And thus, we arrive on the finish of one other yr. A yr stuffed with some very wonderful video games, and a few very not wonderful video games. And thru all of it, the RPS guides workforce has been quietly toiling away, appeasing The Beast That Is Google with medium-rare slabs of web optimization 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 are able to step into the sunshine for just a little bit and rejoice all the pieces the guides workforce has achieved this yr. Often we keep properly out of the highlight, as a result of folks solely like seeing guides in the event that they’re actively looking for it. However right this moment, we’re staging a coup. We’re taking centre stage, and threatening the lighting technician with all method of unpleasant bodily experiences except they maintain the highlight fastened firmly on us in the course of this put up.
2023 has been a tremendous standout yr for guides. Let’s check out the video games which have outlined the yr for us, and rejoice among the implausible work our workforce has printed.
Let’s begin with the amount. This yr, we printed 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 document subsequent yr too. A very good, oh, 365 of these guides are every day Wordle hints, after all, however that is nonetheless an enormous accomplishment.
We started 2023 by wanting forward at lots of the most anticipated upcoming video games, and writing posts masking all the pieces we learn about them: after they’re popping out, what they will be like, what would possibly occur within the story. I am notably proud of Rebecca’s (RPS in peace) put up on The Sims 5, which is written in a method that solely a diehard Sims fan might 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 Lifeless Area remake. I need to spotlight Hayden’s (RPS in peace) work on the large Lifeless Area Remake walkthrough – a 12-page information which confidently leads the participant by way of each facet of the sport’s story. We do not typically write complete marketing campaign walkthroughs like this at RPS, so I am very proud of 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 taking part in 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 dwelling that dream, our maps – and the instrument itself – will solely get higher as time goes on.
Additionally, listed here are among the good icons I made for the maps. Gotta stretch my graphic design muscle tissues from time to time!
Quick ahead by way of some beautiful instances guiding Wild Hearts and Wo Lengthy, and we arrive in the summertime of 2023 – a time dominated by one specific motion RPG. Your complete workforce labored on Diablo 4 guides for a very good month or so, together with some much-appreciated freelance assist from Whitney Meers. Particular shoutouts should go to Hayden’s wonderful construct guides for all of the completely different lessons and past – for which they obtained many emails and feedback thanking them for the help for weeks afterwards. That is how you recognize they did a dang good job.
We additionally spent lots of time taking part in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, and compiling a painstaking spreadsheet of over 1000 collectible areas and screenshots to help our varied collectible areas guides. Whitney additionally put collectively a implausible, amazingly complete Jedi: Survivor walkthrough which I am very proud to have on the positioning. I am additionally personally fairly happy with my very own information on the greatest lightsaber designs in Jedi: Survivor. I all the time love the prospect to get a bit inventive, and scorching rattling, you can also make some fairly lightsaber hilts in that recreation.
Rebecca, in the meantime, did an enormous quantity of labor placing out infinite guides for Honkai: Star Rail – a recreation that I used to be genuinely terrified of masking, as a result of HoYoverse video games are dense, advanced, impermeable monstrosities to try to cowl. However Rebecca delivered repeatedly with 30-odd guides masking all the pieces from the greatest characters to the varied complicated currencies and pity system.
We’re getting by way of the yr, however there are nonetheless some large video games forward. Video games such because the astonishingly profitable and wonderful Baldur’s Gate 3. This recreation was coated collectively by Hayden and Whitney, who coated a dizzying variety of matters, on all the pieces from romancing Karlach to dropping your eye.
Starfield was even greater for us (garbage recreation IMO although), and regardless of gaining 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 following month, we elevated that quantity to properly over 100 guides. Specifically, I would wish 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 price 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 larger training system.
Our new full-time guides writers, Kiera and Jeremy, have solely been a part of the workforce for the reason that finish of October. However they’ve each received 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 wonderful guides.
Jeremy (with assist from our latest freelancer Grace Dean) took level on our Trendy Warfare 3 guides, serving to us attain a dizzying whole of 131 guides – totally on weapons. A lot of weapons. Jeremy must be notably pleased with his MW3 greatest weapons information and greatest Assault Rifles information, each of which do a implausible 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, received caught into taking part in Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora, one other recreation that’s deeply complicated in its personal method. However unfazed, she launched a superb Avatar ideas and tips information, which fits properly past the fundamentals to ship some very sensible and helpful recommendation. Add to this a plethora of different Avatar guides on all the pieces from the greatest weapons and armour to discovering Swamp Hive Nectar, and he or she – together with Jeremy – have properly and really made their mark on the positioning for 2023.
I, in the meantime, spent what generally felt like your complete winter placing collectively this Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty endings flowchart. I will not present it right here, as a result of spoilers, but it surely’s fairly fairly.
And that, in a nutshell, was 2023 from the attitude of the guides crew! It has been fairly a yr. A lot of very busy instances, but additionally tons 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. This is to a different robust yr for RPS guides!
