Critical Role's The Legend Of Vox Machina Red Band Trailer Dropped

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Critical Role's The Legend Of Vox Machina Trailer Dropped

Dungeons and Dragons

By Leslie McMann

Published Jan 19, 2022

Amazon Prime launched the trailer for its new adult animated series The Legend of Vox Machina. Adapted from the web series Critical Role, the animation features the Critical Role cast of star voice actors as their original Dungeons and Dragons roleplay characters.

The Legend of Vox Machina follows a 7-member “band of misfits” on a quest to save their fantasy realm from evil forces so they can finally pay their bar tab with the reward money. Critical Role Dungeon master Matthew Mercer will voice Sylas Briarwood and various NPC roles, with some of the biggest names from the gaming and anime world returning to voice their original Dungeons and Dragons characters.

Laura Bailey (The Last of Us: Part II) will voice her half-elf ranger character, Vex'ahlia “Vex” Vessar, with Liam O’Brien (Naruto) playing her rogue brother, Vax'ildan "Vax" Vessar. Travis Willingham (Fullmetal Alchemist) voices Grog Strongjaw, a goliath barbarian. Ashley Johnson (The Last of Us) returns as Pike Trickfoot, a gnome cleric, and Sam Riegel (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) as Scanlan Shorthalt, a gnome bard. Marisha Ray (Metal Gear Survive) will voice Keyleth of the Air Ashari, half-elf druid, and Taliesin Jaffe (One Piece) will voice Percival "Percy" Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III, human gunslinger. Orion Acaba and his character Tiberius Stormwind will not be featured in the animated series due to his falling out with the rest of the Critical Role team following his departure after Campaign One.

Critical Role began as a private game between friends (who also happen to be some of the best voice actors working today) of the 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons played in Mercer’s home before becoming a live-streamed, live play web series hosted by Felicia Day's Geek and Sundry Youtube channel in 2015. Campaign One: Vox Machina lasted 115 weekly episodes across almost two years. In 2018, the Critical Role creators formed their own company, Critical Role Productions, and took their web series to their own Twitch and Youtube channels, launching several spin-off web series, podcasts, and even their own game company. Each player in Critical Role holds an executive position in the company, making it totally creator owned.

Critical Role Productions launched a Kickstarter in March 2019 with a $750k goal to fund a 22-minute animated special titled Critical Role: The Legend of Vox Machina Animated Special. In 24 hours, fans had donated $1 million. When it closed 45 days later, the Kickstarter had raised almost $11.5 million. The animated special was subsequently reworked into a 12-episode series produced by Critical Role Productions, animation studio Titmouse, and Amazon Prime.

While most of the series will be based on campaign one from the Critical Role live-stream, the first two episodes will be a new story, a prequel to the “Briarwood arc." The group started live-streaming their Dungeons and Dragons game after their characters reached Dungeons and Dragons Level 9, so this prequel will finally let fans see the characters interact “on their first grown-up mission” at Level 7. While giving the fans a taste of new content, the two-episode prequel arc will likely also serve to introduce viewers unfamiliar with Dungeons and Dragons to the game’s concepts, as well as the Critical Role characters.