Critical Role's The Mighty Nein Reveals First Look, Season 1 to Air on November 19th

The Mighty Nein will come to Prime Video in November. Alongside news that The Legend of Vox Machina would be picked up for a fifth season, Prime Video also revealed a first look at The Mighty Nein animated series and announced that the show would start airing on November 19th. You can check out a "sneak peek" of the season down below, which features six of The Mighty Nein's seven characters being interrogated after an incident at a traveling circus.


The Mighty Nein will star Critical Role's founding cast members (Matt Mercer, Marisha Ray, Liam O'Brien, Travis Willingham, Taliesin Jaffe, Laura Bailey, Ashley Johnson, and Sam Riegel) and will feature a group of misfit heroes swept up into the political intrigue of two feuding nations. While The Legend of Vox Machina is a prototypical heroic quest, The Mighty Nein's heroes are much more reluctant and face much more personal threats over the course of their adventures.

 

[OB1]

I think this is a pretty widespread opinion.

Yep, and happened right about the time that they decided to ditch as much D&D IP as possible, creating a bigger workload for Matt. The response to that was to rely on the PCs to improv longer so they could stretch the story beats out and give Matt time to build things from scratch.

It reminds me of how SNL sketches often feel like they go on for too long, and that's with the best improv talent in the world going for maybe 10 minutes. The CR crew at the end of C2 and all of C3 were trying to improve single scenes for 30 to 40 minutes two or three times an episode.

They probably need to either let the episodes shrink down to 2 hours or so, hire a bigger team to help Matt prep sessions so that there is more content for the cast to bounce off of, and or start to edit episodes.

 

[Bolongo]

Yep, and happened right about the time that they decided to ditch as much D&D IP as possible, creating a bigger workload for Matt. The response to that was to rely on the PCs to improv longer so they could stretch the story beats out and give Matt time to build things from scratch.

That's funny, I have a completely different take on it.

IMO the issue was that after the war storyline was wrapped up with the peace conference, that was it. Everything they had been building to was finished. But Matt had started the campaign with the (at least implicit) promise that each character's backstory would be resolved - everyone would get a character arc. And there were still a few left to go, so Matt had to scramble to come up with new material.
That led to many episodes of faffing about with side plots. The players were stretching things out simply because they could - there was no pressure on them to do anything important, so they were just relaxing and having fun. Unfortunately this went nowhere story-wise.
Finally Matt introduced the Eyes of Nine arc to give the final part of the season some shape, and closure to the rest of the characters. But at least to me that felt very tacked on, and never really gelled.

 

[OB1]

That's funny, I have a completely different take on it.

IMO the issue was that after the war storyline was wrapped up with the peace conference, that was it. Everything they had been building to was finished. But Matt had started the campaign with the (at least implicit) promise that each character's backstory would be resolved - everyone would get a character arc. And there were still a few left to go, so Matt had to scramble to come up with new material.
That led to many episodes of faffing about with side plots. The players were stretching things out simply because they could - there was no pressure on them to do anything important, so they were just relaxing and having fun. Unfortunately this went nowhere story-wise.
Finally Matt introduced the Eyes of Nine arc to give the final part of the season some shape, and closure to the rest of the characters. But at least to me that felt very tacked on, and never really gelled.

That's great insight. Yeah it wasn't any singular thing that led to the increase in the amount of improv being done by the cast to stretch things, but the more they rely on it (for any reason) the more of a slog the show feels, IMO.

 

[Amphytrion]

The preview looks great, and the character designs are all very distinctive. The animation also looks more fluid than it is in the Legend of Vox Machina, but that may be just for the teaser.

 

[Clint_L]

I think the issue is that Mercer has been overindulging in his epic storyteller tendencies, to the point that it is disempowering the players. They are doing improv with their characters in lieu of having real decisions to make.

I used to argue against the widespread argument that CR is scripted. I still don't think the minute by minute play is scripted, but I do think that the overall plot is more and more tightly controlled.

I also think that the games are less joyful as they have become more professional and CR has become Big Business. One thing I love about the earlier episodes is that I feel like I am hanging out with some folks who are having their regular D&D session - it's a bit loose and ragged, they're eating and sometimes drinking. It's more casual. Now it's so serious. Not all of the time, but a lot of the time. It's not as fun.

 

[Worrgrendel]

Yeah. The Mighty Nein is wildly better than Bell's Hells. It's not even close. Vox Machina is good, but MN is so much better.

100%. I love the MN. Peak CR. Bells Hells I WANTED to like soooo much but I just couldn’t keep watching it. It was complete trash and that was mostly on the players being trash and it felt like Matt was just trying to keep the train from derailing over most of the campaign. Seriously, Taliesin’s character should have DIED for his BS selfish crap with the stones. As a DM he would have been sooo dead and I’d have pulled him aside and told him if his next character was an A-Hole I’d consider booting him from the game entirely.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I agree that the characters are the best. The story of the campaign loses steam about 2/3 of the way through, though. IMO.

The campaign has more false endings than Peter Jackson's Return of the King.

Fingers crossed they take advantage of redoing it for the TV series to either weave it all together into a single coherent narrative or to toss some of the bonus storylines overboard.

 

[overgeeked]

100%. I love the MN. Peak CR. Bells Hells I WANTED to like soooo much but I just couldn’t keep watching it. It was complete trash and that was mostly on the players being trash and it felt like Matt was just trying to keep the train from derailing over most of the campaign. Seriously, Taliesin’s character should have DIED for his BS selfish crap with the stones. As a DM he would have been sooo dead and I’d have pulled him aside and told him if his next character was an A-Hole I’d consider booting him from the game entirely.

I wouldn’t go that far, but you’re not entirely wrong either.

The cast is great at what they do. For me a large part of the problem is Matt forcing the players back on the rails and trying to push some kind of forced story. If he’d just stop doing that and let them run wild they’d have endless content for mini-series and arcs.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I wouldn’t go that far, but you’re not entirely wrong either.

The cast is great at what they do. For me a large part of the problem is Matt forcing the players back on the rails and trying to push some kind of forced story. If he’d just stop doing that and let them run wild they’d have endless content for mini-series and arcs.

Yeah. The issue with campaign 3 is that most of the characters simply do not connect with or resonate with the main story, and it feels they get railroaded onto a quest they do not really care about. I've on episode 80, trying to get though it, and it always just seems that the game works way better and everyone is more interested and energetic when the play is about something else than the main gods/moon plot.

 

[OB1]

I think the issue is that Mercer has been overindulging in his epic storyteller tendencies, to the point that it is disempowering the players. They are doing improv with their characters in lieu of having real decisions to make.

I used to argue against the widespread argument that CR is scripted. I still don't think the minute by minute play is scripted, but I do think that the overall plot is more and more tightly controlled.

Spot on. And that tight control was even in their Daggerheart Age of Umbra campaign, in a system specifically built to be player directed.