Paramount+'s long-awaited 'Halo' TV show has arrived. Here's how it diverges from the video-game franchise, according to one of the show's producers.

• The "Halo" TV series, based on the video-game franchise, debuted on Paramount+ on Thursday.
• "Halo" producer Kiki Wolfkill says that the pandemic-related production delay was good for the series.

After two decades, a dozen games, a slew of book and comic spinoffs, and a failed attempt at a movie, the "Halo" video-game franchise has finally been adapted for the small screen.

The "Halo" TV series premiered on Paramount+ on Thursday after weathering the coronavirus pandemic and a change in networks.

The series shut down filming in Budapest for eight months during the pandemic before resuming production in November 2020. Kiki Wolfkill, an executive producer and an exec at game developer 343 Industries, told Insider that the delay was beneficial in a way for the series. She said she looked at the early stages of the production as making four feature films at the same time.

"The COVID break let us step back and look at what we were doing, and helped us realize we were on an unsustainable path in terms of how much we were trying to do at once," Wolfkill told Insider.

Originally set up at Paramount's premium-cable network Showtime, the series moved to the company's streaming service last year, with Showtime still producing along with Steven Spielberg's Amblin TV and the maker of the games, 343. Steven Kane served as showrunner for the first season.

"Halo" is just one of a handful of high-profile video games getting the TV treatment, from HBO's "The Last of Us" to Netflix's "Assassin's Creed," as media companies mine the lucrative gaming industry for fresh IP to boost their streaming businesses.

"The shift onto a streaming platform was really good for us," Wolfkill said. "So much of our audience is already streaming versus watching traditional television or premium cable."

The "Halo" TV series follows a different timeline than the games

The "Halo" TV series, like the games, follows the Master Chief, also known as John-117, the leader of a group of physically enhanced super soldiers called Spartans, as they take on an alliance of alien species known as the Covenant.

The bumps in the road never changed the direction of the series, Wolfkill said.

"The vision for this was always about telling a character story against this huge sci-fi 'Halo' universe as a backdrop," Wolfkill said. "We wanted to explore the Master Chief, but more importantly express the themes of 'Halo' of hope and heroism through the lens of John exploring his own humanity. That was always a North star for the show."

Part of that exploring John's humanity means showing his face, which the "Halo" games have never done, instead presenting the Chief as more of an avatar for the player. Actor Pablo Schreiber, who plays the Chief, gets plenty of screen time.

"There was healthy conversation around how big a decision that was," Wolfkill said. "But in order the tell the story of John, it was important to see him out of the armor. And this is meant to be a differentiated experience from playing the games. We wanted to give 'Halo' fans a different experience and new fans a different way into the universe."

The series will follow a different timeline than the games, which 343 has dubbed the "silver timeline," allowing it to tell its own story while still taking inspiration from the "core canon" of the games.

Wolfkill said that there's "flexibility to do other things" in the new timeline.

"Now that we've established the show, it has its own rules," she said. "That doesn't mean there can't be crossover with the core canon, but we wanted to give this branch the freedom to grow the way that it needs to. If we decided to tell another story [in the future], there would be a decision of whether it sits in the silver timeline or the core game canon, depending on the medium and what the story needs."