Critical Role's new animated series, The Legend of Vox Machina, will now premiere on Jan. 28.
Prime Video announced today that the animated adaptation of Critical Role's first RPG campaign will premiere a week earlier than its originally announced release day of Feb. 4. If that wasn't enough of a bonus, Prime Video also released a new clip from the show to celebrate its new launch date. The clip shows several members of the titular adventuring guild, including the gnome bard Scanlan Shorthalt and the half-elf Keyleth, attempting to force open a locked door, which is eventually undone through the careful application of a toothpick.
The Legend of Vox Machina is unique among animated series in that it's not an adaptation of a comic or a movie, but of a tabletop RPG campaign that was originally played through by Critical Role, a popular web series that stars several veteran animation and video game voice actors. The original campaign featured Resident Evil voice actor Matthew Mercer as the dungeon master, with Laura Bailey (Dragon Ball Z, Spider-Man), Taliesin Jaffe (Mobile Suit Gundam: Unicorn, One Piece), Ashley Johnson (Blindspot, The Last of Us Part II), Liam O’Brien (Revolutionary Girl Utena, Sailor Moon Crystal), Marisha Ray (Persona 4: Arena, Fire Emblem), Sam Riegel (Sanjay and Craig, Winx Club) and Travis Willingham (Fullmetal Alchemist, Sonic the Hedgehog) all role-playing as the members of the dysfunctional and self-proclaimed "second rate" Vox Machina guild. The players from the original campaign are all reprising their characters for the animated series. The cast also serves as the show's executive producers. The show's character designs were created by Phil Bourassa, an artist who previously contributed his talents to numerous DC animated projects, such as Young Justice, Batman: Bad Blood and Justice League.
The show was originally announced as a single, 22 minute animated short. Critical Role launched a Kickstarter campaign in 2019 to crowdfund the production of the special, with an initial goal of $750,000 USD. Their goal was surprassed within the first hour of the campaign going live, and by the end of the fundraising drive several weeks later, $11 million USD had been raised for the project. Amazon Studios later announced that it had signed on to the project and was expanding the special into a full length animated series.
In addition to the new series, Critical Role fans can look forward to digging into a new campaign book based on Vox Machina's world, entitled Tal Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn, which is due out on Jan. 18. The series is also teaming up with Wizards of the Coast for an official Dungeons and Dragons book, Critical Role: Call of the Netherdeep, which will be released next March.
Source: YouTube
