Red vs. Blue: Season 10 shows off the culmination of the development of the hard-working Rooster Teeth team. The show is made with not only acting through the game, but custom animation of the models from the game. There’s some post production explosions and special effects as well. Some motion capture even goes into some scenes. Music from a variety of artists and genres including rap and rock spices things up as well. It’s become quite a high level production, a pretty big leap from its humble roots.
Season 10’s story goes back and forth through time and ties together a lot of the plot points and characters from previous seasons. It’s a lot more enjoyable if you have at least some knowledge of the earlier seasons, but I think you'd be able to muddle through it if you do have at least some passing knowledge of the earlier plot. I wouldn’t say this is a story that’s going to captivate non-fans of the series (it seems to move a little slowly for that), but it is quite dramatic, with some pretty good action scenes.
In this season, Carolina recruits the dim-witted Red and Blue teams to help her find the Director. Why and how they're going to help her is unknown to them, but then a lot escapes those two groups. As Carolina follows the trail, there are frequent flashbacks to the past. Agent Tex, South, North, Carolina, and several of the other freelancers’ past are explored in short story sequences. There are some particularly juicy revelations about Texas and Maine's past in this season. And of course, when the show is back in the present day, there’s plenty of dumb jokes and fun with Sarge, Church, Caboose, Griff, and the others.
Ok, if I nitpick about anything, it would be about some of the voice acting coming from some of the actors including Carolina and North (played by Jen Brown and John Erler, respectively). The Freelancers take on the more "serious" roles in the series, so their acting should be some of the more believable parts in the series. Carolina, however, sometimes sounds like she’s simply talking through gritted teeth or just speaking very slowly (not the calculating badass she’s really supposed to be). North often sounds a bit too mellow, even for the mellow personality he’s supposed to portray, and doesn’t sound natural. More often than not, the acting is superb, but there are just times where it feels like it could really shine and push things over the top, and it seems to fail to reach that level.
The special features are great, as always. There’s commentary from the RVB crew, PSAs, outtakes, and trailers. I would warn that fans that love the original few seasons can’t really jump into Season 10, but you could probably guess that. Not only is the plot a little hard to follow if you haven’t been keeping up, but the humorous sequences are spaced quite a bit farther apart now, and this season is pretty much all about back story for the previous seasons. Still, it’s a great Blu-ray, and the production quality is as great as you could ask for. Red vs Blue is great machinima fun as always.
