I'm currently obsessed with a game series called "Dragon Age". I'm a bit late to the game, but I'm almost through Dragon Age Origins (if I can stop killing Alistair for breaking up with me after making him King. Bastard.) and when I heard Felicia Day was doing a web-series based around it (with an accompanying new DLC) I was all over it.
I'm not a novice when it comes to web-series--I've watched and enjoyed animated, live action, CGI...pretty much every kind of medium you can think of. I'm also not a novice when it comes to lower budget films or films based on games. Redemption is somewhere between Resident Evil (the first movie) and Silent Hill (which I think to date is the best video game adaptation of all time) in terms of enjoyability and level of production values. It certainly doesn't hurt that Felicia knows a lot of useful people who could help out, but there's only so much you can do on a small budget.
The six episodes, each only about 6 and half minutes, don't spend a lot of time smelling the roses. There's a lot of humor, violence and banter happening, though a hefty portion is from Day's character Tallis (which makes sense as she wrote it) and there's sometimes I remember why her smirky behavior aggravates me. The plot is engaging and certainly follows a lot of the steps you'd have to take if it was part of the game--asking random people for help, running a side quest, dispatching random enemies, learning backstories, etc.
Some of the acting was...meh. Cairn at first was really wooden and stiff, maybe a product of the fact the actor (who I remember from Doctor Who, the Agatha Christie episode of series 4) is better use to drama than action-fantasy-comedy. Day was her usual self--which is to say this side of swarmy at times, but overall cute and funny. I envy the fact she could wear that costume so well.
Overall this was solid entertainment for me. I'm already interested in the franchise however, so I don't know how it would be for those not interested. It does a decent job of set-up for the world structure and mythology, but its not really meant for the casual viewer.
