Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you had a safe break (or a sane run, if you were working).
2025 is starting hot, there's a lot of catching up to do. The Stalker 2 video is up next. I've explored most regions of the Zone but still have a few to go. Play time is currently 270+ hours, though a portion of that is the longplay on the Blondefire channel.
There's a tonne to see. Each point of interest is bespoke and tells stories of desperation, murder, despondency, and betrayal. It's fair to state that by the time I'm finished, I'll have seen more than 99.99% of the people who finished the game, let alone those who played it. This is the reason I don't regularly analyse RPG's, folks, I like to explore EVERYTHING and that takes a lot of time.
The Stalker 2 video won't be a deep dive so much as answering the question: was Stalker 2 worth the wait, even in its current condition? Was it? You can probably guess, but there's a lot of nuance to the answer, hence the video.
After Stalker 2, instead of doing an indie preview, I may do a short video on the Dead Man's Promise DLC for Blood West. It's release came when I was neck deep in Stalker 2, so it'll be a nice fun one to follow up the Stalker video. It rated well, so my expectation is high.
Beyond Dead Man's Promise is Marathon 2. I had hoped to get to it last year but longer projects ate up a lot of time. There's also the mystery subject I hinted at last year but which I also didn't have time for. It's gonna be a busy year.
What's Blondie Playin'?
Stalker 2, no surprise. I've had my eye on the new Indiana Jones game but will wait for a sale. $120 AUD is a tad steep, even if the game is solid. And Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is just around the corner. I'm excited for this one, and it may even nudge Marathon 2 down for an earlier video. I loved KCD1 so this'll be a must-play.
New Years Resolutions
If you know me, you know I don't wait for arbitrary dates to do stuff. That said, here's what I'm working towards this year:
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5min/kilometre runs
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Greater food portion control (smaller portions)
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A bowl of broccoli with every lunch and dinner
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Less snacks/better nutritional quality snacks
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Re-integrate weights work into my exercise plan
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Improve sleep quality (get last year's plan back on the rails)
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Produce shorter, quicker videos
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Streamline initial post production setup
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Document useful Davinci Resolve techniques so that I don't have to look them up again every time I use them :P
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Improve writing speed, efficiency, and clarity (vague, I know, but it's involved)
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Relax the grammar and punctation and be more like 'me'
There's more, but we'd be here all day. There's always something to improve.
What are you all hoping to achieve this year? Whatever it is, make a plan, lock in a schedule, and get to it. Today will always be the best day to start. And be kind to yourselves. There are plenty of assholes out there who would love to tear you down, don't do their job for them.
Until next month, parders.
There's no sugar-coating this one. July was a rough month. Between a bunch of personal stuff and a busy IRL work schedule all coming at me at once, July has been a frustrating month, a month to forget. There were times I felt like throwing my hands up and giving up the Youtube gig, it felt that hopeless. Only in the last week have I wiped the plate clean and gotten back on track. They say the victories are won a step at a time, but they never tell you how to feel about the times your feet are moving yet the scenery isn't. This isn't a sob piece, but I need to get it off my chest. I have disabled Patreon payments, temporarily at least, until the Marathon 2 video is out. I swear there was an option to charge per video which is feeling a lot more fair than monthly payments at the moment, but I couldn't find it in the settings. I'll have another look soon.
Amidst the chaos of life, I had to face a hard truth: long form videos aren't as fulfilling as they once were. Am I saying anything new in them? Do they still mean ...
G'day, folks. Work on the Marathon video has begun. The playthrough is finished and the draft script is roughly 2/3 done. It's hard to say how long videos will be anymore. I've sped up my voice-over cadence which has compressed video length by around 1/3 to 1/4 but it's an ongoing refinement to find the right balance. The video won't be as long as the Marathon 1 video but I'm expecting at least an hour runtime. A lot of research goes into the Marathon videos because there's so much information out there and it takes time to review the relevant bits.
I got sick earlier in the month which wiped out a week of productivity. Because I couldn't sleep properly during the nights, I spent any and all free time sleeping that week.
What's Blondie playin'?
I finished Atomfall and its DLC this month. Fun game, though not as open and revolutionary as I was led to believe. More interactivity between characters which revolved around questlines would have been welcome. The System Shock 2 remaster came out recently, and ...
