Game developer and publisher Ubisoft has teamed up with Apple and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”‘s Rob McElhenny for a comedy series based on the gaming industry. To be more accurate the admittedly rarely explored MMO genre of the gaming industry. The series follows McElhenny as creative director Ian Grimm a self-serving, often arrogant leader of the Mythic Quest MMO game that’s always going through development shifts due to Grimm’s ever-changing thought process and direction for the game causing chaos for his team of developers and producers. 

Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet is a 2020 comedy series, it is produced by Ubisoft Motion Pictures & Lionsgate Television. It is currently streaming in its entirety exclusively on Apple TV+.

Editor’s Note: Advanced screeners for the entire first season of Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet was provided by Apple in support of this review. Near complete to complete spoilers for the first season of Mythic Quest may be present within this review.

We’ve been here before, there’s quite a few shows that have tackled or made light of the gaming industry in the past. However, one thing that sort of separates Mythic Quest from the others is that for one it’s based around an MMO which I feel has been poorly represented from the behind the scenes world. MMOs often have much larger and longer development cycles than your average AAA game so more insight into that development process that gives us a better understanding on the things these men and women experience to bring us such high budgeted works of art is always a plus. 

THE GOOD: Mythic Quest is a series that focuses on the relationship building of it’s characters and the team they’re tasked with working on despite the many different viewpoints they each have for not only the Mythic Quest game but also the real world much like any standard business in the world. Much of the screen time is interchangeable between characters, but their are some key characters that get more time on camera than most. Such as the aforementioned Grimm, his lead designer (and unintentional assistant) Poppy, game testers Dana and Rachel who have an ongoing romance storyline, and lead writer C.W. Longbottom. Gaming cons, monetization, and maintaining a strong, healthy, and consistent player base are some of the key themes featured in the story for Mythic Quest. There’s even an episode based on reaching out to influencers for coverage of the game.

Mythic Quest actually taking the effort to do a deep dive into the problems that plague game developers is it’s strongest element. Other shows like Mythic Quest always feel like “oh hey we work at this game company that’s this show”. As a gamer it’s an appreciated varietized commentary on the industry.  It probably helps that McElhenny and a handful of the other cast members are also genuine gamers. And probably pay as close attention to the good and bad side of the industry as the audience it wants to attract. The quarantine episode is the best and showcases just how much potential Mythic Quest has as a series. It was also put together kind of at the last minute as well which is rather impressive. 

THE BAD: The biggest issue I have with Mythic Quest is that McElhenny’s character is a bit too similar to that of his ‘Always Sunny’ character Mac. Granted when you spend so long doing a single character routinely it can be a little tough branching out and avoiding a typecast aura. The core differences between Mac & Grimm though is that Mac seems to actually give a shit about his friends and co-workers. Whereas the Always Sunny characters are essentially just assholes who turn otherwise good people into assholes which is a running theme in that show.

OVERALL THOUGHTS: Although it starts off pretty slow Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet starts to find it’s strength by it’s midway point. It’s commentary on the gaming industry while more subtle than outright hits the ridiculousness of it all rather nicely. It could be a little stronger, but it helps Mythic Quest standout from being “just another show about games”. Otaku Dome gives Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet season one an 80 out of 100.