On the Limitations of FreedomI've been thinking for a long time about the new direction Red vs. Blue has taken over the past few years, and I thought maybe I'd share some of those thought with the few of you I know who care about this stuff.

You all know what I'm talking about. The era of Monty Ohm. Now let me be the first to say that I have a certain amount of respect for Monty's work. He does what he does very well. He cares about the characters and the authenticity of the show. But Monty isn't a story teller. He's not supposed to be a story teller. He's a guy who brings things that weren't possible through machinima to life.

On the surface you might think this is a good thing. Af...

On the Limitations of FreedomI've been thinking for a long time about the new direction Red vs. Blue has taken over the past few years, and I thought maybe I'd share some of those thought with the few of you I know who care about this stuff.

You all know what I'm talking about. The era of Monty Ohm. Now let me be the first to say that I have a certain amount of respect for Monty's work. He does what he does very well. He cares about the characters and the authenticity of the show. But Monty isn't a story teller. He's not supposed to be a story teller. He's a guy who brings things that weren't possible through machinima to life.

On the surface you might think this is a good thing. After all, you'd think that with the inherent restrictions of machinima it'd be hard to tell a good story. And surely removing some of those restrictions would make for a richer and more detailed story.

And yet, I would argue this is not what we've got. Instead, what we have are a long string of admittedly very impressive, but ultimately uninteresting fight scenes.

For a while some of this stuff was really cool. It allowed exactly what you'd expect, an expansion of the already rich story of Red vs Blue. But when we got to Project Freelancer things really started to fall apart. Of course this is my opinion so you're welcome to disagree, but I haven't been the biggest fan of the past couple of seasons, and here's why: There's no reason to care. The Freelancers are fighters, and apparently rather good ones, but for the most part it seems like that's all we know about them.

Yes, of course they each have their own personalities, but it seems like for the most part who they are gets lost in what they're doing. And that, I think, is a mistake. Because, just because you can have an awesome fight scene in every episode doesn't mean you should.

Back in the era of Blood Gulch, the vast majority of the episodes consisted of people standing around talking to each other. And it wasn't boring. We got to know them. We came to understand their archetypes. Tucker was the horny one, Caboose was the dumb one, Sarge was the...Sargey one? Anyway, you get my drift.

But with Project Freelancer there has been precious little of that. And the talking we do get is incidental, a prelude or epilogue for yet another gratuitous action scene. But last week's episode (Number Five for those of you reading from the future) gave me some hope. Here we had the freelancer just sitting in a classroom being themselves. No flashy fights. No pumping pyrotechnics. Just a bunch of guys and gals talking. We need more of this. And in this more serious story line we need to go deeper than simple archetypes. We need to learn more about these characters beyond, "North is the nurturing one" and "South is the one I want to shoot in the head." We need to believe in them.

I'm writing this, not because I hate the new special effects, but because I'm worried about how they're being used. In my mind, story and character trump all the production value in the world, and I want to see the writer of Red vs. Blue realize this. Will they read this? Probably not. But the point stands.

Red vs. Blue is a still good show. But it could be great again. It could be powerful and moving and funny all at the same time. But only if the writers force us to care about these characters before they throw them into the woodchipper of Monty's insanely wonderful fight scenes.