Dec 21, 2007 12:01 AM

Videogames & Futurama, Part 5: Bender Gets Medieval On The Third DVD

Alf came back in Pog form. Futurama is back in DVD form. The first feature-length DVD, "Bender’s Big Score," is out now. The third DVD, due some time next year, is sure to be of interest to fans of Tolkien, WoW, Everquest, Dungeon Siege, and D&D. Details are scant at this point, with the exception […]

Alf came back in Pog form. Futurama is back in DVD form.

The first feature-length DVD, "Bender's Big Score," is out now. The third DVD, due some time next year, is sure to be of interest to fans of Tolkien, WoW, Everquest, Dungeon Siege, and D&D.

Details are scant at this point, with the exception of the image at right, lifted from the free promo comic handed out at ComicCon. But Futurama co-creator and showrunner David X. Cohen told IGN that it's going to be a “Dungeons and Dragons-style fantasy”. And he told Wired:

"Bender's Game" (working title of the third DVD) will reach its climax in a full-blown fantasy world, for the first time in Futurama history... a world dominated by evil arch-villain Momon and her three evil sons. We will also learn more about the powers and history of the mysterious substance "dark matter," which is used as spaceship fuel in the future. A severe dark matter shortage is what sets the events of the movie in motion.

More details after the jump. Plus, some wild and baseless speculation about whether portions of "Bender's Game" will be set in some sort of World of Futuramacraft virtual reality or video game world.

First things first: Many of the people behind Futurama are RPG geeks. And I'm not talking about the kind of fancy-schmancy imported JRPGs that Kohler loves, none of that *Final Dragon Tactics **Persona *Of Mana for the WonderSwan Color kind of stuff. I'm talking about the kind of RPGs that are played in meatspace, with peripherals made from wood pulp and graphite.

In the recent book Thirty Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons and Dragons, Cohen contributes an essay on his lifelong love of tabletop role-playing games. After waxing nostalgic about his elf fighter/magic user named Sho-Rembo, he notes that:

I'm probably one of the only people on planet Earth, outside of the gaming industry, to have actually used my knowledge of D&D on the job -- and not gotten fired. In the writers' room at Futurama, our shelf of reference books included a full D&D library (God forbid we should misspell ixitxachitl). And the job itself bore striking resemblance to a D&D game — a bunch of nerds sitting around a table, stuffing candy in their mouths and talking about monsters. (I'm allowed to describe it that way because I was one of them.)
At one point, there was even an occasional game after work, but I missed out on it because I was editing at that hour. The following statement from Futurama was tacked up on our "quote board" where we post memorable remarks. It perhaps sums up the years of heavy wear put on our D&D library:
"My Monster Manual is starting to smell"
—Eric Kaplan

Cohen goes on to point out that Gary Gygax, the father of D&D, actually appeared in an episode of Futurama. It was the second season classic "Anthology of Interest I," and he was part of the Vice Presidential Action Rangers along with Stephen Hawking, Deep Blue, Al Gore and Nichelle "Uhura" Nichols. After the universe is destroyed and only the Action Rangers remained, Gygax offers to be Dungeonmaster in a game session that lasts a quadrillion years.

So you can expect that the upcoming DVD "Bender's Game" will be riffing on D&D. But will
Ultima/WoW/Everquest cliches also be mocked? I predict that a portion of the episode will take place inside of some sort of videogame-like virtual world.

I base the guesstimation on these facts:

It's hard to conceive of how else they could reconcile the 30th century scifi nature of the show with an interlude in some sword and sorcery realm. (Is the fantasy stuff all just a dream that one of the characters is having? Do the characters go to some ren faire where they dress up as knights and wizards and centaurs? I mean, c'mon...)
Futurama is shot through with video game references.
The working title of this DVD is "Bender's Game," which alludes to Orson Scott Card's novel about military trainees who think they're playing a sim wargame when they're actually fighting in a war.

Is that persuasive? Or is it just stupid? I honestly have no insider info or evidence here. Please fill up the comments below with hearsay and conjecture and rumor. Oh, and facts, if you have them.

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