The season finale or Dragon Age: Redemption dropped today.
Now, if you haven’t been watching DA:R (that’s how us viewers / cool kids write it), it’s a web series-gaming crossover from BioWare, Machinima, and online video sweetheart Felicia Day. This sixth and final weekly episode, dubbed Saarebas brings the story of Day’s ‘knife eared’ Evlin assassin Tallis to a climax and demonstrates the epic live-action world Day created based on a video game.
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I must confess, I’m not an avid player of Dragon Age the game. I only started watching DA:R because of Felicia Day. I’m a long-time fan of her seasoned web series The Guild. But last February, when Day showed a teaser trailer of her upcoming original web series on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, that was enough to get me to tune in. Felicia Day with elf ears? Sold! Though when the first episode premiered back in October, I was lost in this world of Qunari and Chantry. Who are these characters? Is Tallis a name or a title? What is with the strange blood splatter?
Just when I realized I was interested in learning the answers to the above questions, but not interested enough to rummage through Dragon Age wikis to find them, Day started posting video commentaries for every DA:R episode. They’re great! Each installment not only touches on Day’s favorite filming moments, but also explains the style and story choices she had to make in transforming a virtual, computer-generated world into real life.
For example, in the Episode 5 Commentary Day explains the blood splatter VFX was designed in the style of the game. The effect allowed the characters to “reset” like their RPG counterparts, while practical blood would have taken actual clean up time and slowed down production. Now it all makes sense!
Day’s two minute long commentaries do more than allow viewers to peek into the mind of the famous gamer turned web series creator as she relates a little of what it was like to create a web series based on an RPG, which itself is also kinda being turned into a game. (Queue that Inception sound) The personalized vlog format and accompanying laid back style and tone of the commentaries give fans the kind of content from Day that made them fall in love with her in the first place. They’re just like Cyd “Codex” Sherman’s adorable rambling at the beginning of episodes of The Guild, except about a different subject matter and not in character.
She might not be wearing elf ears, but Day’s personal thoughts on Dragon Age: Redemption are what made me really appreciate the series. It’s a great supplement to the main programing and a promotional, marketing, and super fun tactic that more original web series creators would be smart to employ. Whether you’re a fan of Felicia Day, Dragon Age or new to both, her commentaries make the series more acessfule and more fun to watch.
Go check out the finale of Dragon Age: Redemption today. And then check out Day’s commentary right after.
