redvsblue Season 2 Remastered

Another month, and a second season's worth of remastered redvsblue videos to cover. In case you are unfamiliar with the web series redvsblue, please check out my entry covering the first season from last month where I go into the origins of the show and why the earlier seasons are being remastered. Season two (trailer) is continuing the Blood Gulch Chronicles saga that makes up the first five seasons of the show, and is entirely shot from gameplay from the first Halo on original Xbox, but for this remaster the PC version is used to get a HD resolution on BluRay.

Spoilers ahoy for those who have not finished the first season yet, but when we left off, an attempted blue assault on the red base went terribly awry when Donut (Dan Godwin) got a lucky grenade toss that led to the demise of Tex (Kathleen Zuelch). This had the side effect of the infectious AI called O'Malley that had control over Tex leaving her body upon her death, and via travelling through the open channel in his radio, wound up being attached to Caboose (Joel Heyman). The spirit of Church (Burnie Burns) ends up possessing the android body of Lopez for a majority of this season to give him a reason to be riding with the blues still in some capacity, and rest assured it seems that just like in comic books that no one stays truly dead in redvsblue because soon enough Tex's spirit arrives on the scene.

A new character joins the fray early on as a medic gets dispatched down to Blood Gulch. His real name is too hard to pronounce, so Church officially calls him Doc (Matt Hullum). Doc is not a big hit with either the reds or the blues, so it was fun watching both sides get tired of babysitting him before abandoning him. Rest assured Doc will play a bigger role as the season progresses, but a good chunk of the season is spent on the blues coming up with a plan on removing the sinister AI out of Caboose.

Meanwhile on the red base side of things, Sarge (Matt Hullum) has his own devious plan to get Grif (Geoff Ramsey) and Simmons (Gustavo Sorola) to work better together and stop their bickering. Sarge also is desperate to get his favorite android Lopez back, and even constructs two new androids in hopes to pull off a trade to get Lopez back. The final act builds towards this big hostage trade, and of course things do not go according to plan, and a bizarre firefight erupts. The season ends on another cliffhanger alluding to us that it looks like both the reds and blues are taking their war outside of Blood Gulch and finally exploring onto the many other maps available in Halo.

Just like the first season, season two looks fantastic being remastered in HD with the prettier PC version of Halo. Unfortunately, the six bonus PSA video featuring the redvsblue crew shedding their wisdom about various holidays are not remastered, but provide a great comparison to show you how far they came on making the remastered videos really pop in HD. All the other original extra features are back also with about 15 minutes of deleted scenes and ten minutes of outtakes, as well as the original commentary. There is no bonus commentary for season two, so I gave the original commentary another listen, and like last time it was fascinating listening to the Rooster Teeth crew talk shop about setting up some of their shots and the stories that came out of the crazy long production days they endured.

I thought the second season of redvsblue held up well just like the initial season. Again, this is primarily because almost all of this season transpires on Blood Gulch. A couple other maps make small cameos in certain scenes, but by and large this is still another season of the red and blue armies going at it in the fan favorite map of Halo. Besides both armies being up to their usual tomfoolery, the lore of this universe really starts to unfold this season with the O'Malley AI breaking out as the series' primary antagonist. I liked how the season played out, and still did not mind the cliffhanger because it was enticing to see which maps and new direction that Rooster Teeth Productions would take the series going into season three. I am hoping this time around that redvsblue will be easier to follow and less convoluting when watching these seasons in quicker fashion in individual sittings like a movie instead of over the course of many weeks when they were originally released in weekly bite sized episodes.

Looking forward to covering season three next month, because if my memory serves me right, it is when the series makes the jump to being produced with the Halo 2 engine. You can join in the fun reliving these episodes with me by watching them for free on the Rooster Teeth website and YouTube channelor by getting the ten year anniversary set off Amazon. See you all next month for season three!

Past redvsblue Blogs

Season 1