Though Red vs. Blue always had an underlying storyline, it is nice to see it evolve into something more sophisticated as the seasons go on. At first, there’s a lot of silly, ridiculous dialogue. It started out as a quick fix of humor based loosely in the Halo universe - just a humble, humorous web series. Eventually, we find that the entire war turns out to be a sham, which is good since neither team could seem to get anything right. Heck, Caboose could fill an entire Blu-ray with his idiocy. But it evolves into more of a movie-like script with subplots and twists and turns. Relationships get serious, fights get epic, and people die. It’s a pretty intense production by the end of the Project Freelancer Seasons (Seasons 9 and 10). To tell the truth, I miss some of the nonsensical fun from the early seasons. When the series gets too serious, well, it gets too serious. And some of the fight scenes that are meant to be so serious seem over the top and ridiculous because of that tone (think of some of the worst wire-fu scenes from your favorite awful martial arts movie). But I can definitely respect the epic production RVB has become over the years.
Actually, the commentary is quite insightful if you want to get an idea of how the show was made, and how the actors got along. There are some surprising tidbits of machinima shooting secrets you can learn, such as how the baby alien was shot in game only with perspective tricks. But the commentary is great for other things, like listening to the frustrations of the cast, and general goofing off fun.
Each Season has lots of special features. You’ve got the PSAs, the Outtakes, and some other videos that just fall into the Special Videos category. The Outtakes are just as hilarious as you can imagine (this is RVB after all). There are also some alternate endings available for some scenes. Commentary is also available for every Season.
Of course, if you happen to own all these seasons on Blu-ray already, you’d expect more than just those features, as you’ll find those on the individual discs already if you purchase them separately. And this set does have much more. There are 4 extra discs that go beyond just the first 10 Seasons of episodes. One disc is dedicated to the making of RVB. This disc includes extensive interviews with the folks that composed the music for RVB. There’s also very big chunk of content dedicated to the people and activities of Rooster Teeth over the years. This seems to be a great place to put names to faces for the cast of RVB as well as learn more about how the team works together and got started. Another section is dedicated entirely to the special effects of Season 10. All that cool special effect stuff you heard about in the commentary including the motion capture and visual effects processes: now you get to see it in action. There are two discs of Grifball, which include the Expansion, Zero Tolerance, Franchise Player, and Double Agent mini-series. The essential PSA on the rules of Grifball (which are pretty much just "Kill Griff") is included as well. Finally, there’s a bonus disc of The Blood Gulch Chronicles, which includes just about every extra video you could imagine from Season 1 including extra scenes, short videos from film festivals, and lots of other miscellaneous stuff.
The quality of the production is good, and I think even the sound from Season 1 was cleaned up since it seems a lot easier to understand now. If you’re used to watching the show while hunched over a tiny laptop screen, this is full widescreen glory that you can enjoy on your TV. And maybe you can have your friends relax on the couch instead of crowd around behind your monitor now.
