Sons of the Forest - Update #2

Good afternoon everybody. It's the second week of work on the current video-essay. Here's how things are currently going. My current objectives are:

• Review the Sons of the Forest streams for useful moments.

• Identify the points in the prior video-essay that I'd like to bring up again.

• Plan out the broad structure of the video and plotting out what does where.

All three elements of that plan have been going very well. I'm pretty confident I have the complete structure, I know which points I want to bring up from The Forest, and I've gotten through 11 of the 17 streams.

So this is how I'd like to structure the followed up video-essay. Subject to change, of course. And mindful of the fact that it's supposed to be a follow up rather than a stand-alone analysis of the sequel:

• Introduction.

• Walkthrough of the sequels mechanics.

  • To set the scene for those who don't follow survival games or did not see the prior video-essay.

  • It also frontloads the video with things that aren't story relevant spoilers. With a "call to action" to invite those who want to try Sons of the Forest to leave and come back later before the spoilers begin.

  • I'll also be able to setup the basics of things like inventory, crafting, base building, NPC's, etc.

• Walkthrough of the story and clues, in roughly the same order played in (REPEATED)

  • This also lets me sprinkle in the funny moments that would typically occupy a bullshittery.

  • I can loop these parts as many times as needed. Narrating it like an adventure. Setting up stuff like the Christians, cultists, cannibals, artefacts, campsites, helicopters.

  • Every subsequent topic here is followed by at least one of these.

• Revisit the "Weird Logic" segment of The Forest - compare and contrast.

  • Talk about whether the same logic seems to exist in the sequel and where.

  • Also talk about the meta logic, now that Sons of the Forest is a sequel to a gameplay loop that came before. And how that changes the equation.

• Revisit the "See-saw of quality" observation in The Forest - compare and contrast.

  • Talk about whether I feel it still exists. And show lots of examples. Including areas of praise where great improvements shine through.

  • Fold the segment "See-Saw of quality screwing up the mystery plot" under this section for brevity. They're nested topics.

  • Perhaps even the "problem of scale" too. It doesn't need its own bit. I have numerous related examples marked.

• Wrap up the walkthrough by showing the finale of Sons of the Forest

  • Intentionally cut out the second ending for now. Just laser focus on the main ending for storytelling satisfaction.

  • Summarise what I think worked well, what worked poorly. Points of criticism, praise, general thoughts, etc.

• Divert heavily to discuss Endnight's storytelling methods - now that two products exist side by side.

  • Talk about a very distinctive Endnight-specific element I feel I've identified. An analysis of this specific quirk and why I think it is the way it is.

  • Finish with a numbered list of potential minor fixes for Sons of the Forest. For beyond the technical, there are some easily rectifiable plot-holes the studio might not be aware of.

  • Since a face reveal is of the table, announce the start of an OnlyFans or something (?)

The other part of the pre-production process involves steadily reviewing the original livestreams and identifying anything that could prove useful to me in the following video. Adobe Premiere has this marker system when you press the M Key. And you can rapidly cycle through these markers on their own window, taking your play head to that moment.

I've organised these moments like this:

• Green moments = Anything amusing that could be included as a joke.

• Yellow moments = useful bits of dialogue to snap to. Such as when I make speculation based on the clues presented (whether accurate or not).

• White moments = Any cool visuals that could be useful simply as background footage whilst I talk about something else. You're seeing some of them in the gifs shown here.

Additionally there are some compositions that exist on their own with little clips being cut. Giving the potential of montages. Such as bats or spiders making me jump, me running over everything with gold carts, or the number of times Virginia or Kelvin did something funny.

I need to finish off the scrubbing of the remaining footage. And then start to actually pen the script, which will occupy all of next week. Creating the words I plan to read out in late night recording sessions.

Then I should be able to give you a word count and estimate on how long I think this will take.

The work continues :)