Return of the Ashbringer II

Anybody who knows me, is aware that I am not a big fan of Machinima and most of the time, even after watching a quite good video, the feeling is, at best, something along the lines “ok, that was kind of cool.” However, I stumbled upon something yesterday that made me rethink, completely the power of creative machinima, when it is brought to bare by talent and creativity.

The project that I am talking about ofc, is titled Return of the Ashbringer II, Raiders of Northrend. It is apparently suppose to be a sequel but no knowledge of the previous story is necessary. It is, by the author’s own words, no about action or combat, although both are pretty good imo, but about characters and drama. Now I was skeptical, to say the least, when I read that in the video description but only few minutes into watching the short version, I had to admit that it was pretty darn good and the director had surely nailed it.

It is actually quite long for a machinima, almost an hour and a half, and took the author over a year to complete, with over a thousand hours of work that he put into it. However, every hour seems worth it to me. I found the story incredibly moving, dramatic and well scripted. The movie has both elements of comedy and tragedy, woven into the storyline and some really good voice acting. In fact, Blizzard entertainment could very well hire some of the same voices to work on their projects, if you ask me. Jesse Cox for example delivers a very good performance in a number of roles in this movie.

The soundtrack is brought together from a many cinematic sources, including World of Warcraft itself, along with the Village, Battlestar Galatica, etc. The music really delivers the mood of each scene, amplifying the drama a hundred fold.

So I definitely recommend, anyone who like machinima and a good story, to have a look at this movie. It is a victory in movie making by any standard. There is a shorter 15 minute long version on youtube, so you don’t feel daunted by the length and you can assertain, a head of time, whether or not to commit for the whole thing.

Full length movie –> Warcraftmovies.com