Annotated Appendix 2

Mmmmmk, so here we have Episode 3...

It doesn't look like it, but this one kind of took forever to make, even though it's not quite like the information dump that the first episode wound up being.

For one, the info here was a little challenging to parse out when it came to Maria and the Clock Room. It's kind of a lot of info to get through, so I tried to write a script that was as succinct as possible while also covering a lot of ground. Now that it's out in the wild, I hate it, really. This is one of those instances where I recall all of the times I dreamed about doing something like this and what I would say about any given topic. I'm absolutely sure that in my head I had way more interesting things to say (or at least more fun ways of saying them). It's done and it's out, though, so fine. Let's all move on with our lives.

This video was also chock full of little tidbits that weren't in the original script that had to be added with some re-recording later. I'm pretty sure the differences in the dialog levels make that abundantly clear. Truth is, I had to do those extra audio recordings at something like 11:30 at night when everybody's asleep in the house (including my year-old baby), so I couldn't have these saucy tones booming into my little Snowball mic.

More on that end, and really the point I'm slowly getting to, is that this has been a very complicated couple of weeks for me professionally. My work life is changing pretty drastically --and not really for the better-- and this is by far the busiest time of the year for me, so other things like video editing and script writing didn't get the attention they probably could have used. I'm glad I caught some of the glaring flaws before completing the video rendering and putting on the internet, but even though this is much lower on the priority list for me than how I feed my family and pay my mortgage*, I need to be a more careful of the script writing to make sure all of the facts are in there. This is going to be especially true for a few of the upcoming videos like the Outer Wall and the Long Library where there's lot to talk about.

Whew. Ok. Another difficult part of this video is plugging in the background filler to the backtracking moments, like when I opened up the section previously blocked in the Entrance and went back through the Cthulu/Devil fight and back up the chimney with the Marionettes. Not a super long section, but definitely a lot of silence to fill, so it was a matter of finding the best piece of trivia to inject there that's both appropriate in length and situationally useful. I tried a few different chunks of dialog to use, and they were either too long, or it made more sense to use them in a future video when there's an example that's found in the same place (like, say, explaining elemental damage).

Alright. On to the Outer Wall.

*Really, not that much lower.

Annotated Appendix 1

Well, hi there.

That thing at the top? Yeah, that's Episode 2 of the series, which was just posted early this morning. I haven't had a chance to dig into the episodes here since posting them, but the response to the first was very promising, and the comments were more than supportive. If you're reading this and you've commented, then thanks again for the views and the kind words.

Let's get into the process a bit regarding this first two videos. These both wound up being kind of awkward with the way it seems that I'm forced to do these for one reason: choreography. See, there's just too much to say about a given topic that by playing a normal game and not stopping to smell the roses once in a while that it's certain that my commentary won't be able to cover everything. A good example of this is in the first episode where I hit three big facts about the Death encounter. Without stopping there for a certain length of time, I wouldn't have enough room to talk about the Bone Scimitar enemies (both of which are unique, it turns out) and the Red Rust sword that the red one drops. It turns into real logistical problem when actually playing the game.

The solution, then, is to write tight scripts, record them in Audacity, annotate them so I know what's coming and when, and then listen to them through headphones as I'm playing the game. As you can imagine, it's kind of a painstaking process, but I'm trying to cut down on the amount of time that Alucard is either bum rushing through commentary or just standing around in silence, so I'm trying to get it down to more of an exact science.

The other problem with this (which is something I re-learned the hard way the other night) is that SotN isn't a game with multiple save files. If I complete a section and think, you know what, I should re-record that, I have to do it with a separate run of the game, which is something I'm trying to actively avoid. I think people would eventually catch on, and my schadenfreude would be lost. We don't want that, do we? Honestly, I want some semblance of consistency with the videos, and to me, that means one unified playthrough. I'm not saying that this won't happen down the line, though, so please keep your pitchforks and torches in the shed now that you know the reasoning.

The good news is that the actual recording and editing is getting a lot easier now. I've decided to put the kibosh on the PS3's smoothing option when playing PSX games. This doesn't completely translate into crystal clear pixels on a YouTube video, but it makes me feel better, I guess. I'm still using the copy of Symphony that my parents gave me for Christmas when I was 17, though, so I'm at least getting a sense of authenticity with it, even though it's not on original hardware.

The second episode was much more dry of interesting things to say, though, sadly. One thing I probably should have mentioned is that most of the enemies in Alchemy Laboratory are all old timey monsters from the very first game, other than the Spittle Bone, Bloody Zombie, Bone Scimitars and the bosses. In fact, they all come from the second to last level where you fight Death, which may have something to do with the Grim Reaper's appearance at the entrance and Slogra/ Gaibon being the first boss, but that's a bit of a stretch. Anyway, the Marble Gallery is a larger area, and I should still have more fun things to talk about more often.

Part of those fun things is something I'm going to playfully call "backtrack filler." Mapping the entirety of the game (not counting outside of the castle, which I'll only briefly mention) can take a fair amount of time, and there's definitely going to be some episodes that are a little on the quiet side as I blast through old areas to find previously inaccessible chambers and locations. I'll be using these moments to talk about as much of the background development history of the game as I've dug up. I worry that I don't have enough to fill the entirety of the game, but I suppose I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

So yeah. Part 2. It's a scene, man. Lucky for me, I have a week off of work soon, so I'll try to blast through another video within that time, because life is about to get pretty nutty for me over the next month or so.

Thanks again for watching.