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videobun-gameblog · 5 years

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Rambling about Sekiro (spoilers below read me):

- Evolution of "i'm scared to block, i like Souls rolling" to "okay i'll block and sort of deflect but only basic attacks i know" to "okay I don't even need to dash except for perilous attacks!" to "okay now i can actually flip between defense and offense on the fly and this is SUPER fun!!"

- Basically, I've never in my life played a game where offense and defense mesh so well together, where blocking is FUN and viable, and seeing your attacks get deflected is actually GOOD and not just infuriating, because you're making progress in the fight.

- People've said Dark Souls is a little like a hard, combat focused Zelda but really, THIS is what that's like, and I'm in love. From did it.

- The upgrade system is neat and I appreciate it for rewarding exploration but also allowing you to challenge yourself by refusing to use them. Also it just works out really well for speedrun balancing and I can’t wait to see the evolution of speedruns in this game because there’s a good balance between wanting more power, posture, and HP and wanting to go as fast as possible.

SPOILERS UNDER CUT, DON’T DO IT UNLESS YOU ARE ALREADY AT /END/ GAME OR DO NOT EVER INTEND TO BUY SEKIRO

---!!!SPOILER ZONE (I'm serious do not read if you intend to play or are still playing)!!!---

(long space for people who might see this on the blog first as opposed to via the dashboard)

- I absolutely adore the weird scientific/medicinal/supernatural macabre shit in this game. The red lump item gave me chills picking it up the first time. Same thing with seeing the first undying monk thing, I couldn't even burn it (but then I finally did it with THAT ITEM... more below)

- haha hand in a jar! haha that guy that flies at you... haha, monkey :) haha ninja dog...... hell even the headless... I love From's mix of disturbing humor (or just flat out being funny despite the bleak setting). Their version of mimics in Souls sum this up best but there's plenty of things here too that are just flat out hilarious and I love it.

- Oh Christ, speaking of, I did the Doctor questline and oh god it gave me some of that Bloodborne dread.

- "IS THAT A FUCKING DARK SOULS?" also lmao when he falls

- "IS THAT THE FUCKING CHAOS BLADE!??" oooh fuck oh fuck *pushes up glasses* remember the cut content with Shiva in Dark Souls???

- Sekiro/Wolf having the "defy your father, break the code" moment was SO good and I love that whole archetype. Simple but I just... <3 Oh god and When Owl is basically just like "that's my boy" when you kill him... I... u_u

- giving Lord Kuro rice was SO cute and just furthered my love for Wolf because this child is teaching him part of how to be himself and to also enjoy things (basically chill the fuck out you freaking murder machine, you are more than that) through compassion, friendship, and a reminder of his own childhood and I don't really get emotional over stuff like this often but awww..! ;_;

- The sake dialogue moments are so good. A very simple concept but I love the nature of sharing part of one's past through a friendly offering, it felt like a really good balance between clear concise mechanics (sake) fitting neatly with narrative elements. It's basically just a dialogue item but it didn't FEEL that way. I felt genuine excitement upon finding new drinks knowing I'd get a chance to share it.

- OH MY GOD ENFEEBLED IS SUCH A GOOD ASS STATUS EFFECT??? THE ANIMATIONS!!! He just hobbles around like a dude who just suddenly became an old man (’cuz that’s literally what it is) with his sword as a cane??? I LOVE FROMSOFT! That shit is so wonderfully expressive but also fits perfectly with that style of horror humor (and I lied before. Mimics are beaten by THIS status effect. New number one spot for my fave moment like this in a From game)

- Oh also speaking of animation, those fucking boss kills!!! *deep inhale* BROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

- While not my favorite boss mechanically, SPECIFICALLY that kill animation on the Giant Ape... DUDE HOLY FUUUCK! and then the fake out!?!?!? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!! SO good!

- Lady Butterfly was a fun main boss and O'Rin of the Water was a fun mini boss. Plenty of others were fantastic but those stood out. Like, two of my friends so far have expressed the same feelings on Butterfly! Good Fight!

- I even liked the gimmick fights! They did it! Gimmick fights that are actually well designed! They're more about exploring mechanics outside of pure combat without punishing you super fucking hard at a random point just because they can. (Bed of Chaos, Micolash) Strangely a little bit of a breather, which is fitting because it’s a perfect counter balance to the stress of finding yourself in a unique situation. They actually give you time to analyze, think, and breathe it all in!

- I'm currently stuck on an end game "secret"/optional boss with some classic From Lore Implications *ok hand* and it's brutal af. I am excited to learn how to master this.

--- SLIGHT CRITICISM (basically the “i love it so much i can’t help but see small flaws but I’d still give it a 10/10 anyway” part) ---

- I like that even when they repeat mid bosses they usually put them in a new arena to change things up. I think a FEW were a little overdone though and could have benefited from maybe... I dunno, a couple new ones in their place or at LEAST alternate movesets to change things up a bit more than just location BUT the combat is engaging enough that I don't mind, I just found it a LITTLE weird how despite the rest of the polish there was a tad bit of copy-paste (but far FAR less egregious than DS1)

- Idk how replayable this game is gonna be but I can definitely see myself finishing NG+ and doing two more playthroughs for all endings. It's replayable more in the Metroid or Legend of Zelda sense and less in the Dark Souls character build sense. "I wanna try a new route first and beat bosses more effectively this time. I wanna be as stealthy as possible this run" etc. and not "I wanna make an int build" (less a critique and more an observation on how it differs from Souls replayability)

- Dragonrot is like, the only actual flaw in this game imo. It doesn't have enough depth. I was thinking it would have more end game narrative significance but it's just something tied to the sort of useless unseen aid mechanic which fails to really incentivize risky play. If anything it just encourages you to grind before bosses to cap the current exp bar and save/store/spend sen by spending 10 minutes fucking around elsewhere until you're ready so that you have nothing to lose. I feel like it should have done some world state changes and something more intense, like ACTUALLY having npcs die and having a healthier world state and an unhealthier world state where some enemies get weaker or stronger based on which extreme your world is on etc. etc. basically ANYTHING more than it is now. But this is super minor relative to how good everything else is. It just felt underwhelming considering all it was hyped up to be. It’s one of those things I just ignore as if it wasn’t there and it’s just as good because it has little effect on the parts that I DO like the game for.

---FINAL NOTE---

- To end on a positive note though, Sekiro managed to be a game that iterated on the Souls formula by defying part of what it became (dodge heavy, block averse play, slow, parrying primarily for one-shotting) yet still providing the same feelings of starting one of those games fresh. Part of what makes it FEEL Souls-y is precisely what separates it from those games, and it's all too good to really put into words at the moment. Like sure it's got Estus, bonfires, and a kick-your-ass "you're going to get stuck and frustrated and that's how it is" attitude and it's got a similar enough control scheme, but beyond that, there's just so much more combat and movement depth that it's a whole new beast, and I love it so much.

#Sekiro #spoilers

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calliecat93 · 5 years

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RvB Season 16 Commentary Masterpost

This post details the commentary from the RvB16 DvD. I tried to add as much and be as detailed as possible and I apologize if I misconstrued anything. This was 12 pages long BTW... I hope you all enjoy!

Commentators

All Episodes: Joe Nicolosi (writer/director)

Episodes 1-5: Kyle Taylor (machinima director), Josh Ornelas (senior machinimator)

Episodes 6-10: Jason Weight (co-writer), Greg Slagel (show producer), Billy Burson (Visual Supervisor/Lighter)

Episodes 11-15: Phillip Sparn (Audio Mixer/Sound Designer), Ian Sheppard (Lead Animator), David Levy (Audio/Music Composer)

Episode 1

The intro scene with the knights involved zero machinima (Kyle very much appreciated that), IDK if this was a joke, but Joe said that he wrote the intro three years ago and sent it to Miles, who was confused by it. He thought this would be a good place to finally use it.

The Grif knight is now Sir Gryffandor and the Simmons one Simmtarian XD

Joe use to be in a time traveled-theme band and many of the unused ideas it's where he got several of his ideas for this season.

Joe felt that it took far too long to get into the action in S15, so he tried to have it go faster this time around. Hence why he sped through the setup in this and Season 2.

Kyle and Joe talk about how there was a joke in S11 where Caboose responded to his echo in a cave. Joe wanted the echo to have been time travel Caboose, but when they decided on the slideshow format he couldn't. Miles confirmed at RTX that it is now canon so yay!

Joe had gone back through the show and made notes about where the characters could mess with their past. He also has a fan theory that Two Coffee Mug Guy from the Freelancer Saga is the cause of everything bad that happened since if he didn't show up, North wouldn't have gotten caught, the mission would have gone fine, etc. I am on board with this theory!

In one shot, they forgot to put Huggins and Muggins in as the headlights and it was too late to fix when the time came to air it. Oops. Kyle jokes that they have to blink off every one in a while due to their anatomy XD

The scene where Donut has... broke I guess was apparently a pain in the ass to do. For example when there's like eight of him in a row, they had to time the shot exactly right to machinimate it properly. It involved a LOT of coordination. They all agree that the bit where Donut glitches/contorts is the stuff of nightmares.

Speaking of that bit, you'd think that would be easy since it's essentially glitched out animation. But doing it apparently broke all the rendering machines and they had long talks with the tech department to get it rendered properly. It got to the point where it actually went up to Gray Haddock, the Head of Animation. Daaamn.

Joe's original vision for Episode 1 was to have a long conversation about food that triggered a series of horrific events as it was going on. Kind of like a one act play. Only the Caboose bit with Donut made it through however.

Grif's love of Sammie Raphaello's is based on Joe's feelings about a similarly named place in New York, including eating it for 100 days straight. It had been worth it.

Starseat, the Cosmic Gods base. Is one of the only maps that they hadn't used form Halo 5. They used the majority in S15 so they needed to use some of the alien locations for this one. Since S16 has the Cosmic Powers, it worked out for them.

Episode 2

The forest area was a custom map made by Josh. They used several custom maps this season.

Josh calls layering trees the 'Bob Ross effect' XD

There's this lightning effect in this map that had to me timed perfectly to not mess up the shot. Lets just say that they had to redo several shots because they got the timing wrong or it was too distracting.

When there is a joke that has an awkward pause or silence in it, Joe likes to add a bird effect to it. In the bit with Caboose's 'Your Mama' joke, he used an owl effect

It is canon that Caboose has shy tinkle and can't do his business with others around XD

Because the Halo 5 models have this bad tendency with their coloring (ie, Simmons sometimes looks too much like Sarge), they hired a colorist for the first time in the series history. So every Simmons scene (IDK if they mean just this one or every single one) had to be hand colored to keep him as maroon as possible.

Kyle asked about what was going in on Chorus. Joe says that this is NOT canon, but in his mind Locus got arrested when he brought Wash back to Chorus. They want to try Locus as a war criminal where he COUDL escape, but since he swore off killing people he cna't without doing so. Apparently his ship has an AI ready to split the planet with him Locus gone so Kimball, whose in the middle of an election, has the choice to either let Locus go and save the planet, or not and not get re-elected. This is strictly headcanon, but Joe considered using it as a subplot but since it had nothing to do with the time travel, he opted against it.

Donut is now God Jesus Donut. Something that Joe was very excited to do.

Kyle had no idea how they were going to have Donut walk across water. Apparently Halo 5 has these invisible blocks that they were able to use to pull off the effect.

The music used in this scene is a genre called 'monk-step', which is like Gregorian chanting mixed with ETM (from what I can gather, it's some kind of electro music). Apparently this is a real genre.

The city and destroyed Sammie Raphaello's was made by Austin Clark and Kyle Moran.

Conner, one fo the editors, edited the scene pretty tightly as with most RvB scenes. Joe then made him go back and add a punch of long. pauses

The cop was indeed voiced by Jeremy Dooley. Joe's direction to him was that he thought he was the main character of the story and to just go off with it. He did so for several minutes and Joe had to cut it down, but you can see the full thing in the blooper reel.

Joe didn't want to lock onto a specific place aside form 'somewhere in America' for the city location. But since Grif said he went to Harvard in a PSA, he guesses that it's somewhere in Massachusetts.

Joe has this pet peeve about a truck in the shot as the exact same model was also there when we the place again in Episode 4. Kyle makes a backstory for it about being driven by a dump truck driver who cheated on his wife and was caught, left the truck there, and went on to become president. The truck is now a monument. I am all for this!

They storyboarded Donut putting the guns on the ground... and Joe decided at the last second to just have them flash and appear to not waste time just having him lay down guns for 20 seconds.

Kyle calls Grif a coward for not taking the bullet for Sammie's. That's not nice Kyle!

“Donut uses his shield powers that... never come up again” Thanks Joe...

To get Sarge and Simmons properly on the ground when they land in Egypt, Kyle simply had Josh kill them in-game. They landed perfectly XD

Episode 3

The snow scene with Grif and Doc apparently shows the horizon for the first time in the series due to using very boxed in multiplayer maps. It is also a custom map with the horizon point, which was green-screened, blending into the snow.

Sister and Tucker were green-screened into Halo 3. Apparently it wasn't too bad here, but it was MUCH harder for Halo 2. They VERY much appreciated having a green-screen within Halo 5.

The desert scene with Sarge and Simmons apparently had a shadow in it, so they had to color correct it to make it look more desert-like. Simmons color apparently overlapped with Sarge's a lot.

The storylines were supposed to be about the characters all trying to fix their past mistakes, but only make it worst. This was meant to tie into the season's theme on how fucking up is a part of life. Them not learning it, of course, causes what happens in the end. Joe does mention that it doesn't seem like it worked for everyone watching, however but Kyle mentions how rewatching it can get people to pick up on it more.

The map they used for The Battle of Broken Ridge went through several iterations. They went with one they called White Dwarf which was very detailed tot he point where they fuzzied it up to make it look less so. The rock formations are underwater rocks and have coral textures to them to make them look more alien.

Present!Sarge is wielding a sniper rifle in this scene, not his shot gun. They imply that he shot the previous CO so that his past self would be given the position. GDI Sarge.

Apparently Halo characters do NOT like rough terrain, so recording the soldiers running across it was difficult to make it look natural.

For the PoV shot with Caboose, apparently you can't move the camera much in Halo 5 but you CAN have the character walk closer into it. So Austin and Kyle Moran did so to get the shot and was one of the first they did on their own.

Lopez couldn't be color corrected apparently. They had to go with a shade nearly identical to Grif's because otherwise he looked onto much like Master Chief. As such he looks different in every scene. Thanks Halo 5.

Episode 4

Joe wanted to use all the main locations (Blood Gulch, Valhalla) at least once. He was able to use Halos 2 and 3, but didn't get around to using Halo 4, so we didn't get Chorus aside form the one we saw last season.

The Tucker and Sister storyline was the most changed. Originally, it was going to be about Tucker trying to stop himself from getting laid with all the women that got him a lawsuit last season. He succeeded... but his present self got seduced anyways. This however created a bit of a paradox (I assume since it was clear that Tucker remembered it last season) so he decided he wanted to do something more personal between Tucker and Sister.

Joe wanted this, Episode 5, and Episode 6 to feel more episodic. Hence why he get a major focus on Tucker and Sister here, Sarge and Simmons in 5, and Grif and Doc in 6.

Joe apparently cockblocked himself once. Oops.

Kyle wants to use a time machine to go back and mess with himself when past!him was working in a check out line. Joe would use it to go see old movies and bands when they opened up.

The Broken Ridge map made all the visors green.

Hammerspace exists in the RvB verse due to all the weapon shifts.

The machinima team used the PC version of Halo 2 (the same one used for the Blood Gulch remaster) due to technical reasons. The problem is all the servers, services, etc that were available when doing the remaster no longer exist in 2018. While they have copies of the game, to do what they need they had to use fan hacks, a laptop, and Joe's home computer to make the scenes properly.

Lindsay Jones (VA for Kimball) plays one of the three kids using her Space Kid voice form Camp Camp. Kyle thought one of the actors was the VA for Qrow in RWBY (Vic Mignogna) but it wasn't.

They had a lot of fun macinimating Grif's freakout and Joe outright called Geoff's performance Oscar worthy. They considered submitting it XD

The guy left the truck (form Episode 2) on this very day XD

Tucker asking Sister if she turned off her radio was a reference to O'Malley since at this time, he was still around and going through different people's heads. It was important to make sure that he paid attention to continuity in the time he was going to mess with. Since he felt that this was a memorable event in Blood Gulch, he wanted to go back to it and make sure that he wasn't accidentally messing up anything.

This is the third time they've gone back to this in RvB's history as Josh previously directed a S14 episode written by Barbara Dunkleman (VA for Jensen) about O'Malley in different headspaces. Wow, they must love this scene XD

Joe made Nico (one of the composers and part of Trocadero) make porno music for the cave pond scene. He said “On it Joe!”

Joe liked making Tucker dense when it comes to sex, especially in this scene.

There were talks about if Tucker and Sister should still be in Halo 5 armor when time travleing or if it should change. They ultimately decided to stick to the Halo 5 armor, which Joe felt was the right choice since he was no real reason to have them in the game's default. RvB14 had a similar philosophy where whatever time period the story is taking place, ti had to match that version of Halo.

Episode 5

The map used at the very beginning was a user-made map that's meant to be reminiscent of a Halo 3 map.

Using John Wayne was apparently a pain in the ass. They couldn't refer to him as John Wayne and several other names like The Duke due to legal reasons. It was at the point where they had to have Gus and Matt frequently come in to do re-recordings due to all the changes. They finally settled on Private John... and they hope that they don't get sued for saying it in the commentary.

To remake Desert Gulch, they had to use all the characters at the same time and do several different shots for several reasons.

George Washington was voiced by Todd Womack, a Creative Producer for Broadcast at RT. He also voiced the Simmons knight in Episode 1.

Chris Kokkinos, a Lead Audio Engineer for RT Animation, played Alexander the Great. They did ten minutes of Google searches to put together a voice that sounded accurate enough to what Ancient Masadonian (I think) would sound like.

There's a radio effect in the movie filming scenes where, if you listen close enough, you can hear someone trying to find the bestboy. When I rewatch this with commentary off, I am ging to listen HARD to find those lines.

Kohan Wooter, the producer Jax torments, was voiced by RT's 3D Animation producer Koan Wooten. Joe jokes that he's a 'pathetic ball of anxiety' so he based the character on him. Don't worry, he actually loves Koen XD Koen produced Seasons 13, 14, and 15, but 16 has a new producer, Greg who we'll hear in Episodes 6-10 commentary.

Apparently in Halo 5 (Kyle isn't sure if this was an update or he just never saw it there's an option to max character speeds. So when Jax, Simmons, and Sarge are walking through the set, they were able to set all three to the same speed without it looking like they're sprinting, something that is normally difficult to do in machinima.

In S15, Joe wanted Jax to get successful at some point... and then fall back down off his horse due to his ego. So he did it here!

They wish that they showed Jax's version of S15, though we do get a sample in Episode 12.

Austin and Kyle Moran worked on the scene where Sarge and Private John are doing lines.

For this scene, Matt was late for a CEO meeting so he had to do all of his lines in one take in quick succession. He nailed every single one of them.

I think most know this, but just in case, Atlus is voiced by SungWon Cho aka ProZD. Joe was a big fan of him and was really excited to cast him.

All the Gods we see who aren't Atlus, Kali, Genkins, and Burnstorm are Minor Gods and this is the only time we get to see them all. Kyle says one is the God of Anxiety XD

Kyle made Atlus' throne and used spaceship parts to make it. It was also a chore to decide on all the Gods guns.

Episode 6

Jason wrote Episodes 6, 7, 10, 11, 13, and 14 (Joe confirmed the latter four on Twitter).

Joe says that Grif and Doc are somewhere in Calabria, Ancient Italy. It is known as 'The Boot of Italy'.

Greg previously on a 2D show at another company (I couldn't make out what he said it was) before arriving at RT and being put on RvB. Since machinima is treated more like live action when filming, it was a very different experience along with storyboarding the animation. He had to learn a lot about what can and can't be done in machinima.

Billy previously worked on a live action RvB short (I assume the RvB14 finale but they didn't specify) and before this worked on RWBY and RWBY Chibi. He works on both lighting and composition.

Billy really liked working on the lens flare shots XD Which are also apparently hard to render despite how easy it looked at first.

Jason wrote most of Sister's dialogue, which had to be cut down a bit. Apparently one line he wrote was Sister saying “I want Lancelot to slay my p***y like a Dragon”. This once got cut because Microsoft told them to, which is a VERY rare occurrence.

Genkins was the one going crazy with the airhorn during Atlus' intro. They used up all their airhorn budget for that one XD

Joe credited Jason for Atlus' portrayal. Jason feels that Atlus is very human and fragile on the inside and the kind of characters that he likes to write.

They all laughed at Tucker and Sister being blown up, which they tried to reuse form other stuff, but Joe refused. They joke that they just got it off the internet.

Joe feels that he could have done this episode better as he didn't feel anything for Doc at the end like he had intended.

They have an animator specifically for O'Malley's finger motions. He'll be in the 11-15 commentary and is reffered to as 'The Fingerer'

Episode 7

Since this is an episode that mixes live action, they started working on this even before Episode 1. They were excited at first... until they finally started doing it.

Gus Sorola (VA for Simmons) played the Cyclops as well as his wife.

Joe knows that some people weren't happy with this episode, but he still liked it cause Tucker and Sister got to fight a giant cyclops. They do admit it is one of the stupidest thing they've ever done though XD

They went over budget doing the scene and had to go all the way up to Matt to get more. At RTX, Matt said that he allowed it when they said that Gus was going to be uncomfortable for several hours. Best CEO XD Joe brought in Koen to convince help him.

Huggins had several different animators, but most of the credit goes to an animator named Owen for giving a glowing sphere so much energy with the animation.

Gus' scenes were shot in one day, but because they had to change the lighting so much to correspond with Halo, it took a LOOOOOT of hours.

When the cyclops bit into the Tucker armor, Joe had it in the script that Gus just pulled the head off. Gus asked if he could eat it, which Joe allowed. Joe had to paint it the day before the shoot after Greg went and got it. They used a toy since animating Tucker in Gus' hand would have been too much work to get right.

Joe did a lot of the work on the scenes while listening to an audiobook, so now he just hears it whenever watching the episode. Fortunately, he has a lot of work with green-screen XD

David Levy composed the music for the scene and Joe had him listen to stuff from Jason and the Arganots and such things to give him an idea of what to do.

Tucker jumping to hit the Cyclops'... privates...w as a reference to Independence Day apparently.

Joe wished that, when we see the location again in the finale, he just showed the Cyclops' corpse rotting away... so I guess that confirms that he's dead. He thought of it after the fact however so he couldn't.

Joe deliberately told the Art Department about the female cyclops at the last second so that they would buy a shitty costume for Gus to put on. Greg was confused. The shot later for Episode 15 was a surprise shot Joe did since he was writing the finale around this time, so he wanted it just in case he wanted to use it... which he did XD

Episode 8

The map with the Chorus towers were a Live Map. IDK what that means, but apparently they can't use. So the machinimators had to go around it and take various shots of the towers to put them in the opening scene. It got several accounts banned as a result XD

After the last episode used so many different things (animation, machinima, live action), the fact that they were able to get an animation sequence into this one had Joe feeling good about the production flow for the season since the previous one would normally go over deadlines. Fortunately, the production went through seemlessly.

The animation team is mostly from RWBY Chibi.

Originally Carolina and Dr. Grey's talk was in Grey's office. Miles said that it wasn't weird enough to fit Grey though, so Joe change the setting to a morgue. The dialogue stayed the same though! The feet of the body were apparently hard to render XD

Joe wished that Carolina was holding some guy's intestines to further show how creepy it is.

With the cyclops, Joe apparently wanted him to have a giant, hanging dong cause he things it would be Tucker's worst nightmare. Greg immediately shot that down since no amount if pixilation would be able to hide it.

Joe wanted to give Grif a magic fairy companion, ehnce why we got Huggins and the two would learn form each other.

Huggins is based off of her actress, Ashley Spillers, in terms of personality.

Apparently doing shots showing tall buildings like in Chorus is much easier than getting a dead guy's feet in properly. Huh...

Joe got obsessed with doing different shots to make shots of a character just talking interesting and he felt he went a little too crazy.

Joe felt bad that he couldn't use more of Dylan, but he learned last season that RvB has a TON of characters and he needs to break them up when it's necessary. This is part of why the Reds and Blues were split up this season.

Billy did a lot of work on the wrestling scene in the finale due to how much lighting was needed. It also involved a lot of comp due to the amount of shots.

Wash's cat, Loki, is based off a cat Joe had in RL. Many of the same things happened to it and lived for over 20 years. Wow...

Episode 9

Joe makes it clear that he loves Koen and he only made fun of him because he loves him. Greg felt much of Kohan's portrayal hit too close to home XD

Since they used most of the maps in S15, Joe knew that they were going to have to reuse some of them and the filmset plotline was done in order to do so. Considering Wash's state, he felt that it worked well for character.

The Female Frozen Freelancer was voiced by Minni Clark, their Animation Coordinator.

Joe considered what Wash and Carolina would do with a time machine. For a while, he considered having Carolina use it to go to the future, but he felt that could botch future storylines so he decided to not use the future at all.

They liked the campfire map and giving Huggins sparkles. The sparkles got added late into production. Luckily they emphasized that no one was harmed in the making of this production XD

Huggins will only swear when quoting Die Hard. The lens flare in the movie was also Joe's favorite lens flare in film XD

Joe was originally going to have Grif come across Lopez's head after he sank in the titanic. But since Grif was in Ancient Italy, that would not work so it was cut.

Joe also intended for Grif to use a boat to get over the English Channel, but since it would have been a hard set-piece to make and they already had an underwater map, they went with that instead.

The effect to make past!Simmons portal appear/green-screen was apparently fun XD Joe also liked having Sarge stab Achilles in the foot.

This season has the most green-screen used in any season.

Apparently there are a LOT of time travel stories out there with very complicated rules. Joe went with the ones that he felt were the most common.

Joe got very mad because The Covlerfield Paradox came out sometimes before the season starts. He also gets mad in the finale cause Infinity War did what he did essentially XD

Joe found using time travel to test free will interesting as he doesn't recall anyone doing it before.

Matt improved his lines regarding the back and forth on deciding to open the door. He does that a lot XD

They didn't want to add a shot of Simmons pressing the keypad, so they just showed the door opening.

Episode 10

To make Caboose's vacation easier, they decided to go with the slideshow and just use stills. Most were easy to comp, but some like the monkeys were more difficult. It was orignally going to be animated.

With the shot of the RT Founders, they originally had a Halo helmet in the photo. Joe changed it to a bowling ball.

Joe was counting down the days of production and told no one. Greg was very confused when he saw '100 Days' on Joe's calendar.

Jason wrote Camelto and voiced Lancelot/Sir Gryffandor. Joe used all of his first takes XD

Jason writes long scripts, so Joe had to cut them down and he felt bad about it. Jason said that he got rid of the garbage bits XD

There is some kind of cannon by Tucker's shoulder when he meets with Grif. Joe headcanosn that Tucker just demanded that they make a cannon.

Even Joe points out that Grif's trying to push the plot forward now. They joke that it's just so it an end faster.

The reason why Tucker started the war with France they decided was because they ate snails, hence his line “Those fancy f***s eat snails!”

Joe clarifies on what turning into a shisno means. I wrote about this already, but I'll do so again here. It is not a form of corruption or mind control, but people like Tucker giving more and more into temptation and as such, the worst part of them comes out. He felt that them trying to make the past better is a big convenience in time travel and decided that them screwing it up and therefore still trying was an effect of Chrovos. It's not direct mind control however, it just makes your darker impulses stronger.

Joe confirms that Genkins was the PA who lead Wash to the scene recreating where he got shot solely to make him worst and keep the plan going in the right direction.

Joe, having grown up on films like Evil Dead, really likes bloody shots and thinks that his seasons have had the most blood effects XD

They checked over Donut and O'Malley's scene a LOT due to a lot of screw ups and using a large white void.

Billy's favorite thing to have lighted was Chrovos. They were very happy with the gears design.

Joe really liked Chrovos' VA

Episode 11

Phillip played one of the guards that got crushed by the horse in the finale. It is his proudest moment.

Doing work for Huggins was painful since she required several swooshing effects and her animation turned out to be much more work due to Ian deciding to make her more energetic to not make it boring.

Muggins is less energetic due to being older

Joe had to get special permission from Miles and Kerry to use the RWBY moon and now calls it canon... which he honestly isn't all that wrong if you've watched RWBY V6...

Audio liked adding the effects to Atlus' voice, something that ProZD apparently does in his videos.

When he decided to use God sin RvB, Joe had wanted to have a wish granting scene and the one we got is one of his favorites. He also mentions how most Gods go to places, mess with younger races, so he felt like this fit.

The music for this was challenging for David as Joe instructed him to base it on Danny Elfman-esque scores. The guitar rift when Grif makes the sword wish was treated like a sound effect.

Apparently they used a laughing seagull effect to laugh at Tucker. I need to listen for these things more.

They used a sunset map for Tucker and Sister's talk, and while lighting is often difficult in RvB, Joe felt that this worked very well. Using Halo 5 in general was hard, but after last year they had a good grasp on what they could and couldn't do. They'll be us9ig a new Halo next year, which since Halo 6 isn't out I assume is referring to Halo 2 Anniversary

Okay... so this bit is probably gonna be the biggest part. So the whole scene with Tucker and Sister's talk? Originally in the outline, Joe simply had Sister go 'And I don't care!' when she and Tucker realize that their s*xventures were coming to an end. Then he sent it off to Jason, who expanded on it in the script to have Sister's verbal beatdown to Tucker. Joe let it stick, and we got what we got.

Episode 12

This is the first episode of RvB shot in 4K

You know the opening shot where Actor!Wash dips Actress!Carolina? The scene was mo-caped by Joe as Wash an an animator named Harley (she works primarily on RWBY) as Carolina. When they acted it out, Joe tried to catch Harley when she fell back... except that he had recently dislocated his arm. So he ended up just dropping her and he fell over and hit his head. The mocap for it looked really funny though XD

The reason why Joe used 4K for this episode was in order to do wide shots so that After Effects could put in the shaky cam. He did it in one weekend. He's not a fan of 4K however due to feeling it adds too much production time, so he used it for only this episode.

They joke about making an RvB Soap Opera where Church has a twina nd Sarge goes into a coma. I WANT THIS!

Joe had not seen The Office when he went with the interviews idea.

This, and the later episodes, were written during the production.

This episode was the RvB equivalent of a Beach Episode like you see in anime. But because of armor and stuff, he couldn't go all the way. Also apparently if Halo characters hit the water unless it's an underwater map, they die. Huh...

Joe continues to make it clear that he loves working with Koen. Good job on making sure you don't piss your boss off dude!

The Chinese Finger Trap gag with Caboose was improved by Joel. The trap was composed in and they used the Huggins rigs to help with the stretching.

Joe felt he went a little too strong with the color correction in this episode and that the colors came off too strong, especially with Donut.

Joe liked the audio cue used for when Wash has one of his memory blocks.

There was a lot of improve done with the actors for Jax's movie. Phillip also didn't get the Rodney Dangerfield reference. Joe put that specific one in because the Private John actor did one for funsies in his session.

According to Joe, after he gets hit by Atlus' hammer, he forgets all of his movie ideas and is now in the next stage of his life in trying to figure them out. They ask if this is autobiographical for Joe XD

The gold club is an actual weapon in Halo 5 (some kind of multiplayer mode), huh...

In the original take where everyone is saying titles, Joel had Caboose curse. Joe found it funny... but since Caboose doesn't swear to that level (I think in another interview Joe said he used the F word), he decided two days prior to cut it and edit several takes together to get what we got. They added it back in for the Blooper Reel, and I can confirm that it is hilarious.

Episode 13

David used wall to wall music for this episode.

The first drafts for the final three episodes were over 70 pages long. The average is around 12-18 pages, so... yeah... he had to cut it down to 54 within about three days.

Joe didn't get to work a lot with Genkins' VA (Ricco Fajardo since he forgot the name in the commentary) since Genkins had very few lines. He really enjoyed working with him and the other professional voice actors since he can really push them and they love going along with it.

Jason did the script for this episode.

This episode, along with 13, had very little animation due to the finale going crazy with it. So they cut down on it in these two to make up for that time.

Joe's not a fan of exposition scenes, but since Starseat was a unique set design, he felt like it was a good place to do it.

The Cosmic Powers are always green-screened so that they can look much larger.

David wanted to listen to his master work XD

Joe hadn't told mahcinima what swords to give everyone and is happy with the options that they went with.

Burnstorm's VA is a theater actor in Dallas

Joe regretted that he wasn't able to have the Gods in action much and wishes that he was able to fit in one God fight at least. But he had gone over the animation budget, so even if he wanted to he couldn't.

The Neanderthals hair in Caboose's slideshow apparently didn't work at all, so they photoshoped it in.

Joe really enjoyed doing Carolina and Wash's scene, especially with how well Jen and Shannon performed it. He felt so much regret for what he did to these characters XD

Joe did research on brain injuries to make sure that he portrayed Wash's condition as accurately as possible.

Machinima built the room that the Reds and Blues were teleported to. It was originally a hallway apparently.

Episode 14

The intention of the episode was to be a runway into the finale and to be a bit of a cool down after the last one.

Jason once more did the script for this one.

Halo 5 armor in multiplayer apparently can't be black, so in shadows it just glows. Huh, weird.

No one aside from Joe saw the shot of the Fates. Ian never saw them as he handed them to someone else while doing 15, and they did them all without him having to check them.

Joe wrote the demo for The Fates song to give to the singers who auditioned.

Joe thought a lot about Carolina time traveling prior to this, but felt that she was too responsible and smart to use it the same way the Reds and Blues did.

Phillip was kind of glad that Huggins got 'killed' (I'm still denying it) since it meant no more swoosh sounds

The buildup to the... death scene... dropped the ambiance to build up the creepiness factor.

Joe did the black hole effect and went on until it made him too sad and he kicked his computer. You have only yourself to blame.

They like how the Cosmic Powers just become more and more normal acting as time goes on XD

Joe had been very nervous about The Fates and considers it the weirdest sequence in the season. He suggested the orchestral tuning build-up.

Joe explains how The Fates work. The Cosmic Powers are AI/computers, and that includes The Fates. They are like a series of quantum supercomputers who scan the atoms around them to determine the outcome of the future. Their prophecies are mere projections.

Episode 15 (Season Finale)

They call this 'The Beast Episode'

David added 15 minutes of music with no stop. It continues to accelerate as it continues on.

The episode was done more like a music video. All the animation was done first, and then David composed it to the animation instead of before it. He used bits of previous cues and themes as well. It took him two weeks to do.

The room that Carolina and the others hid in had been very bright, so they had to darken it.

This was very tightly edited in order to stay matched up to the music.

The strategy for the Donut vs O'Malley was to treat the finale as two episodes. The fight was done by one team and all the other stuff was done by another.

They like the 'Use what you learned' advice.

Audio used a program called Vocaline to dot he effects for Chrovos' voice and the gear ticking effects.

The edit for the episode was very different from the script as Joe did a lot of re-arranging of scenes to improve the flow. He got advice form Connor, one of the editors, to pace them better.

The pizza is a photoshopped Home Slice Pizzal

If you watch the scene where Caboose hits the Red with his golf club in slow mo, the body flies off but his soul stays put in an extra frame. If you watch it frame by frame, you can see the soul dissolve. Will make a note to do so later.

David wrote three separate tracks for each storyline in the episode (Donut vs O'Malley, Grif vs Genkins, and the others saving Wash) which all blend together as they go on.

The cue playing when Genkins goes on his boredom rant is Joe and David's favorite cue.

Genkin's rant was also much longer and was pretty much Genkins breaking up with the universe. Joe felt that it was losing momentum as it went on however, so he cut it down.

Phillip had a ringing bell sound effect play when Donut hit the plane on the commentary track. All of them lost it XD

The longest scene to animate was Donut jumping after The Hammer.

Each bit of the fight went to different animators. Ian worked on the Blood Gulch part and reference show he's known for being good at finger animation. Hence why we got O'Malley's evil finger wiggling XD They were bummed that they didn't have more time, but with so much going on, they had no choice. Everything was mo-caped and hand framed due to the uniqueness of all the scenes, all of which used no machinima, which normally has to be in a specific view. Joe was happy since he could move the camera around more.

The city for the final part of the fight was stolen taken from Gen:Lock. It's meant to be New York.

Joe has no regrets regarding the fight scene and was very happy with how it all came together.

There's a ticking effect during the episode that accelerates, but during the final part where Grif is running and stuff, the ticking significantly slowed down.

Grif's running was machinimated and they used an after effects plugin to slow him down properly.

Again, Joe was very mad that Infinity War came out during this time XD This happened a lot this season apparently, such as Legion.

The final scene is done in Halo 2 Anniversary. Joe chose this because it looks familiar, yet is different. He did this specifically to not make people think that they were rebooting it... which happened anyways XD

Again, they confirm that they are NOT doing a reboot. Joe tried to put in as many clues as he could (like Church not being voiced by Burnie) to demonstrate that. There is a reason for why things are like this and why the final three shots are in reverse order from the events in Blood Gulch.

Joe watched all of Deep Space 9 while editing the season. All 6 seasons! Two he watched during the cyclops episode!

Apparently the Security part of the credits (which lists pets) hjust gets added onto without chances, so many of them are probably dead... ending on a morbid note then!

This took like... five hours to type up. But I always like listening to behind-the-scenes stuff and I had a lot of fun doing this! To all of those who actually made it through the entire post, thanks for reading! Looking forward to S17!

#rvb #red vs blue #rvb16

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