Angels of Death

Right away when the series opened I had a problem with the face of the space marines. For being the sons of the angel they neither look or sound angelic, not a single one. The story is pretty good and for the most part the animation is good. The series truly falls short with the sound design. There is no weight to anything. A Storm bolter tossed to the ground sounds like someone just dropped a toy gun. This weapon must weigh like fifty pounds or more. The chainsword sounds are from the default sound pack of a video editing software. It is truly terrible. The voice acting is wonderful for almost everyone. Like I said before though, the Blood Angels sound more like the veterans of fifty years of cigarette smoking.

I remember many years ago when the Ultramarines movie was released. Man that was bad, Dan Abnett is my favorite author, and I was shocked when I realised he wrote the script.

Fastforward to today and we have warhammer plus and the series Angels of Death.

The animations are OK if you count the number of polygons. But the "soul" is there, the visuals are there to carry the story.

Sound effects and audio are on point, really well done.

Story, setting, dialogue and characters are also great and are just to the WH40k setting.

This was made by people who really enjoy WH40k, for people who really enjoy WH40k.

Could I show this to my wife who doesn't understand why I spent money I could buy a car for on minis and other WH-stuff? Hell no!

As a fan of 40k, did I really enjoy this? Hell yes!!!

Any issues I have with the animation and sound quality are easily overlooked by the fantastic story telling, it really feels as though the writers and producers understand the world in which the story takes place, the characters are well developed and the action is visceral.

It's losing a star simply because the animation could be a little better, the lip syncing is particularly poor.

Except for the writing and some of the voice acting, there is very little to laud in this project. The animation is blocky, unimpactful and unremarkable, the overall production is just weak. From the directing, to the sound, to the overall presentation and tone. A shame really, the fan made animation called "Astartes" puts this to shame and then some. Maybe GW should take their projects more seriously, this looks like it was made 10 years ago and only disserves one of the most potential universes to be adapted to the screen. This is some heretic work, indeed.

X - Artistic style is fantastic.

X - Animations great. (Apart from face animations which i will get to below) X - 40k universe captured perfectly.

X - Strong and engaging story.

But ...... the face animations and syncing to voices need work .... A lot of work. (Especially the co pilot) It is noticeable and distracting enough to take away viewer engagement.

Many people wont make it past the first episode unfortunately. It reminds me of the issues mass effect andromeda experienced. Hopefully theres a season 2 and can be addressed.

Overall great work though.