After-Thoughts: Red vs. Blue and its Changes in Dynamics

I've never been a fan of the Halo games. While I acknowledge that they're good games, I'm not a fan of first person shooters. However, one thing I've always liked that spawned from Halo were Halo machinima. For those who don't know, a machinima is a film or series animated entirely within the confines of a video game. It's different from a Let's Play in the sense that a Let's Play is used to communicate your personality by using the game as a medium to convey yourself with, whereas machinima are essentially animated works, they just happen to be using games and gameplay recording software to do the animating.

I liked a fair few Halo machinima in my life. Spriggs was pretty good all things considered, Phil is really good in terms of writing and characterization, and Sanity Not Included also features a number of skits that are incredibly good. However, by far the biggest and most famous Halo machinima of all time, to the point that it's the only one still being made that I'm aware of, is Red vs. Blue.

Red vs. Blue started off as just a game of capture the flag between a red team and a blue team. The team who made it, Rooster Teeth, was at the time not equipped to do a lot of the things that an actual animation studio like Pixar or Dream Works could so they had to restrict onscreen actions and characterization to what was possible within the confines of Halo multiplayer. Because of that, the first five seasons, known collectively as The Blood Gulch Chronicles, were mostly about a bunch of jackasses standing around and talking.

That's not to say that there were never any attempts at actual plot, because there was. The introduction of Project Freelancer through the Agents Texas, Wyoming, and York, South Dakota, and Washington in Out of Mind and Recovery One respectively, along with the reveal of Vic being command for both the red and blue teams did have quite a bit of events going on surrounding them. However, because the entirety of The Blood Gulch Chronicles were done within the Halo 1 and 2 multiplayer modes, the plot that was tackled had to be done mostly through characterization and what few mechanics were actually present in those games.

This is why a focus was put on making the characters as endearing and entertaining as possible: since plot was minimal and action scenes were largely uninteresting, they had to make it up with characters that were fun to watch and banter that was fun to listen to. Things like Church's Sarcasm, Tucker's libido, Caboose's intelligence or lack thereof, Donut's ambiguous sexuality, Grif's laziness, Simmons' loneliness, and Doc's multiple personalities were used to convey certain things. The only one of the main group that was in any way stereotypical was Sarge, and he was more a parody of the uptight drill Sergeant than an actual Drill Sergeant. Even the antagonists O'Malley, Lopez, and Wyoming were not all that serious until right around Season 4 or 5, around the time their runs started coming to an end. The only remotely serious characters were the actual Freelancer Agents, especially Washington, whose distaste for AI in his system and general cynicism in regards to Project Freelancer made him more serious and his mini series, Recovery One, the most serious thing that had come out of the franchise up until that point.

Then Reconstruction hit and there was a sharp change in direction. In Reconstruction, the use of machinima was largely unchanged and elements of visuals that were present in Recovery One and Out of Mind, particularly the Delta AI Fragment, were maintained and, though the shift to Halo 3 changed the visuals of the series, the overall movements and animations were mostly unchanged at this point. However, there was a tone shift.

Reconstruction was the first of the main seasons to feature a main character that was not one of the Reds or Blues, and that was Agent Washington. As I said, Agent Washington was the most serious character introduced in the show thus far, so a season that was primarily comedy was less feasible. So, instead of trying to force humor out of him, the humor mostly came from how he played into the crazy personalities of the other characters.

You see, prior to Reconstruction, the show had no real straight-man. Though the Reds had Simmons, and the Blues had Church, everybody was quirky and crazy in some way or another, which made for great banter but it also made everything seem incredibly crazy. Washington, however, being as serious as he is, could only be a straight-man, which not only made the interactions a lot more grounded and less ridiculous but it also started to apply logic to aspects of the series that had previously been accepted as just part of the series.

For example, in The Blood Gulch Chronicles, Church died fairly early on and became what was, at the time, a ghost. Now, for most of his interactions, he was possessing other characters, which you would just take as a ghost power but then, why could he possess robotic bodies? If Ghosts are a thing, why are Church and Tex the only ones who become ghosts when they die, especially after the death of York, who you'd think would become a ghost as well, given the focus he was given? And, if York could not become a ghost, why was Tex not surprised by this even though she herself was a ghost?

Well, in Reconstruction, there's a lot more focus on AI Fragments and where they came from, something called the Alpha AI. All of the AI Fragments for Project Freelancer spawned from the Alpha AI, which was the reason the main antagonist, the Meta, was trying to obtain the different Fragments. Church was the Alpha AI based on the Project Director Leonard Church who then spawned the AI Fragments after significant psychological torture.

This gave us a very clear reason why Church was one of only a handful of characters who could become a ghost and why the only other one who could was a prior romantic partner. This also explained why the Omega AI had no prior effect on him, which was initially thought to be because he was always angry and maniacal to begin with.

This resulted in the discontinuation of Project Freelancer by the UNSC and an arrest of all Freelancer Agents. This also resulted in the destruction of all of the Project Freelancer AI except for one: the Epsilon AI, who was the Alpha's memories of the torture that it had been put under.

Reconstruction is widely considered to be the best season of the series and, while I'm not certain I would go that far, I would definitely put it at the top of the Recollections Trilogy.

Recreation, the season that followed, was a bit more light-hearted, which I attribute to the introduction of Epsilon as the reintroduction of Church and the general absence of Washington as a whole. It's hard to be as serious with those two factors. Recreation, to me, is the weakest of the trilogy but that's correlation not causation. I don't think the lower quality of Recreation was as much a result of Church and Wash's roles as much as it was a reliance on characters and jokes that were not particularly memorable or interesting.

The Aliens in Recreation were already a pretty played-out joke as is, and their insistence on using Shizno when that word got old a while ago was as well. Also, the only real memorable characters from that Season were C.T. and Malcolm Hargrove, who are far more memorable for what is made of them in later seasons than what they do in this season, though it's worth noting that in Reconstruction Hargrove had diary narrations alongside the Director at the beginning of each episode, alternating between each other.

Then we get to Revelations, which is in the middle because Reconstruction is better far more than because of a general quality level. Revelations had a tone that was similar to Reconstruction due to the reintegration of Maine and Wash but this season also introduced heavy amounts of CGI animation, which is where I think the biggest turning point for the series lies.

During the development of Recreation, Rooster Teeth had hired on the Animator Monty Oum, the man responsible for Haloid and Dead Fantasy. This didn't occur to anyone watching at the time but Monty was great at two things: fight choreography and taking unnoticeable shortcuts.

The fight choreography can be better explained by the Revelations Episode This One Goes to Eleven than I can in a block of text but in terms of shortcuts, Monty had a tendency to reuse animations that were already in a library that he was building over time. Obviously, Monty had to create custom animations sometimes because he didn't have animations for every single occasion but, a good number of times, if there was a scene that needed an animation and he had one in his library already, he would just use that. One thing that I was initially the only one who noticed was that, during the fight Tex had with Maine and Wash, Tex used a mirrored version of a punch that Hitomi used during the first Dead Fantasy episode, which only stood out to me because I had already watched Dead Fantasy and I was aware that Monty was involved with the animation so I figured some animation reuse was okay, especially since this wasn't really all that noticeable or much of a problem within Red vs. Blue.

After the Recollections Trilogy had set a tone and lore for the series that could not be denied anymore, this ultimately meant that somethings happened that could not be reversed and some things hadn't happened that would be inevitable.

The next set of seasons is known as The Project Freelancer Saga but is really only comprised of Seasons 9 and 10. Pretty much the entirety of Season 9 takes place in flashbacks: one half of the season was a prequel that details what happened with Project Freelancer prior to the beginning of the series, which meant characters that were previously stuck in machinima finally got some decent animation attached to them and characters that were either never introduced or died by the time we knew about them were finally given personalities and characters. Even characters we had seen before, like York and Wash, were given entirely new lights. As for the other half, the other half is in the present and there's no denying that but this season is from Epsilon's perspective while he's trapped inside the memory unit which means what he's experiencing is actually a faulty recreation of The Blood Gulch Chronicles.

And when I say it's a faulty recreation of The Blood Gulch Chronicles, it is that way for two reasons: first off, Epsilon was never actually in Blood Gulch, which means that his only recollection of that arc is what Caboose told him prior to and during Recreation, which means that it would be inaccurate to start with. The other reason is because he's actively trying to change parts of the story to resolve his relationship with Tex, which means that the arc diverges from Blood Gulch in a number of ways. Instead of doing a side by side comparison, I'm just going to list off a few bullet points and get back on topic:

• The Reds and Blues are present and accounted for at the beginning of the season but the Reds do not behave the way that we know they do. Sarge is kind and compassionate and not really assertive, he's more of a dad than a Marine. Donut is hyper macho but in his sexually ambiguous way. Grif is a hard worker and clean freak. And though Epsilon doesn't notice any differences with Simmons, he is actually a lot more assertive and less of a suck-up than he was in previous seasons.
• Pretty much the only Freelancer who appears in this memory is Tex because her AI is trapped inside the unit with Epsilon. Every other Freelancer that Tex and Church interacted with are not there, not even Wyoming. Doc is also absent, as are Sister and Junior for obvious reasons. Vic returns as a voice in Tex's communicator but that's more of an easter egg than an actual character appearance. Andy is the only one who comes back, which was an executive decision made during production.
• Blood Gulch is covered in grass and has water on one side, which seems to be a mixture of the actual Blood Gulch and Val-halla, where Epsilon actually was prior to reconvening with Tucker.
• Tucker and Church go to see the Red's Jeep with Caboose who comments that they had a tank, neither of which were present during that point of the first season. Caboose and the Tank both came later. Also, even though the Tank is there, the AI FILSS, renamed Sheila by Alpha, was not.
• Likewise, Donut and the Jeep are also modified. Donut is present from the very beginning when he initially showed up around the same time Caboose did. Likewise, the Jeep initially had a gattling gun on it but now it has a rapid-fire rocket launcher. Also, something a bit more minor about the jeep is that there was initially a joke about it's name being the Warthog and several names were given as an alternative, such as Puma and Chupa-thingy. These were removed for pretty obvious reasons but I thought they deserved a mention.
• Although Andy is present, his role and conception are somewhat different. Instead of being used to blow up a base commandeered by O'Mally, Tex builds him because Grif antagonized her. Andy speaks because she built him out of robot parts and the battery for the bomb was connected to the voice generator.
• Lopez speaks Spanish in both versions but, in the original, it's because sand got into his sound card but here Sarge does it intentionally to bring culture to the Red team.

At the end of this season, Epsilon deletes Tex because he decided he wanted to let her rest and move on with his life and the actual Reds and Blues, specifically Caboose and Sarge, get him out of the memory unit. Once he's freed, it's revealed that they're working with Agent Carolina, who was stated to be dead in previous seasons by both Tex and Delta and was only introduced in the Prequel part of the season but here she seems to be alive, which is a cliffhanger until Season 10.

In Season 10, it follows the writing of past-present arcs that relate to each other, only this time the present takes place in Halo 3 because that is still the present and, though the past arc seems to continue where Season 9 left off, the present arc of Season 10 has very little to do with the present of Season 9 except for the ending of Season 9.

Here is where we start to get some focus on what this saga is about and what it's trying to accomplish. The main character of this saga is actually Agent Carolina and the main focus is her relationship with Tex and the Director. There's also some relationship stuff going on with York and North but it's primarily about Tex and Carolina. And here's a little bit of something that many may not have noticed.

In the prequel parts of Seasons 9 and 10, most of the characters have armor that is present in Halo 3 but the coloring on that armor is actually for Halo 2. This is why the characters with secondary colors have it on their wrists and thighs and not on their shoulders and helmets. This was done to differentiate the past from the present, as the present in canon takes place in Halo 3 while anything before the Blood Gulch Chronicles takes place in Halo 2. Or, at least, that's the general impression I got but we'll cover that more later on.

The past seems to be a recapping of how Project Freelancer deals with the threat from the previous season and how these events lead into Blood Gulch. Whereas the present focuses more on Carolina's revenge on the Director for what he put her and her friends through. This isn't obvious on an initial viewing but, in a way Carolina's relationship with Epsilon is a sort of mirror of how she wanted her relationship with the director to be.

In the Project Freelancer parts, both in Seasons 9 and 10, the Director is cold to everyone who does not do their best and Carolina is competitive to gain his approval but he ultimately sidelines her because he's more obsessed with Tex, or Allison as he knows her. By contrast, Carolina starts out cold and abrasive toward the Reds and Blues but once Epsilon starts opening up to her, she starts to get the approval that she always wanted, which is shown a little bit in this season but is far more prevalent in Seasons 12 and 13. We'll get to those later, however.

In fact, I would guess that this contrast of her relationship with the Director and her relationship with Epsilon may be an indicator of why she does what she does at the end of the season. At the end, during the part that takes place in Halo 4, Carolina has a bit of dialogue with Epsilon talking about her mother and how she hated good byes. Now, some people thought this was subtle, some people thought it was sort of hammering in the point but nonetheless pretty much everybody understood that Carolina's mother was Allison, the woman that Tex was based on. From here, it starts to make sense.

Carolina wanted approval from the Director because he was her father. He was always cold toward her and he taught her that she needed to be tough if she was going to get what she wanted. This made her incredibly competitive for the purpose of gaining the affection she never got during her younger life. Carolina obviously loved her mother and when Allison died, it had an impact on both the Director and his relationship with his daughter.

After he got the great idea to create AI Fragments through a reproduction of Multiple-Personality Disorder, the very first AI he created was Beta, who was the memory of Allison and later became Agent Texas. Now, because Tex was stealing her father's affection and praise with her number 1 spot on the leader board, this made Carolina incredibly resentful.

Now, I'm not quite certain when Carolina figured out that Tex was a recreation of her mother, given that she never really comments on it but she wasn't really all that surprised by the Army of Tex's that were in the base at the end of the season. She was surprised by the number of them but not necessarily by the fact that Tex could be reproduced in the first place.

However, if I were to hazard a guess, I would say that the moment she figured out Tex was her mother was during their training match when Carolina and Tex were about to fight and the Director screams Allison's name. Now, Carolina is not a stupid girl so she probably put two and two together in that moment right before her AI fragments had a seizure and started damaging her brain. If that is the case, this is probably another reason that Carolina had so much resentment toward Tex. Not just because Tex was stealing her father's approval but also because she was a copy of someone she truly loved that seemed to be intended to replace that someone.

Given that this resentment seems to be one-sided, with Epsilon noting that Tex thought they were friends, it's likely that Tex empathized with Carolina on some level even if she was never entirely certain why.

So, after Tex disappears for good, and Carolina is damaged and has reflected on what her father has done, she doesn't have much of an outlet for her anger anymore so she channels it into trying to kill the Director. This is where Epsilon comes into play.

If the Director is her father and Allison is her mother, it means that Alpha, Tex, and to a different extent, Epsilon and the new Tex, were representations of her family. However, while she hated Tex, she got along very well with Epsilon. This has to do with how these relationships are framed: Tex appeared after someone she loved died and seemed to be trying to replace that person, which Carolina took as massive disrespect for the dead. Epsilon, meanwhile, gave her the approval and affection that she wanted when she was at her lowest that her father never provided, which gave her a bit of support and closure on her bitterness toward her father.

This all culminates in the scene where she comes face to face with him and she's not angry anymore. Epsilon is angry but she is not. She let go of her anger and saw him for what he really was: a man who was never able to let go of the past. She allows him to die in that facility, not out of hatred or anger but out of a desire to simply let a pained soul rest.

If you couldn't tell by all this character analysis of Carolina, Season 10 and to a lesser extent Season 9, did a fantastic job of developing and fleshing out a character that was only around for two total arcs at the time. This is something that indicates a change in the dynamic of the story as well:

The Blood Gulch Chronicles was just a set of assholes being assholes and put the most focus on humor. The story was consistent in terms of the rules it established and the characters were all distinct from each other but humor was the biggest priority, so they focused on making relationship chemistry far more than writing jokes or punchlines.

The Recollections Trilogy was still funny but it was more serious and darker in a lot of places and was also set on applying realistic logic to things that were just previously accepted as part of the lore. It was a lot more focused on plot and intrigue. Action was a big part of Revelations but 1 season out of 3 does not make a massive priority.

Prior to Project Freelancer, no character was given actual development and most of them were given minimal fleshing out. In Project Freelancer, Carolina was the only one who was notably developed and, though development for other characters would come later, this marks the turning point where the stories are now a balance of characterization and plot developments.

This is illustrated very well in the next saga called Chorus, after the planet that the Reds and Blues are now stranded on. This isn't as much of a thing in Season 11, as that season is far more about playing out a drama of people stranded somewhere with no way to leave trying to get help and failing for reasons they don't know. Here, Tucker and Wash are the focus and are given the majority of the development. Wash, now the leader of the Blue Team and the only one who actually succeeded as a proper military agent, was trying his hardest to be a leader and was consistently failing because he didn't understand the soldiers he was working with and he was never in a leadership position.

Wash has always been a capable Soldier but the thing is that, among Freelancer Agents, he was a bit of a joke, even if he was one of only four Agents who was on the Leader Board in every scene that it is featured, the others being Carolina, York, and North.

Wash was not necessarily the most compassionate freelancer, that honor goes to North, but he was always the most naive and was always trying to follow regular military protocol. His inexperience shows in Seasons 9 and 10 where he not only doesn't do what other freelancers do but also because he doesn't seem to be as skilled at combat as the rest. York even says that Wash is the worst.

It is true that, at that point in time, Wash didn't really have the same feats that the other freelancers did but I don't think this is because he wasn't as good but rather because he was not as experienced. He clearly wouldn't be in Project Freelancer, and consistently in the top 6, if he wasn't just as good or qualified as any other freelancer but his inexperience impacted his judgment and all of this hazing capped off by the trauma of Epsilon made him what he is in Recovery One onward. He's more serious because he's jaded about the whole military business.

However, now, at Season 11, Wash is with a group of people who are not military veterans, at least not in the same way he is, and he has to learn to be a leader and mentor for a bunch of people who are essentially just giant children, something that makes far more sense than you realize if we apply it to Caboose and Tucker in particular.

Throughout the season, we're shown elements of two figures, who would later be known as Felix and Locus. Felix is the first one given a proper introduction as a Mercenary working with the New Republic of Chorus. He is trying to recruit the Reds and Blues to his side to help them stand up to the Federal Government of Chorus. At least, that's what we have at that point and Locus attacking the Reds and Blues with the Feds does seem to further cement this point.

Then, in Season 12, we're given more information about the war that's been going on between the Feds and the New Republic. Here, the main focus is shifted onto Tucker and his desire to live up to Wash's example as a soldier which means that most of the information we're given is from Tucker's perspective and, by extension, the perspective of the New Republic. We're initially led to believe that they're being oppressed by a corrupt government and they're trying to complete a revolution to bring it down.

During this time, we're given a little bit of information about Felix and his relationship with Locus, or so we initially expect. The one giving this information, Vanessa Kimble, talks about Felix as though she knows him and her experience with him leads her to believe that, though he's a mercenary, he is trying to help them even if only for selfish reasons. But, as we learn later, Felix isn't just a mercenary, he's also an actor. Trust me, you'll get it as we go further in.

As the season goes on, Tucker with the remaining group Caboose, Simmons and Grif, try to rescue their captured teammates, Wash, Lopez, Donut, and Sarge. And when they run into each other, we find out in the following episode that the Federal Government isn't as corrupt as Kimble seems to think. The leader, General Doyle is a bit of a pansy but he's ultimately well-intentioned and tells Wash that they allow the New Republic to exist perfectly fine because, in his own words, it's quite a large planet. From his perspective Kimble and the New Republic are a bunch of savages who want more than a regular government can provide.

Once that's established and we don't know what's going on, we're introduced to Team Black and their allegiance to Locus and Felix. As it turns out, they were working together the entire time to get the war going to drive the entire population extinct so that their employer could sell the now uninhabited planet for some extra money. Again, using quotes because that's something Rooster Teeth is good at, "If a planet is nuked all to hell, people will start to question it. But if everybody on the planet kills each other, well, that's just a tragedy."

This is also the moment Carolina is reintroduced to rescue the reds and blues from certain death because, as it was hinted at at the end of Season 10, she and Epsilon were investigating them. They both knew ahead of time what was going on with Locus and Felix and that the reds and blues were somehow involved.

They escape somewhere that is outside both the Federal and New Republic territories and ultimately away from communications with Doyle and Kimble respectively. With this in mind, Locus and Felix return to them and tell them that the reds and blues died at the hands of the opposing side, getting them both enraged and ready to kill each other.

This ultimately leads them to try to get word of the subterfuge and deception to both sides to end the war. They don't do so as well as they could have. Carolina had an injured leg which, while it seemed like it wasn't slowing her down, she clearly wasn't as agile or fluid with her movement as previous seasons when she fought against Locus and Felix. However, the fact that Wash doesn't really do much in the way of skilled movements either does indicate something else.

You see, you'll notice that when CGI came back to the series after Season 11, none of the animations that were used were anything in Monty's library. Well, after Season 10 ended, Monty started working on his own project known as RWBY. RWBY, for the two seasons that Monty worked on it, were where most of his tactics were used instead of Red vs. Blue and this is both a good and bad thing.

The bad part about it is that Monty's choreography which, while unrealistic as hell, was really stylish and fun to watch, was replaced by movements that were a lot more stilted and slower. To be honest, I'm not really certain what was wrong with the movements because movements that were likely done with Motion Capture earlier in the season looked perfectly fine. However, once the fist fighting and gun-fu began it all started falling apart.

The good part is that, because there was no reuse or retooling of animation, nothing looked like it was taken from somewhere else or looked copied and pasted like a lot of movements for RWBY Volumes 1 and 2 were, particularly the run cycle, which was not only reused but was also not even hidden.

This meant that the good and bad aspects of things from Season 8, 9, and 10 were moved over to RWBY and though this did cause the animation in Season 12 to suffer, they seem to have gotten their groove back with Season 13, which was my favorite of this saga.

After Season 12 ended, the war on Chorus ended and the people on that planet decided to fight against Locus, Felix, the apparently space pirates that they were teamed with and the leader of the Insurrection from Seasons 9 and 10, who is revealed to be Malcolm Hargrove. And now I want to have a mini-rant about Hargrove because I don't know how to feel about the way he turned out in Chorus.

On the one hand, if you're going to reveal the antagonist of an arc there are some benefits to having it be related to an antagonist from previous arcs, due to familiarity and rapport. However, the Insurrection was stated to be dead prior to the start of the series and CT hinted at the idea that the Insurrection were simply correcting the wrongdoings of Project Freelancer. Combining the Insurrection with Malcolm Hargrove is not necessarily a bad idea, since there were hints that they were simply going against someone who was doing wrong.

However, that being said, Malcolm Hargrove being the leader of the Insurrection on top of being responsible for trying to purchase Chorus does bring up some questions. First off, if Malcolm Hargrove was always evil as he seems to be, then what side was Project Freelancer on? If Project Freelancer was fighting the Insurrection, their side of the battle would be determined by the alignment of who they're fighting. Initially, we thought the Insurrection was well intentioned even if defeated. However, it's also possible that, since Hargrove was leading them, that they were up to no good and that Project Freelancer was actually the ones on the good side.

It's also possible that both sides were bad and that this is more a matter of lesser of two evils. This complicates the issue a bit and I don't know how to feel about it.

Anyway, Season 13 happens and it does more character development with two characters in particular: Locus, who is actually more damaged goods than psychotic maniac, and Kimble, who develops by learning to overcome her past with the Federal Government.

This is all well and good but there's a bit of a downside here: Carolina's development was welcome because, even if she was written out of the series for Season 11, there was never any doubt that she would come back. She's intrinsically linked to the Reds and Blues so there's no way she wouldn't come back so developing her was a legitimately good idea.

I can't say as much for Kimble and Locus, however. While it is nice that Locus was redeemed and Kimble overcame her demons, these characters don't seem to have much of a role outside of Chorus. Kimble may come back any time Chorus gets involved in something, which was for one episode in Season 15 so far so we'll see how that goes. However, Locus has yet to reappear at all and there's nothing indicating that he ever will. This means that the impact of their development is diminished greatly because they won't have permanent impacts on the series.

That said, Chorus did develop Wash and Tucker, which is good and those characters are clearly not going anywhere. And now we get to the elephant in the room that was alluded to earlier: Season 14.

I'm not going to sugar coat it: Season 14 was a filler season. While there were some episodes, particularly the ones that took place between Seasons 10 and 1, that explained some things in more detail, like how Tex beating Jimmy to death with his own skull was the result of putting Alpha into Jimmy's AI slot and showing how the Red and Blue teams were formed was interesting. However, there were far too many what-if episodes that bogged the whole experience down. And while I liked some things like the Rooster Teeth Throwdown, ultimately no amount of enjoyable filler is going to make up for the fact that that was money they could've spent making an actual continuation to the series.

As for the engine thing I mentioned earlier, this is a bit weird because it fucks with the continuity. In Seasons 9 and 10, canonically The Blood Gulch Chronicles and anything dealing with it were supposed to be done within the confines of Halo 2. This is because the Mark VI Armor that everybody uses is a mainstay for pretty much every character, even before Blood Gulch begins, so the evolution was only natural. However, in Season 14, the events that take place close to and right before Blood Gulch, are recorded in Halo 1, which is stylistically consistent in terms of production but does not match the internal canon of the series and the armor choices.

And now, we're on Season 15. Currently, it is not over yet and we're only about half way done with it, since episode 12 is the most recent episode and episode 11 is the only one available to everyone who doesn't have a First subscription. But, from the looks of it, we seem to be tackling Project Freelancer again. The plot of this season surrounds a bunch of lookalikes of the reds and blues committing terrorist acts that are causing the UNSC to react violently to Project Freelancer. However, there's more to it than that.

The antagonists, the Blues and Reds, a copycat team of the Reds and Blues, are hunting down former members of Project Freelancer, Agents, Sim-Troopers, everybody involved with the project because of some unknown agenda. Episode 10 brought up a mysterious connection to Carolina and Temple's particular vendetta against her. However, she doesn't seem to recognize him or, if she does, she doesn't comment on it, and we also don't really seem to know who this guy is based on his voice actor, so it would seem he's a character we've never seen before.

Season 15 is likely the start of a brand new saga and one that marks a dynamic shift again. To recap, The Blood Gulch Chronicles was largely focused on humor and witty dialogue. The Recollections Trilogy was about plot advancement and answering questions. Project Freelancer and Chorus focused on character development, and Season 15 and whatever seasons will be next in the saga seem to be more focused on intrigue and telling a mystery story.

Red vs. Blue has had an extensive history, so much so that I've spent far more time than I thought I would dissecting the ways the series has grown and changed. Granted, the season's not over yet and it seems to want to develop the Red and Blues, who have largely been shafted in that area in favor of other characters. Grif seems to have taken an early start by his refusal to change and abandonment of his allies, which may come back later and he may become a better person when it's over. Simmons also seems to be showing elements of this, having to face elements of himself that he hates and overcome his own denial on the topic.

Caboose, Sarge, and Donut don't seem to have any potential to grow, due to lack of intelligence, mind rut, and something I can't quite comprehend respectively. But, knowing Rooster Teeth, I'm sure they'll find some way to deal with it.

That's all for now. I hope you guys have a good night and I will see you all next time.