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And thus, we arrive on the finish of one other yr. A yr crammed with some very glorious video games, and a few very not glorious video games. And thru all of it, the RPS guides staff has been quietly toiling away, appeasing The Beast That Is Google with medium-rare slabs of search engine marketing meat, and offering the solutions to oft-asked Gaming questions.
It is vital to me to have a second within the yr the place we will step into the sunshine for a bit bit and have a good time all the things the guides staff has completed this yr. Normally we keep nicely out of the highlight, as a result of individuals solely like seeing guides in the event that they’re actively trying to find it. However at the moment, we’re staging a coup. We’re taking centre stage, and threatening the lighting technician with all method of unpleasant bodily experiences until they hold the highlight mounted firmly on us throughout this submit.
2023 has been a tremendous standout yr for guides. Let’s check out the video games which have outlined the yr for us, and have a good time a number of the unbelievable work our staff has revealed.
Let’s begin with the amount. This yr, we revealed over 1000 guides, which is greater than any yr in RPS’s historical past. That is fairly particular, and I am very assured we’ll smash that report subsequent yr too. A great, oh, 365 of these guides are day by day Wordle hints, in fact, however that is nonetheless an enormous accomplishment.
We started 2023 by trying forward at lots of the most anticipated upcoming video games, and writing posts masking all the things we find out about them: once they’re popping out, what they will be like, what would possibly occur within the story. I am significantly pleased with Rebecca’s (RPS in peace) submit on The Sims 5, which is written in a approach that solely a diehard Sims fan may write; and my very own posts painstakingly choosing aside the trailers and contexts for Mass Impact 5 and Marathon.
After that, the yr started in earnest with the Useless Area remake. I need to spotlight Hayden’s (RPS in peace) work on the huge Useless Area Remake walkthrough – a 12-page information which confidently leads the participant by each facet of the Sport‘s story. We do not usually write complete marketing campaign walkthroughs like this at RPS, so I am very pleased with how this one turned out.
The early a part of 2023 was additionally a really thrilling time for us, as a result of we had been enjoying round for the primary time with our new interactive mapping instrument. Utilizing this instrument, I created our first maps for Sons Of The Forest, Tchia, and afterward Diablo 4. Having interactive maps on RPS has been a dream of mine for years, and now we’re residing that dream, our maps – and the instrument itself – will solely get higher as time goes on.
Additionally, listed below are a number of the good icons I made for the maps. Gotta stretch my graphic design muscle mass occasionally!
Quick ahead by some beautiful instances guiding Wild Hearts and Wo Lengthy, and we arrive in the summertime of 2023 – a time dominated by one explicit motion RPG. Your entire staff labored on Diablo 4 guides for a great month or so, together with some much-appreciated freelance assist from Whitney Meers. Particular shoutouts need to go to Hayden’s glorious construct guides for all of the totally different lessons and past – for which they acquired many emails and feedback thanking them for the help for weeks afterwards. That is how they did a dang good job.
We additionally spent a whole lot of time enjoying Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, and compiling a painstaking spreadsheet of over 1000 collectible places and screenshots to assist our varied collectible places guides. Whitney additionally put collectively a unbelievable, amazingly complete Jedi: Survivor walkthrough which I am very proud to have on the location. I am additionally personally fairly happy with my very own information on the perfect lightsaber designs in Jedi: Survivor. I all the time love the prospect to get a bit inventive, and sizzling rattling, you can also make some fairly lightsaber hilts in that Sport.
Rebecca, in the meantime, did an enormous quantity of labor placing out countless guides for Honkai: Star Rail – a Sport that I used to be genuinely petrified of masking, as a result of HoYoverse video games are dense, complicated, impermeable monstrosities to attempt to cowl. However Rebecca delivered again and again with 30-odd guides masking all the things from the perfect characters to the varied complicated currencies and pity system.
We’re getting by the yr, however there are nonetheless some large video games forward. Video games such because the astonishingly profitable and glorious Baldur’s Gate 3. This Sport was lined collectively by Hayden and Whitney, who lined a dizzying variety of matters, on all the things from romancing Karlach to shedding your eye.
Starfield was even larger for us (garbage Sport IMO although), and regardless of having access to the Sport later than most, we delivered a herculean effort and wrote practically 50 guides prepared for Starfield’s launch. After which over the subsequent month, we elevated that quantity to nicely over 100 guides. Specifically, I might prefer to take a beat to ask for a second of silence for the hours of my life spent cataloguing all 1692 planets in Starfield. Was it value it? No. No, it was not.
At round this time of the yr, we sadly stated goodbye to Rebecca and Hayden. Rebecca defected and joined our sworn frenemies over at VG247, whereas Hayden was wrenched from our grasp by the interminable machinations of the UK’s increased training system.
Our new full-time guides writers, Kiera and Jeremy, have solely been a part of the staff because the finish of October. However they’ve each obtained off to a roaring begin, repairing the cracks within the partitions of many an previous information sequence, and placing out quite a lot of of their very own glorious guides.
Jeremy (with assist from our latest freelancer Grace Dean) took level on our Fashionable Warfare 3 guides, serving to us attain a dizzying whole of 131 guides – totally on weapons. Numerous weapons. Jeremy ought to be significantly pleased with his MW3 greatest weapons information and greatest Assault Rifles information, each of which do a unbelievable job of creating sense out of the stupefying choice of weapons within the newest Name Of Obligation. And Grace additionally deserves a shoutout for her many gun guides, in addition to explainers on matters from MW3’s Zombies mode to the selection of killstreaks or scorestreaks.
Kiera, in the meantime, obtained caught into enjoying Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora, one other Sport that’s deeply complicated in its personal approach. However unfazed, she launched a superb Avatar suggestions and methods information, which works nicely past the fundamentals to ship some very sensible and helpful recommendation. Add to this a plethora of different Avatar guides on all the things from the perfect weapons and armour to discovering Swamp Hive Nectar, and he or she – together with Jeremy – have nicely and really made their mark on the location for 2023.
I, in the meantime, spent what typically felt like all the winter placing collectively this Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty endings flowchart. I will not present it right here, as a result of spoilers, however it’s fairly fairly.
And that, in a nutshell, was 2023 from the attitude of the guides crew! It has been fairly a yr. Numerous very busy instances, but in addition heaps to be pleased with. And fairly rightly, we’ll end off the yr with a glance forward in any respect the upcoming PC video games of 2024. Here is to a different robust yr for RPS guides!
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