Updayte Blawg (Patreon)

HEY! Howyadoin'? Did you notice that I brought back Arlo Plays this week??? Yeah, I know not a ton of people care, but I'd like to give it a shot again. I can't make any promises, but I know I'm at least finishing Wind Waker, and if everything goes according to plan I want to do Pikmin 3 next. So give me a "HAPPY SLAPPY!" down in the comments if you're one of the precious few who are looking forward to watching me fumble my way through Zelda and Pikmin!

Anyway, it's been a while since the last update blog, so here's what you can expect to see in the coming weeks!

First, there's a Pokemon Direct tomorrow morning. I'll record my reaction, naturally. If it just ends up being a teaser that shows us three new starters I might just stick the whole thing here for you patrons, but if it ends up being a full gen 8 reveal I'll probably put it on Youtube and wrap it up in a discussion video. I generally do reactions and discussions separate for Nintendo Directs and stuff, but this is short enough that I think combining them makes sense. But I'll have to wait and see what they show us and make the decisions then and there.

Then, thanks to the Pokemon announcement, I'd like to do a "my hopes for gen 8" kind of video. Pretty self-explanatory, just all the stuff I hope to see in a big, new Pokemon game on Switch. Now that I think about it I probably should have done this BEFORE this (presumed) reveal, because once we see real gameplay a lot of my "hopes" won't be worth mentioning because they'll be confirmed or deconfirmed already. So while I want a full blowout tomorrow, I'm also kiiiinda hoping for just a teaser, haha.

Then the next full video that's already in the pipeline (coming soon to $10+ patrons) will be one about the Link's Awakening remake. Specifically, the art style, the controversy surrounding it, and even the nature of opinions themselves. I'm really hoping this one isn't too preachy, but I'm pretty happy with the message.

After that, I really want to make a video about Mario Maker 2. I know it's old news by now (same with Link's Awakening, really), but I just really want to talk about it. How cool it looks, how important I think it is, that kind of stuff.

So that probably covers the next month, assuming something else doesn't come along and change things. Buuuuut, I do have some exciting news. And I don't THINK I've talked about this yet... So I'm going to assume I haven't, ha.

Do you remember that idea I was talking about some time back, where someday I wanted to sit down and play all the 3D Marios and make videos on all of them, comparing and contrasting and analyzing and all that good stuff? Well now that Kane is my full-time editor, I've got more time for side projects like that. And I've been jonesing to do more thoughtful, timeless content. Stuff like the Breath of the Wild review, stuff that I can be really proud of long-term. But I got to thinking, and I realized...why limit it to 3D Mario? Why not cover other series as well? And THEN I got to thinking, why am I bothering to make it such a thing, where I play them all in a row and make a series of videos? Why am I limiting myself? Why don't I just play them all in a row, just like I planned, but then just sort of...make a video about each one? Know what I mean? Playing them in a row and comparing to each other doesn't need to be the "gimmick." Why don't I just say: "This is a video about this game!"

I don't know if any of that makes sense, but basically what I'm saying is that I want to do to other games what I did to Breath of the Wild. I want to play them with a real critical eye, then do the deepest dive I possibly can on them, comparing them to other entries in the same series and really just going nuts on them. And I want to sort of set them apart from my regular content, so I need to really think hard about the branding. I'm thinking of making each one "An Exploration of [blank]" or something. "Retrospective" isn't quite accurate (plus Youtuber KingK already does those), "review" isn't quite it either, "analysis" doesn't really cover it... So "exploration" is the best I've got so far. But be sure to let me know what you think. I think it gets the job done pretty well. But I dunno, I'll need to think on it more.

I don't know what ended up shifting my attention away from Mario, but at the moment the first video in this new series is about...

(drum roll, please...)

METROID PRIME.

There's a part of me that thinks maybe I should hold off for a while to see if a trilogy collection gets announced, but at least at the moment, I'm writing the script for Metroid Prime 1. So if you liked my Breath of the Wild review and you like Metroid Prime, you'll probably think this is pretty okay. And you want to know how deep I'm going on it? Well, I don't think it will be as long as the Breath of the Wild review, but at the moment the script is a little mover a half hour long, and here are the topics I've yet to touch on:

Enemy design (creatures, Space Pirates, bosses)

Level design of each area

Progression (with many comparisons to Super Metroid)

Issues with backtracking and how they could be addressed

Secrets

Thermal and X-ray visors

Visual style, immersion and atmosphere

Scan visor and passive storytelling

Bleak mood of the world

Sound design

Music

Outro about how the game is so important because it represents everything Nintendo typically doesn't like to do yet fits Nintendo so well

Sooooo yeahhhhh... I'm not going to split any of these videos up into multiple parts, so there's no telling how long this one will end up. I'd be pretty darn surprised if this was any less than an hour, and if it turns out anything like BotW, it'll just keep on stretching out before me until it's ridiculously huge. But we'll have to wait and see! I'm still not 100% sure this will indeed be the first game I cover (really just because of the whole trilogy thing possibly throwing things off) but it's at least the first one I'm writing. I just played 1 and 2 so I'm trying to get them written out ASAP, and now that I've started it makes sense to play 3 again while the first two are fresh in my mind, or else if I leave and come back to the project I'll have to start all over by playing them again... But anyway, whatever ends up happening, I'm really excited to start doing these. Even if the idea is reeeeally daunting and I'm already 1/6 of the way through the year and I still don't have much to show for it. XP

But that's that! I've actually got another SUPER EXCITING piece of news to share about a project I'm working on RIGHT NOW...but it'll have to wait until another day. ;) For now though, I'll just say...

...it's not a video.

OOOOOOOH MYSTERIOUS

Anyway, thanks for reading, thanks to any new patrons, and talk to you later!