Managing Spoilers
Still struggling with the best way to notate the large amount of information from all my playthroughs. I am sure there will be a lot of false starts as I try to figure out exactly what works and what doesn’t, and how to best to write down everything I come across. So far, this has been the biggest hurdle.
Currently, I’m using OmniOutliner to detail and section out note-taking. I’ve separated story-based notes and walkthrough notes, with other sections for shop notes, random conversation notes. This kind of categorization is overkill, but until I figure out a rough of the bulk of the guide, compartmentalizing is probably the best thing.
There’s a few different styles of writing in walkthroughs to use, regarding spoilers. Some are complete bare-bones no-spoiler step-by-step walk throughs that basically say:
“Go through the door. Watch the event, go east and open the chest. Follow the pathway north until you get to a fork, and enter the door to the west to fight ‘Boss 4′.”
While I appreciate the complete and utter lack of spoilers, the lack of any writing spark or game-locators is off-putting. Some people follow guides to the letter, page by page, so they’ll know exactly what the vague instructions are trying to tell them. However, I think a larger number of people crack open the guides when they want to make sure they aren’t missing anything, or in case they are stuck or looking up a reference table. In those cases, it would take a frustrating amount of time trying to backtrack their own individual path and mold it to what the guide is telling them to do.
I think the key is to balance the two. A guide’s purpose isn’t to tell you the same story that the game is telling you, nor is it to be so sparse as to be unnavigable. While outlining and bringing light to often-missed story aspects and arcs of the game is a goal of my guide, rewriting the script isn’t.
I think by the 5th or 6th playthrough I’ll finally have a rough idea how to properly take game notes.
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