If you’ve been ignoring Mythic Quest, you’ve been missing out on one of the best TV shows of the last several years.
Apple TV+ has been producing some of the highest-quality TV around, from the unsettling psychological thriller Severance to the beautifully heartwarming Ted Lasso. Mythic Quest, a comedy set in a video game studio, is no exception. Expertly written, painfully accurate, and performed to perfection by a powerhouse ensemble cast, it’s a show everyone - especially gamers - should be watching.
With season three finally hitting Apple TV+ plus on November 11, GAMINGbible caught up with two of Mythic Quest’s stars - Danny Pudi and Naomi Ekperigin - to talk about the last season’s major shakeup, microtransactions, and what the cast have learned about the video game industry over the last few years.
A brief recap for you: Mythic Quest’s second season ended on a surprising note, as lead developers Poppy (Charlotte Nicdao) and Ian (Rob McElhenney) decided to leave the titular MMO and build a new game from the ground-up together. Meanwhile, Pudi - who plays the studio’s sleazy head of monetisation, Brad - is taken to prison over insider trading.
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The new series sees Brad return to the studio as a janitor after head of HR Carol (Ekperigin) takes pity on him. But how much have things really changed?
“Can Brad change?” Pudi laughs. “I mean, I think Brad has. He's taken from this experience. Definitely. I think he's got to be grateful that he's out of prison, because that is not a place for Brad. It's just not. But I think at the same time, he just is who he is. And I think that this group of people has accepted him for that multiple times. And they kind of know that he is a schemer. He is always plotting, but at the same time, he is a value to this company.”
“I do believe Carol deep down lives for the drama,” Ekperigin adds of the personnel shift at Mythic Quest. “All right, she likes to be able to complain. She likes things to be a little difficult, so that it's almost something to do.”
While Brad might be a solid bastard on the face of it, season two of Mythic Quest went some way towards providing him with semi-redeeming qualities. But how far can the show push that before losing what makes Brad an entertaining character to watch?
“That is the central question for me,” Pudi says. “There's a fine line. You don't want to be such a demon, because why would they even let you in the building? There's this balance of being a villain, but in a playful way. I think with Brad there's always a level of like, ‘how do I add value? How do I help this person even though they might not know that I'm helping them?’”
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Brad’s main ‘value’ in the first two seasons of the show came from his relentless attempts to squeeze as much money as possible from Mythic Quest’s players. Gamers will be only too aware of the controversy surrounding microtransactions, loot boxes, and in-game purchases. Brad is corporate greed personified. But, Pudi argues, the character is kind of essential when it comes to keeping the lights on.
“I didn't know about loot boxes and all these things being put into games,” Pudi admits. “But we explore this idea in the show that the creatives are constantly at odds with me talking about cheap money grabs, and me being like: ‘let’s put a casino here, because this is where the player activity is. Let's generate some income here.’
“So I was surprised at that. But I also understand the debate, because it's the art vs commerce debate that we have all the time. And the gaming industry is massive. It's just a massive, massive industry. So I think it's just a cool question to explore, because it's actually real. How do we navigate these two things that have to coexist? Brad is like, ‘someone's got to keep these lights on. Right?’ You know, these guys are driving around in their Mercedes and their BMWs talking about how cool this game is. I'm paying for that with this casino that I just put into the game! So even though I'm a villain, I think I'm kind of a necessary villain within this world.”
One of Mythic Quest’s greatest strengths is its commitment to accuracy. A comedy set in a video game studio could have easily been a lazy parody, but the fact gaming giant Ubisoft uses its film and TV arm to produce means there’s a real, grounded flavour to the world. From Brad’s relentless cash grab schemes to a community manager that spends all day dealing with abusive gamers, if you’re at all familiar with the video game industry, you’ll see how alarmingly (and sometimes upsettingly) spot-on Mythic Quest is. But what have Pudi and Ekperigin learned about the world of video games after three seasons?
“I think for me, as someone who's not a gamer, the sheer scale of it,” Ekperigin says. “That a video game can cost as much as an Avengers movie. I had absolutely no idea. To see that, and just to realise the years of work in terms of coding it and building it before it even sees the light of day. Talk about a labour of love, right? Like you've got to do that stuff. And to be so focused on every single detail before people even get to play it, and then you better hope they like it!”
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“The hours that people put into just to keep things running,” Pudi agrees. “Because when there's a launch, people are working around the clock, making sure that the servers are up, you know, making sure the servers don't crash… and then also the testers. I think I'd never really understood that testers are honestly finding glitches that you don't even know exist. They have to keep going. And they have to keep playing, working, and upgrading.”
Mythic Quest lands on Apple TV+ November 11
Featured Image Credit: Apple TV+Topics: Ubisoft, TV And Film