Video essay talking about Divinity II

This isn't really a proper update, so I'm somewhat reluctant to mention it. But I more just wanted to tell people what I was doing on the weekend.

I had a sit down and penned a draft outline for yet another video-essay to be completed one day (tm). Though I know, cart before the horse. Since I've been thus far unable to finish even the first one.

This one was prompted by the recent completion of Divinity II: Original Sin, which I was thoroughly impressed with. And I wanted to talk about some of its clever design decisions that many a developer could learn from when it comes to storytelling and replayability that doesn't revolve around finding randomised "loot".  And then contrast against several similar examples where, despite a rich storyline, the player isn't paying attention because it's overshadowed by gammification, leveling and lootbox bullshit.

Also, I need to get round to providing a full list of the available video essay drafts I have sitting in Evernote. Just as I've done with the (tad out of date) bullshittery summary. That way you'll know 'what's on the menu' when it comes to voting for what you'd like to see next.

But a quick summary of the video essay drafts I have in Evernote:

• The DayZ critique - A discussion about the 2012 mod for Arma 2. And how subsequent games, including the standalone version, have not quite understood the main attraction.
• Anti-power fantasies - A fangasm analysis for a subgenre that's extremely hard to get right. But amazingly compelling if you nail it.
• The Revan Effect - An analysis on the genius design decisions that went into a single Star Wars character. And how when it was imported into other media types it didn't work at all.
• Regiments of Renown - A video talking about the ethics of repo copying in SEGA's Total War - Warhammer II.
• Battlefield Franchise - A look at the entries in DICE's Battlefield series and why competing with Activision's Call of Duty caused an enormous identify crisis for the series that's going to be difficult to recover from.