A Vice City solo.
As I am sure many of us have - I have always wanted to produce a solo I could be proud of. Towards the end of my first stint in stunting, this was planned to be in San Andreas. However with the final crew video from TMS in production - the little stunting I did was focused on Vice City, and I found myself enjoying it more than making attempts in San Andreas. I also discovered a couple of spots that were remarkable, both in terms of difficulty and the extent to which they pushed Vice City physics to the limit. Perfect centrepieces, were I to swap to making a Vice City solo instead. Unfortunately, I never landed them. And as TMS itself came to a close, combined with myself moving away to university and into young adulthood - stunting and gaming generally faded out of my life. A largely deliberate choice to make the most of those younger years.
Ten years, a degree, and a career later - I dipped my toes into stunting once more. Given my history and a warm welcome from SA stunters, this tended towards San Andreas to begin with. But once again, I just found Vice City more enjoyable to play around in. Adding to this - many of the spots I had in mind for San Andreas had, in the intervening years, already been landed by the likes of Taz, AR and similar. To my surprise, my few Vice City spots were undefeated. Whilst I enjoy less time-consuming stunts (in fact I prefer them, consciously), it seems I have a natural affinity for trying the ridiculous. Because what occured over the next few years, can only be described as obsession. With a decent amount of free time to spend, and also conscious that age and responsibilities will soon prevent me from pursuing such things, I decided to push myself to see these spots landed. Or at the very least, exhaust every possibility and time limit before giving up. As the months and years rolled on, however, the spots kept feeding back on themselves. Regularly demonstrating that they were, in fact, doable. Which drove me even harder to make them happen. And eventually, they did. I also found that spots, new and old, unlocked just through sheer practice and experimentation, and I was learning details of the physics right up until the last.
So we arrive at this video. All in all around 3200 hours of stunting time went into these clips. Months of recording and editing by Haywire. Countless more hours spent thinking about cinematography, music and discussing spots and ideas. I am more than comfortable saying - I gave this everything I had.
With all that said - we hope you enjoy. As ever, reaction videos are extremely appreciated. Nothing beats the visceral feeling you get from watching a video first time, and it easily justifies the time and effort that went into the project. Thank you.
Additional Notes- Replays were recorded by using Freeplay slow-mo, with the recordings returned to normal game speed, in the video editor. This emulates the look of 60fps gameplay, whilst the stunts themselves were obviously performed at 30fps.
- Extensive live recordings were taken for all stunts in this video. These will be made available ad-hoc should people want them.
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