Tag: Denial Anger Initiative

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Befriending Dwarves – Borderlands 2 S05E02 – Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep – True Vault Hunter Mode

Tiny Tina’s DLC continues to offer up some great combat, although a few of the supposedly humorous parts of this campaign fell a little flat for us. Having to repeatedly die attempting an impossible puzzle, only for the ‘joke’ to be revealed wasn’t particularly fun.

That said, the rest of this episode was really enjoyable, offering up lots of varied combat against a good mixture of enemies of different levels.

I’m particularly pleased with the way these videos are turning out now. The newly-added facecams add a new dimension, and if anything are forcing us to be a bit more descriptive and communicative, knowing otherwise the bottom third of the video is taken up by two relatively static images of us starting slack-jawed out our monitors!

My recollection is that this DLC finishes really strongly, so I’m looking forward to continuing the series.

The second hour of our Tiny Tina adventure was great fun if you ignore the puzzle that only reveals it’s impossible to solve after you’ve killed yourself several times trying to solve it. That sort of game mechanic annoys the shit out of me.

The rest is of good quality and great fun. The setting is medieval with a dungeons and dragons flavour, and taking on bows and arrows with SMG’s and shotguns does sometimes feel a little unfair but…

On the technical front, we are starting to hit our stride now with the facecam. One of the rules we imposed on ourselves when we created the channel was that bringing the separate video feeds together as the final product should not become an industry in itself. Of course, it has been a learning curve. The goal has been to spend no more than an hour putting together each video. The first videos took three hours, but once the process was in the bag I got it down to 30 minutes, and then we introduced something else, that took it back to three hours, and then process and practice brought it sub 60 minutes again.

One of the biggest technical challenges at the beginning was synchronising two videos onto one screen. Synchronising the videos involved a lot of frame counting, subtracting frame counts, shifting timelines back and forth until I discovered you could select both sequences in Premiere Pro, right-click and select synchronise!

All hail synchronise. It doesn’t do it precisely every time; usually, it’s a couple of frames out. But adjusting those last few frames is a few minutes over the frustrating 20 minutes it was.

Hopefully, we’ll get to share more insight into the technical aspects of GreyOps over the coming weeks.

Have fun, see you soon.

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Tina in Denial – Borderlands 2 S05E01 – Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep – True Vault Hunter Mode

Tiny Tina’s DLC is a bit of a departure from the normal Borderlands fare. Instead of taking on the usual opponents, this DLC sees us fighting Orcs, trees, knights and various other fantastical creatures. Doing it with sniper rifles and rocket launchers does seem a little out of place however!

As seems fairly standard with the add-on content, the early levels are a little weak, but this DLC soon gets into its stride giving us some decent bouts of combat. Tina quickly tugs at our heart strings, seemingly unable to accept that Roland is dead. This theme continues throughout the DLC, and I remember the ending being particularly poignant.

This video also continues the evolution of our video presentation, and now sees JBG and I appearing in the videos in full HD glory, allowing you the dubious pleasure of watching us as we commentate on our various escapades.

I’m looking forward to continuing this DLC, as my recollection is that it builds to a very strong conclusion.

My first impressions of Tiny Tina’ DLC were not positive. Skeletons are one thing, but shooting walking trees are another. I’m glad we were committed to playing the DLC though because it gets a lot better once you are past the first orc village.

Throughout the campaign, there is a good blend of opponents ranging from skeletons, knights, archers, sorcerers and orcs. Throw in a dragon or two too.

Tina’s DLC has an excellent narrative on loss as well. It is very powerful, starting with the introduction of a story favourite at the end of this first episode.

If you have been watching our videos for a while (and who wouldn’t) you will notice a few changes in the layout; for a start, you can now see our faces. In just a few weeks, we have gone from having a twirling avatar beneath each of our screens to a gnarly face overlaid on the background and video.

Creating that sort of video overlay with a transparent background takes a certain level of technology; namely a greenscreen. Once we decided we were going to have our faces and then saw that we each either had a wardrobe in the background or a bookcase, it wasn’t a great leap to decide greenscreen was the future. We both bought the same fold-out green screen, which is excellent but HUUGE! Also folding it back up is an art form in itself.

Greenscreen is a challenge in every video because the screen must be well and evenly lit to remove it from the video. Currently, AD and I use bright off the shelf ceiling bulbs. If you see any static in the background or the transparent background isn’t entirely transparent, it is because we’re recording in the spare room and not in a studio. We have found recording the facecam at 1080P with a high resolution does result in a lot less static.

There have been challenges at every step creating these videos and still are, it’s one of the reasons they’re worth making. As we go forward, we’ll be discussing them and the solutions in greater detail. If you want videos demonstrating the process, let us know in the video comments.

For now, have fun. See you in the next one.