"Action Button Reviews Cyberpunk 2077" enters the final stages of post-production!

Short version: no more roadblocks (creativity requirements, etc) on the video editing work. Hoping to launch the video early August. Reason for delay: this one's huge (by multiple standards), and also I've been coordinating Season Two. Big Stuff in the works. New Hire coming on for next project. A few vague words on the important tonal and mission-statemental shift coming in Season Two. An understated confirmation that the next video will be exactly one hour in length and take less than one month to produce while also being the best video yet. A quick tease that until THAT video this Cyberpunk 2077 video will get to be The Best Video Yet for a whole month. Also, I got a great haircut yesterday. I don't actually mention that in the post, though.

Full length version follows:

Hello!

Action Button Reviews CYBERPUNK 2077 has entered the final pass of editing!

Here I would say "thanks to the encouragement of all your angry complaints", except nobody's angrily complaining. Why the heck not? It's been literally SIX MONTHS since the last video. If nobody starts yelling, I'm gonna think you're not paying attention. And that would make me sad. And not because it'd hurt my feelings--because you really oughta be paying attention! It's a big world, with a lotta stuff out there that's out to get you.

Well, if you're not angry at me yet, let's see if I can give you a couple reasons: for starters, "The Final Pass Of Editing" usually takes about a little bit LONGER than the first pass of editing, so lmao @ that. (It is *much* lower stress, though. That first pass is a nightmare.)

Furthermore, we haven't even finished filming it yet! I'm flying to Indiana this weekend to film the (short) intro and outro at the studio.

I saved the intro and outro for last, this time, for various reasons: chiefly because this script is a behemoth and we MIGHT not have been able to film it in one weekend session, though also because I had this fancy little notion of starting and ending the video with similar energy levels, with evident unfakeable enthusiasm. I've been editing video on top of a cold(ish) voiceover reading of these intro and outro scripts, and I have no doubt that the video version will be better, though stepping into that studio knowing that the most mundane aspects of the process are already finished for me will hopefully lend me the sort of energy usually reserved for the "epilogues" of these things. (In the future, I hope to replicate this sensation for the duration of every video with "another employee".)

With such a plan in mind, I intend this video, the "Season Finale", to have no epilogue. I've been able to minutely tweak the final segment ("The Bottom Line") script right up until the final moments of editing, which means I'm hyper-aware of all the motifs that emerged during the editing process and have been able to adjust the script to maximally incorporate them for full foreshadowing or callback effect. And holy lord there sure are some motifs! I dare not tease the exact form of the motifs. I just wanna say: I like this way of making these videos. I shoulda thought of this earlier.

I mean, I sort of did, for the Tokimeki Memorial video (several segments were pre-edited over cold script readings weeks before filming). For this video I wanted to cut down on that temptation I felt with the Tokimeki Memorial project--wherein several unignorable revelations came to light during editing, which I could only satisfy myself by talking about extensively in the epilogue.

It's possible that you all's silence indicates trust--indicates that you saw the Tokimeki Memorial video and just flat-out trust me to deliver something equally labyrinthine for the Cyberpunk 2077 video. If that's the case, buddy . . . wow, you have no idea how right you are. It's possible that an overflow of this confidence in your investment accounts for the absolute lack of messages in my Patreon inbox asking me where the video is or telling me I'll hear from your lawyer if I don't "just post whatever" I "have".

I'll admit: I don't post much on this Patreon because:

A. I'm extremely busy working on these videos, which is perhaps evident in their density

B. Patreon's user interface is an absolute nightmare, very clearly thrown together in like a weekend by some guys with more money in their pinky fingers than I could fit in my bathtub

C. I'm genuinely terrified of angry messages because I just presume that literally nobody actually likes me, even the people sending me money every month. I earnestly wish this were any kind of joke. I promise it's not. I hate it. I'm doing what I can about it.

Well despite you-all's patience, I find myself standing atop a particularly significant milestone in the development of this video, so I'd like to take a moment to answer the question you're not asking:

Why is the video taking so long?

Well:

1. This game is long!

I played through it three times. It took 177 hours the first time, 60 hours the second time, and 30 hours the third time. That's a lotta game, Jerry--and a lotta game means a lotta footage.

2. I couldn't resist using Cyberpunk 2077 as a perfect excuse to unleash every single thought I have had about virtually every singleplayer triple-A video game design trend of the past decade. 

So, well, this is gonna make me sound like some kind of a freak, though, uh, yeah, I spent about 600 extra hours playing literally 110 video games, all of which I reference in what I consider meaningful ways somewhere in this video. I don't wanna spoil the exact shape of these references, though I promise there's a lot of them. There's a clip I just keep using of one of these games that BLASTS my mind every time I drop it in there. In summary, I went looking for good stuff, and I found it.

3. I was real sick for a while, man!

The illness arose right in the middle of writing the second of the script's seven segments. I was brutally ill for about two months. Buddy I was neck-deep in the Freak Zone for that whole time. It was bad. During that time I continued working on the project, though my work mostly consisted of easier tasks (such as playing aforementioned 110 video games). At any rate, yeah, that certainly slowed me down--and unfortunately right in the middle of the "uh-oh: nobody else can help me with this exact part" part.

4. Lord, this video is way, way more ridiculous than you can possibly imagine.

and if you're here, you likely saw the Tokimeki Memorial review. Ah, man, I don't even know how to START talking about this one. So maybe I shouldn't.

5. I experienced many technical challenges (not difficulties! just challenges) during this project.

In addition to building a new PC for work (and video games (which, literally, count as work for me)) I also had to, for example, build a home network server capable of handling the intense load of footage I'd need to review such a video game. I built a PC with a Ryzen 5950x and an Nvidia RTX 3090, so of course I captured all of all three of those Cyberpunk 2077 playthroughs in 4K60 (at the maximum allowable settings). From a data storage perspective alone, this project was a katamari of problems requiring meticulous solution.

6. Well, it's 4K60.

Of *course* with all that 4K60 footage I felt it completely unacceptable to NOT produce this entire video in 4K60. This required new graphics templates, et cetera. So here I am with this monster-man PC, and after not thirty minutes of ogling my Adobe Premiere performance in an old project file I made the quick decision to ask it to do exactly one little hair beyond Too Much for this next project. So here I am editing massive 6K RED files and big 4K60 game footage files, and . . .

7. "Oh no . . . this PC is . . . still just taking ALL this abuse. What is it gonna TAKE to light this thing on fire???"

Well, how about I layer like four 4K60 clips with a drop shadow over another 4K60 video clip with a nice gaussian blur--making sure to pull all five of these from different source files--and then ask Adobe Premiere to play that back in a full-resolution preview window? Uh-oh . . . it's just . . . doin' it, man. Oh god . . . it looks like I built myself a really good computer. Me computer so good, me make video bigger and weirder than anybody probably should!!! Oops!

8. No seriously the video is taking a long time because my computer is too good.

In all seriousness: blessed by this phenomenal power, I went ahead and finessed the heck out of every little clip even during the "get it done" phase. I've just never had access to hardware this powerful for this particular job and I'm candy-store-style losing my bonkers. Back when I was doing The Job a lot of you first got to know me for, I had an iMac with literally 4GB of RAM and a 256GB hybrid drive. Now I'm goin wild.

And appropriately, I dare say: Cyberpunk 2077 is probably the last massively triple-A singleplayer narrative-driven video game I'm going to review here for a good long while, so I decided to give it the real luxury treatment. Big triple-A games have big triple-A facial animations and cutscene dialogue presentation--and big user interface toggle options, et cetera, so I wound up with a lot of footage that needed better camera angles or a less cluttered on screen interface. So many times I *yelled* at myself while logging all this footage: WHY did I not just LEAVE the camera RIGHT HERE? Why did I keep MOVING IT AROUND??? Luckily I have literally 200 save files for Cyberpunk 2077 so it was never hard to roll back and redo a scene if I needed it.

9. New Personnel Incoming!

I shall not name because I dare not implicate another party as a roast-magnet of sorts in this, a self-roast post, though I've spent many of the past eight editing weeks on-ramping a full-time assistant. I know from my years of acquaintance with this individual that I am *in for a treat* when it comes time to finally break ground on a fresh project together. Though I'll be honest right the heck now: as my buddy Brent "Touchdown" Porter once told me someone else once told him, anybody you hire to work with YOU, YOU-STYLE, is gonna come into the enterprise less than 5% of the way toward wherever you are. The person could be a stone-cold genius who in a year will KILL you with their superiority at your particular set of job skills, though on day one they're Dirt Meat Salad. In my case this meta-advice rings quadruply true because I find myself doing four jobs at once almost all of the time, and I've had *hard time* to big-style descend into doing all four of these jobs capital-M My capital-W Way. We passed "The Highway" *years* ago, my friends. What I'm saying is doing My Job WITH me requires another person to flat out Deal With a spiderweb with a bunch of rat's nests stuck in it. So to the end of better on-ramping this individual, I've had to also off-ramp my Previous Self. My previous work standards and practices, developed via a process in hindsight more similar to fermentation than, say, classical sculpture, required deliberate unknotting. In short, I needed to teach mySELF *what* I wanted an assistant to DO. This required a gentle reshaping of my workflow. And because I learned back in 2007 that I simply can NOT let myself make any sort of a professional workplace request of an individual whose business card carries a different job description from mine without I've spent a couple hundred hours, at least, doing exactly their job (preferably in a controlled environment, away from initiating any Workplace Disasters), this particular scruple-shrapnel required me to basically be My Own Assistant for a couple weeks. I emerged from this philosophical coccoon alive to both the shimmering notion that A Better Way of making these videos is not only POSSIBLE--I'd already done it. So I cruised into the "coverage" phase of the editing (during which I, uh, cover all of my on-camera moments with at least minimally (preferably maximally) relevant video game footage) with a much, much, much, much, much more robustly chronicled log and much, much, much, much better color-coded, organized, marked, and prepared clip sequences than I usually pull from. I mean, I developed a little five star rating system for clips and everything. Now I just gotta teach all of this to the New Hire. Well, that'll happen soon. Also, I've gotta build a new PC for said New Hire. Though once I do, wow: this is gonna revolutionize the workflow of all of these other videos. 

10. In all honesty, I'm making the next six videos already as well, because I made the tough decision that there was no other way to proceed.

"All of these other videos" weighed ultra-heavily on my mind as I *began* this project, so imagine the mass of my skull as I coast toward the END! So wickedly tightly does this Cyberpunk 2077 review intertwine with the next six videos on the schedule that, oops, I found it intellectually impossible to even begin writing this script without playing those next six games in some thorough detail and outlining the scripts for each of them. Wow! We've got a lot going on here.

11. Oops! I stopped crunching.

Somehow, in the middle of writing the segment about "crunch" in the video game industry, I made the sudden, ridiculous, stupid, knee-jerk sort of decision one often makes new-years-resolution-style following for example a grave illness in which multiple doctors use the phrase "jugular vein infection" as though that's something real (oops: it is). That decision was, well, that I was only going to work eight hours a day. The Tokimeki Memorial review development process climaxed with "seventeen consecutive 20-hour days", as I've not-bragged elsewhere, though the colder, worse fact there is, well, those last seventeen consecutive 20-hour days were not the only 20-hour days. There were 23 more 20-hour days during the making of that video. Just usually never more than four in a row. 

Look, I work hard on these things. And I promise I'm not complaining: I didn't quit an office job just to become my OWN boss and then FORCE myself to work 20-hour days because I *don't* like it. I *do* like it. I *love* making these videos. I *love* learning new editing tricks. I *love* picking these video games apart. I've learned more frame-by-framing through video game footage this past year than I learned in college!

I mean, maybe that's not saying much, though at least it's true!

It's just, man, it was killin me. So here I am, trying out this forty-hour work week thing. I have been going for walks and everything. I dare not say more because I don't want to spoil a fun little segment I filmed for this video.

12. Did I just say I "filmed" a "segment"? 

Am I talking about in the studio? Or do I (!!!) allude to something else? Well, you'll find out soon. And then, after that . . . well, let's ditch the numbered list format for a bit, and talk about "After That".

THE FRIGHTENING FUTURE OF ACTION BUTTON REVIEWS: SINCERITY

After the Cyberpunk 2077 video, Action Button Season Two is coming. And with it, Big Changes.

Yes, my videos will continue to feature the same intense density as before, and we'll also be making a hard C-turn back into extreme data-driven analysis of game design, though we're going to be, from now on, only ever doing this with games I personally *love* a LOT.

When I quit my previous job, I did so because I thought I had a shot making a more comfortable living on my own. It turns out I was right. I rallied all my troops and had several fantastic ideas prepared for Action Button Reviews. Then the coronavirus happened, and I *got* the coronavirus, and I felt like I was gonna die, and then I got a little bit better and launched a Patreon while both still mostly dead-feeling AND unsure about the foreseeable-future shape of the civilized world.

The truth is, the description in the Patreon I launched did not perfectly match the original little shiny plan I concocted while still riding a desk in Times Square. I adapted that pitch to suit a trapped-at-home lifestyle, and though the coronavirus sucked and it made the world a genuinely worse place for almost everyone alive for the duration of its (continuing) dominion, I can still appreciate that it did, ultimately, grow my idea for these videos.

I'd originally planned on making weird little travel videos with developer interviews. For my Dragon Quest V review, for example: there is literally no way I will DARE begin developing that video without making 100% sure I can get an on-camera Yuji Horii interview. Like, how else could I do it? And I really hope that's not any kind of a spoiler for me to say that here. Hopefully none of you ever imagined such a thing WOULDN'T happen.

So because stuff like THAT couldn't happen because of a global health emergency, I ended up designing a whole different sort of video. And guess what? I love that sort of video. 

Though still, for this past year sequestered at home away from my big Travel Concept I've forced myself to make videos about games for which, to be perfectly honest, I harbored no prior passion.

Recall my DOOM review, in which an entire segment consists of my scrambling to conjure any enthusiasm at all for DOOM simply in an attempt to wash the tattoo-stain of DOOM-poserism from my soul--just because I wanted to be able to say, "Yeah, I played DOOM". I played DOOM like my barber watched "HOMELAND": because it was there, and I wasn't in the mood to really dive into something that was gonna rewire my definition of love.

Yet through this process I, for example, discovered Tokimeki Memorial. I played Tokimeki Memorial with a feeling more closely resembling fear than enjoyment: every other thirty seconds I shuddered to think maybe the NEXT beat will break my back and make me wish I'd chosen to review something that inspired less grandiose plans.

Yet, trapped at home and encouraged by your approbation, I turned a new-to-me video game that I loved into a piece of work I'm quite proud of.

Then I turned Cyberpunk 2077 into a piece of work I'm going to scream myself hysterically unconscious about ten years from now when I on-a-whimsically click on the thumbnail in my YouTube channel and drop the needle somewhere in the middle.

These six videos have taught me an extreme amount about video games, video editing, the expecations of an audience, and, most surprisingly, myself--just when I thought I knew everything there was to know about this dirtbag.

So by taking pains to grow this tiny un-idea ("thorough reviews of video games") into "something only I could make" I've developed a firmer grasp on what the next season of videos must provide.

(I dare say I'll be trapped inside this apartment a little bit longer, though travel is certainly on the menu for a sooner "later" than I previously anticipated. (For example, hopefully it's not a spoiler to say I'm going to Los Angeles to film some stuff for my review of . . . yes, LA Noire (Season Two Episode Two).))

Though all this preface here is to lead me into a quick turn: yes, season two will contain several reviews with densely edited design analysis and some personal anecdotes, though I'm looking to change the tone.

Because, you see, contrary to the majority of the comments I delete from my YouTube videos, I do *not* like the sound of my own voice. That's why I engineered all those affected bizarre speaking mannerisms. Because my first impulse is to read said script in a particularly morose tone that I'd never share with anybody whose insomnia I didn't want to cure. So looking over my own words closer to Go Time with an ice-bath of "Uh GOD who CARES what I think WHY would anyone SAY all this" shredding my nerves I with inevitability turtle-hole back into "lol".

I developed this shrilly affected jokey tone because, well, when you have basically a professional-sport's-rulebook's-worth of guidelines for how to spread intonation and emphasis over any constructable sentence in a thousand-some-word vocabulary, you're guaranteed fewer pauses for decision-making during the reading process. Often teleprompter operators commend my reading fluency and consistency. My "secret", in so much as I have one, is that I simply am not comfortable sitting in front of a camera, and I am even less comfortable talking about what matters to me, so I set guidelines to make the process as easily free of personal stress or creative decisions as scientifically possible. 

I hold this tiny tinkering notion that someday I might find the words to speak exactly what is important to me in a way that makes helpful sense to everyone in earshot and that when that happens I'll speak it and if it never happens, well, it never was going to happen. I've been over this before, though I'd like to go over it maybe one more time before I'm done going over things.

To reiterate, my "secret" to reading these dense scripts so expertly is that I hate sitting there and I hate talking so I have constructed a deliberate pallette of mannerisms which restrict any creative impulses during the reading process.

This has, of course, led to a particularly stilted style of video. On the one hand, hey, at least I *got* a style! On the other hand, perhaps owing to this style I have received fewer than FIVE job-inquiry emails that don't use some form of the phrase "I'm not sure how serious you were when you said you were hiring". Have you SEEN the videos? How could you think a guy wouldn't want help with THAT?

It turns out that because I've Made Some Jokes Before, and because I've amalgamated some anecdotes because I don't want you or anyone to *actually* know The Full Truth About Me because WHY would I WANT *that*?, I have obtained the unwanted reputation of some kind of Cosmic Chessmaster of "Ironic" Jokes. It gets so that I can't even throw a tiny pebble in my own email inbox at ANY speed without killing a pigeon of an email asking me if my review of Tokimeki Memorial--yes, the whole six-hour . . . THING--was "a bit".

When I told someone in public on Twitter last year that I make jokes and have affected a bizarre persona because I hate myself and I don't know how to like myself, I received a message from a Patreon patron telling me that they were canceling their pledge because that Twitter joke had gone too far, that it was classless of me to make fun of people with actual self-esteem issues--the sort of person that clearly I, a guy with a Big Number on top of my Patreon, am not. I feel often, in this social media world, this world where corporations quietly yell at us to hate at each other so they can promote images of anime characters drawn in roast beef sandwich condiments, a sensation like a sunburn on the brain, which a long-ago biology class told me has no pain receptors. Ghost brain sunburn pain.

The truth is, I do hate myself. I spend most of the day inside my house clutching my head (migraines) and muttering about how much, exactly, I don't like myself. 

That's why these videos are so good!

Until that day (if ever) I figure out how to say some words that fix a part of the world I'm going to always feel like an ingenuine version of myself whenever I speak in public. For a long time, I've let that ingenuine feeling stop me from taking public speaking seriously. Well, these days, wherein I tweet "elden ring looks great", which gets retweeted one or two times before instamagnetizing to me a dozen Twitter direct messages from people with The God Of War or Horizon Zero Dawn Girl as their Twitter profile pictures asking me to confirm or deny the rumors that Bluepoint games is making a Bloodborne remaster, have me reassessing my position as a Public Person.

I maintain, and maybe not loudly enough, that I am no Cosmic Chessmaster of "Ironic" Jokes. In addition, I do not have "sources". I am Just A Guy. I have never pretended to be a "journalist". I have reviewed video games in public before, and I've written blog posts about what the maze in Pac-Man probably smells like (paint thinner) though I've never reported hard news.

Yet this cannot stop the cascade of the expectations of those who don't know me, and whose lives literally become worse BECAUSE they learn about me, borrow someone else's assumptions, and then fall into a waking coma of hatred. 

I'm saying I've reached that sort of age where my brother's daughter is going to college and I have a six-pound dog that just got 1,100 likes, beating out Hideo Kojima for my most-liked Instagram post of all time. I'm thinking, and often, less "Who Am I?" and more "Who Can I Help Everybody Else Be?" A less sloganizable question, to be sure, though a no less necessary one.

So with Season Two I would like to try some new form of sincerity. To defend myself, I think I've always put just enough of my real self into everything I make that anyone wanting to see it will. Though on the other hand, an occasional glint in my email inbox reminds me that some people don't WANT to email me their complaints--they HAVE to. I don't begrudge those that DO *want* to send such emails, because everybody needs a hobby, though for the ones who clearly DON'T, I freeze up when I think about replying. I am for a moment genuinely sorry to have made a long video they define themselves as refusing to watch.

I promise to never do anything so bold as tell anyone to--well, to do anything, though more specifically I promise I will never do anything so bold as to ASK someone to "watch my videos". I have a pretty spotless track record of having never once in any of my videos asking the viewer to like, comment, OR subscribe (I'm considering working in a regular joke about reasons to NOT subscribe to my channel--hmm I still have time before Thursday . . .), so I'd dare not say to, for example, the person who told me via email yesterday to "Get the name 'Tokimeki Memorial' out of your mouth" that they could try watching the video and that maybe they'd see I was truly in awe of my appreciation for the game. The email was filled with so many references to People Like Me who treat dating sims like a joke, who don't know the difference between dating simulations and visual novels, et cetera, et cetera, and I just felt so profoundly sad that here we are in an era defined by the omniavailability of human information and a majority portion of my anonymous conversation brickwalls base their attention-getters on a profound committment to not paying attention.

I know I can't fix every problem in the world--or even this one--though that doesn't take from me the inspiration to feel sad about this.

For one thing, nobody had ever told me to get something "out of" my "mouth"--well, not since I was in diapers and picking things up off the floor. This person so profoundly presumed that the only reason a person would spend six hours talking about Tokimeki Memorial is because they hate it and want to make fun of it that they could not restrain themselves from sending me an email which contains the line "I hope you don't mind if I block your channel so YouTube will stop showing your punchable face in my recommendations".

Often viewers hear me describe hate mails with a presumption that I'm baiting compliments. No, really, you needn't compliment me--not about this, anyway! You needn't tell me "No Your Video Is Good!" I know it's good. I *felt* what I described in that video. I felt *valuable* while I edited it. I know what is real there.

I only mourn the self-loathing crumble of that presumptuous departed viewer's opportunity.

All this is to say, these little impression drizzles have added up to my decision to Change The Tone. And that decision snowballed into another decision which formed the concept backbone for the new and improved Season Two, which I am beyond thrilled to begin producing . . . the INSTANT I post this Cyberpunk 2077 video.

(Okay, maybe I'll take a week off. Who'd be interested in watching me stream a playthrough of Cyberpunk 2077? Or Control? I don't know.)

If I say any more, I'll spoil the theme of season two--and you all don't even know what the theme of season ONE was yet, because I don't reveal it until late in the Cyberpunk 2077 review! Feel free to guess at Season One's "Theme" in the comments here. I will not tell you if you're right or not. I'll just say: it's one word, kind of like the "Theme" of a Final Fantasy game, except it's not a theme that would make a good Final Fantasy game. I'm genuinely curious to see how close you all can get. (Maybe all the way there?)

At any rate, please anticipate Big Things and Big Changes. Please anticipate a fancy jam-packed website to commemorate the launch of Season Two. Please anticipate more physical merchandise--some of which you will barely even know what to do with (I'm so excited). And let's go ahead and spoil that yes, of course there's a new T-shirt by Dan "Dandy Dan D" Dussault, aka The T-Shirt King, aka the illustrator of *the* Final Fantasy XIV shirt most preferred for wearing during on-stage appearances by Yoshi-P himself. Expect an extravaganzous advertisement reveal for this shirt at some point in the Cyberpunk 2077 video.

Expect Action Button Season Two to brim with concise, sincere, heartfelt observations about the importance of beautiful media. Expect me to stop doing an impression of mySELF doing an impression of Ricky Jay doing an impression of Anthony Bourdain narrating a movie trailer and expect me to start just being myself (maybe doing an impression of Anthony Bourdain).

Expect a new Patreon pitch video, a new Patreon description, and a (barely) revised list of Games I Plan To Review. 

Expect a new, final logo.

Expect me to somehow throw off the yoke of this debilitating reliance on secrecy as a Personal Brand Shortcut that has ruined many attempted careers and interpersonal relationships over the past tens of years. Expect me to keep constructing elaborate jokes whose punchlines don't land for Many Paragraphs, Many Hours And Then Many Months, though also please expect me to be at least a tiny bit more open about upcoming video topics so that I can get over myself enough to just play the video game on Twitch for all of our entertainments. I'm saying, expect me to figure out what I should have figured out before I made this current video: how to write a script that does not absolutely require every audience member going in--even the most dedicated, paying ones--to have no idea what they're in for.

Expect me to fully trick-OUT my living room with a fully (not just halfly like now) professional streaming setup. I'm gonna get a real nice camera and some real nice microphones! Also I am going to get some furniture (sofa broke) and throw away all the garbage bags and cardboard boxes in my living room. I figure if I put 10% of the work into this streaming setup that I put into one particular six-second joke late in part three of this Cyberpunk 2077 review I'll get partnered on Twitch within fourteen minutes.

Expect interviews with relevant and / or exciting individuals. Expect field segments for every video. Expect full-segment-length contributions from ($$$paid$$$) freelance correspondents.

Expect the joie de vivre of my Final Fantasy VII Remake review (aka: "I knew I was gonna like this no matter what before I started playing it") to make a triumphant comeback, and subsequently never go away.

Most importantly, expect Action Button Season Two Episode One to be Exactly One Hour Long--to the second. (On the one hand, I already wrote the script. On the other hand, I had already written the script for the Tokimeki Memorial review when I said at the end of the Pac-Man review that the Tokimeki Memorial review would be shorter. On the third hand, I promise I only think a joke like that is funny exactly twice.)

Expect Action Button Reviews Season Two Episode One to emerge ONE MONTH after the posting of the Cyberpunk 2077 video.

Expect a luxurious reward for all high-tier backers. This reward, in fact, already fully exists, though its nature requires me to let it surprise you.

Expect me to wear a suit at least once. Expect me to have a good haircut EVERY time I appear on camera.

Expect these videos to start being more about Other People than about me--maybe even more about Other People than about The GAME!?

Expect me to tie video game analysis in to real-world issues of massive importance, and expect me to do so in a perfectly natural way.

Expect, as always, zero endorsement deals. Expect zero salesmanship. Expect absolute unfettered enthusiasm for an experience and appreciation of the audience's attention.

Expect videos you can confidently send to a friend who has never played a video game before, and receive a text later informing you that they actually watched all of it.

Just . . . don't expect any of that from The Action Button Season One Finale: Action Button Reviews Cyberpunk 2077, a video that has provided me roughly sixteen lmaoaneurysms per hour of editing work. When I first started this series I wanted the videos to possess the beefy texture of old floppy glossy magazines. For this season finale I drilled down on that "magazine concept" like my name was Hori Taizo. I figured, there's no better way to pave the path for a new style than by grinding the old style into a fine spreadable powder. So oh baby: I haven't wheeled "apotheosis" out of the wordshed or scare quotes in literally fifteen years, though dude, I probably am gonna hafta do it for the announcement post of this god-forsaken video presentation. I figure that in this life, you either go out with a bang or you die with intact eardrums. In the words of Johnny Silverhand as pronounced by Keanu Reeves, "I'm here to say goodbye [to big long horribly wild videos, and hello to much different ones]!!"

At any rate, though the hardest, most creative work for this video has finished, much joyless busyworky tweakery remains, and I cannot dare promise not to commit a creativity here and there throughout. I hope you will find this . . . thing worth the wait.

Because I know you are all such excellently, weirdly patient individuals who generally trust my judgment and process, I expect many comments encouraging me to take all the time I need. While I definitely appreciate your appreciation, I also really gotta say that buddy, I am so excited about what we're going to do next that more or less six minutes out of every seven I struggle to stop myself from just sloppy-kicking this thing out of the barn door and moving on. In cold fact, I lol too much at nearly every cut to dare consider rushing. When you see the running time, I beg you: think of it as a series of one-minute videos. If you want to watch it like Tik Tok, just pause every time you can hear me breathe.

In summary: Why video so late?

Well, the global crisis as instigated by da cowonaviwus make me make big video because no want go outside. If me make video bigger? Me no think about go outside. Well, soon me go outside. Thank you for your patience!!!

Well, it's late, so I should probably go to bed. Goodnight everyone. I'll see you all in a couple weeks!

PS: I wrote this last night and then passed out at my desk before sending it. Sorry that the last line says "It's late". I can't figure out how to change it.

PPS: If you'd like to get in touch with me with a question or concern, feel free to email me directly at tim at actionbutton dot com. It's much easier for me to use than Patreon's messaging service! Or you can DM me in Discord (discord.gg/actionbutton) and just say you back me on Patreon and I'll believe you because if you didn't how else would you know to lie to me about that? I promise I try to reply to everyone! It's just I get so avalanched over with these things on top of the videos. Lately I enjoy naming people's pets, though, so that's a service I'll offer free of charge To Backers: Guaranteed.

PPPS: Okay I actually DO know how to change the "Well, it's late" line; I just felt like making a terrible joke, and now I made it worse.

PPPPS: I was gonna show you the whole magazine cover, though I chickened out at the last second because I just don't wanna ruin the multitudinous cacophonous surprises. My debilitating devotion to secrecy strikes again. I promise I'm gonna get over it real soon. Just let me have a little bit more a little bit longer.

PPPPPS: No, that's not the final Action Button Logo. That's a trashcan-style logo hacked together minutely in a legacy version of Photoshop for maximum era-appropriateness. Which era, you ask? Well, you'll find out soon!

PPPPPPS: I was going to make a CD Projekt Red Tweet-Style Yellow-Background Delay Apology Image though that joke was too obvious, and also reading text off a yellow background is horrible. Lord, why did they keep doing that to people? Also, for the joke to work I'd have to have done it like twice already and this would be the third time of four, the fourth one being planned far ahead of time to happen in said first week of August, the planned release window, announcing a firm release date for one week later. That's how I'd do it if I were doing it at all.

PPPPPPPS: I'm glad I remembered I typed all of this up last night. Lord, some of this is wild. I love it. Okay, now I am going to immediately get back to work. Bye!!