G'day Pardners,
What a cracker year we've had so far. Some huge titles have dropped and we're not even half way through 2025. My backlog for this year alone is already piling up, and Doom: Dark Ages is just around the corner.
The video on Dustborn is in the script outline phase which, thanks to the new level of detail I put into it, is basically the first draft. I'm about 2/3 through and it's coming along quickly. Even though it replaces what would normally be an indie spotlight video, the Dustborn video might be a little longer, maybe 15 minutes. I have 20 hours racked up in this game so I feel I've earned the right to talk about it.
I'm not expecting the Dustborn video to do numbers, no-one cares about the game and the initial furore died out months ago, but it's a great case study and a good test of impartial analysis, or as close to it as one can get. Admittedly, full impartiality is impossible given the subject matter (and that's by design), but I aim to give this game as fair a go as possible.
What's next after Dustborn? I've had a few requests for Marathon 2 and I reckon it's time to indulge, especially since Marathon has become a talking point thanks to Bungie's recent alpha of a new video game they're working on called Marathon. Perhaps I'll address that mockery in the Marathon 2 video. If I'm honest, the prospect of covering another game in the Marathon trilogy is exciting.
What's Blondie playin'?
Still working through KCD2. Each quest is so fully fleshed that it often results in at least an hour of additional work to complete. Really enjoying it and trying to reveal all POIs on the map, but I'm getting burned out. I'll be glad for some Doom when it drops.
Ambitions
- Create a playlist for the videos my Youtube buddies create so that I can catch up on their work. A long time overdue.
- Fix Patreon alerts so that I get notified when other people I follow post something. Another long-overdue task which has slipped under the radar.
- Add recommendations to my Patreon. There are some great creators (some of you are already here ;) ) who produce great videos. Go check 'em out!
Personal ambitions:
- Running - I'm now getting times below 30 minutes for 5.17km's which is fantastic. Let's see if that time can go lower.
- Food portions - I'm beginning to think that tracking macros is probably a better way to go. It's annoying but obviously more accurate and will get me closer to my goals.
Until the Dustborn video, pardners.
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 ...
