Channel Update #44 (Mar)

This is a positive if unexciting update.

The history of rpgs video took a little longer than expected, mostly because it’s the type of video that’s time consuming to write and edit. As for the end result… it’s okay. I don’t actually think this is one of my best videos but there isn’t anything that I think is particularly wrong with it either. I think maybe I’m just comparing it to the MMO history video and the Entire history of games video, both of which I really liked. But the MMO history video allowed me to pull a lot from personal experience to say something more unique, and the entire history of games video gave me so much history to pick and choose from to kind of tell a story out of it, where as this history video just felt a bit ‘flatter’ by comparison. Still despite my personal feelings, on youtube it seems to have been the best performing video I’ve ever made. I’m not sure why, and the views might still drop off suddenly, but at the moment the channel looks to be in a really good place and I’m feeling quite content with that.

As for the next video, it should still be Baldur’s Gate. I’m playing through 2 at the moment, then I want to do half of a second playthrough of 3 and then I’ll be into making it properly. I still don’t know how exactly I’ll structure it but I guess it will work out.

I also played through Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, which took quite a bit longer than I expected. I actually considered making a lower effort (probably second channel) video talking about my thoughts on it, but ultimately decided not to as ‘lower effort’ videos just don’t interest me much. The thing is, I think a lot of viewers watch youtubers they like and get invested in knowing their opinion on certain games, and so sometimes a video doesn’t need to be high effort or that impressive as a video because it’s the youtubers opinion that people care most about. So there’s a reason a lower effort video makes sense, particularly as I’ve talked about both final fantasy and 7 remake already at this point. But time spent making something low effort is still time that could be spent making something higher effort instead.

That said, for anyone who is invested in my opinion on Rebirth… I liked it a lot, but probably a bit less than most other critics/fans. It’s a remarkably high effort game, which is impressive to see from modern Square Enix, but the overall experience still felt somewhat padded, some parts of the original story were handled poorly imo (the biggest being Dyne and Cid), some open world content is very repetitive, and it is quite a messy game. Characters continue to be great though, and I still don’t mind the bigger changes to the story (even rebirth’s ending). Also my god is it cool to see some of the locations and events in that game in HD. Seeing Junon from a distance in particular was such a surreal feeling. I watched no trailers or reviews before playing, so everything was fresh to me, and there’s just so much in the game, most of which is really good. I’m glad it’s been positively received. I do wonder if poor sales might cause the next part to have a smaller budget however, which would be a shame because I think creating good games can have greater benefits for a company like SE than just pure sales, but I’m not sure people in charge would see it that way.

Anyway that’s all from me. See you next month.