Mythic Quest – Season 1 Review

Movies and TV shows about video games have historically come across as pandering, cringey, and/or totally out of touch. Mythic Quest might be the best game-themed media I’ve seen, but it’s still not quite there. While it’s obvious that the creators grew up playing video games, they seem to only have cursory knowledge of how games are actually made. This reminds me a lot of Silicon Valley, where the technobabble sounds ridiculous to anyone who works in the industry. I know TV shows have to speed up real-world events for the sake of story, but it’s hard to suspend disbelief when one of the game programmers can add a new feature to a million-dollar game without getting permission first, and then can re-tweak it overnight before the launch. That’s not how this works; that’s now how any of this works!

It’s also weird that they used real video game footage for scene transitions. I think the first episode used footage from Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, which really took me out of the story since I had just finished playing that one. On the other hand, it is kind of cool that they’re able to use real licenses. I do get the sense that the showrunners are people who understand and appreciate playing games. There is a great episode early on that follows a dev team couple and how they struggle to keep creative control over their horror franchise as it grows in popularity. That episode is a wonderfully random side story. It has nothing to do with the rest of the Mythic Quest plot and features characters we never see again. One of those characters was played by Jake Johnson, and his presence in that episode sheds so much light on what the rest of the show is missing.

To put it bluntly, Mythic Quest needs someone like Jake Johnson to be permanently in the cast. Sure, Always Sunny fans will enjoy seeing Rob McElhenney and David Hornsby, but neither of them can really carry a show on their own. They’ve always worked better in supporting roles. I also like Danny Pudi a lot, but he isn’t given much to do here and is painted as more of a villain, which is an odd choice given what made him popular on Community. The best character is probably Poppy as played by Charlotte Nicdao. She has great energy and often acts as the frustrated intermediary between department heads. But that circles back to my original complaint: the company structure makes no sense. Like, why are two testers hanging out with the creative directors when there is supposedly a whole floor for testers? Maybe I’m just too close to the source material to fully appreciate this as a silly office sitcom.

Reviewer

Clark
I love gaming so much, I wrote a book about it.

Published by

Clark

I love gaming so much, I wrote a book about it.