Speedrun Explained 56 (Update 2); Speedrun Explained 57 (Update 1)

Hey all! Happy December, writing this to you all as it's snowing outside and listening to some soft jazz, you know, essential winter vibes. Then again, I listen to the Spotify playlist "Jazz in the Background" pretty much every day while working to have some non-distracting background music.

Anyway, onto the update. I've had a lot of shifting deadlines and schedules lately. I'm going to walk through how everything has kinda gone down in the past couple weeks, and then get into the actual update on how specific videos are coming along after (and updates on when to see them here on Patreon).

My original plan for November and December was to try and get four videos out: Half-Life, Starfield, Outer Wilds, and Baldur's Gate 3. Well, as November went on and as both the Half-Life video took a little longer than expected, along with our struggle to find a second sponsor for the month of November, I had to shift everything back one video slot. This meant that the plan was Half-Life in November, then Starfield and Outer Wilds in December, in that order, and Baldur's Gate 3 in January. As I finished up with Half-Life, we secured our two deals for December. The only thing was that the sponsor for the first half of the month requested that the video its in be less than 40 minutes in length. The Outer Wilds video is looking to be probably in the 10-15 minute range, and the Starfield video is probably going to be around 40-45 minutes. This meant that Outer Wilds had to come first in the month, which honestly worked better since I could then have more time to work on Starfield since it's longer. As soon as I finished the Half-Life video, I then began writing the script for Outer Wilds, and put off working on Starfield until after Outer Wilds was done. After working on Outer Wilds for around a week and finishing the script, my agent and I received news that the sponsor for the first half of the month had to push back their campaign to the end of the month. This means that the Outer Wilds video now has to be the second video in the month, and Starfield needs to be the first, AND that the Starfield video needs to be done by around the 15th. So total wrench in the cogs there. I immediately dropped everything I was doing with Outer Wilds (thankfully had already sent it to the runner for review, so they have some extra time with the script) and started working on Starfield, and I'm in a bit of a crunch right now trying to write, record, and edit this video and get it done by the end of next week. It's doable and I'm doing alright with the crunch, I'm making sure that I have hard cut-off hours for when I stop working each day so I can rest and relax, but MAN am I exhausted at the end of each day right now. Anyway, let's get onto the specific updates for these two videos, where things are at, and how I'm feeling about them.

SPEEDRUN EXPLAINED #56

Starfield, Starfield, Starfield... I'm very much looking forward to never having to think about this game again in a little over a month's time. Between losing my mind grinding the run for it and the current situation, this game has been all-consuming for a bit and I just want to be free of its grasp. That all being said, I'm super super happy with how the video's turning out so far. As of this second, I have the first ten minutes of the video recorded and edited. I always enjoy making videos on runs I've done myself since I get to write, record, and edit all at the same time, and write the video as I progress through the run. It's been really rewarding being able to implement all I've learned this year from doing the Retrospective series here on Patreon into a run of my own. I feel the explanations are really strong so far and the humor is just the right amount of shitposty. At my current rate, I'll likely have around 35 minutes of the video done by the end of this week (going to be visiting Detroit this weekend so won't have a full workday on Friday), and then I'll be wrapping up the video on Monday. If all things go according to plan, I intend to post the video as soon as it's finished here (likely before I run the video by another runner for information checking and before I do a proofwatch myself, so there might be a few minor errors that get through, but maybe not 😉). The run lends itself pretty well to giving time to explain things, so thankfully I don't need to film too much for it. I think that the only things I have to film are the intro and outro (the intro is already filmed). Can't wait for you all to see this video, I really do think it's a good one!

With that all being said, the current record holder for Starfield (Harctwo) just got the run accepted to AGDQ and I'll be commentating the run with them! I'm super super excited for Harc and happy for him to have gotten accepted and do a run for the event, and I'm honored to be asked and I'm really looking forward to helping him show off the game, so be on the lookout for that run during the week! You can find the event's schedule here to see when that run will be during your timezone (https://gamesdonequick.com/schedule/46). I haven't been asked to help commentate any other runs yet, but if I do I'll post them to Twitter closer to the event.

SPEEDRUN EXPLAINED #57

Alright, Outer Wilds time. It's been a real treat being able to revisit this game after having played through it casually around four years ago. Seriously, this game is incredible. If you have not played it yet, drop everything and go play through it. It's around 10-20 hours to playthrough on average, so it's not a huge time commitment. Seriously, it's that good. Go play it. As for the video, like I mentioned earlier, I was able to finish the script before having to divert my focus back to Starfield. I talked about this a fair bit in my November recap I posted yesterday for the $9 tier, but I'm low key relieved about having this break between finishing the script for the video and working on it again. The script itself isn't long since the speedrun is so short. For reference, the length of the script is in the 3,000-4,000 words range, and the final word count of the Half-Life script was 10,000. I honestly really like the first half of the script of the Outer Wilds video. It has a really neat explanation up front of the starting area with some fun framing to lay out the starting area. I feel like the humor is there as well, and it's just a really solid start to the video. The back half I feel like is a bit unfocused though. All the explanations are there, but it feels like just the explanations are there with little connective tissue. And on top of that, the explanations as they stand are really, really wordy and clunky, especially for how quickly things happen in the run. It's going to be really nice to finish the Starfield video and then be able to return to Outer Wilds with an already finished script that I can then focus on polishing for a couple days. The silver lining to having to crunch and get the Starfield out earlier means that in the back half of this month, I'll have a some extra time that I can spend on making sure I nail this Outer Wilds video (as well as some miscellaneous things like editing the promised Oblivion video for you all to watch). In all, the Outer Wilds video should be out the last week of this month, right around Christmas.

Alright, that's all for updates! Diving straight back into working on Starfield now. Hope you all have a great month and Happy Holidays!