; the element is merely a randomly formed MacGuffin that gets blown up in the end.
  • In a case of They Wasted A Perfectly Good Setting, there's nothing we see on the Alpha Shard to ever indicate that it was once part of a Forerunner installation, not even a scrap of metal. Could be justified by the feral Lekgolo eating much of the technology, but it still comes off as a huge waste of a good setting to a lot of people.
  • The Lekgolo could have been something that tied much more closely to the Forerunner mythos, like surviving Flood specimens (they act more like it than traditional Hunter gestalts, anyways).