Echo Bizarre

New written mini-essay about Star Wars Visions Season 3 just went up on my Patreon for all tiers! Here's a preview:

I’ve mentioned in a couple different videos that Star Wars Visions, the non-canon international animated anthology show, is one of my favorite Star Wars things of the last decade, probably second only to Andor. “Screecher’s Reach” from Season 2 is one of the best Star Wars stories ever made and single-handedly justifies the entire project, though a number of other episodes (especially “Village Bride” and “Spy Dancer”) are also really great. So Season 3 dropped at the end of October and I figured I’d do a rapid-fire mini-review of all nine episodes. I think overall this season had the fewest episodes I really liked, but I also appreciated the shift in focus away from being so lopsidedly Jedi-focused. After all, if the point of Visions is to have unlimited creativity, it’s nice to see such creativity applied to the less mystical parts of the galaxy. Anyway, here’s the rapid-fire review list...

www.patreon.com/echobizarre

1 week ago | [YT] | 23

Echo Bizarre

10,000 subs! I'm so grateful to everyone who's followed me so far, and I hope you'll stick with me moving forward as I get more ambitious and try new things and get bigger and bigger until one day in a feat of Icarusian hubris I flame out spectacularly and then am forgotten except for maybe a "The Fall of Echo Bizarre" video from some disgruntled former fan.

As I teased at the end of my Kingdom Hearts video, my next major project is an in-depth Deus Ex narrative analysis (I swear I committed to this before the remaster was announced). Hope you're excited for a close reading of the UNATCO Handbook. I have no idea how long it will end up being or how long it will take, but since I just hit this milestone I think I'll be throwing together a quick and easy celebration video that'll be a "Revival CRPG Story Tierlist" some time this week. Hopefully that will be fun and not screw up how the algorithm treats my videos too much. Also I've clipped out a bunch of moments from my previous videos that I'll be gradually uploading as shorts over the next month and change, so if you'd be interested in those keep an eye out (and also feel free to recommend your favorite short moments for me to add). I think if possible I'll avoid sending subscriber notifications for these shorts so you aren't spammed by clips of stuff you've probably already seen and only get them for my full videos, so feel free to check in every now and then manually to see if there's one that interests you.

Anyway, huge thanks once again and I hope you like what I've got planned.

1 month ago | [YT] | 68

Echo Bizarre

New Patreon Mini-Essay about Cyberpunk 2077 just went up. Here's the first one and a half paragraphs for a preview:

"This is another mini-essay I’m going to spend fixating on a criticism I have for a game that I otherwise really liked. Five years after its disastrous launch and two years after its 2.0/Phantom Liberty redemption, Cyberpunk 2077 is very much worth playing. One of my favorite things is that most missions play out like miniature immersive sim levels, making the whole experience (especially as a primarily stealth-built character) feel like an open world Dishonored game. Bouncing between a succession of mini-Mankind Divided levels with interesting setups while the radio was playing the Jazz station and the cyberpunk megacity was rainy was some of the most fun I’ve had this year. But something kept nagging me at the back of my mind: would V really be doing this right now? After all, once Act Two begins and Johnny Silverhand is implanted in V’s head, the ripperdoc Viktor Vektor tells them they have “a few weeks, tops” to live before the Silverhand engram completely overwrites their mind. Not years, not months, a few weeks. This one line may be one of the worst writing choices in any game I’ve played in recent memory.

Make no mistake, the game has a lot of good writing, especially the relationship with Johnny Silverhand and the Phantom Liberty expansion as a whole. But this is a game bursting with fun side quests unrelated to the main plot and this line, innocuous by itself, destroys any non-metagaming reason for V to engage with any of it."

Full post here: www.patreon.com/posts/bonus-mini-essay-137762918

2 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 21

Echo Bizarre

In celebration (?) of the Raid video overtaking my Pillars/Baldur's video as my most viewed, I just wanted to do a bit of an audience check-in regarding what videos you've liked the most and what you've disliked to gauge what sort of stuff I should focus my efforts on going forward.

Personally, across my whole channel I think my Existential Crisis About AI and Art, Cool Games of 2024, and Veilguard critique are my top three best videos, though maybe Disco Elysium Successors takes the Games of 2024 spot in the trio depending on the day. Meanwhile the videos I'm least proud of are my Boba Fett critique (the "Boba's Arc" chapter drags a bit and makes it take too long to get to the more interesting points about genre, which I do still think are worthwhile), the Tainted Grail video (my decision to throw in assorted thoughts about the whole game on top of the Golden Ending discussion makes the video unfocused, which I knew going in but did it anyway), and my Githyanki addendum (I don't think there's anything meaningfully wrong with it I don't care about as much as my other stuff).

What about you? What's your favorite and least favorite video of mine and why? What sort of stuff would you like to see going forward? I can't make promises to act on any specific requests but I'm certainly open to considering your suggestions

2 months ago | [YT] | 49

Echo Bizarre

Just put up a new Patreon Mini-Essay for all members about Promise Mascot Agency.

Here's a short preview:

"I typically don’t get excited about any media because I don’t want to fall into traps of getting hyped and then building unreasonable expectations and being let down. I find that policy has served me quite well and enabled me to engage more directly with works on their own merits, even when they’re deemed disappointing by others like Deathloop or Avowed. Sometimes, though, I get excited despite myself like with Promise Mascot Agency, brought to us by the creators of Paradise Killer, one of my favorite games ever. Promise is a very good game and I would recommend it, as I’ve done in a video or two already. That said, I am now going to spend the rest of this short article talking about why its exploration mechanics didn’t work for me nearly as well as its predecessor."

If you're interested in the full article, as well as articles about Black Mesa and El Paso, Elsewhere, and can afford to spare $1-$5 each month, you can join any of my Patreon tiers here:
www.patreon.com/EchoBizarre/membership

2 months ago | [YT] | 14

Echo Bizarre

Hey everyone, and welcome to all who've joined in the last month or so, I'm super happy the Raid video justified its own ridiculousness. Just wanted to share that I've added a new reward to all tiers of my Patreon: short, written mini-essays covering media I've recently experienced (mostly games I'd imagine) that I have a couple thoughts on I'd like to share but not enough to justify an actual video about, especially since most games would be indies that the algorithm probably doesn't care about. I expect a lot of these mini-essays will resemble the sections I gave to each game in my Cool Games of 2024 video, since I'm not sure I'll make another full production like it. The first of these mini-essays just dropped, about the game El Paso, Elsewhere.

Once again, all three levels of backer get these bonus mini-essays in addition to the old rewards, so if you haven't checked out the Patreon yet and this sounds like something you'd be interested in, feel free to give it a look here: www.patreon.com/EchoBizarre/membership

4 months ago | [YT] | 68

Echo Bizarre

Oh hey I'm at 4K subs, that's rad. Huge thanks to everyone who's joined up so far. If you missed it (because I didn't mention it at all besides quietly adding it to video and channel descriptions, oops) I started up a Patreon which you can find here
www.patreon.com/echobizarre
Any and all support is greatly appreciated if you can afford it.

If you do sign up don't use the iOS app, use a browser, there's apparently some tomfoolery going on with extra App Store fees or something.

Also, I feel like I should clip bits of my videos for YouTube Shorts, and while I have some moments already in mind I'm completely open to suggestions from my audience regarding what segments from any of my videos you think would make good 1-3 minute clips. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

8 months ago | [YT] | 19

Echo Bizarre

Quick update to the schedule from my last community post: I'm moving up the Veilguard and Avowed videos ahead of the others I mentioned for next year. I figure since those will be topical and trendy and I am genuinely interested in playing and discussing both, I can build more of an audience with those before getting into the nicher ideas. Maybe I'll have missed the bus on Veilguard if I put it out late Jan/early Feb but hopefully I'll be timelier for Avowed. The other two videos I mentioned are still coming, just a little later.

10 months ago | [YT] | 26

Echo Bizarre

All right, I've officially hit 2.5K subscribers which is a very minor milestone but I'll take it. Thanks so much to everyone who's subbed so far. I wanted to give a preview of my video plans for the next little while so you know what to expect from my channel in the near future. The titles and release times are super tentative right now, and I might throw in some much shorter videos like my Open World Games one if there's interest. We'll see what my schedule allows for. I also may completely change my mind about one as I start working on it but this is at least what I want to do right now:

-End of December: Cool Games I Played in 2024-
Just me praising a bunch of cool indie games to end the year with some positivity and game recommendations, because there's some amazing stuff out there.

-January/February: The True Successors to Disco Elysium-
Some weeks ago there was a flurry of announcements that fragments of the Disco Elysium team had spread out and made their own studios with competing projects to take up the mantle of "Disco Elysium Successor." XXX Nightshift even has a trailer already. But I think we've already got some strong contenders for the crown: Slay the Princess and NORCO. So this video will talk about those two games and how they clearly carry on the legacy of Disco Elysium without being obvious copycats like XXX Nightshift looks like it will be.

-April (?): Historical Atrocity as Power Fantasy-
Dragon Age Inquisition and Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous both feature the player leading organizations named for real-world entities with very dark, bloody histories (the Inquisition and Crusades, respectively), but makes their versions of the organizations vessels for power fantasies. How do these games make that translation in their own ways? How are their approaches different? Do they work? Do they not work? We'll find out together. I'm putting a question mark after April because I am going to have to do some actual historical research for this one which might take a while.

-Some time after I get around to playing Veilguard: The Only Honest Critique of Veilguard-
There's a lot of ragebait about Veilguard right now. I'll pour a cup of water onto the raging trash fire by making my own full deep-dive critique that actually addresses the game's successes and failures on its own terms. Whatever they may be. I haven't played it yet. Maybe it'll still be all negative, but I expect "mixed feelings" is the more likely outcome.

-Some time after Avowed comes out and I play it: A Review of Avowed-
My first video to get noticed was partly about how much I love Pillars of Eternity so I kind of have to do a followup on how Avowed carries the Eoran torch once it's out, don't I?

So that's my intention for now. If any of those look especially exciting to you, let me know! If any of them look especially awful and uninteresting, also let me know (nicely)!

1 year ago | [YT] | 28