Hey everyone, I just wanted to give an official & big happy shout out to all the new members to the Cynical Guides group! 100 Members! Welcome! At the moment, there isn't a whole lot happening with this Steam Group outside of my little updates on guide progress & interacting with you all in the comments. As of now, I will try to make an effort to be present in the Group Chat. I work off of two computers (PC for gaming, & a separate laptop for writing my guides at the same time); if you see me in game, I will also make an attempt to have the Chat open. No false promises as I am pretty introverted, but I do encourage discourse or conversation (of course being decent human beings, I've got no mods).

As I mentioned earlier today on the main Group Comments, I have nothing to release just yet but have around 10 or so guides in progress at the moment & I am hoping to release at least 4-6 of them by the end of the year. Three to be released in November, then December is a bit of a wild card.

Unfortunately/fortunately, a lot of my day jobs work for the winter ended up falling through to "upper level bureaucracy" & a lack of funding for the projects I typically oversee. The fortunately part of that... means I in theory have a lot of time to do gaming/guide writing if I can keep myself motivated. As it stands, I have plenty to keep me busy & many in progress guides piling up over the four years I have been doing this. However. With this potential* good chunk of guide time I am faced with two dilemmas that I would like your input on:

Arkham Knight: I am currently around 1/4 of the way through the Akrham Knight guide. I put in a good 60 hours into it way back in April of this year, & I am 3/4 of the way done the first playthrough & getting all of the bajillion Collectibles. I maybe have another 10-15 hours left on the first playthrough. The first playthrough is the longest part of the guide, as NG+ is a basically a speedrun just to finish it. The DLC Episodes are short, though there are a few of them, & then it leaves the gruelling Challenges gauntlets per every character that these games are notorious for.

I can spend December as a dedicated Arkham Knight game & see if I can put another 60+ hours into it to either finish the game/guide or be very close with only a few of the Challenges left I need to chip away at... or.

Elden Ring: As you all know, I have been promising an Elden Ring guide since the day it released in 2022. It has been long enough since Shadow of the Erdtree (which didn't add Achievements) that I am confident I can safely make a guide for the game. This is a game I have never played once yet, & as a long time Fromsoftware fan, I have been dying to play it. However, this will also be the very first "Souls game" I have written a guide for that I have not already beaten many times over & I am not totally sure how I will approach making a guide in an efficient while also spoiler free (for myself) process. I have been doing this for long enough though, that I should be able to do it with only minor spoilers.

Elden Ring will be a huge & difficult guide for me to make due to how large some of the Areas are for describing where to find Achievement related Items or Spells. I also plan to (try to) make it as spoiler free for the reader as well. All this means, is that it will take me a while to get through.

So the dilemma is: should I stick to finishing Arkham Knight, or do I put it on hold to start another large project, Elden Ring. Personally, I am fine with either option as both are most certainly getting done; which ever I finish first, the other will be slotted for the winter/December of 2025. Let me know below if you have a preference!

Without overextending my promised guides for 2025, I plan to get the whole Dishonored series & Crysis series completed amongst many other "swappable games/guides" depending on how I am feeling throughout the process. With Dishonored & Crysis done, I will then move on to the Deus Ex & Doom series for 2026... Somewhere in between those (or near future & beyond), I plan to cover Mafia, GTA, Assassins Creed, Borderlands, Starfield, Divinity – Original Sin (& then Baldur’s Gate 3), God of War, Nioh, Kingdom Come Deliverance, Monster Hunter, Xcom, State of Decay, & Tomb Raider amongst many many more.

Once again, thanks for supporting me for so long & I look forward to many more years of putting out guides. I definitely intend to be doing this for a while, if not forever!