Shooting the shit with Phorm about Monolith's sad early LithTech engine games sent me down a minor rabbit hole inside which I discovered this LithTech-based machinima piece from 1999.1
Edit: Here is its original website.
Back in the day I used to scoff a little at machinima, especially the more pretentious-feeling ones, but the content and fidelity growing pains resolved themselves soon enough. Early machinima creators who saw potential in video game engines as virtual film studios have clearly been vindicated. Could not be more vindicated, really.
One I've always remembered is Blahbalicious (1997, Quake), which was a jokey comedy thing that got a lot of notice on Blue's News and the like. And also that one that was like, several hours long with very amateur voice acting and I couldn't be bothered. (It might have been this one.) That was an example of the sort that put me off, but in retrospect it was hasty to write off the entire medium. And even if I didn't enjoy the filmmaking it was clearly a milestone for the budding form.
- BetaNews 2000/01/18: Introducing "Ozymandias"