After the fantasticMythic Quest: Raven’s BanquetEpisode 5: A Dark Quiet Death, Episode 6 had a lot to live up to. Unfortunately, Episode 6: Non-Player Character is easily the weakest episode of the series sinceEpisode 1: Pilot, slipping up when it comes to video game accuracy and failing to deliver anything remotely close to as compelling as A Dark Quiet Death.
Starting with the video game inaccuracy,Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquethas so far been a lot more accurate when it comes to its representation of the video game industry when compared to other shows. In fact, the vast majority of video game depictions on television so far have been downright offensive, with characters wildly mashing on controllers or playing games on the wrong systems or whatever other inaccuracy could be dreamed up.Mythic Quest’s video game inaccuracy in Episode 6 isn’t necessarily a big deal, but it stands out because of how accurate the show has been otherwise.
Basically, the plot inMythic Quest: Raven’s BanquetEpisode 6 revolves around the NPC The Masked Man going rogue, giving away free loot and eventually just disappearing from the game completely. David is instructed to keep attacking The Masked Man in-game to prevent him from giving away any free loot, as that gets him stuck in an animation. What doesn’t make sense about this is that theMythic Questgame is an MMO with a literalIndiana Jones-sized warehouse full of servers, as we saw inMythic QuestEpisode 3. David attacking one version of The Masked Man on one server would do literally nothing to solve their problem.
With David busy hitting The Masked Man for hours, Poppy was free to go on her lunch meeting with Cold Alliance Games, the studio that approached her with an offer inEpisode 4: The Convention. The meeting doesn’t go all that well, as Poppy realizes the culture at theMythic Queststudio is actually quite toxic. This is compared to Cold Alliance Games, where the developers are friendly to each other, act like adults, and there isn’t someone like Ian Grimm lording over everybody in his special office that is strategically raised higher than everyone else’s desk.
This storyline wasn’t terribly interesting or funny, and it didn’t seem to really go anywhere beyond making Poppy realize that her work environment is toxic. Toxic work environments is something thatMythic Questhas tackled already and so it’s starting to become a bit stale. The acknowledgement that’s a little weird for a game studio full of adults to constantly say terrible things about child streamer Pootie Shoe was somewhat amusing, but otherwise this didn’t really follow up on the Poppy cliffhanger from a couple episodes ago in a very satisfying way.
Another storyline in this episode similarly failed to hit the mark, involvingMythic Questwriter CW Longbottom, Brad, and Dana. With Pootie Shoe no longer streamingMythic Quest, the team has decided to use Dana as their own in-house streamer, though it’s taking up space in Longbottom’s office. Brad tries to get Longbottom on board with the streaming idea and asks him to write a backstory for Dana, but he refuses to do so. Brad then introduces an AI that he claims is able to produce stories, though in reality he just pulled writing from one of Longbottom’s books and impressed Dana with it. This convinces Longbottom to become more involved in the streaming situation. The AI, meanwhile, was just an air conditioner. It was a predictable plot line and just wasn’t funny.
Brad’s character continues to be the weakest link in the show. He was a little more interesting in Episode 4: The Convention, but only because he was actually challenged in a genuine way. Otherwise he just blandly steamrolls everyone and there are no layers to his character.Danny Pudidoes his best with the material he has, but it’s clear that the Brad character just wasn’t given the same attention as everyone else in the show. There’s still time to make him more interesting, but Episode 6: Non-Player Character fails to do so.
Meanwhile, Dana’s new streaming career has left a vacancy open for the QA testers.Ashly Burch’s Rachel has a new partner, a generic sexist guy who says offensive things and mansplains. Again, this story wasn’t terribly funny, though it at least felt like it had a bit more forward momentum than the other stories being told in that it is making Rachel become unsatisfied with her job now that she can no longer work with Dana.
As for Ian, he and Jo became embroiled in the only story in the episode that was funny. An especially tall programmer named Paul is brought up to Ian’s floor, and Ian is immediately threatened by him. He and Jo attempt to undercut Paul’s masculinity, but fail to do so each time. Seeing Ian so threatened by someone else opened the door for some great gags, particularly Jo’s aggressive support of Ian throughout the episode, and her clear disdain for Paul. Jo egging Ian on to engage Paul in “hand to hand combat” was especially hilarious, and she remains one of the funniest aspects of the series.
Eventually, Ian “promotes” Paul and gives him his own office in the basement next to Community Manager Sue. This happens inMythic Quest’s first post-credits scene, and serves as a proper way to cap off the Ian/Paul story.
The Masked Man story didn’t get the same kind of closure in this episode, however. Poppy takes a look at The Masked Man’s code only to discover that his code has been changed from an external source. This means thatMythic Questhas been hacked, which adds some much-needed stakes and drama. The same thing happened with Poppy making the phone call to Cold Alliance Games, but that storyline ended up not really following up in any big way. Hopefully the hacker revelation actually leads to something interesting and the final few episodes ofMythic Questseason 1 are able to get things back on track.
Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquetis available to stream exclusively on Apple TV+.
