I really don’t even have to say it, as there hasn’t been a new episode of my Hollow Knight playthrough for a long long time. Part of it is due to the changes I mentioned in the past weeks, but there were other important reasons.
Firstly, I just didn’t feel like playing the game and the more time passed, the less I wanted to do so.
Now don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adore Hollow Knight, as much as I love Ori and the Blind Forest and other games in my Pilot Season, but the problem is that when I proposed those Let’s Plays I had recently finished the games and I rarely replay games that soon. I started fine and it was great to show off some of my expertise after having completed the game, but the surprise that comes with playing a new game and from where some of the best moments of a Let’s Play come from just wasn’t there anymore, which meant my commentary wasn’t as spontaneous as I would’ve wanted. I kept topics aside to touch upon during the commentary, but I felt the rants were stale.
On the other hand, the past few months I’ve been terribly busy with the awesome process of creating Telia, the campaign setting for my upcoming D&D game. I’ve worked on the rules for the world, the history, religion, cultures, locations and so much more, and even now I’m still working on it, loving every moment of it. I love writing and I love coming up with stories and world-building. It’s great to come up with a new society, a new kingdom and not only their rulers but the important people in the kingdom. In a lesson I learned from the RPG game 13th Age, I’ve focused on making sure there’s an “Icon” everywhere that matters, these Icons being important NPCs.
As we’ve come closer to starting the campaign and my players create their backstories, more details about the world come in, since I need to adapt the world to their choices and there are always blanks to fill in. Just last week I had to think of something I hadn’t even considered: how is life under water, in the bottom of the ocean? All just because a player wanted to play as Sea Elf. So I came up with Sea Elf society and Triton society and the relationship between them. Ended up establishing a centuries old war, Sea Elven society as a barbarian and war-driven people with Tritons having a Greek flair, but led by what are essentially Joan of Arc figures. In my world, Tritons are a tragic people, fighting a desperate war against an enemy that just appeared one day and took their home from them. They’re fighting for survival, with the sole hope of one day returning to the lives of their ancestors, which were dedicated to science, academic and artistic pursuits. But when they lost their home they lost their greatest libraries, museums and even theatres.
Okay, I’ve gone a bit off-track, but I hope you get my point on how much I get into this stuff, how much it feeds my creativity as much as it provides an outlet for it. But it consumes time and what little I have left I have to decide if I will spend it recording and editing videos, which can be a fun experience as much as it can be deadly tedious, especially if you’re adding the sounds and little titles and compositions to make videos interesting, or if I’ll spend it with my other passion, Gunpla. In the past few months I’ve pretty much gotten a ton of models to build and lots of paints to experiment with. I have such plans for custom kits, and dioramas and improve my skills to perhaps send a creation to the Gunpla Builders World Cup in a year or two.
So at the end, I really don’t have time for Hollow Knight or any other Let’s Play, at least not at the moment. I haven’t even broadcasted anything lately and I’ll be honest, when I finally get back to it, I’ll probably dedicate the time to either D&D games or Gunpla. I’m honestly tired of broadcasting or recording video games, especially on Twitch and its mercurial crowd.
I’m not saying I won’t have my fancy tickled and I won’t record a let’s play ever again, but if I do, I probably won’t do it alone. If I find a partner in crime to join me as we go through a game while chatting like idiots, then I’ll definitely consider it.
So with this, I say goodbye to the Hollow Knight Let’s Play and ask that you wait for what comes next from me in terms of recorded and live videos!
