Secret Level is an animated anthology show that reimagines a handful of iconic games - from Pac-Man and Spelunky to Armored Core and The Outer Worlds - in small, self-contained episodes, but the series' creators had originally pitched a badass-sounding crossover between Halo's Master Chief and the self-titled Doom Slayer that sadly never came to be.
"I get a little chafed when I read online, and they're like, 'Hold on, these assholes took Spelunky when they could have taken Halo?,'" series creator Tim Miller said in a chat with Collider, before revealing that the team behind Secret Level actually did pursue Xbox's sci-fi franchise. "Man, you think that we didn't talk to Halo or something?"
Things get even juicier when supervising director Dave Wilson chimed in to reveal that the "creative director at id Software is a good friend of ours, and so are the folks at Microsoft" - so the creative duo decided to make a "big plea" to combine the two iconic shooters. "We wanted to make a Master Chief/Doom Slayer crossover episode, and I spent the whole weekend crafting this impassioned letter of my childhood."
If you've ever spent more than 10 minutes scrolling across Reddit, chances are you've definitely seen adoring fan art of the two icons ripping and tearing it up together. Sometimes they're smashing demons. Sometimes they're massacring aliens. Metroid's Samus sometimes makes an appearance. The two are even pitted against each other in fan fiction, a la Death Battle, ad nauseam.
So the pitch makes sense. They're both the immortal faces of two of the most important shooters in history, they're both chunky space boys, and they're both cool as hell. Even the animation house behind the show, Blur Studios, has tons of experience with Xbox's FPS, having handled the cinematics of Halo Wars and Halo 2 Anniversary.
But despite pitching the match made in heaven, the answer Miller and Wilson got was a plain and simple (and heartbreaking) "'Nah.'" It's not clear whether the rejection came from Doom makers id Software, Halo Studios, or the rights holder of both, Microsoft, though. Maybe that's a good thing considering how bad the PlayStation mash-up episode was.
Master Chief and Doom Slayer shippers don't need to completely give up hope for a crossover just yet, though. Amazon Prime Video renewed Secret Level for a second season just last month, where it'll keep adapting more video games. "Of course, we begged for Half-Life," Miller also noted.
Doom: The Dark Ages is taking our beloved Slayer to a historical hellscape this year, meanwhile, a massive Halo leakage recently spilled 25 years of history onto the internet.
