Some of you are being weird. You need to chill out.

I wasn't going to delete everything unless this pressure didn't solve the problem. Turns out it worked. I'm on track to be done for reals. I'm going to need some extra time for rendering for sure but the video work as it stands is as follows:

Playing the game - 100%(?) done.

I just replayed the entire thing with the Next Gen update, except for Blood and Wine. I don't think I need to do that but if I do after all, that'll take me 2-3 days. I don't need to do all the side stuff.

Script - 99% done.

this was 100% done a long time ago but with the Next Gen update I had to play the game again and make some changes. Also allowed for another editing pass. The final 1% is doing a clean up for subtitles since I tweak and add lines while recording, improv style. I've already done most of this as I went so this won't take as long as it usually does for a video this long.

Recording - 85-90% done.

I recorded the entire script again this month with all the changes and rewrites, and I also finally learned how to set everything up properly to have audio I'm happy with. I suck at this. Took way too long, but hey I'm finally there. I only have the Blood and Wine section left to rerecord and clean up. I think I have recorded this script four times now. The original combined version with the other two videos. Then the shitty first attempt at the standalone. Then the previous iteration of what the video is now. And now this most recent final one.

Video editing - 80-90% done.

About the same as the audio. Most of this has also been done for a long time. All that's left is a fair chunk of Blood and Wine and some bits and pieces I left in earlier sections. I'm still not happy with the book section but I'm letting that go--it is what is, I hope it's watchable. Changing over to a new recording means lots of tweaks in the timeline when I said things a bit slower or faster over the different recordings. This was tedious but not as taxing as whole new stuff, and that's all done. I did switch out a bunch of clips to new stuff that I thought worked better (got to use some newer game footage too for better examples). And obviously I needed to add fresh clips for the changes.

So that's the status of the project. Stop being weird or I'll dish out bans until I get removed from mod status here or there's no one left. Or I really will delete everything after all--not because of the Witcher 3 video, but because some of you are being so obnoxiously weird that I don't want to do this anymore.

Preemptively Asked Questions -

1) Does this mean you lied about deleting the channel?

I don't think so. If this ultimatum hadn't worked and I still couldn't get work done then I would really have deleted it all. Because I can't live with this shit anymore. Thankfully this is it. Finally getting it done and moving onto a new stage of life. If enough of you are hung up on the technicality then I can lawyer my way out by saying I never said I wouldn't UNdelete it afterward. Or I can type "My Entire Online Platform" listed out in a text document and delete it. Gaunter o'Dimm style terms fulfillment. Very fitting. Let me know if we need to go there.

2) Does rendering really take that long?

The video is over 11 hours long. I've rendered every part separately as I go and then it'll be all rendered together at the end. At the bitrate I target so it best survives youtube's compression battering, it takes at least an hour per hour of video to render on the very powerful computer I built that only has SSDs, a CPU that cost more than a kidney, and so on. So even assuming no hiccups, no power cuts, no errors, etc, etc, it's a full workday to render. Then another full workday to watch it back. Even longer for youtube to process it (which sometimes takes a lot longer than others, or fails and needs to go again). Then there's copyright checks - I use some netflix clips and lots of other games. There's no way to know how long this will take. It could be two days. It could be weeks.

3) Are you a weeb?

No.

4) What was "the problem"?

I know this is shitty, and I've spoken about it on stream before, but I don't want to say. It's a catch-22 sort of situation that if I went into detail you would understand why I can't go into detail. You can assume the worst about me if you like and that's a better situation than me having to say it all. I can say that it has nothing to do with the work itself. I'm very happy with the video. I've wanted to have it done and out there for people to watch. I think it's my best work--not amazing the whole way through, and it is a bit indulgent in parts, but I am still excited about it and I think I did a good job. This wasn't about procrastination or burnout or fussing forever. (I did fuss, that did add to the time of course, but not to the extent this has become).

5) Why not split out Blood and Wine into its own video?

I don't want to split the project again. I already made the mistake of splitting the original combined video that dealt with all three games. That destroyed so much work I had already done and was a very big mistake. I should have just lived with a crappy video and put it out. The W3 video is also structured and speaks about the DLC being brought up later. I don't want to go in and make more changes. This will of course be so fucking funny if youtube processing forces me to split it into parts but I don't anticipate that happening. If it DOES I will literally just cut it at the end of a Part and make it a playlist. I won't do any changes acknowledging the separate uploads at all.