This has been a troubled video in a troubled month. I struggled with the script early on, and even when I had a good sense of what I wanted to say, time and energy never managed to come together in a satisfying way. Though, admittedly, I also carry blame as I just assumed I would have enough time to pull it all together. I managed to get some time in to enjoy the new game Romeo is a Dead Man, but it was also time that could have been spent making the video more complete.
I don’t know if it would have helped, though, as I’m already feeling some burnout. While there was a gap of time between the Metroid Prime 4: Beyond video and the prior Resident Evil 7 video, there was work on a project that did not see completion in between the two. I’ve been trying to make videos pretty non-stop since mid-December, and while I could unfortunately use a week long break to not think about it, Resident Evil Requiem is releasing in a matter of hours and I’ll need to try and be far more hasty with that video’s completion. I do not think I’ll be attempting to cram multiple videos in before a new release like this again, and will try and pace myself better.
Of course, I think part of the burnout was due to the realization halfway through editing that this video was just never going to be what I had hoped it would be. There’s so much depth and detail to Resident Evil Village that I had to gloss over and skip for the sake of time. This video could have easily been twice as long, and in another universe I’d have done it without the pressure of completion before Resident Evil Requiem’s release. Instead, I am left with the first video in a long time that I’m really not fond of.
One of the reasons I never got around to making a video on Resident Evil Village was that, in order to discuss some of the design and narrative decisions Capcom had made, I knew I’d have to discuss Resident Evil 7 first. I tried doing a short write-up at the beginning of a script, and I tried coming up with a hook for a video of its own, but I just never got around to making it happen. The greatest blocker &endash; aside from the usual, that is &endash; was that I simply did not enjoy playingResident Evil 7.
However, with the success of my Metroid Prime 4: Beyond video, including opening up monetization on YouTube, I decided to not only try and repeat that success with Resident Evil 9: Requiem releasing at the end of February, but to first do videos on both Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil Village to lead up to it. This decision would ultimately be a good one, as coming back to Resident Evil 7 and playing through it multiple times certainly warmed me up to it and gave me a deeper appreciation.
Nonetheless, the production of this video was a bit of a headache.
I am officially burnt out after working on this. I haven’t done such a long video in… a long time, and I most certainly have never put something together in such a short span. It has been one week since the release of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, and yet here I am, someone that notoriously takes months to work on one video, finished in seven days.
This project was fun, it was hectic, and it’s got me frazzled. It’s been a long time since I felt this way, but I think I’d like to do it again. Of course, that all depends on the future, as the past two years have been… a bit difficult. I do not want to get into the gritty details, but it is a tough job market, not least of which is because AI has begun to trim and dismiss any resume and cover letter that doesn’t have the perfect selection of buzz words within it. It’s easy to get depressed, and I certainly have been for over a year now.
However, working on this felt like… well, it was the first time I felt like myself in a long time.
I apologize for the video taking as long as it has… which seems a common preamble before each of these postings. In this instance, I was beset by illness just before the holidays, which only increased the amount of time I was incapable of finalizing the script, recording audio, and finding myself distraction-free enough to get some work done.
For this reason, I may not be able to pull together a 2024 in Review video in time. Nonetheless, I will still be trying.
As for Space Marine 2, well, I don’t know if I have many more thoughts than what I’ve placed into the video, save for some of the story details. However, to have gone into further detail would have dragged the video out longer than necessary.
There is, however, one thing regarding the common response to the game that I wanted to address.
Another video that should have taken half the time, if not less, than it had. However, I think I’ve sorted out a number of things preventing me from properly working on videos as expediently as I’d like. Naturally, most of them are self-imposed foolishness.
Normally I’d share a sort of post-mortem, but I actually plan on recording an unscripted video that will be posted next week to discuss those thoughts. So, instead, I shall leave with a tidbit of what I learned while working on this semi-analysis of The Minish Cap.
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