You’re an Adult Now (YouTube Cut) + My Commentary + Next Episode

Hey everyone! The video went live on YouTube today!

For previous videos I have written a bit more of my thoughts on the game and given commentary on the video itself, so I'm going to do that again.

Here's what the final timeline looked like!

It would be cool if Premiere let you see how many cuts you've made! I've shared these for previous videos so I feel like I have to keep that pattern going. Anyway, here's some random things about the video:

In the intro, I had the yellow splat fade and zoom out into the video the same way the red "M" does at the start of Mario Sunshine. I'm really happy with how that turned out. At the end of that section, each of the splats on the title have faint clips of the games from 4 of the previous videos, and then zooms again into the new splat for this video. It's easy to miss so I thought I'd point that out!

I really like the thought of someone being very confused on why the first 3 minutes of the Splatoon video they clicked on is just Mario Sunshine. I do somewhat fear that it will make people drop the video at the start, but I feel that the payoff when I tie it back into Mario Sunshine is pretty significant and I'm super glad I structured the video like it is. It's a common theme throughout the video (and the games) that I introduce something that seems unimportant or tangentially related, only to bring it back up later. I think that's my favorite thing to do, so there's a ton of it in here.

The Mario Galaxy section is just for the joke of saying there was nothing Mario between Sunshine and Galaxy while showing the plethora of Mario that there indeed was (and to establish the "Blink" visual as a timeskip in the video), but its also a bit symbolic for my experience with it because Galaxy never had huge staying power in my life. Both games I quickly played once through when they came out, and while I greatly enjoyed them and appreciate them as amazing games, Mario Galaxy is not very high up on my list of favorite Mario's.

I have such a clear image in my mind of how I reacted to seeing Splatoon's reveal and the mentality shift I experienced when I fell in love with the game, so I had to include that story, which was very true! All of my little stories in here are true. I might say "and this is true" which could imply that some are not true, but they all are very true.

At around 5 minutes, I begin the analysis of Splatoon's game design. While I'm sure it exists, I've never seen anyone fully break down why Splatoon's gameplay is perfect. I don't think I was successful in this either (I'm not a professional game designer), but I did my best to concisely explain the simple genius of it. I truly believe Splatoon's ink and squid core mechanics is the best thing to ever hit video games. It's just too perfect. Splatoon doesn't get the praise it deserves. In my eyes, Splatoon 1 introducing itself to the world was as big of a moment as Mario 64's 3D camera and movement. It's what "shooter" "games" could have and should have always wanted to be.

There's an in-built contradiction to Splatoon's ink. Being as colorful as it is, it makes it seem like a lot is going on during the match so it can be hard for a newcomer to immediately understand. But on the same side of that, it's the easiest thing to understand, even in the ranked modes, because your pattern-loving brain autofills who the winner is just based on which color is more overwhelming. And most of the time, that's accurate! Its viability as a spectator sport is overwhelming.

I had someone tell me that the accurate Pro Controller rotation at 7:57 looked like the reason the video took so long. It's sorta true. I got pretty obsessive about little details that not many people will notice, but I think they add up to make the overall quality feel a lot nicer. Plus, the more little treats you hide, the more likely someone is to find one and feel good about themselves.

There's a lot of little jokes in the pun section. That part took a lot of time to edit because of how dense it is. When I was writing it, I was hoping for it to be about a minute long but I think it's closer to two and a half. That might be slightly too long, but part of the amusement of it is how long it goes on, so I think keeping it going with good fast visuals helps to keep it engaging. I really like the editing of C.Q. Cumber because I was unhappy with how I had it originally until I came up with the idea for the pause while he walks in as I was replaying the Octo Expansion intro and saw that scene.

In the Sales section, I wrote the script knowing it would get outdated quickly, but its pretty unreal how many lines I had to cut out as I went simply because Pokémon did so well.

The Music section had a similar thing where I kept updating as time went on because many albums didn't have covers or names when I edited it. One update added a jukebox with every song and band name, which sorta made the section feel a little unnecessary because the in-game visual was pretty similar and would have been easier to use. Going through every Splatoon song was an enlightening experience though. There's so much variety that you don't even realize, especially in niche hidden sections. "Pour It On" was such a crazy discovery because it was an unnamed lobby song that rarely plays, and when I heard it I instantly had a new favorite Splatoon song. It's so unique!

At the start of the Octo Expansion section is a fake blink because the intro cutscene had the POV Octoling blink in it already and so it just worked so perfectly as a way to transition into that section. It was still Splatoon 2 so it didn't deserve the full blink.

In the section that I talk about Squid Roll, it took me a lot of time to find relevant footage because a lot of my footage was taken early on when not many people used the mechanic. This was kind of one of my biggest issues and still a bit of a regret with the video that my early footage was taken with a low bitrate and a lot of it would be too time consuming to capture again so some parts of the video look worse than others. In very important parts I made sure to recapture them to make sure it was full HD though.

After the blink into Splatoon 3, I was going to include a clip from Splatoon 3's reveal and the title drop where my friends and I yelled in excitement but it felt out of place so I didn't keep it in.

I asked my Smash Melee-playing friend to provide me some Melee footage to use. He didn't deliver so the gameplay at 31:30 was made to look like some of the lowest level Melee gameplay you'll find.

I really like the brief "Big Friend Little Buddy" part with the Last of Us font because it feels like a minor callback to this tweet I made a while ago. It also let me slide in another reference to the next video (Bayonetta, sorta)

When talking about how I assume the viewer to be an adult, I knew that it wouldn't be super accurate because YouTube does probably promote Splatoon content more for kids and the video would have a lower average age than the rest of my channel. The analytics aren't available yet but I'm pretty confident in that. Also, I'm super aware that most kids lie about their age to Google so the analytics aren't the best indicator.

The Mr. Grizz reveal section felt satisfying to me because it was sorta the second largest "this will be relevant later" section of the video (next to Sunshine), and it was also a "this will be relevant later" section of Splatoon's story. So it was fun to implement it in that same way. I try to make the videos themselves build a meta story, so since this video also included a story retelling it was a unique experience to intertwine them like this.

The flashback to Mario Sunshine is pretty much my favorite part of the video and was the main initial concept for it. I played the story a week before Splatoon 3's launch on an emulator and saw Big Man's Manta Storm boss, after already thinking Splatoon 3 was full of Mario Sunshine-isms, so it really did blow my mind and I instantly knew I had the topic of the Splatoon video made. At that point I had already written some of it because I knew I'd be talking about game design and Splatfests, but that brought it into clearer view. Similarly to how with Xenoblade I already had the concept of the video before playing the game but then discovered the game reinforced the concept in a big way so it was an instant click.

When talking about things people don't actually miss, the script included "The Kraken" special weapon and explicitly called it out as something that wouldn't come back. An update during production added the Kraken back to Splatoon 3.

In the clip of my Splatoon 1 inkling slowly turning to the camera, that was the actual recording of me actually having that experience when I booted up my Wii U to get Splatoon 1 footage early on. That was not an exaggeration and not even a reenactment because I managed to capture that exact moment.

The text wall at 47:30ish was going to just be a text wall without the voiceover like all the others in the YouTube cut, but a few people told me they really liked it so I kept it in for everyone.

Let's talk a little about what's coming next now!

I've been planning the next episode as the finale for a while already now, as I've mentioned in some of the past updates leading up to this video. I still plan to do this. The research phase is going to take a bit of time but I'm aiming for a 20 minute video again so hopefully it doesn't take super long. Some of the games that will likely be covered are Bayonetta 3 (And possibly the Bayonetta Origins spinoff), Disco Elysium, Night in the Woods, Mother 2&3, Babylon's Fall, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Astral Chain, Star Fox Zero, and possibly more. I only need to play/finish a couple of these games and then get footage of the others.

What it means for it being the "finale" is that I've had a plan for tying all of the videos together since the start and have had subtle hints towards the unifying theme in all of them. I'm really hoping to make it a satisfying payoff so I'm going to put as much love and care into it as I possibly can. I think that even though it'll be a video best for viewers of the previous ones, the topic is still going to be very attractive to newcomers. While I'm not worried about the performance aspect that much, it is demotivating for videos to not perform well and I want them to reach as large of an audience as possible so I take that into account when developing them. Along those lines, the Splatoon video isn't off to the best start in the algorithm. That may change! I hope it does!

As always, I give my deepest thanks to all of you Patrons. It's incredible to have your support for these videos. With the first Patreon payout I bought a nicer mic that was used for this video and eventually I'm hoping to upgrade even more to up the quality. Thank you for being awesome, and thank you for all the kind words on the video so far!