After several months of struggling with scripts, doubt, and the ticking clock of relevancy, I managed to pull together a brand new video with ease and in a short span of time. It has only been half a month since Pragmata, and yet here I have a longer video that took less than half the time to make. Of course, I also don’t feel like I have much to lose with this one. I have no idea how it will perform, though I’m naturally hoping it will do better than the last. Be it my thumbnail work or my title, Pragmata is my worst performing video in a long, long time.
I have a good feeling that this one should at least do okay, though I cannot really predict how the algorithm will bless me or curse me. I’m hoping the title and thumbnail work better, but if there’s anything wrong with this video, it’s that I didn’t really have a cohesive thesis aside from looking back on a favorite game and its sequel that I’ve resented for some reason. I sincerely do not recall when such resentment had begun, just that I began to look upon Star Fox 64 with ill favor some time around college.
Either way, I’m starting to wonder if I should just lean into Nintendo properties more.
I have not been able to recapture that energy which spurned me to create the Metroid Prime 4: Beyond video in seven days. This is, in part, due to how real life has been going. Employment continues to elude me despite the resumes and cover letters I send out, and I am frequently alone to assist my sick mother with doctor’s and hospital visits. Life has, honestly, just not been easy. However, it was in organizing my thoughts on the story that I really struggled.
Discussing and editing everything involving the gameplay was easy. I knew exactly how I felt and thus explaining all of that flowed with ease. However, my problems with the story were not so simple as they were with Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, which is likely one of the reasons I found Resident Evil: Requiem so difficult as well. Putting my thoughts into words for things that have redeemable qualities but are otherwise still disappointing is, surprisingly, difficult. Moreover, I am somewhat nervous that having negative thoughts on the story is going to get me slammed negatively again. The Resident Evil Requiem video has simply not performed, and I think it is, in part, due to how I had titled it. I tried to change its name, and it created a minor burst of new interest, but at this point I feel like I’d rather just revisit the story later or move on.
With Pragmata, it is important that I communicate that disappointment in the narrative, but I can only imagine it’ll similarly be met with negativity.
Man, who would have known that “The Best and Worst of the Series” would have applied better to Resident Evil Requiem than it had Resident Evil Village? Though it remains applicable in different ways.
This was a rough video to try and get through, largely because the script just failed to take shape. I felt greater time pressure on this one. Unlike something where my thoughts and feelings were pretty locked in, such as Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, I had a lot of complicated, and even conflicting, thoughts regarding Requiem. Even now I feel as if my assessment is not set in stone, which is why I’m open to revisiting the game in future videos. I once believed every video ought to be evergreen, but I’m starting to embrace a more fluid, dynamic approach to content creation.
If I could do the video again with more time, though, I’d do a better job working out the Leon combat section, perhaps even reducing it, and focusing more on the story. If anything, the story got the short straw in this video as there is so much to be said, both complimentary and critically.
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.
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