Video Update #5 (Patreon)

The mod video has gone over exceptionally well, which I'm pretty happy about. While I thought it would be one of the easier videos to work on, it ended up being one of the most stressful since Aurora. Figuring out how to hammer out a somewhat new format while not straying too far from the normal reviews, deciding what parts of the interview to incorporate in, having to get some people lined up for the audio work, and finally worrying about how people would receive it. 

After all, even though I said the mod videos would be shorter and more surface level than the regular reviews I had a feeling there would be a lot more people who would despise the idea of it rather than just working purely on game reviews. Plus there were a ton of people who were asking me to do a video on the base Dawn of War games and the expansions who didn't use mods at all, or if they did would use something more balanced like Firestorm or Titanium Wars. Basically I had a lot of ways to disappoint people. A lot of the production like the interview ended up being a LOT messier than I hoped for in some technical areas, but incredibly it all worked out. Whew.

As many people guessed the Gothic 1 video is underway. Just the phrase "German RPG" alerted most of the German viewers that there would be a Gothic video, and several of them reached out with several concerns, but the big ones are taken care of. Concerns like audio are trickier. The English VA is pretty horrible compared to the native German, since the German was recorded by professionals, and there is an easy way to replace the audio if you have the Steam or GOG version, change the language, and move the audio files for the German version on top of the Steam version. That way you still have English subtitles. Unfortunately there are a few video cutscenes in the game that will be in German without English subtitles, which means having to minimize the game and go watch them elsewhere. I might end up having both an English and German playthrough. 

I'm also using the Player Kit and System Pack for Gothic, and I'd be crazy not to. For those of you unfamiliar with Gothic 1, the game uses a single CPU core and will barely touch your GPU. This means that changing most graphic settings and ini tweaks can't help you a lot. Widescreen tweaks will keep the UI incredibly small, and the engine is locked to about 25 FPS. It was a different time.

Luckily the System Pack fixes just about everything. It uncaps the framerate, fixes tons of bugs and crash issues, properly utilizes hardware, adds in true widescreen support, restores the surround sound (if you're not using EAX), and several other improvements. There's also a way to tweak the game into using DX11, but it's very unstable on Gothic 1 compared to the sequel and the crashes aren't gonna be worth it for recording. Being the first RPG I've covered on the channel (besides EYE, kind of) means this will be one of the longer recording processes, and likely one of the longer videos. Gothic is an intricate game, and there's going to be a lot to cover. 

Thank you again for all the support! I'll give a progress report on how Gothic is going in a week.