When I first saw the episode list for Secret Level I was sick of it. Amazon's animated series from Love, Death & Robots creator Blur Studio sounds like a great way to bring our favorite video game stories to the small screen at first, but then it turns out that the series isn't adapting our favorite video game stories at all.
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Instead of CGI shorts based on The Legend of Zelda, Red Dead Redemption, or Hades, we got episodes based on mobile games, tie-ins to the now-cancelled Concord, and Amazon's own MMO New World: Aeternum.
Secret Level Rather Secretly Advertising
Secret Level felt like a montage of CGI trailers at Summer Games Fest… because it mostly was. In addition to the current episodes of Concord, New World, and Space Marine 2, we also got an episode based on Wizard's of the Coast's upcoming space RPG Exodus, an episode based on The Outer Worlds 2 perfectly timed for the new TGA trailer, and the worst. , a PlayStation-themed episode that could have been written by Sony's marketing department. Remember a few years ago when Sony State of Play opened with that weirdly long PlayStation ad that felt like a short film? This is the animated version of it.
One episode from the first season of Secret Level that I really appreciate was Pac-Man: Circle. A gritty horror reimagining of a classic character like Pac-Man is a perfect fit for Secret Level, and I was hoping season two would bring more of those big swings. In interviews, Secret Level producer Dave Wilson talked about the freedom Bandai Namco gave them to create this episode. While the rest of the season felt like a tightly controlled extension of the publisher's vast marketing plan, Pac-Man was the one episode where the filmmakers had free rein to explore the character and tell a story they were passionate about telling, and I admired that.
I'm just kidding
Except, as we now know, it wasn't true. Like the others, the Pac-Man episode turned out to be another advertisement for the upcoming game. Shadow Labyrinth was revealed at The Game Awards just a few weeks after the episode's debut. What a stunt! I imagine we should have said, “Oh wow! This great episode of Pac-Man is being turned into a video game!” And I might say that if I were a total jerk.
what's next The Mega Man episode was the starting point for Capcom's big reboot? Was Armored Core a Prelude to a Keanu Reeves Feature Film? I mean, of course I'll take it, but I don't have to be happy about it.
Why does everything have to be part of some bigger brand campaign? Why can't anything be cool just for the sake of being cool? I don't know if Secret Level's producers actually like these games and have their own stories to tell, or if they were just taking offers from whoever had the most money to burn. I understand it's a show businessbut this is just shameless.
I'm willing to give the next season of Secret Level a chance and sincerely hope it has a clearer point of view and reason to exist than the first season. We already get enough CGI trailers from the big awards shows and publisher shows — and you don't have to pay Amazon to subscribe to watch them.
Secret Level is a computer-animated anthology series that tells bold, unique and emotional stories set in popular video game franchise worlds.
