This is a mostly spoiler-free review of Apple TV Plus’ Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet, which releases its entire season on February 7. There’s one clearly labeled section which includes minor plot details for a particular episode, if you want to go in completely spoiler-free.
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Not since ye olden days of Grandma’s Boy has Hollywood delved so deeply into the everyday lives of video game developers, and if that sentence terrifies you, don’t let it. Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet, co-created by and starring It’s Always Sunny’s Rob McElhenney, is a show that surprisingly grapples with a number of tough topics coursing through the games industry — not always gracefully (or quite frankly, accurately), but admirably all the same. It’s a shame, then, that a lack of consistently funny scriptwriting hamstrings its honest efforts to give the Brooklyn Nine-Nine or Parks and Recreation treatment to a game development studio.
We first meet the crew behind Mythic Quest, supposedly the world’s most popular video game, in their final days leading up to the launch of Raven’s Banquet, a new expansion that’s going to determine the financial fate of the studio. It’s tough stuff, made all the tougher by the toxic cocktail of personalities running the show, including creative director Ian Grimm (McElhenney), lead developer Poppy (Charlotte Nicdao), executive producer David (Always Sunny’s recurring scene-stealer David Hornsby), an eccentric pulp author-turned-game-writer named C.W. Longbottom (F. Murray Abraham), marketing director Brad (Community’s Danny Pudi), and a number of other notables, including a game tester played by Ashly Burch of Horizon: Zero Dawn and Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin’ fame.
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Escaping the far less accurate stoner humor of something like Grandma’s Boy, Mythic Quest manages to tread the line between somewhat realistic depictions of the archetypes and issues that permeate the broader video game industry, and allowing for plenty of wiggle room, either for comedic effect or easier storytelling. These are definitely the kinds of overworked creatives and rampant a-holes that any game developer might recognize from their own office, so much so that I wonder if watching this show would be horribly anti-therapeutic for anyone in the industry. As someone who has both worked adjacent to and enjoyed games since childhood, I definitely want to root for these characters, even if their inconsolable anxiety sparks my own.
They’ve got plenty to worry about, too: Sales numbers dictated by the whims of a “little s–t” streamer named PootieShoe; literal nazis digging swastikas made of penises into their overworld; crunch; mistreatment of female game developers; and even unionization. I hesitate to say that Mythic Quest tackles any one of them with any tangible positive effect (they solve one particular problem by essentially just cordoning it off, rather than actually dealing with it), but it is great to see a show at least talking about these kinds of issues with some halfway decent frankness.
So where does the comedy come in? Well, that’s a good question. At times, Mythic Quest manages to transplant the usual workplace comedy tropes into game development with success. The resident boozehound/lead writer C.W. Longbottom is a source for some quality “old man vs. technology” jokes, while producer David is a mix of Ned Flanders and Parks and Rec’s Jerry Gergich, a consistently undermined pushover who’s hanging on to his job by sheer virtue of being too high up to fire. Poppy, perhaps even more so than Grimm, is our audience cipher, able to gawk and scream at the lunacy of her cohorts so passionately that she seems in danger of losing her voice at any moment. Jo, a new assistant to David, is channeling every ounce of April Ludgate she can.
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I can’t say I’m an avid watcher of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, but it certainly feels like McElhenney and his fellow writers are leaning into the cynicism of his FX comedy, rather than the earnest optimism of The Office or Parks and Rec. Characters bounce off of each other and their respective quirks with the cadence you’d expect (Jo is sadistic, Grimm oblivious, Danny Pudi’s Brad is a money-grubbing microtransaction villain) but it can often feel like the script doesn’t know how to clinch the final beat of a joke. Instead, characters are often just reacting in confusion to each other, before quickly acknowledging the awkwardness, and moving on, but not in the rapid-fire way that made shows like The Office so addictive. In fact, one particular beat involving a string of suicide jokes feels pretty reprehensible, and the script drags it on kicking and screaming for ultimately little effect. I’m certainly not clutching my pearls very often when it comes to offensive humor (I still think South Park is pretty funny, at least when it punches up, not down), but is it too much to ask for some redeeming qualities in these characters?
They say one key rule of comedic improv is to “always be plussing” the humor. Keep escalating until the original kernel of the joke grows so ridiculous that it’s impossible not to laugh. Mythic Quest has its moments in that respect, but more often feels afraid of embracing its own zaniness. In a series about the artistic minefield that is game development, it feels like a missed opportunity.
That’s not to say there isn’t an immense amount of potential here. The show itself is remarkably well-produced, for what it needs to be. Game developer Ubisoft actually partnered up with Apple TV to produce a ton of assets for the game, making for the best fake depiction of a game since South Park’s infamous World of Warcraft episode. That said, Ubisoft definitely manages to squeeze a few references to their own properties in there, including Assassin’s Creed and a ton of For Honor. Our games media cohorts over at Kotaku and Polygon get mentions (collusion!) while Red Dead Redemption 2 and The Last of Us get nods for their emotional storytelling. McElhenney told IGN that the show originally came about because Ubisoft approached him with the core idea for a game studio workplace comedy, and that he wanted the show to remain “authentic” to the industry without seeming like an ad for Ubisoft. In that, he at least mostly succeeds.
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As for the cast, they’re often acting their asses off, especially when the show leans into more emotionally charged beats. The fraying of relationships, the petty squabbles of office politics, and upended career arcs are all common themes, and some decent drama is pulled out of the muck by the end. On the flipside, Ashly Burch pulls off a solid job as a tester who’s crushing hard on her coworker, but feels a little wasted by season’s end, when perhaps she would have fit far better in Jo’s role, as a malicious assistant, considering Burch’s comedic pedigree. That I can’t remember a single joke from Burch’s character shocks me, given that Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin’ is one of the internet’s brightest gems.
SPOILER ALERT FOR EPISODE 5
No review of Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet can be complete without mentioning episode 5, a seemingly disconnected side story starting in 1990 and ending around 2006. Telling the story of two fledgling game developers-turned-romantic partners (played by New Girl’s Jake Johnson and How I Met Your Mother’s titular mom, Cristin Milioti), this extra-length aside is a shockingly adept exploration of a relationship between two creatives as they navigate their unintended financial success while desperately trying to hold on to their artistic integrity.
Milioti and Johnson give some of the best performances of their careers here, so convincingly exploring how fraught it can be to share not just a workspace, but an artistic medium with a partner, it even made me pause to reflect on my own similar relationship. This sad, yet touching side story is so heartbreakingly good that I actually wrote “where did this come from?” in my notes. It even manages to elevate the ending of this first season a bit, circling back a recurring theme of partnership and creative cooperation that redeems some (but maybe not all) the chuff we had to go through to get here. Written by Katie McElhenney, herself a writer on a handful of Always Sunny episodes, I’d absolutely love to see more of this side of Mythic Quest in the show’s already-ordered Season 2.
END SPOILERS
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By season’s end, it’s hard to get a bead on where Mythic Quest wants to go. I can only ask that you indulge me one more Parks and Rec/The Office reference: If you watched either show, you’ll remember how the first seasons of both shows felt a little more cynical, a little more mean, but not necessarily funnier because of it? Eventually, Leslie Knope and Michael Scott learned to be a little softer, a little more respected rather than tolerated. The world around them learned to be a little less dark, though no less obstinate. At times, it feels like that may be what saves Mythic Quest in a second season, if it can learn those same lessons – a little hope, in place of the biting cynicism of Always Sunny. Give us a script and cast worth celebrating (even though we may mock them) rather than simply tolerating. There’s still plenty of potential for Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet, but like a heavily monetized loot box, you may not feel compelled to invest much more time to unlock that hidden gem.
Source: IGN.com Apple TV's Mythic Quest: Season 1 Review