Of all the peculiar data surrounding « Mythic Quest, » the formidable blend of « The Office » and « Silicon Valley » that puts the video game industry at the forefront, arguably the most notorious is revealed if you look closely at the headlines. credit. “Mythic Quest” is produced by Ubisoft. Yes, ESA Ubisoft. I mean, Mythic Quest is a satire of the interactive entertainment industry fully hatched in the guts of the beast.
The jokes therefore have a very particular echo. The famous chapter 5, which talks about how big companies devour small creatives with original ideas in the industry, it takes a dark echo. And « Mythic Quest » continues to bite the hand that feeds it: in another chapter, the game producer has an emotionally destroying encounter with his enigmatic and genuine superiors, whom he simply calls « The French », in reference to claire to Ubisoft itself.
Review of « Mythic Quest », an essential comedy for fans of video games, halfway between « The Office » and « Silicon Valley »
‘Mythic Quest’ is not a series built around winks: It doesn’t parody specific games or situations, but it does provide a clear picture of the video game industry through humor.. And for those who know its history and, most importantly, the current state of the environment, it throws very obvious darts. We’re going to break some of them down into a list of tributes and references that, of course, are featured in EYES: SPOILERS, since we will go into some details of the arguments of the episodes.
The female presence
Megan Ganz
The role of Megan Ganz, co-creator of the series, is important in defining the female role in it. He is responsible for the drinking series of « Community » or « Hanging in Philadelphia », in which he worked. AND it is she who gives a very interesting role to the women who work in the company, starting with the protagonist from the series, the programmer Poppy.
Almost all the women in the series, for whom they have more or less administrative roles (the community manager, the chief of staff) to those in more creative roles (from Poppy herself to an eternally brooding programmer named Michelle – comedian Aparna Nancherla-) Do you have time to explain what the life of women is like in a company like « Mythic Quest »dominated by men. The sight has a bitter and disheartening point.
In Episode 4, the one that most directly addresses this question, a group of girls visit the studio to meet a woman who plays an important role there. But since Poppy is at a convention, starts looking for a woman who is satisfied with her job in the company, with depressing results. Finally, they will find him in what is literally almost the last monkey in the business: a pretty beta tester who still finds an illusion in what he does. Moral: ambition puts an end to all the beauty you have … if you are a woman (a message that can also apply to the excellent episode 5).
Pootie shoe
One of the more interesting characters is Pootie Shoe, an irritating young YouTuber whose motives we will meet to play Mythic Quest at the end of the season. But before that, with his whimsical mind swings he can rock the future of the game: their opinions, positive and negative, mark the rhyme to which they are forced to dance in company. This is an interesting reflection on how creators depend on current media (there is hardly any reference to mainstream press in the industry, although there are some directly and with first and last names ) and their whims.
Soon, in Mythic Quest, they realize that the only way to compete with yououtubers is to create someone to replace them. An apparently irrelevant plot that arises without the study makers perceiving a problem, which is arguably the most devastating critique of the concept that can be made: all of us (them as creators and us as than viewers) have assumed that the industry will find a way to replicate the forms of communication that arise in the fan environment.
« The time of the «
In the slang of video game developers (in turn inherited from the slang of child psychologists, who sometimes have so much in common), « Time to P***s » is, according to the urban dictionary, the time it takes for players to start drawing es with in-game tools, whether in chats or with applications Stake. The designers of « Minecraft » know this well, as any creator of a tool to modify weapons, shields or emblems knows it. The is on the horizon, the only unknown is how many minutes it will take someone to draw it.
In « Mythic Quest », this situation is achieved by the shovel, a fun artifact that also reflects the creative tension between programmer Poppy and the game directorIan. One wants the shovel to be a creative tool for gamers, the other ends up making it a deadly weapon, which ends up being very well received by users, as ridiculous as the concept is. And anyway, at point zero they start digging huge es into the ground, because that’s the creativity of this world. Well, es or …
The N**i problem
… Swastikas. Or swastikas on the , of course. In one of season one of the most powerful episodes, the creators of « Mythic Quest » discover that their game has been invaded by the N***s, and They turn to a circumstance that poses a real problem of image. Among them, a funny debate is generated on how to sweep away these unwanted people without giving the image of censors, with moments as funny as the meeting in which they categorize all kinds of toxic thoughts. In this context, one of the most ridiculously mythical moments in World of Warcraft history is in the spotlight: the brutal raid of the Soulless at Fajeyin’s funeral.
Mythic Quest Cinematics
To give the fictional game personality, real Ubi Soft games, which appear both as a transition between scenes and as cutscenes. They all come from the ‘Assassin’s Creed’ and ‘For Honor’ saga, and from franchises outside of Ubi Soft, like ‘Kingdom Come: Deliverance’, among others. The exception to its most notable catalog is in the scene where the game’s writer and a beta tester they find themselves excited by a scene of the death of a horse in a title that cannot be mentioned: it’s ‘Red Dead Redemption 2’
The role of E3
Sure, conventions and their faun play a big part in the show, but this one, as a product, is no stranger to its necessary push. Rob McElhenney presented the series at an event at E3 2019, the last. It is the first time that a television series has been presented in this context.
The game « Mythic Quest »
The game « Mythic Quest » itself is seen on screen several times. This is a transcription of the MMORPG ‘World of Warcraft’ (but with a third person action interface, to make it more easily identifiable), and was developed by Ubisoft’s in-house studio Red Storm, which has worked in the French company’s franchises such as ‘Far Cry’, ‘Rainbow Six’ and ‘Ghost Recon’.
It was overseen by Danielle Kreinik, director of television development for Ubisoft, and Jason Altman, head of the film and television department and executive co-producer of the series. Red Storm created character models like the masked man, the white knight and the poppy. They got the humor because, as Kreinik claims for The Hollywood Reporter, there were big “Hung in Philadelphia” fans in the studio.
Dr Robotnik’s Medium Grain Machine
The pseudo-Tetris ‘Puyo Puyo’ was remade and distributed by Sega in the West spin off from ‘Sonic’ in 1993. From their title come the nicknames of the two protagonists of chapter 5 of « Mythic Quest », Doc and Beans.
Crunch and other toxic working relationships
Now that we’ve all clearly seen that Marathon and unhealthy work sessions in development studios are the order of the day, ‘Mythic Quest’ can only echo that situation, and it will touch on pretty much the topic in every episode: programmers organizing to end the abuse by capitalizing on the study many of them are doing for do the job of your dreams.
« Silicon Valley »: How a Satire on the Internet Industry Became the Chronicle of a Self-Parodying Reality
In the all-new Mythic Quest: Quarantine, a Special episode of confinement recorded with each actor in their house at the touch of the videoconferencing interface, we will see a side as dark of these relations between the company and the worker as theirs cracklings: Workers’ psychological dependence on a job they love, but which kills them. The episode begins when Poppy focuses exclusively on the code so that she doesn’t have to deal with the horrific pandemic that surrounds us.
Ian’s model
Brandon Beck
Ian, game director and played by Rob McElhenney, also co-creator of the series, It is clearly based on the physique and style of Brandon Beck. Beck is one of the founders of Riot Games, the publishing studio of the very popular « League of Legends », one of the clear inspirations of « Mythic Quest ».
Brad from the Finance Department as Uncle Gilito
Another vector theme of the series is the eternal balance between art and business. Creativity and money clash especially with the character of Brad (Dan Pudi, another veteran of the « Community »), a CFO who continually monetizes the game. The series uses his ideas to parody the complex world of financing games like Mythic Quest, which is often systems-based. free to play.
A curious wink that Brad plays in is the one that leads him to confess a dream he had since his childhood: to have a pool of coins like Uncle Gilito. Interestingly, Pudi voices one of Donald’s nephews in the latest incarnation of the ‘DuckTales’ series, Huey Duck. It was while telling a colleague on a break from filming that the idea to introduce him to the series and to tell the anecdote about the pool of parts came about, an ambition that certainly fits Brad’s personality perfectly.
