Dragon Age: Redemption

I saw this as someone who loves Dragon Age, but I was also dubious. Seeing it finally, I thought it wasn't terrible, but it wasn't very good either. I did like the music, which had a sense of adventure, the costume and set design while not amazing did look decent, likewise with the photography, Nyree was an interesting and fun character and Marcia Battise gives a lot of enthusiasm here. However, the story didn't always engage me. The idea was great, but the basic structure seemed thin and sometimes even padded out, then there are parts felt rushed and underdeveloped in an effort to introduce many characters. The special effects are rather tacky, granted I have seen much worse, but the blood especially looks very artificial. The dialogue is corny and stilted, and apart from Nyree the characters either got on my nerves(Tallis) or took far too long to introduce. The acting is nothing great either, Adam Rayner is wooden and while Felicia Day is good in The Guild she seems rather detached here. All in all, interesting and not awful, but fell short in terms of writing and story. 5/10 Bethany Cox

This was originally mini web episodes, like Felicia's Day famous work, The Guild. The beginning of every episode features a wall of exposition about the Dragon Age game and it's background, with a barely readable grunge font to fit its so-wannabe-edgy-it's-cringe setting. Everyone is a slave, and outlaw, and the best at what they do, but enchained to society, and all the names are either clumsily made up or stolen from mythology. When we are done with reading this episode's exposition, we return to the episode itself, where we have the characters reciting more exposition to each other. They try to get around that by having Felicia Day's character say, "I know that," as if this major violation of the "show don't tell writing" advice can be forgiven. Then something might happen for 60 seconds, with video game logic (we'll shoot colored light at someone and they lose the next 5 turns). And then the next episode starts abruptly with another crazy text crawl. On the plus side, it assembles a party much like a Dungeon and Dragons group would do, and they bicker just about as much. It kind of feels like something you could see happening in a roleplaying game night. As far as fantasy goes, it's plot and effects are just as fine as Hawk the Slayer or Deathstalker (which are not great either) but nothing like The Princess Bride or Dragonslayer.

This show is interesting for fans of the Dragon Age video games. Felicia Day's character Fallis is even featured in Downloadable Content of Dragon Age II: Mark of the Assassin. Her character is also a major problem in this show.

Sure, the show (and Felicia's cleavage) look pretty good, given the budget they worked with. Most of the actors are likable and better than expected. But the Tallis character does not work at all. She is supposed to be bad ass, but she's nothing but annoying. Partially a Mary Sue, a too good to be true character that outwits and overpowers her foes a tad too easily too many times, she also is selfish, arrogant and heartless. That is a real bitch of a main character to relate to.

The writing seems OK, but the point where I stopped watching was when she just throws a dagger into an innocent boy, just to let him prove his healing ability. What if he had bluffed a bit and had not been proficient and just wanted to help out? He'd be dead, thank you Tallis.

I appreciate what was attempted here, but it would have been good to let one of Bioware's people write the script. They let Felicia ruin this potential by allowing her to turn it into a Mary Sue, i.e. your typical average fan fiction. Not too dreadful, but too flawed to bear watching it all the way through.

Hollywood you are officially on notice. If they can do this with almost no money your 100's of millions is pathetic, wasted and you should be ashamed. This is a group of people, or at least one person, Kathryn Felicia Day, that are not going to submit to the Hollywood machine. Dragon Age attempts to tell the story that would require many novels to communicate. This is the pit fall of almost all Fantasy/Adventure story lines that are conveyed to TV or movies is they are trying to communicate an entire world in a relatively short movie. Dragon Age is actually very successful in translating several novels on story into a very short amount of film.

I was just wondering what Felicia Day was up to, so I looked her up and found this film. Also starring Doug Jones as the tall prosthetically covered villain. And since I enjoyed the Dragon Age games, I said I would watch it.

It is more of a Dungeons and Dragons kind of story, but set into the DA universe. You have the Qunari elf assassin, the valiant Chantry knight, a pubescent Dalish mage and even a Reaver, trying to stop a rogue mage from opening The Veil!

Any of the DA games have a better story than this film and even action, if I may say so, but the banter between characters is fun and the film is very short. And you will say "but wait, isn't this a series?". No, I've seen it as a standalone 50 minutes long (or short) movie.

Bottom line: just scratches that indie fantasy D&D web series itch a little bit. It's really low budget and has little to recommend it. But it wasn't bad.