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Captain Keyes

January 25, 2013 | By Errex More

One of the more prominent characters in the Halo mythos is UNSC Captain Jacob Keyes. He was the CO of the USNC vessel Pillar of Autumn from the first Halo game and he was also included in several of the Halo novels written after the game’s success.

The character doesn’t survive his contact with the alien Flood in the game, though, which probably prevented Joyride from making an action figure of him, but for the tenth anniversary of Halo: Combat Evolved, McFarlane Toys decided to include him in the second series of figures devoted to the Anniversary line.

This Capt. Keyes figure was made to roughly fit in with the Halo: Reach scale figures, making him too tall to go alongside the Halo 3 ones, although the level of detail is not quite on par with what I’ve seen in that line.

Keyes comes attired in UNSC white dress uniform, with no real texture applied anywhere on the garment, although there are a few slight creases sculpted with no apparent rhyme nor reason all over the figure. The head sculpt is definitely odd and entirely devoid of life; there is something about the non-expression in the face rubs me the wrong way, almost as if someone was wearing really bad prosthetic make-up.

The design team gave Capt. Keyes a whole lot of articulation although the overall result doesn’t appear to have been entirely thought trough before cramming in the joints, of which the figure has:

• Barbell mounted neck.

• Pegged hinge shoulders.

• Pegged hinge elbows.

• Pegged hinge wrists.

• Floating torso.

• Swivel hips.

• Pegged hinge knees.

• Pegged hinge ankles.

Given the character design, several of these joints are either useless or have the same functionality of much simpler types of articulation. For instance, the neck joint would have the same range in they had used a real ball joint instead, and the same goes for the wrists and ankles. Likewise, the same torso mobility could have been attained using a much simpler swivel joint than the barbell mount it has.

But the really annoying thing about the articulation is how ugly the knee joints look. They look like something designed by Pinocchio’s father and there is really no reason why they could not hide the articulation better.

Worst of all, even with all of the joints, Captain Keyes is just not as versatile as one would think. The upper torso joints work fine, actually, but the leg design doesn’t lend too well for action-packed poses.

The paint applications are very neat, but not particularly noteworthy. There are really small details painted on the chest in the form of badges and a nametag, but as a whole the paint application looks just bland. Usually, the paint can do wonders in bringing life to sub-par head sculpts, but this time McFarlane didn’t even seemed to try.

Keyes comes armed with a dull silver pistol that he can grab with either hand and also one piece to complete Series 2 UNSC icon, precisely the ribbon with the UNSC letters engraved in the middle.

Overall, Captain Keyes is one of those action figures I am happy to have waited out for the price to drop way below 50%. At this price point, Keyes looks good enough to fill out a display and maybe even to try my hand at some customizing, but not much more.