“Good morning!” “Nice day for fishing ain’t it!” “Hu hah!”
How many ways can one NPC (non-player character, for the uninitiated) utter these three lines of dialogue in a 30-minute film? Plenty apparently!
Meet Baelin, an epic NPC fisherman who gets thrown out from his scripted loop around the fantasy MMORPG world of Azerim. Think World of Warcraft, Skyrim, or The Witcher – this is one immersive open-world that is not to be missed.
If you’ve not caught him, great news! The full film is now available to all for free now on YouTube. With over 2 million views (and counting) since it was released into the wild last week, this speaks something, doesn’t it?
The epic movie began as an immensely successful Kickstarter campaign in March 2020, where it reached its NZ$400,000 goal within less than two weeks before going on to conclude with a NZ$220,000 surplus by the end of the campaign a month later.
[Spoler Alert! Click to reveal]
The story revolves around Baelin and his scripted path around the fantasy game world of Azerim. One day, he runs into a mean adventurer who is on a side quest to save and return an NPC girl, Willow, to her parents.Annoyed by the quirks of Baelin as well as Willow’s reluctance to go off the beaten path, he later goes on to slay the both of them to end the quest.
But Baelin is virtually indestructible, even at point blank. He later intervenes to save the girl and succeeds in knocking the mean adventurer out with his fishing rod.Baelin then proceeds to continue on the quest to return Willow back to her family, growing as a character along the way.
His epic journey was documented by kiwi-based YouTube comedy trio Viva La Dirt League – which is also behind three popular video game sketch shows on their YouTube channel from the likes of “Epic NPC Man”, “Bored” and “PUBG Logic”. Their channel has garnered over 772 million views and 3.2 million subscribers since its formation in 2011.
While MMORPG animes from the likes of Sword Art Online to Overlord are popular, it is refreshing to see a movie with real-life actors that takes on a refreshingly unconventional perspective that centers around an NPC instead of a playing character.
If you have not seen Baelin’s Route – An Epic NPC Man Adventurer by now, this is certainly worth your 30 minutes. ?????
“Nice day for fishing ain’t it?”
