From The Last of Us to Halo, Fallout to The Witcher, popular videogame IP is getting rinsed for TV series. Joining in on the trend, but without the blockbuster budget or backing, is the pilot episode of a fan-made Destiny animated series, which has just debuted after a lot of community crowdfunding.
Created by Dream Big Animations, which was set up by Twitch streamer and Destiny fan Matthew ‘Average Matty’ Marradi, the series is called ACE, and after posting a teaser trailer towards the end of last year, its short but exciting first episode has recently gone live. The project is seemingly entirely funded by the Destiny 2 community, and with detailed animations and proper motion capture, it’s pretty impressive.
According to a post from Jake Lucky on Twitter, Average Matty crowdfunded around $60,000 for the project, and the first episode includes a long list of donors in its end credits. In a brief email exchange with The Loadout, Average Matty confirms that this $60,000 was used to create just this initial episode.
Following the launch of the pilot – which stars Average Matty presumably as the son of a fan-favourite Destiny 2 character, who makes a cameo right at the end – there are now hopes to start crowdfunding once again to produce further episodes of ACE.
Average Matty tells us a second episode would be around “30 [minutes] long and much more realistic”.
The Destiny 2 community is well-known for its fan-made creations across a range of mediums, which are often championed by Bungie in its weekly TWAB blog posts, but this is more than likely the biggest-budget creation of the lot. Despite Destiny 2 Season of the Seraph boasting a great storyline right now, there are always plenty of stones unturned when it comes to Destiny lore, and ACE appears to be capitalising on that.
For more on Season of the Seraph, check out our best Destiny 2 Hunter, Titan, and Warlock build guides and some of the best Destiny 2 weapons to use this season.
Additional reporting by Sam Comrie.