Red vs. Blue

Red vs Blue is an extremely popular machinima series. Its plot revolves around the never-ending war between the Red Team and the Blue Team. It is a situation comedy parodying Halo 1 and Halo 2 multiplayer, normally taking place in Blood Gulch. Season 3's time travel plot used Marathon to represent the past, and Halo 2 for the future. The series currently takes place in Coagulation, the future Blood Gulch, and Waterworks.

Made by Rooster Teeth Productions, it is released for download from their website as a series of short episodes, and individual seasons are sold as DVDs. Praised for its originality, the series has won four awards from the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences.

Characters
Main Article: List of Characters in Red vs. Blue

Red Team

 * Sarge
 * Private Dick Simmons
 * Private Dexter Grif
 * Private Franklin Delano Donut

Blue Team

 * Captain Leonard L. Church
 * Private Lavernius Tucker
 * Private Michael J. Caboose
 * Freelancer Tex(Alison) a.k.a Agent Nevada
 * Sister
 * Sheila (M808B Main Battle Tank AI)

Production
The writing process for the series has changed over time. Early in season 1, Burns wrote the episode scripts from week to week, with minimal planning in advance; major plot events were conceived shortly before they were filmed. For the second season, Matt Hullum became a main writer. A rough plot outline is now written before a season begins, although the actual content of an individual episode is still decided on a more short-term basis. Because Red vs. Blue is loosely based on the Halo universe, Rooster Teeth encountered some difficulties when trying to synchronize events in the series with the release of Halo 2.

Aside from a few scenes created using Marathon Infinity, Marathon 2, and the PC version of Halo, Red vs. Blue is mostly filmed with interconnected Xbox consoles. As the series title suggests, the videos are largely set in the Halo map Blood Gulch and its Halo 2 counterpart, Coagulation. However, some episodes have been filmed on other maps, including Sidewinder from Halo and Zanzibar from Halo 2. Within a multiplayer game session, the people controlling the avatars "puppet" their characters, moving them around, firing weapons, and performing other actions as dictated by the script, and in synchronization with the episode's dialogue, which is recorded ahead of time.

The "camera" is simply another player, whose first-person perspective is recorded raw to a computer. As the recording occurs within the game, a few different bugs and post-production techniques have been exploited in order to achieve desired visual effects. In particular, Adobe Premiere Pro is used to edit the audio and video together, impose letterboxing to hide the camera player's head-up display, add the titles and fade-to-black screens, and create some visual effects that cannot be accomplished in-game.

Season 1
Main Article: Red vs. Blue (Season 1)



The delicate balance of indifference in Blood Gulch is disrupted by the introduction of new players to the "conflict". On the Red side, a recruit named Donut enters the fray and manages to capture the Blue flag on his first day. For the Blues, a rookie named Caboose arrives alongside a battle tank named Sheila, and they manage to accidentally kill Church on their first day. In response, Blue Command hires a mercenary named Tex to recapture the Blue flag. Church briefly returns as a ghost to warn his teammates about Tex, who soon arrives and goes on the attack against the Reds. After severly injuring Donut, Tex succeeds in returning the Blue flag, but is captured as a result. Church again appears to explain that Tex is actually his former girlfriend, whose mind is partially under the control of a psychotic AI. Church organizes a successful rescue mission, but not without its problems, and spends the rest of the season attempting to remove the AI from Tex's head. His attempt to warn the Reds of Tex's pending attack fails and, much to his horror, she is killed by Donut with a Plasma Grenade. Tex's AI manages to escape her body, and begins to take possession of Caboose.

Season 2
Main Article: Red vs. Blue (Season 2)



Three months later, Frank Dufresne (soon nicknamed "Doc"), a medic sent by both Red and Blue Commands to tend to the medical needs of both teams, arrives in the gulch and proves completely unhelpful. The Reds attack the Blues and manage to take Doc as a hostage, but soon tire of his personality and ditch him in the middle of the canyon. Church is still trying to get used to his new, stolen robot body, which he eventually loses when Lopez regains control and resists further attempts to possess him. Donut is captured by the Blues, who force the Reds to build two new robot bodies in exchange for his return. Meanwhile, both teams are menaced by Tex's evil AI, O'Malley, despite the best efforts of Tex's ghost and the Blue team to stop him. This culminates in a Mexican standoff between the Reds and Blues, following the revelation that both teams are in fact secretly controlled by the same army. O'Malley resurfaces in Doc's body and sets out to conquer the universe, kidnapping Lopez and escaping through a teleporter. The Red and Blue teams call a truce and form several two-man teams to pursue O'Malley, but something goes wrong with the teleporter, and the teams are separated and sent to different worlds outside Blood Gulch.

Season 3
''Main Article:Red vs. Blue (Season 3)



After regrouping on Sidewinder (after a brief encounter in Battle Creek, with two groups of immortal, respawning, flag-obsessed Reds and Blues called "grunts" by Rooster Teeth), the Reds and Blues join forces again to confront and defeat O'Malley, only to have a reality-shattering bomb destroy the present and propel everyone except for Church into the future (Halo 2). Church is thrown into the past (Marathon). While the Reds and Blues continue to battle O'Malley in the future at his fortress, Church goes on a time-traveling odyssey, where he learns of a prophecy that a blue being known as the Great Destroyer will use a Great Weapon to bring the Great Doom to billions of people at the point in the future where everyone else has ended up. Church decides to time-travel to Blood Gulch during the events of the past two seasons and alter the past in order to prevent the great doom along with most of the other negative events that have occurred in the storyline. However, in a classic causality loop, Church realizes that his interference is what caused most or all of the problems in Blood Gulch in the first place. Giving up on trying to change the past, he travels back to Sidewinder and rejoins the main group just as the bomb goes off, so that he can be blown into the future along with them. Shortly after the teams are reunited, O'Malley lays siege to the captured fortress with an army of deadly robots, only to have them obliterated by an unknown being, before he himself is seemingly killed. The Red team leaves mid-battle in search of a mysterious distress call, without informing the Blues. They arrive back at Blood Gulch, much to Griff's dismay. The season ends on a cliffhanger as an Elite is seen creeping up on an unsuspecting Church.

Season 4
Main Article:Red vs. Blue (Season 4)'

As the Red Team re-explores Blood Gulch, Simmons' insistence that Sheila still roams the canyon leads to his exile from the group. Painting himself mostly blue and taking command of the empty Blue Base and Sheila, he takes Griff hostage, later confessing to him that he believes that Sheila might be hiding something. Back at the fortress, the Blue Team attempts to confront the new Alien, only to experience a series of humiliating defeats until Caboose manages to befriend him. The Alien reveals that he has been on a sacred quest to save his people, and has come to the fortress to retrieve The Great Weapon (an Energy Sword), which only Tucker can now activate, since he accidentally discovered it first. Threatening to kill everyone otherwise, the Alien forces Tucker, Andy, and Caboose to partake of his quest, with Tex trailing and then joining them. Arriving at their final destination, the team finds a temple occupied by the Grunts from Battle Creek. As Tex defeats them, Tucker uses the sword to open a gate to a flying ship, of which the Alien quickly takes command. Wyoming suddenly re-appears, however, and shoots the ship down before fleeing with Tex in pursuit.

Meanwhile, Church returns to the Blue Base in Blood Gulch and encounters the blue Simmons, whom he pretends not to recognize, and comes into contact with a distant descendant of Vic, who scoffs at Church's mention of Blue Command. Tucker, Caboose, and Andy return to the gulch, and inform Church of the events at the temple. Simmons returns to the Red Base, and attempts to relay information learned from Vic Jr about the war. At the Blue Base, Tucker becomes ill for an unknown reason, and Church is forced to call Doc for help. On his arrival, O'Malley negotiates a deal to exchange Doc's aid for something to be named later. The Reds find Lopez, who had returned to the canyon with O'Malley, and discover that the instructions that Red Command had planted inside his head can only be played in Spanish. While Church is confirming Doc's diagnosis that Tucker is pregnant, Sarge distracts Caboose and steals Andy to translate the plans. Tucker regains alertness and complains of stomach pains. Church, upon hearing of Andy’s disappearance, becomes enraged at the whole situation. As he confronts the Reds with Sheila, Sarge radios Command for reinforcements, despite having heard the translation of the uninformative instructions. Andy reveals that the Alien had the ability to impregnate others with parasitic embryos, and Caboose radios Church to tell him that Tucker has given birth (a higher-pitched alien language is heard off-screen); and that O'Malley had left Doc after Sarge had contacted Command. As Church runs back to the Blue Base, a ship crashes into the gulch (right on top of Donut). This marks the end of the season at episode 77.

Out of Mind
Out of Mind is a mini-series that took place in-between Season 4 and Season 5. It is a narrative from Tex's point of view, told in a much more serious tone, when she chases after Wyoming. Out of Mind first takes place in the Freezing Planes, at a different base, owned by Wyoming. Two British guards are the first obstacle between Tex and Wyoming. While trying to get past a locked door after killing the two guards, Wyoming charges out of it in a warthog, delivering his usual brand of humor while addressing the situation of Omega (O'Malley) vaguely. He drives off, but Tex attaches a tracking device to his vehicle.

Tex has a flashback talking to Church about rumors of an AI program. She explains to the viewer the background of Omega, and how he affected her. Afterwards, Tex seeks after an ex-special ops infiltration recruit named York. He is shown as out of job by attempting to rob a small shop. While Tex tries to recruit York for a mission against Omega, his AI, Delta appears. This surprises Tex, as most AIs were removed from spec-ops recruits. The AI was very responsive to Tex, as he was afraid that Omega might have been still Tex's AI. York eventually agrees to help Tex, with his motive being revenge. He had gotten his eye damaged in some way by Omega, and has trouble seeing out of that eye.

Tex and York are next seen at Wyoming's/Omega's base. All three anaylize the situation, when eventually deciding to try and get into the base. Delta was still very wary about Tex, saying that her emotions may become erratic when seeing Omega. York replies by saying that it makes them humans, a theme in Out of Mind. Eventually, the two make it into the main portion of the base, instantly under fire by various Zealots. They successfully take them out, when Wyoming enters the battle. Tex tries to fire on him, but has a gun jam. York covers her, but gets shot on his bad side. He says he is okay, but quickly becomes unconscious. Delta says he will not survive, so Tex offers to take York with him. But in a surge of human emotion, he stays with York until his death, even though it will destroy himself as well. Delta creates a hologram of Tex that distracts Wyoming, allowing Tex to sneak up behind him. Tex interrogates Wyoming about Omega, in which he says that he has jumped into someone else. She figures that the information will be stored in his communication logs, so she decides to beat him unconscious to take the information.

Out of Mind features the first episodes to remove letterboxing.

Season 5


Season Five marks the debut of Grif's sister, who is clad in yellow armour. Afraid of being alone during the war, she arrives at Blood Gulch in a Pelican. It is soon revealed that she was sent by Blue Command and is in fact a blue recruit. Unfortunately, as a result of being color-blind, she ends up on the wrong side, in the Red base. Sent to replace Church as Blue Team's leader after the killing of Captain Butch Flowers, she tells the Reds about this order. The Reds misinterpret this, and decide that she was sent to replace Sarge, who is still very much alive. So they buried the still living Sarge, much to Simmon's joy of being promoted. However, after learning out the truth, Simmons attempts to retrieve Sarge, but fails to find his body and Grif sends his vulnerable sister to the Blues to protect her due to the Red's inefficiency. Meanwhile, Donut finds himself trapped in an underground cavern with two dead bodies, in which he foolishly waits for them to wake up. Tex returns to the blue team. Suspicious that O'Malley may have posessed a team member, she attacks her own team. Meanwhile she is calmed, Simmons and Grif examines the hole Simmons found. After taking themselves down the hole, Simmons tries to contact Sarge (who obviously fell through the grave) and Donut. He only success to contact Sarge, because Donut's radio broke when he landed on the ground of the gigantic cave. Sarge orders Simmons and Grif to hold their position. As they wait for Sarge, Simmons and are ambushed and sent to sleep by needlerlike darts. Meanwhile, when Doc fails to diagnose Sheila, Church make up the idea of tricking Caboose to diagnose Sheila. After that, Doc finally realized that Sister was in the team. He wanted to give her a physical checkup, but Tucker tried to stop him and failed. Meanwhile, Tex agreed to reboot Shelia. Underground, Donut found Simmons who was drugged. Sarge wanted to leave Grif (who was taken by the attacker) there, but because the attacker took his shotgun, he changed his mind.Meanwhile, Tucker entered the base(where Doc is giving sister a physical(you can see her amour on one side of the room)) while searching for junior and asks whether he can help them. Doc stops him and says that its "pretty routine". Church finally starts his plan of shutting down shelia, but Caboose's stupidness almost caused it to fail. Shelia warns him not to be so weird, as the others would suspect him. She knows who O'Mally is in, but before she can say, she was shuttled down down by Tex. Meanwhile,the red team found Sarge's shotgun and Grif, who says that the attacker asked him lots of questions.

Impact on machinima
Red vs. Blue is widely credited with attracting public attention to machinima. Although examples had existed since the 1990s, Clive Thompson credits Red vs. Blue as "the first to break out of the underground". Tavares, Gil, and Roque call it machinima's "first big success". Thompson notes that "Microsoft has been so strangely solicitous that when it was developing the sequel to Halo last year, the designers actually inserted a special command — a joystick button that makes a soldier lower his weapon — designed solely to make it easier for Rooster Teeth to do dialogue." The series has inspired other machinima productions, including The Codex, Fire Team Charlie, and This Spartan Life.

Related Links
Internal External
 * Rooster Teeth
 * Red vs Blue - Official site
 * The Unofficial Red vs Blue Resource Site
 * The Cult of Red vs Blue - News article
 * Wikipedia Article
 * Fan Art
 * Red Vs. Who? - Bungie interviews Burnie Burns about the series.