Discussing potential upcoming projects for December 2018 to February 2019.
To keep you informed about my plans for the future of this website, I am writing this post where I talk about upcoming games that I am prospectively considering making guides and other content for.
For the December to February period, there’s nothing else to talk about other than God Eater 3. That’s assuming Code Vein is further into 2019 but I will worry about that when the time comes.
So the question then becomes…
Make GE3 Guide?
Don’t make GE3 Guide?
GOD EATER 3
GOD EATER 3. A long awaited sequel in what’s probably one of my most favorite game series’ next to BlazBlue. I played a hell of a lot of the first two games and hold a deep appreciation and love for this series. Back when I was heavy into GE, I wasn’t really into content creation but I did make a few helpful tutorial videos for God Eater 2: Rage Burst.
At the time of writing this post, I have cashed in 40 hours on the limited time JP-only demo for God Eater 3 and thoroughly enjoyed my time with the game. I haven’t played an Action RPG game that felt so good since… well, AccelSword (^_^;)
But as with all God Eater games, the game is deep enough to make your knees quiver in pleasure but not without the game doing a less-than-adequate job of explaining itself in some of its most critical parts. New system mechanics get glossed over like a young lady applying lipstick at a Rainbow Party.
That’s another way of saying that there’s a lot to misunderstand and a lot that could be explained better. Which in turn, creates a desire for information and a general need for an in-depth guide.
But at the same time, I can recall gazing upon the respective wikis and googledocs for the previous games that held a plethora of helpful and super good information. I remember being genuinely impressed at the amount of good GE information online. So I’m fairly confident that the GE community will put together great in-depth information no matter what.
Which means there might not really be much need for me to write a guide. But I just want to help contribute to the community of a game series I love. That’s why I’m considering writing a guide for it anyway.
But not without some doubts and hesitations.
I’ll get to those later, but for now, if I were to write a guide, the stuff listed below is the kinds of topics you could expect to see in a GE3 guide. Please take note that these are all just ideas at the moment and I haven’t fully decided if I’m going to write a guide yet.
Prospective Guide Contents
For starters, the efficiency at which I’ll be able to write a good guide will depend greatly on the JP Strategy Guide. I don’t know if one will be released and if it exists, I don’t know how good it will be.
Bare Bones & Basic Guide Contents:
- FAQ
Story Mode Guide(GE Story Mode doesn’t need a guide)- Side Mission Guide? Assuming there’s anything that isn’t straightforward
- System Tutorial Guide. Everything from Burst to Dive
- Basic Control Guide & In-game Facility Tutorial
- Weapon Overview Post. Just a broad take on weapon types and how they correlate to playstyles.
- Dedicated Melee Weapon Pages. Burst Arts, Burst Art Effects & Tips on Weapons (Tips needs A LOT of experience)
- Aragami Info. Weaknesses, Drops, Tips, Anything in the Strategy Guide
- Sensible Builds. Examples of Skill Builds suited to certain weapons or playstyles. This will be hard because I’ll be playing in Japanese.
- English Menu Translations? Eng ver is two months after JP so this may be redundant.
- Leveling Guide. Primarily for Accel Triggers and Burst Arts
- Update Notes. Translated from official site into English.
- A link to my YT God Eater 3 stuff
If I were to go the extra mile and seek out to compile a game database with the help of the Strategy Guide, I’ll need a colossal amount of time to put it together. A prospective database and some other advanced guide contents is listed below.
Advanced Guide Contents:
- Database (Stuff pulled from JP Strategy Guide, assuming it exists)
- Skill List. There’s tons of skills and translating them all will be painful.
- Weapon/Gun List. Including pictures (maybe??)
- Aragami List. Like a grid for body part affinities and stuff.
- Database things. Like lists of clothes and materials and other things.
- More detailed info on how to fight Aragami. Attack patterns and how to exploit them and stuff. Will need a lot of experience and work.
- Bullet Editor.
When I throw all my ideas down like this, it sounds really ambitious. Especially for one man working alone. But if I were to do a guide, this is the level of the kinds of topics on the table.
If I were to go through with a full guide of this magnitude, it may take upwards of three to six months to fully be done with it. I’ll have to sacrifice a lot and spend a lot of time away from the game so I’m reeeeeally hesitant to go through with every idea I listed here. It also means I may miss other game releases that I’m really excited for (DMC5) and that always makes me especially bitter.
There’s always an option to just write a nice small guide covering the most important aspects of the game. But sometimes its not a bad idea to consider all of the possibilities first and make a decision later.
Above all, I want to prioritize my personal enjoyment with the game. Having fun should be above guide writing and above helping the community. This is an aspect I’ve had a lot of problems with in the past.
Things I Worry About
There’s always a lot to consider when I’m preparing myself to potentially write a guide. Most of the time, the glaring points are drawbacks and a list of things I worry about that makes me double-think the idea of writing a guide.
These things may put me off the idea and may steer me to not make a guide. They are real problems I need to address and pre-plan for before I make this decision:
- I worry about God Eater 3 being the biggest game I’ve ever tried to make a guide for. The total amount of skills and playstyles the game has may be quite high.
- I worry about there being no Strategy Guide or the Strategy Guide is borderline useless.
- I worry about getting busy with IRL things in 2019.
- I worry about my ideas and content getting stolen by other websites/YouTubers (This has happened too many times in the past.)
- I worry about potential DLC adding an unexpected volume of things.
- Since I’ll be playing in Japanese, a lot of things may need translating into English. This increases the workload tenfold.
- I worry about future balance updates out-dating things I’ve already made guides for. Its always hard to find time to go back and revise things.
- I worry about becoming a social pariah and being made an example of by players in the community. Don’t ask me why, but writing guides is dangerous work that puts a target on your back.
- I worry about the prospect of writing a guide rendering me unable to actually enjoy the game.
These are all pretty self-explanatory and I find myself waking up in the morning saying “No guides. Let me just focus on myself this time”. Then I think a bit more and consider the idea again like “Maybe I should do it…”
Its a big cycle I’m tired of repeating so I’m writing this article to make a decision once and for all. But in the event that I do go through with a guide, the kinds of things I would need help with are listed below:
What I May Need Help With
Honestly, I could use help all over the place. I usually do everything on my own, but the help of the community always makes things better. I’m usually open to anyone helping and I always credit people for their ideas and their work. Some areas I may need help with are:
- Translations & Localizations of names. This is gonna be the biggest one since I will not buy the English version.
- Spotting errors and mistakes. Tell me if you see something that doesn’t look right.
- Helping out in the FAQ. Just preying on people’s questions and answering helps me a lot.
- Telling me about useful existing sources of information or useful methods for doing things. I put useful links at the top of guides.
- Maybe capturing images for clothes and weapons and stuff?
- Help with a Database should I decide to do one. This would include validating the DB to ensure attack values or drop locations or whatever are indeed correct.
- Morale. Saying “GJ BK” in the comments actually has a huge impact, you know w
- Sharing links to the guide on various social media places like reddit, gamefaqs, steam, discord or any other place that has GE players. I don’t like doing this myself, because every fucking time I get attacked for it, but I’ll equip the Shield of Dreams and do it myself if I need to (~_~;)
While I’m on the topic of help, I’m not writing guides to get a name for myself and actually loathe the fact that this website is named after my screen name. I’m writing guides simply to give players a platform for high quality in-depth information.
So if you are interesting in contributing or even if you are writing a guide of your own, you are welcomed to get in touch with me and we can compare notes or I could even reference your work somewhere in the guide.
The Verdict
Not gonna lie, I was undecided when I started writing this article but now that I’m finishing it up, I’m leaning towards writing a guide for GOD EATER 3.
But I don’t want to decide on the scale of the guide just yet and I want to work at my own pace and see where it takes me.
So yes, I’m going to be doing SOMETHING with God Eater 3. A small guide, or just YT videos or maybe even a huge guide that will be AccelSword’s guide size.
I haven’t completely decided yet.
The only thing I have decided for sure is that I will place guide-writing and video creation behind having fun with the game and getting good at it. Those are my priorities and that’s what comes first.
If its any consolation, I wrote the AccelSword guide on a whim because I really really liked the game so who knows what might happen with GE3.
But still, if you feel like you want me to write a GE3 guide or are interested in helping me with anything, say something in the comments section below.
Thank you for reading.
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