Sly 3 Update: 50% complete (or less)

Hi everyone!

It’s been a while since I’ve updated thanks to how far I’ve stuck myself into that one project everyone’s been asking for. The short version is it’s happening, and it’s still happening and looking okay- the long version, well, that’s below.

I figured you deserved an update on Sly 3’s progress- I think I can still hit my window of doing it within the next month, but there was a sneaky snag that I should be upfront about. I did stick to the draft i’d written- voiced it, edited the voice files, and plotted it out in the edit- and then realised it still wasn’t quite working for me. I shopped the script around a bit with some friends, got some feedback, did a full tune up of that draft, and revoiced it again. Kinda cheeky.

The good news is that this is still being edited as we speak. I’m about 50 percent done with the overall edit, which means that the whole thing is plotted out including excerpts from the game, developer/podcast inserts and most of the overlaid tricks are done. A lot of footage from the game is in place, and at least two of the four chunks i’ve split this into are mostly filled. There’s still a lot of work to do though- the video is running quite long, under two hours, and I’m trying hard to cut certain things down and try out different visual cues in certain places to see what bit of footage conveys an idea best. I’m still not convinced on the videos flow or that the writing in certain bits is airtight, and it’s possible they may be rewritten yet- but honestly, that would not be a long or difficult job, and a lot of the stuff in this video right now will absolutely stay. Sometimes you just need the full picture in front of you to really get a feel for what is and isn’t working, or how to better say something. It’s a big part of why I was able to produce the current draft. 

I still don’t think this is as good as the last video- I would like to go into those reasons once it’s done, but it’s possible I’ll feel differently once it’s all together. There are bits of this I think are way better than I planned, and others I think are a bit weak. I have mined the internet as hard as I can for information on how this game was developed, and I’ve exhausted all my research, which I just don’t think is as well covered as the philosophical points this video ends up going for. Still, my hope is that sly 3 is a very different game in its own right, so it’s only appropriate to have a video that reflects how it puts its ideas across. 

One thing I did manage in my downtime between edits was to write a draft for a shorter Crash Team Racing video i’d like to have out a little while after this lands. That may of course end up being out of date if I take too long on this one or feel not so confident about how it’s coming together two weeks from now, we’ll see. I think it’s a good draft though, and is more casual, so it wouldn’t be a huge issue to put together. My good buddy TGB (The Gaming Brit) helped me put together a PC that I’d like to use to make videos from now on- so Sly 3 will probably be the last project I put out on my MacBook’s final cut pro X software. F. 

Anyway, thanks again for your patience, hopefully this video will be with you eventually. I’ll give my next update on this project when I think I can see the end in sight. Then all will be revealed…

-B