Red vs. Blue

Red vs Blue is a general term for the machinima series Red vs Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles. Originally using the Halo: Combat Evolved engine, it has since been filmed using the two sequels of the popular game. 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

 * Staff Sergeant Sarge
 * Minor Junior Private Dexter Grif Negative First Class
 * Private First Class Richard "Dick" Simmons
 * Private Franklin Delano Donut
 * Lopez

Blue Team

 * Private Leonard L. Church
 * Private First Class Lavernius Tucker
 * Private Michael J. Caboose
 * Freelancer Texas
 * Medical Super Private 1st-Class Frank DuFresne
 * Kaikaina Grif
 * Lavernius Tucker Jr.
 * Andrew D. Kaboom
 * Captain Butch Flowers

Freelancer

 * Freelancer Washington
 * Freelancer South Dakota
 * Freelancer Wyoming
 * Freelancer Maine
 * Freelancer New York

Artificial Intelligence

 * Omega AI
 * Gamma AI
 * Delta AI
 * Epsilon 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.

The Blood Gulch Chronicles
The Blood Gulch Chronicles is the first main saga in the Red vs Blue series, spanning 5 seasons, 100 episodes, and a 5-part mini-series, Out of Mind. The main characters are Church, Tucker, Caboose, Sarge, Grif, Simmons, Donut, and Tex.

Season 1

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

The Blood Gulch Chronicles begins with the introduction of two rookies on the Red and Blue teams, also getting a jeep and a tank respectively. The Red recruit, Donut, is sent on a fool's errand by his fellow soldiers, only to accidentally steal the enemy flag when he believed it to be the store (and the Blue rookie believing Donut to be the General foretold in the fool's errand of his own). The weeks of reconnaissance and intelligence gathering breaks down into chaos and [poorly] constructed offenses.

Season 2

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

Several months after the first season, a medical officer arrives to check on the wounded soldier Blue team reported. He had come months afterward, so by the time he got there, the wounded soldier (Tex) had already died. Almost immediately after his arrival the Red team attacks. Red team salvages their failed attack by getting Doc as an exchange for Blue team's surrender (although he was ordered to go to Red team anyway). Doc's added involvement in the canyon, combined with a rampant AI infecting Caboose will force the two opposing teams to do the unthinkable.

Season 3

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

The Red and Blue armies have found themselves in the future. They have stumbled upon a prophecy which says a blue being will destroy everything. They are trying to defend from an attack from O'Malley when the Great Destroyer arrives.

Season 4

 * Main Article: Red Vs. Blue (Season 4)

Following a distress signal back to Blood Gulch, the Red team experiences a falling out with one of their soldiers. Tucker, Tex, Caboose, and the alien go on quest to save the alien's race. Tex does not return to Blood Gulch with the rest of Blue team, and Tucker becomes seriously ill.

Out of Mind

 * Main Article: Red vs. Blue: 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. Its events precede both Season 5 and Recovery One (see below)

Out of Mind features the first episodes to remove letterboxing.

Season 5

 * Main Article: Red vs Blue Season 5

A ship from Earth has crash-landed in the middle of the canyon, bringing a new soldier. Red team experiences a major crisis in their chain of command and Blue team welcomes a new addition to the family. Church tries to stop O'Malley once and for all.

100th Episode
On April 1st 2007, four years since episode one, it was announced by Burnie on the forums that episode 100 is the last one of the Blood Gulch Chronicles. It was the series finale that tied up all the "loose ends". Click here for the page.

The episode was released with three alternate endings, with more on the DVD release. The canon ending is a repeat of the first episode with reversed roles of the reds watching the blues "just standing there and just talking."

Recollections
Recollections is the second saga in the main series that includes the sequel series Reconstruction, Recreation, and Revelation. It also includes the two mini-series Recovery One and Relocated. The main characters in the saga are Sarge, Grif, Simmons, Donut, Church, Caboose, Tucker, and the new character Washington. Tex is speculated to return in the newest season Revelation.

Recovery One

 * Main Article: Red vs Blue: Recovery One

Recovery One was a Red vs Blue miniseries distributed via Xbox Live and the internet that takes place after Out of Mind as well as before and during Season 5. Its plot revolves around Agent Washington, also known as Recovery One, who is a Freelancer like Tex, Wyoming, and York. Washington's job is to recover all Freelancer AI constructs of freelancers killed in action.

Reconstruction

 * Main Article: Red vs Blue: Reconstruction

Reconstruction is the direct sequel to the Blood Gulch Chronicles, exploring the causality of events from both The Blood Gulch Chronicles and Recovery One. It continues to follow Recovery Agent Washington's journey tracking down a mysterious enemy called the Meta who is killing Freelancers and taking their armor enhancements and AIs. First, Wash has to find the people with the knowledge and experience to help him. Namely Caboose and Church.

Relocated

 * "Main Article: Red vs. Blue: Relocated"

Relocated is a direct sequel to Reconstruction, following the Red Team, now on Valhalla, struggling to do the usual nothing, and Caboose's strange action's at Blue Base drawing further attention to himself.

Recreation

 * "Main Article: Red vs. Blue: Recreation"

Recreation is a direct sequel to Relocated and Reconstruction. As the Reds continue to try and figure out what Caboose is up to and wake up a comatose Donut, Caboose continues trying to make a new best friend. He finds the Reds holo-room, with help from Donut, and Epsilon tells him about Tucker and a mysterious energy reading in the desert. Grif and Sarge agree to come, and they meet a strange man at the desert.

Revelation

 * Main Article: Red vs. Blue: Revelation

Revelation is the direct sequel to Recreation.

The Lost Episodes
Currently, Burnie Burns has announced that Revelation will NOT be the end of RVB, just the end of the Recollection Trilogy series. A new series of 13 episodes is already being written out according to Burns and is expected to air in January 2011. The series will continue into the next "season" of RVB of about 20 episodes, currently under the project name "Red vs Blue: Universe".

Universe
Summary coming soon.

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.

Trivia

 * Burnie Burns got the idea for making the RvB Blood Gulch Chronicles while playing Halo CE in Blood Gulch. He had gotten the inspiration by asking his fellow teammate "Why do they call it a Warthog? Can't they call it a Puma?"
 * As a running gag, whenever a character dies (excluding some of the Grunts in Episodes 39-40, and the alternate ending of episode 100 where everyone dies) the last words they say are "Herk, ble-ag!"
 * Red vs. Blue was originally intended to last only six episodes, but its popularity led to the production of 100.
 * In Season 3, Sarge exclaims "Great Gustavo!". This is a reference to Gus Sorola, the voice of Simmons.
 * Some of the voice actors from Red VS Blue were featured in the level Crow's Nest in Halo 3, as two Marines arguing over a password. The voices vary depending on difficulty. On Easy and Normal it's Jason Saldaña (Tucker) and and Matt Hullum (Sarge, Doc) (listen); On Heroic it's Geoff Ramsey (Grif) and Gus Sorola (Simmons); On Legendary, it is Burnie Burns (Church) and Joel Heyman (Caboose) (listen). Sarge also cameos on the level Tsavo Highway as the radio operators voice just before the tunnel before the Pelican drops off the Warthogs.
 * On Bungie.net, look at someone's service record. If they have killed with a flag, scroll over the flag symbol in the list of kills. It will say "It's right next to the headlight fluid." This is a reference to Red vs. Blue's first few episodes.