Master Chief and the Doom Slayer almost came face to face in a crossover I didn’t know I wanted until now. The embattled first-person shooter icons, the former of Halo fame and the latter from Doom, were part of a pitch for the Amazon Prime anthology Secret Level, but powers that be at their parent company Microsoft quashed the idea. Boo!
Among the most recognizable figures in not just FPS games, but the medium as a whole, the Doom Slayer and Master Chief represent very particular eras for the industry. Doom changed everything in the ’90s, formalizing ideas about shooters and multiplayer games that remain fundamental, while Halo was at the forefront of the 2000s boon, bringing in millions of players on Xbox Live.
They’re huge, beloved, and now that they’re both under the same corporate roof some form of meeting seems inevitable. And we almost had it, as Tim Miller and Dave Wilson, creator and director of Secret Level respectively, wanted to do an episode involving both, but were flatly denied.
“[Hugo Martin], creative director at id [Software], is a good friend of ours, and so are folks at Microsoft, so we made a big plea because one of the things both Tim and I would love to do is do something that isn’t currently available in the games, like crossovers,” Wilson revealed to Collider.
“We wanted to make a Master Chief/Doom Slayer crossover episode, and I spent a whole weekend crafting this impassioned letter of my childhood.” Sadly, according to Miller, the response was “Nah,” so the idea never got any further.
It’s a shame, since it’s something that makes an enormous amount of sense on paper. There’s already huge crossover among the fanbases. Doom is stilling riding on a high from the 2016 quasi-reboot and 2020’s Eternal, and the Halo TV series on Paramount Plus wasn’t very good, so people are clamoring for a more faithful adaptation, not to mention Microsoft now owns id Software after acquiring Bethesda, so they’re in the same stable.
Alas, adapting properties like these is often tricky for any number of reasons. Maybe someday it’ll happen. Secret Level is available on Amazon Prime now, and it does have episodes on Unreal Tournament and Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, if you still want a fix of FPS goodness.
Have a read of our guide on Doom: The Dark Ages for what’s coming next over there, while we have lists of the best space games and the best upcoming PC games for other ways to hop into a galaxy far, far away.
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