Hooooo booy that Soma Bringer video huh. If you don’t recall, I’ve been talking about this video for a hot like 7 months now. This script was a nightmare to write so there’s a lot to talk about.
The first draft was written on my plane flight to Japan in April. Funnily enough, literally while Future Redeemed was being announced. I was on a plane for 12+ hours, so I had no idea.
Either way, it was a really bad draft. This video had a lot of very bad drafts. What was so bad about the past drafts? I think a few things.
Earlier drafts heavily invested in explaining Monolith Soft’s relationship with Xenogears and Xenosaga and how they’ve changed with the Xenoblade games. There are about 8000 videos about that out there that tell that story; I don’t need to do that. I ended up cutting about 6-8 paragraphs worth of that. Unfortunately, that was a late cut, but I think the key thorn in my side that kept the video from feeling focused and whole.
More importantly, I found more concise ways to convey these elements but focused more on the core of what changed rather than directly explaining literal changes to Xenoblade’s story telling through examples. I think that also helps make the video more accessible for people not invested in Xeno since it talks about higher level concepts rather than explaining who characters are or what exactly happened in each game. And it also means the opening focuses more on what I want to say, rather than a giant explanation of the Xeno franchise.
I had a segment talking about my updated feelings on Xenosaga. This was very unnecessary overall. I had recently rewatched all the cutscenes from Xenosaga, and while my feelings on Xenosaga actually improved, I think the universe isn’t as complicated as people make it seem. The stories told in the game are straightforward despite the window dressing. Trying to deflate that image wasn’t the purpose of this video so it just felt unnecessary. This topic was better left to my video where I re-ranked the Xenosaga games.
The only thing that survived from this segment was where I mentioned Xenoblade being a lot more conservative in its world-building. Which I think was good to touch on to strike a contrast between how big and cumbersome the old words were vs. how Xenoblade is today.
I also undermined the Xenoblade series pretty heavily. I was pretty confidently stating the expansion of Xenoblade was bad. I also got very caught up in the details of how that happened throughout the series’ timeline and how it made me feel.
Some of this still exists at the end of the video. But instead of just flatly stating how it was bad, I focused a lot on Soma Bringer, and the original Xenoblade benefited my view of the series as isolated games.
The original version just came off as nit-picky without focusing on why I felt the way I did. So, part of that message was also in making sure I conveyed the benefits of the Xenoblade series’ current direction.
I believe this final script is the 7th iteration. Almost nothing from that original survived, though I think the sections about Soma Bringer and Disaster: Day of Crisis were implemented pretty early on and acted as good anchor points to build the rest of the video around in the end. It just took me a while to realize that.
I haven’t put a lot of videos out this year, but there’s been a focus on compassion and empathy toward gaming opinions in my videos, whether planned or not. To some extent, I think there is always a feeling that “the video is your video, so you should share *your* feelings and not focus too much on others.” Which I think can be true.
I recently republished an old Castlevania 64 review I did for Classic Game Room. It was pretty early on in my writing career, so I didn’t really have my own communication style at the time. Re-reading the review, it was a very “video game review” kind of style. It focused on the type of bumps in a game that make up an IGN bullet point list.
Frame rate is inconsistent, controls are weird, cumbersome level design quirks, graphics are dated and so on.
But from what I can tell from that review, I was really focused on how I felt other people would react to Castlevania 64. You couldn’t tell that I loved Castlevania 64. But I was so invested in how a more mainstream audience would see a game that I think it just was completely lost in that framing.
So, overcompensating for sure can hurt your message. But I think a healthy amount of consideration for people who don’t feel the way you do helps keep a video grounded in reality for a larger audience. I don’t want you to think Soma Bringer is the best story ever once I get out of that Soma Bringer segment, so I tried to inform people of the traits of Soma Bringer that may be disappointing but use that to lead into how those traits benefited my view of the story.
I think it’s important to recognize most of us are not authoritative sources on anything. The hard part is making sure the things I say not only paint a clear picture of why I feel the way I do but also recognize the differences in how others will perceive that. Hopefully, even if you disagree with me, you’ll understand why I feel the way I do.
So, while it can come off as a bit tacky highlighting the benefits of the community Xeno built, I think it ultimately helps build the bridge there that lets them know their view of the series is valid in my eyesand that every change that may be an improvement to them introduces a new set of pro/cons that people will feel differently about.
That only really matters to Xeno fans, though, and I try to aim a bit away from core fan bases like that, so there was a lot of lore to have to super simplify for a larger audience, and I had a hard time knowing how effective I was. The feedback I’ve gotten so far has been positive, and people who don’t know anything about Xeno could largely see my points despite not knowing about the details of the franchise. Meanwhile, fans of the series likely already know what I’m talking about if I simply hint at it through either a point I make or the visuals I have on screen.
My only real regret is I went into detail with Soma Bringer’s ending specifically. I think Idea’s sacrifice was core to the video’s point, and trying to talk about it vaguely dampened its impact. Very few people know what Soma Bringer is, so talking about it indirectly, I think, would have ultimately caused more harm than good. I hate having to embed a spoiler warning in a video, but at least today, I couldn’t find a way to make it work otherwise.
I felt this video would fail immensely from a view perspective, but I think setting a Soma Bringer video to the backdrop of Xeno ultimately was for the best and was a good way to position it. But I can say that in hindsight. I’ve had many other Xeno videos fail as well, so I often felt like this was the wrong approach. The stars and possibly lessons I’ve learned happen to align with this one
The video is growing pretty fast as of writing. I suspected it’d top off around 2,000 views, but it seems to keep going, so we’ll see where its ultimate fate lies.
I hope to take a break from talking Xeno for a bit though. We’ve had a Xeno-heavy last two years, and I think I have other goals I want to accomplish now. Even if the video failed view-wise, I think this was a good video to leave it off for now. At least until something new happens in the Xeno franchise or if I play that Dragon Ball Z game and find it has more impact on me than I expected.
