#374 | This Is What It's Like When Worlds Collide

21:03Colin Moriarty:I didn't want to give it up this early. So thanks for blowing it.

21:08Chris Ansell:You're welcome. Patreon.com slash Last Day Media for early ad-free access to this show and every episode we do in every show that we do across the network, including our xbox podcast by the by cog and maddie defining duke punching up which is brad micah and gene that's our nintendo podcast and so on and so forth so inside i mean brad had already come up everyone's juicing brad up all the time you know i feel like he's getting very powerful very powerful indeed he might be the second most powerful after you dustin just in terms of his there's a spirit about him right and especially his point and people will follow right especially with Dagan gone now he benefits even more from the like well there's got to be someone we don't bust balls with and it's him no so very very very powerful figure um so yes patreon.com slash last day media early after access we appreciate your support over there that gets you discord access and rss feeds and spotify access and the ability to submit your inquiries on the various threads in the news feed each week for the various shows that go live and then are deleted promptly and we do that of course so you don't waste your time submitting to things that we don't need anymore but of course no ads on audio early access to audio and video please enjoy sacred symbols plus also a major perk that's our weekly supplement to this episode or to these shows where we do deep dives on games and fun little lists we have a fun little time interviews and uh recently another review discussion and spoiler cast one that popped up that i didn't expect was going to be available to us i think we actually kind of made it on the fly during sacred streaming on monday so we recorded it on wednesday it goes live saturday a day after this goes live so check it out sacred symbols plus on patreon.com slash last day media all about the fourth mafia game mafia the old country chris and i along with lock mort did about two hours on the game.

23:07Chris Ansell:And we both really, or we all rather really enjoyed it. And Tyler Van Labrini wrote in and said, hello, CDC. Are you planning to do a spoiler cast for Mafia, the old country? I'd be fascinated to hear the LSM crew dive deep into the story because as a massive fan of the Mafia series, I found this one to be disappointing. While I enjoy, excuse me, the Sicilian vibes, I found the story to be painfully cliche. It's full of interesting setups without any satisfying payoffs. Please give me two hours of content telling me how wrong I am. I'll hang up and listen now. We did just that. So please check it out.

23:34Chris Ansell:patreon.com slash last day media sacred streaming continues unabated 1 p.m eastern time on our youtube channel each and every monday we appreciate people showing up it's been a lot of fun the sacred league part two was this past monday you can watch the vod on patreon as well but it's free for everyone to watch live and of course we'll have lock mort do the cut downs of each episode so you can check those out on youtube for free the following week um tomorrow well actually it's today so when you're listening to this right around the time this goes live an hour after this goes live on patreon uh like i said earlier micah and i along with dustin will be on our youtube channel for an off cycle free for all even in vod stream so go check it out later as we play co-op gears of war and we did get it all going i signed into my microsoft account i made all sorts of connections necessary and then i was like i can't find you in my list but it's because i have so many fucking friends there's like playstation logos and there's like they're not listed there's not alphabetical or anything it's just kind of lists everyone that's online and i have a hundred i had like 187 friends online so it was like many it was like 12 or 13 pages of people and then it was like all these playstation logos and then she was on like the eighth page like you know the seven down or whatever it was a little xbox logo i was like okay great um so found her got that all sorted out and dustin you did your stuff to get her to set up on the um on discord and with the audio and the video and all the rest she's gonna have a little bit of

25:01Colin Moriarty:like a rogue sort of thing going on there yeah when i was helping set up i saw rush in the background oh i enjoyed that yeah so yeah it's it'll dude this will be the first well on a show maybe you've posted on on twitter you or micah but the view of the the moriarty living room

25:18Chris Ansell:yeah yeah i mean it's nothing to write home about it's just a normal everyday living room it's nice yeah i mean i like it i like my space personally it's a nice we have an

25:27Colin Moriarty:what they call the open concept so the downstairs is really just one huge room

25:33Chris Ansell:the concepts of a living room a dining room the concepts of it right the dining room and you got the kitchen and you got the living area the den kind of so yeah yeah cool yeah what's i wonder what the view i didn't really think about that i guess you'll be i didn't even really uh think about the lighting and all that but i'm sure it'll be fun it looked it's it'll yeah it's fine it's good okay um let's see oh i already read this guy's thing but i liked his name wake up got a lot of dick to put in a man's butt that was his name that's uh chop suey right chop suey i think

26:10Colin Moriarty:that's i think that's what he's doing oh got a lot of dick to put in yeah oh wake up got a lot to put a man's butt stupid that's that's a stretch my guy yeah did derek do that these are these are a lot of the names that we get it's just people making they don't even clarify the song first they just kind of like say shit like this and then assume we'll get it so i'm i'm weird i'm attuned to this now like i spot it it's like oh that's clearly a gay parody

26:38Chris Ansell:i like that song you're ruining it i like that song i love that song actually it is great yeah that album is sick yeah um so i'm sorry i already i already went through anything because yes we are going to be doing gears and uh so we're looking forward to that and then finally merch last stand media dot store get your t-shirts your sweatshirts your hats your stickers etc etc your copy of hypoxia physical on ps5 if you like bobby burke wrote in and said hello gents just wanted if you give a shout out to the man at the john bellion concert at forest hills for his sacred symbol shirt. I didn't want to issue a stand down in front of your girl, but I was with you in spirit.

27:16Chris Ansell:I didn't even know who this was. John Bellion. And I'm embarrassed by that because he's Long Island's own John Bellion. I've added him to the list of important people from Long Island, which is very fun. And he was nominated for multiple Grammy Awards for album of the year. So it is I who was out of touch. Apparently, I'm sure you guys know who this person is, but i don't i have no idea no really you don't neither of you know that this person is i've heard the name i couldn't name a single song or what he looks like and then now here's a guy here's a guy says was a fellows can we expect a merch restocker new drop anytime soon particularly a stealth shirt restocker a fall hoodie drop thanks i mean we got to get on it i mean it's it's it is imminent like with something we have to do in the next we have to at least make a choice in the next week i would say so yeah yeah you reminded me there is one new thing that i'm going

28:16Colin Moriarty:to launch today as of right now in fact if you're listening to it's live uh there's a new pope sticker live well of the new pope i don't remember his name what is it pope american man hope americana uh sacred pope sticker live now new pope go get it leo the 14th leo the four i don't know I named it when I put it in the Shopify account, but I've already forgotten.

28:41Chris Ansell:It is. It's Leo the 14th.

28:42Colin Moriarty:Okay. Well, yeah. New sticker. I would show it to you here on camera, but I actually don't have one. They're all at Colin and Micah's house. So.

28:51Chris Ansell:That's right. Yeah, I saw them. They are very nice. It's nice that we lean into the sacrilegious iconography so deeply at this godless moment in history. It's great. All right. Let's get into some topics of discussion. um i wanted to start actually just giving a shout out to a friend of the show um and so i actually wanted to talk about this last week but i totally spaced on it um jake kanto he's a a british artist and he's an artist of so it's a k-o-n-t-o-u his website is jake kanto art.com so j-a-k-e k-o-n-t-o-u-a-r-t.com um the reason that this person is relevant to last stand fans and really collins last stand fans is that he did before he was famous he did art for me um he was like a listener and is a listener and i'll tell you what he's done since then so that people understand why i'm saying he's famous but if you listen to the q a's we do on patreon every uh week or every month rather he's the one that does like the side profile art of me that we still use like that which was like the original collins last stand art other than the logos and stuff and stuff but you know canny people started to notice him and he ended up making in more recent years a shit ton of a beautiful art official movie posters game art and so on so he did like the box art for uncharted legacy of thieves collection as an example he did the box art for the texas chainsaw Massacre game.

30:23Chris Ansell:He did a bunch of official Ghost of Tsushima art. He did official Resident Evil 4 art. Final Fantasy 16 art.

30:30Colin Moriarty:The 16 art is fucking unreal.

30:34Chris Ansell:And he works for DC Comics and Marvel and all these things. And he did a project with Konami. And it's for a poster for the game that is available now to purchase. And I'm not getting paid for this or anything. I just like him and I think his art is awesome. And to be honest with you when I saw the poster I was thinking to myself like wow that looks like a Jake art and art not really thinking anything of it and thinking like I would love to get this Metal Gear Solid Delta poster that he's talking about the snake eater poster um so uh I've got I've procured procured us all copies of it oh which is cool um and it's on sale until September 12th and I want to make sure I have the details right because it's not at his personal website it is okay i found it so um it's available now apollogallery.com a-p-o-l-l-o gallery dot com it's available until september 12th and it's really beautiful poster and i have a few of his other things that i've already framed i just haven't i have to i'm we're getting our we want to get our downstairs painted before we the downstairs has just gotten so brute it's just white and it's just gotten so bruised over the years like people moving around and just scuffling around.

31:46Chris Ansell:I'm like, I want to paint this space, but I don't want to hang things up and then take them down or whatever. So, um, and I just think it's a beautiful poster and I'm really, really into the game as we're going to talk about later. We're all metal gear fans. The, the imagery in the, who's it? Yochi Shinkawa, right? Like that, that it's just beautiful that, that style, you know, those character designs. And, uh, I just really like him. So, um, I wanted to give a shout out to that and yeah, she could definitely go check that out if you'd like at Apollo gallery dot com which apparently is like his own licensing website that they're doing a bunch of things so he's an entrepreneur as well and i think that metal gear fans out there were like that so yeah i'm not getting paid or anything like that for that i just wanted to kind of throw that out there because i think it's really beautiful do you guys have you guys seen this poster

32:30Colin Moriarty:i've seen the poster and i obviously know the picture of you but i had no idea particularly this uncharted like i've seen that the legacy of these collection cover i i never connected the dots that was the same person so that's amazing looking at his portfolio man every single one of

32:48Chris Ansell:these is fucking awesome yeah he's great he's excellent he's he's got like this um resident

32:54Colin Moriarty:evil 4 art that he did i've never seen that amazing and i mentioned earlier the final fantasy 16 one like i would these these would look fucking incredible hung up framed um amazing stuff this is such a cool connection i'm glad you brought this up yeah yeah he's a he's a really

33:12Chris Ansell:nice guy and actually i it'd be like i knew he was starting to get work um like industry work that's going to keep him busy and make him let him do this professionally which is awesome because he's so talented but i like when i moved into my house so this was like four or five years ago i actually pitched him on doing propaganda posters for cobra like the gi joe bad guys that i wanted to hang in my house and um he just doesn't i don't think have space or time and he's probably going to be so expensive now as well to do that kind of stuff but i have i had this idea i don't know if i were it wouldn't really resonate with you but like cobra is supposed to be like a it's a terrorist organization like a comic book terrorist organization obviously but like it's supposed to be made up of normal people that like work normal jobs and are like kind of covertly part of it or join it and uh they have all these different disciplines within their hierarchy they have like techno vipers which are mechanics and whatever they have you know uh peacekeepers and all these kinds of things and i was just thinking of an idea of like of like uh this old school world war ii style propaganda art of being like a mechanic like you know split in half with like a mechanic working in a garage and then like the other side is the mechanic working on like a cobra vehicle like in his uniform and like doing those kinds of propaganda posters so maybe one day but I mean as people will see on his website he did I think movie posters for Dune which is pretty cool um so yeah shout out to him just wanted to yeah I'm sorry I was supposed to talk about this last week but I totally spaced so go check it out at your leisure all right let's hear from a few other people as we stretch our legs and um and then we'll get into the games news a lot of interesting news this this week to get into Connor Rafter wrote into us though with good news he says hey guys i wrote in seven or eight weeks ago about my golden retriever benji who had been diagnosed with a rare oral cancer this is just a quick update for anyone who cares after two surgeries and with 25 of his jaw now removed benji is officially cancer free been a real struggle over the last few weeks and months but the last dang crew has always been there to lift my spirits the situation would have been measurably more difficult without you guys every week i'd like to thank my fellow listeners too i received some lovely comments on youtube after my write-in.

35:21Chris Ansell:Love to you all. On YouTube. Interesting. Wow. Connor, I'm thrilled for you. Thrilled for Benji. Incredibly sad. Nothing makes me feel more like there isn't an active god that oversees everything than giving a dog jaw cancer. So it's like the most precious, beautiful, innocent, amazing animals. And it's like, yeah, we're going to to fuck you up now i just can't take it it's just so wrong it's so sad that this happens even to that like we have to deal with it obviously you know many animals have to obviously deal with it but just sad yeah and you can't explain it to them like what's going on i wonder what they think i've been thinking about that a lot with treble because we've been getting her like you know acupuncture and like shots in her back and stuff to try to like help her with pain and all the rest and it's like i wish we can tell you what we're doing it's probably very confusing to you but we're trying to let you live live damn it connor congratulations yeah derek dowdy wrote in and said hello ss men and having been married for 10 years and a listener since day one i knew better than to intertwine the humor of this podcast into my marriage but this past weekend i thought i'd try me and my wife were getting ready sunday morning for church no less when she asked me how her dress looked with the most recent podcast still fresh on my brain and I joked, no one is going to notice this dress because they'll all be staring at your Allegheny hogs.

36:52Chris Ansell:Her jaw dropped immediately, and she shot me a look of disgust. I began to laugh and try to explain the inside joke between Colin and Micah to no avail. After I gave up trying to climb out of the hole, I dug. She calmly replied, please don't ever use the word hog to describe any part of my body again. Needless to say, that's the last time I exposed my wife to the show or its humor, but I already knew better, so jokes on me. Love the show, and thanks for all that you do. What's she upset about? she got them allegheny hogs you got to let them they're there for the world to see let them oink what i like about the word hog is that gender neutral that's crazy

37:35let him oink is dastardly work man that's a shirt let him oink

37:43Chris Ansell:is there any I was just going to say is there any other word that could be used like a you know a flipping kind of word in the lexicon that could be used to describe both a male part and a female part other than hog

37:57Colin Moriarty:well I think that's part of the problem is that it's not normally for women in this case seems like the triggering word was hog right to me Derek sounds like your wife's being a little bit sensitive here you were complimenting those allegheny hogs maybe you wanted to see him oink and i think that and even when explained she still took it the wrong way uh that's not wifely energy i can't abide

38:29Chris Ansell:um what's the most disrespectful word for like the most the most ridiculous word like that you would never really use for breasts, but that people do use the one I've never earnestly. What is it? Milkers. Milkers. That's bad. I was going to say I was going to use a more classic one, which was cans. Cans. Like I've never earnestly referred to breast as cans before. Like, look at that chick's cans. I've never done that.

38:55Colin Moriarty:I feel like cans is also in the same camp as a rack. Racks, rack, rack.

39:01Chris Ansell:I've said rack. Definitely.

39:02Colin Moriarty:Yeah. Yeah. um can't i think the younger people like to use the word naturals now as well oh yeah it's heavy heavy heavy naturals are big naturals yeah i think it's funny i think that's that's a funny one yeah that's a good one yeah brandon recently said that in front of my parents when we were watching lord of the rings it was when aragorn there's like the the blonde girl that doesn't that like likes him brand was like come on man i go to war for those heavy naturals

39:36Chris Ansell:geez louise oh yeah what and he said that what during one of the only three and a half minutes in the entire trilogy where a woman is on screen he really was saving it saving it up i'm trying to think of other other funny terms but none are coming to mind for me for some reason titties i mean yeah i mean that's yeah tits i feel like tits is more offensive than titties tits is like pussy where it's like that's just the default kind of like i don't like the word pussy i think it's like fucking it's so vulgar i looked up a list out of curiosity fun bags fun bags that's a great one that's a great one it's a bags yeah very respectful knock uh knockers

40:15Colin Moriarty:knockers yeah uh man there's a lot melons mel yeah that's like guys yeah guys i don't what the heck song is that's it sounds like yeah it sounds like something your grandpa said look of them because wait what was it bazongas what is it is i've seen i've seen both of them on this

40:36Chris Ansell:list oh okay g and b i would think weird but because i would say gazongas i i don't know what i would say because i never said it really gazongas that's a bad one that just sounds like somebody trying too hard it's just like how there is there anything is there anything in the world or is there anything in English language that has more terms for the same thing than breasts I think the Inuit term for snow

41:06Colin Moriarty:the Inuit right right well which has more the different words for penis yeah there's a lot of

41:14Chris Ansell:those cock yeah

41:18Colin Moriarty:pee pee dick pee pee is hysterical to me rod pipe it's a lot yeah it's less creative though because it's just kind of other i don't know yeah it's other phallic things i guess it's just a series of synonyms yeah yeah it's a pretty boring lexicon wiener it's a pretty boring lexicon for the penis right right shaft a shaft dude yeah nice this is a very intellectual conversation like we're really pondering this

42:00Chris Ansell:sean willie wrote in and said do you guys wash your legs in the shower what why is this a thing but this is a thing what it is yeah it is that people there are people that don't wash all the parts of their body in the shower that's the thing oh what do you mean they like wash the sensitive areas or whatever or yeah or just like wash the upper and then the soap just kind of flows down their their body and then that's like that counts this is the thing i'm seeing this now like i'm finding there's a youtube

42:38Colin Moriarty:video stop washing your legs oh my god buzzfeed stop washing this body part in the shower experts

42:46Chris Ansell:say why that's i'm gonna wash every inch of my body yeah oh yeah that's the whole idea i love being clean is there any better feeling than like getting out of the shower i get back in the shower sometimes later on if i just feel like oh i i sweated a little bit or had a bad poop perhaps sure you know and you just feel like you just want to reset i mean there's no worse feeling than getting out of the shower and pooping it's the worst yeah it's it's it's yeah i get right back in the shower like i gotta reset it's like losing a it's like losing a save file right or it's just like i'm back to them back to the beginning right uh yeah no i i i'm in the shower for a really long time i'm in the shower for like well you can't see well you have your glasses on never mind i'm sorry yeah again i can't see i'm in the shower i'm in a long i'm in there a long time because i just like i'm i'm uh i'm serious about that stuff i don't know i i meet too i meet i shouldn't say too many people i've met more people than i would have cared to have met with like poor hygiene and i just don't understand how right right it's really not that many but like it's it's they stand out to me it stands out like a yeah you don't remember someone like that first first you know impressions dude there's some people that i that's the only thing i remember about them i don't even remember what they looked like or like or what their names were what their voice sounded like how i know them how i met them where i met them who that who they know that i know but i do remember that man i smelled you before you even got within five feet of me how is that possible what are you doing what are you doing it's disgusting you gotta shower every day i'm so i'm serious but no i wash i wash my legs everything let's see that's what you're there to do yeah yeah people just i i just thought it was an interesting kind of well it's obviously generated some level of discussion here on the show between us well yeah i'm just um i'm just confused i guess i understand the the notion of it where's where like i guess the idea is the soap just kind of runs down and that's like that's enough because your legs don't get is that the idea like your legs don't get dirty enough yeah yeah but it's like it's just it's just gross it's like you gotta wash you gotta wash your body you gotta do it yeah it's 2025 and there is time to wash your body yeah you gotta do it plenty plenty of fucking time um now mike and i have a thing we call the hobath and we'll see so like i take i typically take my shower right before we eat dinner i work out at like five or six for an hour or whatever and then i like take a shower and like relax for a little while and then we eat dinner and so if we're going to go out the next day you know i get up and brush my teeth and do the normal things but if we're going to go out the next day i don't like going out of the house without having showered so i we do it i what i say is i'm going to go take a hoe bath and it's literally just getting in the shower and like washing my armpits and like my like the sensitive areas because i and a few hours after that i'm going to work out and then do the proper shower right you got to have a proper shower every day and then you can have your whole baths if you want but you can't just exist on the whole bath right and the whole bath alone will not do and that's what really that's what really troubles me like there are people that really do argue like that they don't even shower every day and i just think i'm like that's fine but might be a little stinky that's that's up to you if you want to put that into the world or not but you might want to know that you're going to probably be a little stinky no you you got you only have a day to do that and it's got it better be a day that you're not outside at all you haven't sweat it you know what i mean like you can't you can't sweat at all that day or you can't do anything that's anything like that right you're going to do that right if you're like if i sweat at all if i sweat at all it's like i'm i'm showering even if i've showered in the morning it's like i'm showering again some ways i think calling you and i aren't that different because you have not showered today no neither have i i showered yesterday afternoon right just once a day it doesn't matter when it i mean what matters depending on your job and like what you do right sure uh so but for me it's like really it's just i just want to do it

47:14Colin Moriarty:right after i work out that's me at my stinkiest i'm not going to work out later today right i'm not probably even going to leave the house the rest of the day right tomorrow i'll wake up probably do a few things on on the pooter and i'm going to take a shower but don't you want to take

47:33Chris Ansell:a shower today don't you want to feel gross i will see that's the thing is i really look forward to it i like showering that's the thing i should admit i like i look forward to all of the hot water the the steam i like listening to a podcast or music being with my thoughts i look forward to it and the whole process brush your teeth in the shower i love i always have many years recommended brushing your teeth in the shower it's great now back on the whole the whole shower

48:02Colin Moriarty:initially i thought you meant hobo shower no hobath the hobo shower um to my understanding is like just a wet cloth or a wet wipe right oh yeah yeah it's some you know growing up going to music festivals in the summer like midday you've got to shower every day at those because you are sweating constantly but maybe midday you do a little hobo bath just try to get some of that funk off right right the one year though 90 degrees showers at the festival broke oh and so we were all in the same boat where we were just like that's bad man we can't do anything so we were like you could get water from like these big things we were like filling up buckets and trying to like rinse off our hair at least or something.

48:48Colin Moriarty:It was absolutely horrible. And all the all thousands of people are in the same boat.

48:53Chris Ansell:Yeah, it's gross. I just bodily cleanliness is just a. It's just mandatory for me. Got to get a bidet then. I don't. I just can't. We can't go back down this road over and over again.

49:09Colin Moriarty:You brought up the know the showering once a day thing. So it's only the wipe. Does this it's this?

49:13Chris Ansell:I would argue I would are here's the can we just let's just talk about it economical let's just talk about it okay do you think that there are two buttholes that take an equivalent poop right one is clean you know you wipe or whatever but like one like at the end one is wiped with a wet like the wet wipe right one is bidet I would argue the one that had the friction in the wet wipe and everything is actually the cleaner butt than the one that just got hit with some water

49:43Colin Moriarty:that's just my opinion two thoughts on this there's a with a bidet at least for me i know some people might do this differently after i have a day i'm i'm drying off with a little toilet paper right right right and so there's going to be some friction just to make sure there's no stragglers and 95 of the time you're good sometimes you get a rough one and maybe the

50:04Chris Ansell:day you got to do a second round right right you know and you love that yeah oh yeah so

50:09Colin Moriarty:little butt play the the thing though is just you thank you for clarifying you could just you could just do the bidet and not spend the money on the wipes right i think the a major thing that

50:22Chris Ansell:can i just be i'm totally honest with you half of the battle with the bidet for me is it's just too european it's too much i thought you like cleanliness i do and i'm saying that there's no way that you're you're cleaner than me we're probably maybe equivalently clean i think the

50:44Colin Moriarty:only way to find out is we got to swab our buttholes right and have a scientist grow something see who has the worst bacteria or whatever right that's because the the adult wipe is predicated

50:55Chris Ansell:on the baby wipe if the baby wasn't being truly cleaned by the wipe then we would be bedaying the babies, right? With like a water pick? Water pick? Yeah.

51:08Colin Moriarty:I mean... That's not a bad idea. It might hurt. Oh. That's something to think about. That is fucking outrageous. It kind of is the same. It is like a bidet for your mouth. Right. In some ways, so... I could see that.

51:31Chris Ansell:I'm sorry. I'm sorry that we had to go there. Sean, Willie, thank you for writing it. So fucking violent. Those things are so strong. Yeah, you got to tamp it down. You got to put a governor on it or something. No, I know. I told you, like, I sprayed one. I got a little I got a little thing stuck in my throat. I sprayed it down my throat. Hey, man. And it dislodged it. But how much how much was the water pick that you got i've been looking at it was a 50 water pick but i got it on prime day for 20 not bad yeah i can i'll bring bring up the exact i'm looking at i'm looking at some right now because i want one i just haven't um it's like that weird price point where it feels like

52:14Colin Moriarty:is this worth it yes i was thinking when i was using my water pick because they when we talked about a water pick a few weeks ago a few comments were like oh it's if you need to do normal flossing too yeah and i wondered i keep hearing this is this a conspiracy from the floss industry yeah i

52:32Chris Ansell:i well no i don't know big floss i am flossing as well just to be on the safe side but it just feels like a more adequate adequate thing here is the uh here i'll put it in the chat for you it seems like the water the water pick plus floss is the bidet plus the plus the wipe you know that's right that's this is like a logic problem now um it's the costless water dental floss or teeth pick it is originally 42.99 and it is 30 off right now according to me i don't know my so it's 30 now and i like it i reckon you have to charge you have to charge it you know um sure yeah but i've only charged mine twice the entire time i've had it.

53:14Chris Ansell:So it's there. So, yeah, I got it for it's twenty nine ninety nine. Now I got it for nineteen ninety nine. I think it was well worth it.

53:22Colin Moriarty:It's so when we were originally talking about this, we were talking about my Aldi. I got a little bit of a little bit of a feeling of looking down upon the Aldi water pick. This looks almost exactly the same. It has the exact same water flap. Like, I think it's just rebranded.

53:37Chris Ansell:Yeah, it probably is the same. It's probably the same

53:39Colin Moriarty:company just rebranding at you yeah though this has a bunch of nozzle accessories yeah there's

53:46Chris Ansell:like a tongue scraper and a few other things yeah i only use like that there's like a jet one i

53:51Colin Moriarty:that i use a tongue scraper mixed with high pressure water it's cool it's nice it's interesting you need it to that's that's another thing people i think don't do as often as they should

54:03Chris Ansell:the tongue scraper is so important it's crazy yeah you got to reset you know we're eating all this weird shit yeah there's all these cool attachments oral irrigator why do they got to call that just call it a water i know it's i don't water water might literally be trademarked like

54:20Colin Moriarty:water pik yeah yeah it's like band-aid they used to call me the oral irrigator yeah son let me tell you about my time as the oil irrigator neighbor wrote in finally and said colin i'm on your side

54:37Chris Ansell:with this one who gives any fucks about waldo what is the thing that came to where so we were talking on when where was it was on it was either on oh you know what it was streaming someone's sign right right i was gonna say it's on summon sign for sure where's Waldo came up and I kind of was just like what is this what are we doing like what what is this what are we doing here who is this man and I was like looking into it it was it's originally from the from UK in 1987 it's called where's Wally And we call it Where's Waldo. And it's just about a man who travels. Obviously, everyone knows it's a man who travels around and you find him in pictures.

55:22Chris Ansell:But I'm like, to what end? Why do I give a shit? Like, what is this? It's just a weird it was a weird phenomenon. I don't know if you guys were. And I was again, it's just one of those things where I was at the age where I was like, that was a big thing. You know, I was in fucking kindergarten or whatever. And everyone's got their Where's Waldo book. that was yeah i mean that was kind of like when books were kind of trying to be video games like i remember do you guys remember i spy like the i spy book yeah i think so like that where

55:50Colin Moriarty:it's like it's a game i was gonna call it if if you could get a platinum trophy from a where's waldo book you'd do it you know it's it's just like oh it's it's a little game why do you play

55:59Chris Ansell:little games you know it's fun yeah but but what i was really wondering about waldo was you know who is he why is he in all these different places is he on the lamb because it just it just seems like he's trying to mix in but he's not really because he's just dressed in his normal garb but he's always amongst a lot of people he's constantly roving around is he is he running away is he like a cia agent is he is he an adventurer i just feel like there's like no one's wondering it's just like oh waldo's in egypt waldo's here waldo's there i don't understand and even as a kid i was like i don't give a shit well it could it could be um it could be whatever you want man it's it's it's like an rpg almost it could be like you're a you know you're um you're the law tracking down this felon you're an assassin looking for this target

56:47Colin Moriarty:it could be whatever you want i guess you know dude a where's waldo hitman crossover that would be you have to you have to kill waldo he's like in the stands in the racing level right yeah i have murder that would unironically be a fantastic mode if you just had if if there was just an open zone kind of hitman game and you just had to find waldo and kill him covertly

57:11Chris Ansell:great i love that idea genuinely like yeah that's a great idea that's a great idea and if the people who owned it's an author he's still alive that owns it it's like that would actually be funny to do that and people probably would if you like made your ip open to shit like that to yeah the silliness now i'm like sad that i can't play that you know hitman waldo sniper mission

57:37Colin Moriarty:sniper elite could also work for this crossover yeah shatter waldo's testicles exactly fucking blow his dick off

57:55this is a strange episode yeah it is there's a weird air about this one yeah you're right

58:02Colin Moriarty:yeah I think I set us on a path with the oinking comment yeah let him oink

58:06Chris Ansell:that was a butterfly effect like when you're playing until dawn that little icon appeared yeah it's over interesting I wonder what could have been all right let's get to the news there is quite a few things to get through this week of interest and uh but i wanted to begin before we get into and there's like a trio of i think really big things but i wanted to just remind everyone obviously we had already discussed this about ghost of yote we know that it comes out in early october but we discussed that there's going to be a limited edition console i think we talked about this last month a limited edition console there are bundles accessories controllers etc and these will be available for pre-order uh at direct dot playstation.com and there'll be retailer partners as well that have them september 4th at 10 a.m local time for you so if you want to get these i assume they'll sell out i honestly think the consoles are pretty cool and the plates are pretty cool obviously which is the same thing i think the controller kind of looks a little wacky but not really crazy about it i feel like the controllers in general for the dual sense the like the special edition controls have kind of been like more missed than hit for me yeah i agree totally they're too complicated we bring this up sometimes and i don't know chris where you were on it but i was like it just it reminds me of band merch where i'm like why is band merch so bad yeah like it's the same thing yeah you're over designing it you don't need to do all this you're making i don't need like the thing on the arm and things on the chest and things on the back it's too much it's why i started making my own shirts because I was like I'm so sick of all this crap and it's the same thing here like the the mountain on the on the plates looks cool but the the controller just looks like a mess but I'm sure some people will be into it and teach their own I'm sure some people like it obviously so are you guys gonna get any of this stuff neither of you are really huge ghost fans I'm obviously looking forward to it but I don't need any of this no yeah I mean I I liked the first one but not I wouldn't say I liked the first one enough to actively seek out merchandise you know yeah i do need a control i do need a new controller um so i like to get one every year and i haven't bought one since the 30th anniversary stuff so it's been about a year right since that that came out so it's time but it's not gonna be this one i'll probably just get a random color yeah but wanted to throw that out there in case people are interested september 4th at 10 a.m local time get out there and purchase all right um we have a new leak.

1:00:36Chris Ansell:I was emailing with him just yesterday. Moore's Law is dead. Who's a friend of mine, friend of the show, Tom, and he does the Broken Silicon podcast as well. He had promised he was going to have more PlayStation 6 leaks and information, and so he does. He has a video called PS6 dockable handheld leak AMD Canis specs crush Xbox Ally X. I'm only reading that because I want you to be able to find the full video by its title. I don't know if crushing the Xbox ally X is important to us, but this is a pretty interesting video about 27 minutes long. Now, a lot of this is lost on me. I mean, this is what we always talk about when I have Tom on sacred plus is that I bring him on to incorporate.

1:01:12Chris Ansell:You guys have a much deeper technical mind, much more in line with his. I don't. And frankly, I don't really give a shit either. I care that things are powerful. I want the best that I can get, but I don't care. It's like I go to a restaurant and I don't need to watch. I don't need to understand how they're cooking it. I just want the meal and I know it's going to be great. So that's kind of where I'm at. So I kind of glaze over and just don't understand a lot of this stuff. So I will leave it up to you guys to pull out anything that you want from that perspective. But the major thing that people are picking up on this story is that the PlayStation six handheld can be docked according to this documentation, presumably from AMD.

1:01:49Chris Ansell:I think people are assuming. And obviously Tom has substantial credibility now in this in this leaking of playstation 6 space he is by far the most prolific playstation 6 leaker and this adds to that so i want to give him a shout out because that's that's just such for a journalist or a media person that's a really big story um and he also discusses in his video which he discussed already on sacred plus and it's one of the shitty things about having our stuff behind a paywall is that like that if this is what people are so interested in we would have had this story weeks ago which is like that it seems like there's going to be a PS6 S as well.

1:02:27Chris Ansell:So three PlayStation sixes. Dustin, let's go to you first. I mean, pull whatever. I don't know if you watch the video and there's anything in there that you want to talk about specifically because he gets into the he gets into the raw power of it, apparently. And tell me if I'm wrong. He's basically saying that there's going to be a strata of PlayStation six power such that this handheld will be about on par with a PS5. I mean, that was the way that I was interpreting what he was saying. so we really are getting into this pc like space of of a big strata differences that are that make things like the n64 expansion port or something like so quaint um so what are your thoughts what

1:03:02Colin Moriarty:do you pull out of this yeah well it it goes hand in hand with i think uh tom leaked this initially but now we have confirmation about the low power mode on ps5 and i would imagine maybe tom has talked about this but but that low power mode will be the target spec for the playstation 6s and the handheld um and then of course there's there will be the big beefy boy uh in this video one of the things i find really interesting of course go check out the full video to hear him explain things is that he went and tried to price out the estimate of what each of these devices which not only cost Sony to make, but an estimated price range with current market conditions.

1:03:50Colin Moriarty:Of course, these things are changing rapidly, as we talked about in depth last week. So what's interesting, so the PS6S, if we want to go with what he calls the PSVR2 greedy, which means that they're making a lot of profit on the actual sale of the hardware,$399. um the handheld 550 and the console the main playstation 6 the big beefy boy at 799 um obviously this could range uh pretty significantly like if we want to do the old school aggressive which he lists the ps6s 250 um 350 for the handheld and 549 i would imagine It's going to be somewhere in the middle between those options. But the dockable handheld is particularly interesting.

1:04:41Colin Moriarty:I think the thing that is the most crazy we've seen, like Xbox has done the lower price, lower tier console. And then the main one, we haven't seen Sony do that yet, but we've seen someone do it. But adding a handheld into the mix with the established console is pretty interesting. and to see it behave like the switch and that there will be a power profile for when it's portable and then when it's docked also pretty interesting what i wonder and i'm trying to remember from tom's video if the handheld while docked will be about the power profile of the s console that would make some sense to me but it'll be interesting to see them somewhat try to compete with Nintendo Switch.

1:05:29Colin Moriarty:I think in some ways that might be kind of fruitless just because people aren't buying. If you are interested in power and in a handheld, and a handheld, you're probably not going for Switch other than for software. Like myself, right? Like many people, like Nintendo is always going to have that, that they have their exclusive software that's very appealing. People are always going to buy that for that reason. it doesn't matter how powerful it is right so playstation on the other hand um will have this seemingly much more powerful system uh that assuming will have parity with what's playable on it with their main console and so that's i think where things get really interesting and the fact that too that they're going to be doing this uh and it they have similar strategies xbox and playstation that they're both going to be pushing a handheld to but in vastly different ways where xboxes is partnered with rog it's not really an xbox um yeah it's not it's a portable pc yeah it's a it's a portable pc with an xbox button and it is running a new version of windows which i think sound that's one of the most interesting parts of it to me but um where this PlayStation one is running PlayStation software on it directly.

1:06:54Colin Moriarty:So that's the really interesting part.

1:06:57Chris Ansell:Yeah. Question I was going to ask you to make sure I'm understanding it right. But the idea is that this ROG ally is a stopgap, right? That they are doing their own Xbox handheld. I thought that that's the way I interpreted it as well. That's what people have been saying. I don't know if there's necessarily, I haven't seen anything that shows that it's true, true,

1:07:17Colin Moriarty:but that's what a lot of people think right i thought that i saw i'm just talking about out of my ass slightly right now i remember seeing something that you're bedait ass

1:07:25Chris Ansell:my jeez you're finally bedait ass finally oh i thought you said gay ass

1:07:32Colin Moriarty:i was like whoa i'm sorry um uh i mean i i wasn't it was it was good um well not my gay ass isn't good or is it i mean it is depending on what it could be if you want if you want to have a gay ass you go again oh my god this is something to think about i'm sorry i totally i'm sorry uh what were

1:07:57Chris Ansell:we talking about i i'm you were talking out of your ass we were talking about the xbox uh oh

1:08:03Colin Moriarty:i when i saw that with the the rog plans that that is either on the back burner or not happening anymore. It's probably a better question for Matty or Cog. I don't know. Maybe I'm misremembering. I wouldn't

1:08:17Chris Ansell:be surprised. They probably want to get out of hardware you would think, right? Now I'm not saying that not make Xboxes, but just let others make the shit for you is going to be a cheaper way for you to deal with get, you know, disentwine yourself from this. Yeah.

1:08:29Colin Moriarty:Yeah. And it seems like just the Xbox as a whole is going to go through a huge change where it changes into a PC. That's going to be really interesting. We're getting off topic here, but is the next Xbox going to sacrifice backwards compatibility with actual Xbox games in order to become fucking crazy. The PC.

1:08:51Chris Ansell:They don't. They're really in between a rock and a hard place, I think, more than. In a hardware sense, more than I think people let on because people are like, they're doing great. I'm like, yeah, they're doing great. They are a major publisher. They're killing it. We're going to talk about the Serkana numbers again later. It's like. When you buy all these publishers and you start having your own output internally, too, you're going to dominate these charts. I'm not, so I'm not bringing any of that in the question. They own King and shit like that. It's like, of course, okay, great. I'm talking about the hardware.

1:09:18Chris Ansell:They just seem like they just are in trouble because, and we'll talk about it again later on is like their, their numbers in the United States, everyone's a year over year down significantly, but they're down more than anyone, but they're always down. So they're down more. They're always down more than anyone. And now they're down more than anyone. Again, it's like, what, what, what is the, in other words, what is the core number at this point? it's like down 22 down 40 down 30 down 35 down 60 it's like okay like what like what is the number after you do all that math and uh i think like what what's happening with them is that and this is just an opinion is that they have a hardcore fan base of 20 to 30 million i would say of truly engaged xbox fans not nothing right that's a that's a pretty hard that's a major chunk of the nes audience for instance it's not like a small thing but it's probably not enough to justify xbox hardware and a true ecosystem in the mid to long term and yet they want to they want to maintain those customers as game pass customers and do all these kinds of things and they kind of have to do this magic trick where they morph them into some other type of gamer in order to get out of the console space that they've kind of ceded to sony and nintendo i don't know if that read as accurate to you but that's the way it feels to me like it's they're they're thriving in many ways but in this one fundamental way they're not thriving there's just no way based on the numbers that that they're doing well in that respect and so i just wonder like where their heads are even at where they've promised new hardware and i believe that it will come but i do wonder like what what it will be like you said and what the

1:10:59Colin Moriarty:adoption of it will be i think the the funny well what could shape up to be really funny is that they're going if they do end up changing the xbox is basically a pc that runs a version of windows um and you know makes that switch it'll be right it sounds like valve is about to do that also because the valves they have they just had a leak on like some test bench website of a valve based console and i'm like man um i really fucking hope valve wins over microsoft because there's just uh so much more consumer friendly than microsoft and it seems like they're going to be way ahead

1:11:44Chris Ansell:this is the this is the wedge dude that i've been just i've been discussing i remember when i was on jez and rand's xbox show xbox 2 i was talking about this and it seemed like they were talking about it and i think jez had said it in a few a few ways it's like he hadn't even considered a few of these things where i'm like they're gonna they're gonna be without even steam and valve getting involved in like a console space they're gonna be wedged in this in this situation where especially if they don't bring the xbox games like there's no backwards compatibility it's like there really is no hope of them selling games anymore you're just going to use it as a conduit and if there's a steam if there's a steam console then you're going to literally have another a console on the market where you can buy the games on the other console like it and i cut the hardware manufacturer out completely it's just it's not looking good for that whole thing like that's why i think sony the space is probably going to ultimately shrivel up and die in the future anyway and there's going to be some sort of ubiquitous play platform of it will be even greater than a pc it'll be like a pc probably but like something that's easier and more fundamental

1:12:45Colin Moriarty:to use which is a console um steam os yeah that's what you're talking about dude right SteamOS is shaping up to be just that.

1:12:58Colin Moriarty:My hope is that, and this is kind of what they've done with the Steam Deck, is that when they come out with this console, Valve will really not care about making a profit on the hardware at all. Because why would they? They are privately owned, and they can sell the console and then make plenty of money off every single game that you buy on it.

1:13:24Chris Ansell:Yeah, it's would be interesting. It would be. It's just it's a they are in a valve is in a very fortuitous situation because they have they've already proven that they have unmitigated loyalty on their own platform in regard to just kind of shrugging off the Epic Game Store and things like that. like it doesn't there was like nothing the epic games were could do including giving games away having exclusives people just wait and this by the way might be why things are softening between all the platform holders on the console side too by the way is because they're realizing people just are kind of where they're going to be like they're literally going to wait or never play some of the shit you might as well go after them i think that there's a little bit of a fallacy to that but it seems like that's the way it's playing out um but they just seem like they can just kind of weight so they have like the brand loyalty the console space is going to winnow away probably xbox i would assume as a made i mean it kind of already has as a major console player like in the space they're kind of segueing into a publisher which is great for them and this is exactly what microsoft this is what it probably should have always been if you think about it we should be grateful for xbox because there was a lot of awesome experiences on it and they pushed the industry forward in a lot of different ways with their hardware which is awesome and the choices they made but at the same time this if you look back 30 years or something you're like they probably should have always been a software company or like a software brand something made something else so they're where they probably should be and then it's up to nintendo and sony i think to kind of figure out how they survive and nintendo survives based on its own games which is obvious and sony will have to figure out some avenue to keep going like sony's certainly in a dangerous position in this whole reality.

1:15:08Not imminently, but in the mid to long term, I think.

1:15:12Chris Ansell:Chris, let's get you on. We haven't heard from you. I'm sorry in a while. What did you think of this video and anything out of there that you want to pull from? Oh, I mean, I feel like we've gone pretty deep into it. I don't know if there's anything that I would have picked up that hasn't been touched on already necessarily. But I mean, look, I'm intrigued endlessly by docked like this this dock mechanic like it was it was the thing that attracted me to the switch in the first place um just having that as a as a concept being able to get some kind of boost in performance or resolution from like docking something and being able to take it with you in like a somewhat of a sacrificed format i think it's interesting and i i've i've been wanting like a that in a more powerful capacity like the steam deck is cool and i've used the dock for steam deck for tv stuff but you could tell it feels a little bit skunk work it's not quite it's not quite the seamless experiences as as like you know the switches or or um or even just a console plugged into a direct tv is so like i think it's an interesting idea i i would be very very into it um but i look at these numbers and i'm seeing like i'm seeing shit that i've never seen before quite frankly like i'm just seeing like acronyms where i'm like i don't know i don't know what any of this should be i don't know what a 16 i like i'm looking at all of this i'm like i don't know i don't know i'm not this technically minded to be able to come up with like what the fuck this means off the rip yeah i don't i almost don't even really care about any of any of it either it's just like yeah what we say over and over again i'm just i know that that's uncommon in our space a lot of people do care about the i mean i care again about the end product but just not about how the the sausage is made i just don't i don't care i care about this more about like software and like how like like the optimization of game engines and like you know frame pacing and things like that like that that's where my technical kind of like analytical mind goes to with video games like as far as like hardware like i don't as long as it can deliver me something cool i don't i don't mind but it is interesting to be that they're that it seems like they're going to be pursuing like uh an xbox strategy in the sense of like okay we're gonna have the s model and then the prime model it's interesting to be that that's even on the table for them given how much they've seen the s kind of backfire in some sense with, you know, I remember, what was it?

1:17:45Baldur's Gate 3 couldn't hit, I think, in time because of the Series S and like a bunch of other things. And it's just like, it's interesting that they would they would choose to do that anyway. Because wouldn't the same problem arise at a certain point?

1:17:57Chris Ansell:Yeah, I mean, that's kind of what I wanted to get into was just the. It's not that I find it hard to believe because I believe that he has reason to believe that these things are true, but it's just like a PS6 S just seems like kind of. a waste if you're just going to have the just have a ps5 pro and the ps5 and just span between these generations because it's obvious that there's this it's a losing proposition to assume that we really are a generation in a generational situation anymore the way we used to be it's obviously not the case and there are games that are still coming to ps4 there are games that are coming to ps5 there are games that are going to come to ps4 ps5 and ps6 and that are going to be playable across them and i i don't know that you need to actually lean into it more than that but i think that a lot of it comes from this idea that they're worried about a level of adoption that they didn't get that playstation is still highly reliant on ps4 to this day and that they need to make an attractive way for people to get off of that platform or in this case will be off the playstation 5 which they paid a lot of money for but i do think that like aiming to the lowest common denominator is just it's a nice idea but it's unnecessary if you're already going to control the if you're already going to rather support the last generation consoles and can just have people buy the ps5 pro or the ps5 and there's it just it seems weird to me that you would have um i don't know it just the pricing of it doesn't make any sense for the power of the unit and all the rest like i just can't quite square it in the economic reality we're in with with higher than usual inflation and kind of technology starting to invert the price which where things usually got cheaper and now because of trade and economic monetary situations or whatever that things are just all fucked up so it's just it's hard for me to wrap my mind around like how any of this is really going to work the but i but it's obviously aimed at getting people off of the old consoles and um that was a problem and is a problem for them.

1:19:55Chris Ansell:If they shut off, they would have shut off PS4 a long time ago if they thought they can get away with it. And I mean, it would still operate. What I mean is that they just would stop releasing games and really truly supporting it. And obviously, games are migrating off of it now, as we've seen with PUBG and Genshin Impact and others saying that they're just shutting off PS4 support completely. But I guess for me, the$800 high-end machine is what I would be getting, along with the handheld. I want the handheld for sure. And this is also a little weird to me because I think things are falling within the space between where I remember asking Tom, so like would they do a PS5 handheld or a PS6 handheld?

1:20:33Chris Ansell:And I think he was saying that like it would make more sense for them to do like a new PS6 handheld, but then it seems like it's just a PS5 handheld. Like in other words, it's the power of the PlayStation 5 or a little bit more marked as a PS6 running in this different state. It's just it's a little confusing. and uh i think the xbox series s was a nice i i mean i i think i've said all along that i think it was a nice idea but you you because you want to go for lowest common denominator people but you're just going to attract people towards the lowest common denominator like there's no doubt that the majority and maybe the vast majority of xbox series consoles are asses yeah and that's not necessarily a great place to be in either like when you think about it there might only be 15 million or something series x consoles which is like playstation doesn't have that problem with ps5 there are 80 million ps5s that are all ps5s and then there's one that's more powerful than the base unit so i don't know i'm getting kind of lost in the weeds i guess but i'm just interested in how this all comes about when we learn more about it when things start leaking when developers start messing around with it what games are going to be aiming for it you assume that there are studios internally at Sony that might be working on PlayStation six games.

1:21:50Chris Ansell:But then based on the way this is all scattering across consoles, for instance, if the PS six handheld is just a meteor PS five or PS five pro or whatever, then you're just going to have PS five skews in the game. Does this make sense? That's what I'm saying.

1:22:06Colin Moriarty:Like, yeah, it does. I just don't know if it's going. It's as big of a problem because as we've seen with this generation, the scalability of games is so much higher than it used to be that games will continue to scale the key point on the handheld is just what the particular bottlenecks are trying to remember like the series s is it memory bandwidth and the gpu are are the main bottlenecks so looking at tom's thing here um the ps ps6s and the ps6 handheld 36 gigabytes of ram on both of them and then the ps6 prime whatever you want to call it 40 gigabytes of ram so there's extra four gigs um and obviously memory speed is a big part of it and that's not the only aspect of course there's gpu and cpu but the the key factor is and i would assume sony is looking at series s and be like okay what is the problem with this thing that has made it hold back certain games yeah they probably know they

1:23:15Chris Ansell:probably know firsthand from san diego yeah and now and now from nixes as well right so when they

1:23:21Colin Moriarty:design their s console and their handheld they're like okay what is going to where do we need to make sure the thing is beefed up in the right ways to make sure that scalability can happen

1:23:33Chris Ansell:across all of these i should be clear because i agree with what you're saying there i should be clear that when I what I'm really referring to is like adoption. If you're if you're releasing a handheld that's in the space between and is like a beefy PS5 Pro, then what you're basically telling people is like, well, there's going to obviously be a PS5 skew of this. Because we're already skewing towards this lower end PS6. I don't I don't. So I don't disagree with you. They've obviously been streamlining things for a long time to make them work together. I just I guess what I'm saying is, is I don't understand how this other than price, a really competitive price, it doesn't seem to solve their adoption problem.

1:24:15Colin Moriarty:The the thing that I would wonder is just that PlayStation 5 has 16 gigabytes of RAM and Tom's leaks show that the the S and the handheld will have 36. so while it may be comparable in gpu which i'm trying to i mean this is where those numbers didn't we'll have to ask tom but there's definitely more ram in these that could provide some kind of difference and i think in the video too he talks about how mark cerny is really thinking that ai is going to be a big focus of these new consoles what that means as far as like rendering and what the end product is i'm i'm not really sure but um i i would assume that there will be things that this the s and the handheld can do that the ps5 and the ps5 pro

1:25:09Chris Ansell:could not do so it's exciting and interesting times i mean one way or another i mean it's it's exciting to be here at the same time i'm a little distressed it seems soon it's obviously not historically soon it's actually historically quite normal to get something after seven years if not pushing it a little bit but i just feel like there's something incomplete about the ps5 generation and i think a lot of people just point to the lack of exclusives and stuff and i'm like there's that but maybe it's just the beginnings of what we're feeling or seeing now which is this idea of low generationalistness which pcs have been dealing with for a long time and that we're kind of being forced in and wedged into that which is fine i don't really give a shit but there is something so there's something about this this generation that might never be defined and might actually leak into the 2030s and that's i guess my entire point if people are comfortable on ps4 i just went out you know i went out with my nephew and his roommate plays ps4 still he was talking to me about that and he's perfectly comfortable there and then eventually they're going to shove him over to PS5 because the games that he cares about will probably not be there anymore.

1:26:21Chris Ansell:But then like he's going to move over again. It just always seems like they're going to be trailing behind with a lot of people and they're going to be reliant on this back catalog and keeping things alive. And my only hope is, is that once they kind of shut the PS4 down, and again, I'm not saying get rid of the store. What I'm saying is just stop supporting it. Everyone's on kind of more identical hardware anyway, with the SSD and everything. And maybe things will work differently. I don't know, but I'm not a technically minded person. This is just from a layman's mind obviously anyway shout out to tom for nice little scoops yeah and we'll see how that all plays out the price points are hard to believe i believe him but they're hard to believe i don't get it i don't get how these consoles i don't get how a ps5 or a ps6 handheld is going to cost you know significantly cheaper than the ps5 pro does right now it just doesn't make sense to me but i know it has a lot to do with like the resources that they're using within the consoles and these new technologies and obviously economies of scale but sony benefits from those economies of scale now so there's there's something what does that i don't i don't know but we don't know how to get into it but there is something about that like i can't square it we we are in this upside down world where consoles and hardware are getting more expensive and then when the next generation comes, everything's going to be less expensive.

1:27:44Chris Ansell:There's something I'm missing in there. Yeah, something's missing. All right.

1:27:51Chris Ansell:OK, this next one would have been the big story of the week, and it's not too much to say about it, but. It's obvious that Sony needs to talk more. I've delivered that message to them, you know, because I want to talk to more of their people and interview more people, and that's totally within the realm of possibility. I actually have to pitch them on some things that I want to do. But I've told them, I'm like, you guys got to talk more. I feel like not looking for me for advice, but we'd love to hear from you. And I think that there are things that are happening now that that where I'm like, it's a kind of imperative, actually, that we hear from you.

1:28:22Chris Ansell:I think the. The thing with hell divers, especially in like the future of what's going to go on there, I think it requires communication. You can't just do these things and not talk. so maybe this signals a softening because the Financial Times sat and talked to Herman Holst himself now Financial Times is infamously locked up Fort Knox style with the paywall and I'm not going to pay for it but people have covered it and we have the Push Square article well I put in our document the Push Square article and the Video Games Chronicle article but here's basically what was said that was interesting Video Games Chronicles story is called quote i would like for us when we fail to fail early and cheaply end quote playstation studios head says concord taught a big lesson and they write quote playstation studio business group ceo herman holst says he wants future failures to be identified and dealt with earlier in the development process in an interview with the financial times holst explained that the company has been putting in more measures to lessen the impact of any games that fail to meet its standards holst comments refer to the failure of concord which was reportedly in development for around eight years and made it all the way to full release before just two weeks after it launched.

1:29:33Chris Ansell:Sony announced plans to take it offline, pull the game from sale, and offer refunds to all players who bought it, citing a poor reception from players. According to Holst, new measures have been put in place to make sure potential problems are spotted far sooner, saying, quote, I don't want teams to always play it safe, but I would like for us when we fail to fail early and cheaply, end quote. Holst explained that PlayStation has implemented a stricter and more thorough testing process now, with the aim being to identify potential issues early. Quote, we have since put in place much more rigorous and more frequent testing in very many different ways.

1:30:01Chris Ansell:The advantage of every failure is that people now understand how necessary that oversight is, end quote. According to the report, some of the new measures include more of a focus on group testing, learning from other Sony teams and building a closer relationship between the executives who spend hundreds of hours playing games before they're released. And then Push Square writes the quote, they have a specific quote pulled out of the article, quote, the number of live service games is not so important. What is important to me is having a diverse set of player experiences and a set of communities.

1:30:31Chris Ansell:We have since put in place much more rigorous and more frequent testing in very many different ways. The advantage of every failure is that people now understand how necessary that oversight is. So a little bit of crossover with something I just read, but a little more context. Before I move over to you guys, I do want to say this. This is this seems this is good communication and it's true, but there's a level of copping out here. And blaming Concord and then acting like it was unknowable. Who the fuck was minding the ship? They were a first party team at some point. You bought them. I just can't believe they're kind of like just.

1:31:12Chris Ansell:They kind of got out of it, right? Like these major questions that should have been asked after Concord, like about personnel and decision making and things that I was talking about when I had my report last year on Concord and how much it cost and like the amazing amount of time they spent on it and how probably monsters dumped, you know, the original owner and kind of publisher dumps shit tons of money on it. Then Sony dumped shit tons of money. And then they bought the team. They bought the team a year before the game came out. The game was obviously being fully played behind the scenes. They liked what they saw.

1:31:44Chris Ansell:There seems to be a level of just copping out that really bothers me. I'm not saying you have to be accountable. You own a company, you have to market and communicate the way you want, whatever. Everyone is kind of trying to hide, you know, all these different companies are trying to hide their little failures and make and put a little bow on things and make things seem better than they are. But I just don't understand this specific game and this specific problem. If they didn't buy the team, you could imagine a situation where they just were funding this game hand over fist for years, assuming something about it and obviously they have producers and people checking in on it and all the rest but they were just going and they're like it's good look at all the people look at these people worked at 343 and they worked at fucking activision and they worked all these they'll figure it out and they just never do that's much more believable than a year before the game comes out in which you spend hundreds of millions of dollars on it you buy the team and go all in.

1:32:39Chris Ansell:And then you're like, we didn't know. It's like, no, you made someone along the way. Some of you made a really bad call that cost an enormous amount of money and cachet with the audience and time, people's jobs, things you can't get back. And these errors seem to happen over and over again recently, whether it's with haven and fair games which is obviously teetering after the closed alpha and bungee which is a fucking mess and i will give them credit guys because i think people are really hard on them when they're like look at all the games they canceled to be fair they didn't announce those games with the exception of the last of us online there was nothing that they were just like we're not releasing it right it's these games leaked so you don't you can't get too mad at them for having things incubating and canceling them because they're not panning out That's actually the wise decision to make from that perspective.

1:33:33Chris Ansell:But the question you have to ask is like, what the fuck is going on here? Like who paid the price for this? People will say Jim Ryan, but I'm not sure that that's true because he was gone before they even knew what was going to really happen. They might have seen that things were not panning out and he made some bad decisions. And it seems more clear as time has gone on that. He was good in a lot of ways, hardware wise, I think, and bad in a lot of other ways, software. and that there was a mismanagement that had them bring in someone who will focus on hardware and someone who will focus on software.

1:34:05Chris Ansell:But there are people that must be working at Sony still that made catastrophic choices. And it just seems like, yeah, we'll just put processes in the place to know next time. And it's like, but you were in charge. You were in charge. So I don't know, Chris, you have anything you want to say about this? No, yeah, it is. It is crazy. It's also, I don't know, like I was reading this interview and I kind of felt like. Look, I'm glad they're talking, I guess, because it gives us some kind of it gives us some point of reference and some point of communication. But like, we'd like to identify failures early and cheaply.

1:34:49It's like, yeah. like i like that seems like a default kind of like obvious like that that that feels like information that didn't need to be said because it's so obviously understood you know like obviously that's what you want like if if a game is not panning out obviously you would like to know early and obviously you would like to know before it gets too expensive like it didn't feel like i i don't feel like i learned anything you know what i mean like from from this interview really outside of the fact that like what you would like what you talked about it seems like

1:35:25Chris Ansell:they just kind of got away with it yeah they're on account what i learned is that there's like no it really is unaccountable yeah just totally now i'll say it again because some people disagree with it it's fairly clear that herman holst was demoted he was the co-ceo of the brand he now reports to the lone ceo of the overall brand who was the co-ceo of the brand so there is some sort a penalty in place, I think. But I don't know. So, yeah, it's you're right. It's a lot of it's just good media training, which is fine. But it did. But it did teach me like I wouldn't. I think I'd have a little bit more of a mea culpa personally.

1:36:04Chris Ansell:If I were these guys where I'd be like, this is what happened was bad. What's happening is bad. And if fair games doesn't turn out. Then you really have to wonder, like what the hell has been going on over here where you guys bought them too you bought them too and then are you gonna blame that are you gonna blame the same no in fact i think you liked what you saw actually and i think that's a major part of the problem that that in of itself is the problem what's what's the uh what's the likelihood that fair games because i'm kind of the opinion like look obviously i've not played fair games i don't know anything about it we've gotten one instance of um somebody reaching out to us who said that they didn't like it whatever like it's that doesn't really mean anything to me there's plenty plenty of good games that people don't like my vibe or my gut check on fair games is that it's not going to do well no it's not i don't think it's going to do well at all and i clearly that i i only talked to one person that played the uh the project hearts pre-alpha but um it's fairly clear that they removed jade raymond and that the feedback on the alpha was bad and i think that there's a 50 chance that the game doesn't come out that's what that's what i was gonna ask i was like what it would like what do you think it's a likelihood of them yeah that's kind of my feeling too it's like there's a chance that like they they're because they don't want another concord clearly i think they're i think they're fairly committed to marathon because that's too too high profile of a thing to not and also we've played it um so like that that's kind of locked in fair games i think is more up in the air where it's like look this is not a it's not necessarily a proven team we could cut our losses and avoid a a concord it would still look bad because you'd ultimately be canceling a game after you've announced it which is not great because you've done it already with your biggest ip with the last of us but um it would be better than concord again

1:38:06Colin Moriarty:so I don't know yeah go ahead Dustin I see it yeah I agree I wonder now you know he's talking about how failing earlier and cheaper and specifically with fair games you can see them maybe trying to they've already kind of maybe dipped in a little too far by buying the team and and things like that but at least they are doing pre-alpha testing and quickly responding to that feedback so it seems like they're trying to steer the ship in the right direction and i just saw this too i don't know colin if you saw this it's not like huge news or anything but uh the game post oh yeah i did see this reported about um gummy bears the bungee the well the ex-Bungie team is starting, seems like based on a job listing, they will be doing pre-alpha community testing.

1:39:01Colin Moriarty:So it sounds like pre-alpha community testing is a new essential step of their live service pipeline. Hopefully to do as what he's saying, avoid failures by having it being tested much, much earlier. The question with Fair Games in particular is that because it's maybe straddled between the old way and the new way is that, is it, is that alpha so far along and so bad that it's not, it's like, we really can't, we either need to restart or cancel this thing. As of right now, it hasn't been canceled in that, that Jade Raymond leaving was a few months back. Not that it still could be canceled, but it seems like maybe they're trying to work it out.

1:39:52Colin Moriarty:And gummy bears, I mean, is, we'll see how when once they eventually get this pre-alpha going who knows maybe someone will reach out to us about that pre-alpha and let us know

1:40:02Chris Ansell:how good or bad it is yeah yeah we'll see at least they're doing it's it's not it's not just

1:40:08Colin Moriarty:lip service that they're trying to figure out these problems earlier there's actual evidence they are doing that yeah I am I don't know I think there's there really is a lot to say about this

1:40:21Chris Ansell:just because The decision making. Let me back up. The football season starts next week. Very exciting. And I always make Michael laugh because I'm like, the Jets have not made the playoffs for 15 years, but 14 teams make the playoffs out of 32. And you should just be able to stumble in there once in a while. you know like it actually says something about how bad you are that in 15 years you couldn't be one of 14 of 32 teams one time that's a profound level of ineptitude and i feel that way about what we know about the canceled games and the games that have come out that have worked and haven't worked held iver specifically on one side and conquer on the other and i posit that there's a level of ineptitude to some of this that goes beyond averages in other words like more of these things should have just worked out it'll like everything just seems to kind of suck with the exception of one decision and like one game and hell divers which really has and i think this might be important too has was in development for so long that it really comes from a totally different era of playstation remember we always cite that that there was that trailer that leaked of Helldivers two years ago, like years and years ago, like long before it was announced, years before it was announced, years before it came out.

1:41:46And that might not be a coincidence. In other words, I just feel like somewhere and I don't know enough about them.

1:41:53Chris Ansell:I mean, I don't, I think I know more than the average bear, but I don't get too deep into the weeds in terms of like deep personnel choices and who people are or whatever. But like, there's gotta be something deeply wrong at some level to green light Ben's game, a blue points game, a twisted metal game, the last of us online, fair games, which isn't looking good. Concord, which was a disaster for them to buy Bungie, to do all these things. It's like, where is the good news? Where is even the neutral? Like, oh, we released a multiplayer game and it's exists for five years and then we'll shut it down it's just does this make sense to you what i'm saying like it's like averages of just dice rolling on average should give you more success than this yet like you prove the entire point that people used to bust balls about with me all the time which is that you don't you bought teams so ambitiously without ever getting a product out of them and it's blowing up in your fucking face three different times not to mention the canceled games like deviation and all and what happened with them too it's like dude what is what is happening here it's uh it's confounding to me and and it's frustrating and i just and this is why i think you have to communicate and maybe they just look at it maybe because people like us are so rare in terms of like most of playstation's fan base and user race is not as engaged as we are it's like no one cares no one gets into this and there will be no accountability but it's like that's kind of a bummer, man, because it would just be good to know, like, instead of these kind, and I'm not saying like, whose scalps are you going to deliver to us?

1:43:29Chris Ansell:That's not what I mean at all. What I mean is like, admit that you fucked up in a way that's deeper than saying like, yeah, we got to get some structures in the place. It's like, oh, the structures that had you buy Haven and Firewalk and dump all of this money into these games and then, and let Naughty Dog work on The Last of Us online for years. It's just strange to me. If I'm really hard often on like Microsoft, I always said that like when Microsoft bought Activision, they should have just taken all the Activision executives and fired their own executives. And if I'm going to be that harsh on them, like certainly Sony deserves a little bit, you know, fair play.

1:44:11Chris Ansell:There's a whole nother concept to this as well, which comes in the form of a letter from Wandering Mind of the Insomniac, writes in and says, what's up, boys? per the financial times interview herman holst said quote we take a very intentional approach to ip creation understanding how a new concept can turn into an iconic franchise for playstation that can then again become a franchise for people beyond gaming end quote to me it sounds like they're still a bit confused to playstation creating great games should be the number one priority when deciding on what to pursue not the possible multimedia possibilities of ip i'm not saying it can't be a consideration if something makes sense but it seems like they are prioritizing possible TV and movie opportunities over simply choosing what's best for game creation.

1:44:50Chris Ansell:Am I misunderstanding what he's saying? Curious to get your thoughts. And also thoughts and prayers are for the Moriarty household during this difficult time of cracker barrel rebranding.

1:45:01Chris Ansell:I saw it was the canniest thing I'd ever seen Donald Trump say probably on a social media platform about cracker barrel, where he's like, they got a billion dollars worth of free advertising, and this can kind of be turned around and used into their great advantage. I'm like, I agree. I wonder if they will be able to seize the day and cracker barrel roars back as an American brand. I somehow doubt it. But they did. They did bring the old man in the barrel back, the cracker, the cracker and his barrel for the cracker. I was like, that's a strangely salient point that like this could be turned into a really pot, huge positive for them if they lean like lean into the contrition.

1:45:40Chris Ansell:Yeah, right. Anyway, yeah, it's a big stuff. Europeans especially are probably confused what we're talking about. It's a big story here in America about what's going on with Cracker Barrel, our beloved Cracker Barrel. So as far as the wandering mind of the insomnia, thank you for writing it. As far as the what he's saying here about IP creation, yeah, I think that it does suck to see that, but it makes sense. Sony needs to communicate with, we were talking about this with anaplex right and they were publishing that game uh that kazoo kazoo kazoo kazoo or whatever his

1:46:14Colin Moriarty:name is the guy who made uh oh kadaka last defense account yeah and how they like they're owned by

1:46:20Chris Ansell:sony and then they publish it on switch exclusively it's like what the fuck is going on like that's that doesn't even make any sense like that kind of shit and i think that i think that they have to keep a mind for that now you know with the crunchyroll stuff and anime uh with sony pictures and Sony TV and all the things that they do there. It's like, I get it. I understand what you're saying, but they should be doing things like that. They should be pursuing things that do make sense. And I want great games too, but you just have to understand and nothing proves this more than PlayStation's meteoric financial success this generation is that their own games don't matter to the bottom line.

1:46:59Chris Ansell:So they can really, they need to extract more value out of things. if they did matter to the bottom line as much as people act like they did then they wouldn't be having record profits and driving record gross revenue in a generation where everyone agrees that there are no exclusive games or very few of them right so um i get what you're saying i want playstation to worry about games first but i don't think it's a bad idea for the people at the top to be looking at these things and identifying cross-media potential and i think the cross media potential has been fairly successful successfully executed it would be cool to see these things deployed with each other in mind i do believe that i think that that could be cool and play off each other and do that kind of thing a realization kind of of the remedy style but done with more money and intention because everything you want to say about this before we move on sony doesn't make ip anymore by the way so it's not i guess i guess we'll have it in intergalactic's a new ip yeah what is another one sarah's i guess technically sarah's yeah sure sure sure i don't know i i um i don't think it's wrong for them to identify like okay well this this also i think all the you know the primary factor should be like is this a good game is this fun and then beyond that to identify like oh is this does this have uh does this have legs on it in a way that it could be expanded.

1:48:25I think it's fine. I just think Sony, particularly with Concord, only because it's the most public-facing failure, it seems to me less like they're looking for games that have cross-media potential and more like they're trying to use cross-media potential to justify greenlighting things that otherwise probably shouldn't get greenlighted. I mean, I think about the the. Oh, my God. What the hell was it called? Was it secret level? What the hell was it? The Amazon anthology. They had an entire episode dedicated to Concord. Kind of they kind of predetermined that. Oh, no, Concord's going to be huge.

1:49:10They didn't need that. They didn't wait until that was proven for them. You know what I mean? To to to take the risk on that. They just kind of said, like, you know what? Let's let's force it. let's make it so like okay we we it's almost like we we bought this game we bought this studio and we're we're uh you know we're really focused on it therefore because we focus on it it must have crossed me it must have transmedia potential because we said so and that's really not how it works it's kind of like esports too we're like it's really difficult to set out to make a game in esport on purpose you know a lot of esports kind of evolve from games that are just designed to be first and foremost fun things like smash brothers or you know early halo or like whatever whatever what have you those games weren't designed with the intention of you you know building a sport around it it's just they were so fun and so ubiquitous and so universally beloved that people played them in a deep way and played them so deeply that a strategy emerged with which to build a foundation of a sport on top of and to go out with the set intention of you know hey we're gonna make an esport or we're gonna make an ip that that everybody's gonna want to see on the big screen like i don't know if you can really do that i think that's that's the audience's decision really and and you know like you said like it it makes sense to analyze your ip in a way where it's just like oh can we do something with this but i i don't know if um i don't know if sony is particularly calibrated correctly on this because of concord and how bullishly like the dude the presumptuousness of having a level but having concord up there with with with everything else that um partnered with that show like in some sense the nerve you know to have it up there is

1:51:05Chris Ansell:is insane yeah so yeah that's really and the lost activation that was when people always doubt how much they were spending on all this i'm like dude they were gonna roll out a whole bunch of shit around that new character um new class or whatever you know like bunch of new shit new worlds it was yeah there was a lot of there was a lot of i think a lot of the you know i don't want to say a lot but a significant amount of money that they spent on the game was likely from a presumptuous about this about what was going to come from it think about all the story beats like there was a whole story that like and that's the saddest part to me is like the writers that worked like that shit never saw the light of day like at least people saw the characters and got a chance the chance to like say like we reject these characters right we reject this world but they never even got a chance to reject the story the story might have been cool i have no idea maybe but nobody nobody cared and you can't make people care it reminds me of like not that i've seen this happen or anything but it's a premise that i feel like i've seen before where it's like um you're a new band and you're about to put on your you're about to put out your first record no one's heard it yet and then you decide like let's before the before the album comes out let's uh record a documentary about how this all came to be let's have that shot of me sitting there it's like yeah when i came up with that riff you know i was you know like and nobody gives a shit it's got like 500 views that's what it comes across like it just comes it's so presumptuous and so um pretentious and so just like man how they gotta they clearly need some recalibration yeah it's all well said and maybe they're maybe they're better because like twisted metal did well to be fair to them although there's no game to go along with it so it's kind of like i don't i don't really know what that means it's all over the place how do you fuck twisted metal up i mean that's my whole i don't know and you and that's the other thing it's like the decision making right i'm not even trying to beat a dead horse it's like you have a studio that gives you destruction all-stars and then you give them twisted metal i don't get that like i don't get that they didn't like the other game people actually care about twisted metal and then it doesn't work yeah and then i think it actually went to a different studio at some point behind the scenes as well i think i think so and then it and then it just it's like come on man like who is making how can all of these choices be so bad again the law of averages means that even a broken clock is right twice a day with hell divers it's only been once over many days at this point god yeah it's really it's annoying the fuck out of me but because to reiterate the idea is good i really believe that they should have been investing in a lot of these different games and trying things it's just like the idea was to get things to market and see what worked and what didn't and if you can't even get your shit to market and it's not even good enough to show it to people and see the light of day or be with the last of us online, which is unfortunate because it was supposed to be great.

1:54:00Chris Ansell:But to be released, it's like, well, then it didn't make any sense to do any of these things at all. You might as well have done nothing if you're if you're not going to have any. It's like we make fun of Star like when Disney bought Star Wars, but they had no plan. Right. They were just like, all right, let's go. Let's just spool it up. And it's like, but you got to like, isn't it obvious that you want to have a strategy and an end goal it doesn't yeah it just doesn't work the way it used to like you can't really fly by the seat of your pants like like i know that like raiders of the lost ark was made like kind of like flying blind you know like they improvised a lot of the fight choreography and they managed to build a successful franchise out of it and there are some other exact iron man famously was like i think like 80 improvise they didn't really have a script for it and that and i didn't know that that's awesome i love that movie yeah no the first iron man is inexplicably good considering great um considering they barely had a script for it but i i just don't think that works with studio structures as they are now there's too much money on the line there's it's too it's too big it's too there's too many cooks in the kitchen like you can't you can't do with star wars and just be like let's just do the first movie and then we'll figure it out later like that's that's fine for like a scrappy kind of an indie scene or when there's not really that much to lose but I don't know.

1:55:24It's really unwise. I wonder if part of the question is there are two paths.

1:55:32Colin Moriarty:Think of bringing up Star Wars again. Star Wars unintentional hit when it came out. Unintentional, but unexpected. I guess the right word. Right. And they have no merchandise, no toys ready. And certainly they made lots of money later. But you could see that as lost sales at the point. they were doing mail order that christmas for toys because they're like we got to be able to sell these people something this christmas they want star wars stuff we're not ready because we didn't expect this to be huge so i wonder taking that example is it from a business standpoint it's like well we would rather be ready for this to be huge and make a shit ton of money and that's the better option than not planning for it to be a success and losing out on all the potential money we could make from being ready and being like, look at all these different things we have to sell you based on this one IP that you now love.

1:56:31Colin Moriarty:I don't know. It probably depends on the extent of what you do to be prepared for that success, because if that doesn't work out, then it's like, man, you spent all this other money and nobody cares.

1:56:43Chris Ansell:Yeah. It's like, I don't know. There's a good point to be made there. I think the one thing, you know, that famous 1977 Christmas with a box of Star Wars toys with no toys in it.

1:56:51Colin Moriarty:Right, that's it.

1:56:53Chris Ansell:It's a different era. I don't want to trivialize the making of merchandise and trade and all that kind of stuff, but you can imagine in that era, it's like people hand-carved those toys. They had to be manufactured into it. It was like this whole process. It's like now we can 3D print things. Things look so good because a lot of things are computer aided, and you could probably just move a lot quicker with that stuff. So it's like I'm Not that it's really an important component of what you were saying, but it's like I just – I like the idea of being a little more humble and using the success of something and supporting the success of something as new marketing beats.

1:57:28Chris Ansell:So like you have a few months later, you have the toy or you have the whatever and bring people back to your product. I don't know. It's a little – so what you're saying, I mean, it's like what you're saying is pure capitalism. But to me, it's – and I'm not saying you're this way because you're not, but it's like it's craven. it's what we always talk about like what is enough you have to like you can't embrace a successful game you have to embrace like the amount of you know exploitation around the successful game right away it's very corporate right because i'm sure to some degree with

1:58:00Colin Moriarty:hell divers they're like man uh we knew this was going to be this crazy big we could have been ready to sell skins we could have been ready uh with all kinds of other things maybe they would picked hell divers as a lost uh or a secret level yeah that would be cool episode instead which i think they are featured in the one they're featured in the episode that terrible sony one yeah yeah oh

1:58:22Chris Ansell:with all the different worlds i never watched that i never even watched it oh it's you should uh yeah

1:58:26Colin Moriarty:i actually have amazon so i should it's horrible but yeah so they might be looking at it like oh we weren't we weren't ready for the success of hell divers and we could have made even more money

1:58:36Chris Ansell:if we were ready well they're making a good amount of money on xbox it looks like it looks like people bought it looks like sales of maybe 250 something like that which I think is respectable because there was 500 ,000 people cumulatively playing it I think yesterday or something like that so that's going to be PC and you know a bunch of PC people some PS5 people and then Xbox people so they're they are spreading the field I'm very curious about where this goes from here yeah I saw a lot of people on my friends list playing it so that's kind of interesting yeah it's a uh it's novel what i said at the time i was like you better go buy it if you want to send playstation to signal that you want more of these things but i don't think i don't think there's any question that future games as a service will come to xbox and i think the question is just that when when as we said many times when do they come and i would like to think that they would just come immediately oh oh speaking of coming immediately big daddy's big dong wrote in and said hey gents ken levine opens up a bit about judas and a new playstation blog post what are your key takeaways ken briefly addresses the topic of release date but his response makes it clear that there's still plenty of work to be done take care and have a lovely day so yes this came up out of nowhere i was thrilled to see this over on the playstation blog and it's on their own official website too so it's probably on other outlets as well they write judas ken levine details how player actions determine who becomes the villain so ken levine wrote a little post himself on the PlayStation blog, and he writes the following, quote, We know, we know, we've been silent for a while.

2:00:12Chris Ansell:It takes a lot of time and energy to make marketing materials like trailers, and we're trying to focus all our efforts on finishing Judas. But we also miss the days of having a more direct relationship with you, the gamer, so we thought, why not start releasing some devlogs? Through these, we hope to communicate more frequently to update you with new details of what we are working on without spoiling too much of what Judas has in store. The goal is to keep this pretty lo-fi, meaning more frequent updates than before, but not necessarily always with fancy trailers and super polished final imagery though there will be more of those as well yes and right underneath is a gif of the rented deputy i can't dude just seeing this game in motion i was i watched this over and over again just to try to see like new things i'm not nerdy like that about a lot of things and it just looks like bioshock yeah it's just so nice so here's what he says there's a few interesting things here we've just featured a major milestone he writes villainy villainy is a central feature of judas when you play bioshock or bioshock infinite the villain is always going to be the villain fontaine comstock they're always going to be the bad guys in judas your actions will attract members of the big three to you as friends but ignore one of them enough and they become the villain from there they will get access to a new suite of powers to subvert your action and goals actions and goals the clips below demonstrate just a little bit of the of the feature so So there are, I just highly recommend people go to the PlayStation blog, look at some of these, you know, they're not really good.

2:01:38Chris Ansell:I mean, there are gifts, I guess, in some way, but they're just five second video videos of different action, which is nice. And this is just one example of how the big three can retaliate. The more dangerous and character specific stuff we will be kept secret for now. Eventually, you'll have to make decisions about who you're going to focus your energy on and who you'll end up or wind up alienating. And then a focus on character. One of my personal favorites of all time is Middle-earth, Shadow of Mordor, because of the emergent gameplay made possible by their nemesis system. The system allows you to develop small relationships with multiple orcs.

2:02:11Chris Ansell:However, their goals were a little different than ours because there are so many different orcs and they don't have time to develop them into characters. In Judas, you're going to get to know these characters intimately. We want losing one of them to feel like losing a friend. We want to play with that dynamic and we want that choice to be super hard. The big three are all going to be competing for your favor and attention. They can bribe you, save you in battle, talk shit about other characters, and share with you their darkest secrets. But eventually, you've got to decide who you trust and who you don't.

2:02:36Chris Ansell:In Bioshock Infinite, there was a lot of energy invested into developing your relationship with Elizabeth. By the end of the game, you knew everything about her, her abilities, her hopes and dreams. But the truth is, she knew almost nothing about you, the gamer playing Booker. In Judas, the big three observe you as you play, and they have feelings not only about how you approach combat, hacking, and crafting, but most importantly, your interactions with the other two characters. as part of the villainy milestone we also completed the biggest judas play test yet where new players experience this feature firsthand every time we test we learn so much and we love having that level of knowledge when working on the game the testers shared a ton of valuable feedback on the weight of decisions and how it impacted outcomes they're interested in learning more about character motivations and how moment and how moments where the big three helped or turned on them change their future decisions and um other than that they there's a piece of key art which is awesome and uh boys i gotta know how you're feeling this is the most we've ever learned about the game so far other than seeing it and um chris i'll go to you first yeah i mean uh it's exciting to see more about more about it exciting to learn more about it i'm this is one of those things though man like i'm i'm i'm i don't need to see any more like i'm i'm I'm a mark.

2:03:50Oh, totally. For a Ken Levine game. Like, I don't necessarily need to know any of this. It's cool. And I think it's been hinted. I think this exact kind of mechanic was talked about a little bit before. I feel like this sounds familiar. Maybe they were just kind of...

2:04:02Colin Moriarty:Is this a story building blocks thing? Yeah, the narrative logos. The narrative logos, that's it. I watched that GDC talks like so many times. But yeah, I mean, this sounds awesome. I love the gifs that they showed. It just makes... But it just makes you want to play it. so like i'm just kind of like i don't know what to make of it i'm just excited i just i just want to play it right now i'm very impatient with this with this one uh obviously take all the time you need but i don't i don't need to see anymore that's kind of the thing for me i was just like i worry about having too much explained to me like i kind of i kind of want to go in as blind as possible because i went into bioshock really blind like i saw the teaser trailer and that was

2:04:46Chris Ansell:it um so i i don't know yeah i'm one this is one of those games it's like if a new megaman or castlevania came out where i'd be like i'm gonna have a hard time not looking at things for this this is just one of those because i'm just i mean like you i'm just such a huge bioshock fan like bioshock and bioshock infinite i think are almost as good as each other i think bioshock the virgin one is gets the edge but bioshock infinite's fucking amazing they're just very rare games like games that are like it's hard to replicate how good they are and the man response you know there's a lot of people responsible he'll always remind you of that but it's like the man you know responsible for driving this thing anything he does as you said is going to be really compelling to me and just looking at the game in action it's like i really i'm like yes yes the whimsy the weirdness the art style the lighting the it's just it's all there um i'm amped i'm amped up dustin talk to me about judas first of all i want to know where i can sign up to be a judas play

2:05:49Colin Moriarty:tester if there's doing these play tests though i'm probably like that could probably be the three of us are the least desirable play tester as being on a very public basic podcast yeah that would be

2:05:59Chris Ansell:tough but i mean that that could probably be arranged i mean well but who knows hit me up i'll fly anywhere yeah you'd have to go to boston out judas oh it's not far it's not bad um the so

2:06:12Colin Moriarty:yeah i mean just to echo you guys these gifts look awesome i love seeing the powers in the the second clip with the the flame coming out super cool the the villainy stuff where the different you know ways that you can change the story and how to impact you i feel very mixed about this controversial take but the thing that i love so much about bioshock bioshock infinite i guess bioshock one has multiple endings but there's what three two yeah in the original there's three endings there's there's three um but overall the story is very you everyone who plays bioshock gets 95 the same experience it is uh like a novel or a movie only a little bit different with the ending right um it sounds like this game is story is going to be extremely open-ended and so my gut reaction to that is that I don't like that.

2:07:18Colin Moriarty:I want to just be told one fleshed out story that's told in a very particular way. But to play devil's advocate with myself, being that this is Ken Levine, and it's been a really long time since I've watched that narrative Legos. Is it narrative Legos? Yeah. Since I've seen that, it's clear that he's been thinking about this for literally a decade or more. And so from that side, I'm like, okay, well, if anyone can make this open-ended story experience, it's him. And this is clearly part of the reason why this game has taken so long. So that aspect kind of counteracts my slight skepticism just because we've had so many games where there's an open-ended story and you're like, oh, well, I kind of feel like I got half of an experience because of that.

2:08:14Colin Moriarty:And if you play it again, you're like, okay, well, it was different, but mostly the same. Maybe not. Maybe a little more fulfilling, but also just not. It's like, man, I kind of just would have rather had the story told to me. So I believe. I believe in Ghost Story. I believe in Ken Levine to prove me wrong on this. Yeah, I get that as well. I guess part of me is also feeling like I wonder, like it's been so long. there's clearly been enough time to write like my my worry about any game that says this kind of things is like the writing like how are you going to make a like the idea of a character being like your friend and then in one playthrough and then and then a villain in another and then having that be a satisfying story arc or like a satisfyingly written or well written or well told um generally speaking that would be like that's a difficult i wouldn't under i wouldn't want to undertake that but it like you said it's been so long and ken levine's been thinking about this for so long and it and it is ken levine that i'm kind of like i think you could do it and also what's exciting about this is just the replay potential of like how many different how many different permutations of this story exist and how satisfying are there how like what are the arcs like can you piss off everybody yeah that's like and does that in some way determine the difficulty like if is hard mode like not making friends with anybody and i don't know i guess one thing that comes comes to mind we did recently have a game that even though i didn't fully finish it so my bad on that but uh balder's gate 3 might be considered like the most satisfying open-ended game where they were really able to give make it so open-ended to the point I think we were talking about who was I talking with I don't remember Maddie's playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3 he just accidentally missed Shadowheart at the very beginning and so Shadowheart was just not in his game I think that's fucking hilarious and awesome at the same time so that's pretty it's not impossible who is Shadowheart

2:10:31Chris Ansell:in the game just for context

2:10:34Colin Moriarty:she's like uh i don't know the hot one oh okay the hot girl you're supposed to meet her but he just skipped

2:10:39Chris Ansell:her and then and and she so she just that's so funny that's great it was either shadow heart or

2:10:44Colin Moriarty:there's there's a when i was playing i miss there's like a wizard character uh that tries to fuck you constantly uh throughout the game i missed him up until i was in act two and i was like where did i miss this character it was at the very beginning so it kind of happened to me as well just with a different character yeah the shadow heart's a bigger loss i think yeah than that wizard is that is his name gale um yeah yeah he's the guy who eats magic right yeah yeah i hate him i killed him oh yeah okay his name's his name's gale dude i accidentally almost entered a romantic relationship with him and i i think that was a common occurrence because this dude's this dude's horny as hell yeah no i killed him he wants to fuck he wants to bone he wants to he wants to hear the Allegheny hogs oink you know I'm saying yeah so I said oink oink oink oink oink

2:11:37Chris Ansell:be careful careful those wizards show me your cans show me them can um it's a little throwback it's like when you're listening to a you know like a concept album and there's a little bit of a a sting from a previous song as it goes yeah right um time stamp you listeners right now like what I agree with you that this could go one of two ways. I mean, what they seem to be focusing on and what I assume the reason I assume take two and Strauss, Elenick and those guys have given them, you know, ghost story and Ken Levine so much latitude is because. Bioshock is critical, is a critical darling, and it means something.

2:12:19Chris Ansell:And we saw that with the situation with Bioshock for how they want to release it, but they want to make it as good as they can. They understand. but this idea and and they seem to be leaning into it with the marketing just through what he's saying is like what if you could just play bioshock endlessly or at least to a really high degree of custom you know customization which is what you were saying and it's funny as you were saying it was controversial that's what i was writing down as well is because it is it's going to be a controversial thing on whether this game could have just told a story or whether it's trying to do something different.

2:12:54Chris Ansell:But I think he kind of has been telegraphing this the entire time. And again, you guys brought up this GDC talk, which is 10 years plus old, 10 years old. It was like 2013, I think, or 20. No, no, 20. I think it was 2014, 2015. Yeah, because he was done with Infinite. And I mean, it has been 12 years plus since Infinite came out. And it is frustrating. But my suspicion is that they see something here and they think that there's something worth pursuing. And shouting out the nemesis system is another clever piece of marketing because this is something that people really do care about. So saying so promising a steroids version of that, that really determines deeply that the level of the game means that Judas is probably a fairly ambitious product and it could come out great or not.

2:13:39Chris Ansell:But I suspect like I just don't think you would let them keep going like this. I think the only thing that works against them is that there's going to be a lot of pressure to deliver. I mean, this is a long time coming and it is my, I don't know anything about this, so I don't want people to misjudge me, but it's like my expectation is I think we'll get the date at the game awards. Like, I think this game is a year out or so. It's time. It's time. Got to do it. And I'm excited to see more and it'll probably be such a relief for those guys to finally get this thing out. Although people have been roving on and off that team by in large part because it's, you know, they're taking so much time and a lot of it has probably been done for a while.

2:14:23Chris Ansell:So. All right. So there's that. Oh, Fortuna wrote in about our next topic. He says, hello, sacred crew, longtime listener, supporter and lurker with the first time right in on the 23rd, Sony on the 23rd. I'm sorry. Sony revealed the four Middle East and North Africa men a hero project games coming to PlayStation. the games are red bandits a robber reaction game where i couldn't get find any gameplay or footage and see solution where the gameplay reminds me of celeste the perfect run a third person action adventure rpg is seen in the only video i was able to find a cat's manor which looks to be a puzzle platformer game i myself am interested specifically in one of these games the perfect run as i am a massive fan of the book series it is based off of none of these games have an official release date as of me writing this comment some have coming soon listed and specifically for the perfect run it has a release year of 2028 as stated by the author I just wanted to ask you all about everyone's initial impressions, thoughts, feelings, vibes, or gut instincts about these games from the very limited descriptions and gameplay shown.

2:15:20Chris Ansell:So yes, there is a blog post on the PlayStation blog, a fruitful source this particular week on a few different stories, which I appreciate. This is, of course, Sony's official marketing conduit. And they did announce the four men a hero project game. So just to remind people, so we've criticized Sony a great deal on this episode. one place where you really have to give them an enormous amount of credit and where in my opinion they have bodied their competitors not only in the hardware space but in the publishing space generally speaking is pursuing games in uh let's say off mainstream markets and slowly making the mainstream i think sony has played an enormous role for instance in in getting gaming not only going in so in china in a major way but exporting a lot of those games and they've bodied their competitors in this way so the china hero project is about to release lost soul aside which is imminent um which is exciting and they have the india hero project as well which has five games announced for it and now the many hero project which as was said in the letter is the middle east and north africa and there's a whole website for this the playstation.com slash en dash us slash mana dash hero dash project if you want to check it out or you can just google it um and these games come from a variety of different countries and it's pretty exciting so here are the games as described on playstation blog as he was saying red bandits is developed by a saudi arabian studio called team agenda and it says quote red bandits is a fast-paced robbery action game set in a hyper capitalist age where one company rules the world through complete monopoly in this world a newly formed thieves organization known as the red bandits emerged to challenge the system and spark a rebellion you play as stut a seasoned old thief with a stuttering condition and a mysterious past you can't fully remember break into the company's forfeited floors take down the powerful board of directors and bring back a demonopolized world order with a dynamic cover system evolving heists and a vibrant comrades hide out red bandits blends fast stylish action with a deeply personal story of rebellion robbing its way to ps5 npc so there's that nc solution is from the uae studio dark emerald and it's described as quote exiled by human centuries ago the aeons are confined to desolate underground their village is safe but beyond the gates, danger lurks at every corner, and not everyone can be trusted.

2:17:42Chris Ansell:No one has left the village before except for Jiwe. Inspired by techno-dystopian aesthetics, NC Solution is a hand-painted 2.5D narrative platformer following the story of Jiwe, a young Aeon venturing out into the unknown in an attempt to save his dearest friend. Stumbling upon NC, a lost encyclopedic robot who finds himself far from home, the two form an unusual bond and set out together the surface of a planet regalia play through 40 plus levels with increasing difficulty and explore uncharted territories find collectibles and uncover the secrets they carry about the world and its odd inhabitants keep an eye out for hidden levels and challenge yourself to think outside the box will you find your solution on ps5 and pc there is video for this particular one if people want to check it out there's a trailer the tunisian studio lantern studios is developing the perfect run says quote save the world or blow it up yourself one loop at a time the perfect run is an action-adventure RPG game where the player controls quicksave.

2:18:34Chris Ansell:A time-traveling hero caught in an epic struggle between supervillain gangs marketed superheroes in a powerful megacorporation for the control of the city of New Rome. With three days to decide the city's fate, the player can go back in time to decide their perfect ending, if they have the skill to do so. Interact with NPCs and unlock new dialogue options thanks to information collected in earlier loops. Join a faction in one route and fight them in the next. Bend time itself in epic battle against super-powered bosses. Collect the best upgrades before the reset and unlock the city's secrets in this memorable superhero adventure.

2:19:04Chris Ansell:Find the perfect run on PS5 and PC. That one sounds a little bit like Deathloop.

2:19:09Colin Moriarty:Yeah, that's what I thought too.

2:19:10Chris Ansell:And finally, A Cat's Manor developed by the Bahrainian studio Happiest Dark Corner. Quote, you awaken trapped in a house infested with spiders and inhabited by an eccentric family. At the end of your tail, you discover a crudely stitched hand. With no memory of who you are or how you got here, you let curiosity guide you forward. A Cat's Manor is an atmospheric adventure that blends puzzles, combat crafting and rhythm based music challenges use your wits to escape the manner investigate your surroundings solve puzzles fight your way through deadly encounters or outsmart your foes and avoid trouble inspect observe listen and feel your surroundings for clues and cues immersing yourself with 3d audio and ps5 dual sense controller features uncover the secrets of the matter and unravel what the family is hiding creeping its way to ps5s and pcs near you so anything here dustin that sticks out to you of these four new games from a totally new region

2:19:56Colin Moriarty:of the world the first thing i want to point out in this red bandits game is the fact that this character's name is stud and he has a stuttering condition you know i'm thinking about the whole

2:20:06Chris Ansell:team like is there stub it's a guy that's missing an arm they're like oh this is this is perry and

2:20:12Colin Moriarty:it's a paraplegic you know it's just like a whole crew with a mildly offensive nick got a whole routine about this yeah oh i was thinking about it when you're right i'm thinking about stud But so, yeah, I'm wondering with these, the rubber is really going to meet the road, actually, in the release day of this podcast with Lost Soul Aside, because it's the most high profile game from these various hero projects. And so I'm really curious how that's going to work out right now. There are no reviews for Lost Soul Aside. No one knows if it's any good.

2:20:50Chris Ansell:Yeah, it's a little concerning. Yeah, apparently they have like some sort of day one patch. Yeah, it is concerning. It is definitely concerning. It's just strange. Like, just get this game in order already. Like, how long is this going to fucking go? You know? Yeah. We'll see. I'm excited about it. I have not preordered it or bought it, so I don't know. But I will.

2:21:06Colin Moriarty:Yeah, it's cool to see them investing in all these games and hopefully they can find some really good talent. I think overall, though, that none of these games from any of these Hero Project games have I haven't played any of them. None of them have been particularly appealing to me. And I think overall, none of them have been big hits, not that they needed to be. But if that's the goal is to find the talent, we'll see what Lost Soul Aside. That could be the first one, or it could be a massive miss. We just don't know at the time of recording by tomorrow, by the time you guys are listening, we're going to have a better idea of the quality of Lost Soul Aside.

2:21:48Colin Moriarty:I really hope it's good. But of these games here, this game, The Perfect Run, the one you said sounds like Deathloop, does look the most interesting. I found gameplay on YouTube that I think was right. And yeah, when you start The Perfect Run, this is a book series as the listener or as the write-in mentioned. So kind of an interesting, this is the first time one of these games has been like, this is based on a book. So kind of cool.

2:22:20Chris Ansell:um chris anything here for you i i think dustin's right that like nothing is really broken through yet blussell aside is probably the one that has the best chance but really a lot of it's going hinge on its quality what do you think yeah well also it's i don't know like i i know what you're saying where it's like we haven't seen the big the big one yet but i think just having these games uh in in this market where it might be exposed to more people i mean you'd have to imagine development costs over in these areas are probably like significantly um more affordable so it's probably they probably need less to be successful but red bandits to me i like the art i dig the uh i like stud i like that i like that idea it's cute and weird i don't know anything about it though it's just an image so like can only really say so much but i think uh this hand-painted um what is this uh and and and she solution yeah and she solution yeah yeah i don't know exactly i say it could be entry yeah that looks it looks pretty solid i dig the art style quite a bit it reminds me of it reminds me of something i played a long fucking time ago but i don't i i can't for the life of me remember the name it's like a puzzle game that had this kind of a vibe although like definitely more lo-fi less less technologically proficient lower budget for sure but uh as for the rest of these like i don't know i don't feel um i don't feel anything jesus christ i think uh i don't know it's hard to say because like a lot of this is just art i tried to find this perfect run gameplay that you were talking about i don't know if i found it yeah i'll see if i can find it but um it was one of those things i wasn't

2:24:02Colin Moriarty:even sure because it had such low views but if this game wasn't really known before this at all then that could be part of it um yeah i wonder i think there's there's something about

2:24:19Chris Ansell:the intention behind this it's probably fairly cheap to get involved in it again it reminds me of the pub fund during the ps3 and vita era and early ps4 era where sony would just lend money to companies and then the games would be locked in an exclusivity deal until they like got their rips that paid them the money back and then they can release them out so guacamelee is probably the most famous game that came out of that and uh which is an exceptional i mean guacamelee is fucking amazing and drinkbox is an amazing studio um but i wonder if it's more to engender good feelings about playstation in these development communities these burgeoning development communities to just find to solicit the bigger things that these people will do once they get their feet wet and start getting these projects out there.

2:25:03Chris Ansell:And then you have the intended consequence. I don't want to say unintended. The intended consequence is saying like, and maybe one of these games hits. But I just feel like the way that they treat some of these games, like Evo Tinction is a game that comes up a lot where I'm like, this game was literally a fart in the wind. And I played it as and people know I beat it. It's like, this was pretty good. Why did what was the point of you even doing it? Why did we do this? That's the big thing. It's like, what is the execution? It's like making a video on YouTube with no, no consideration for the thumbnail.

2:25:34Chris Ansell:It's like, well, no one's going to find it. No one's going to. You put all this work in, you invested in the time and energy and produce this thing, and there's very little to show for it. So it is a little muddled. So I guess what I'm saying is based on like the way that they've marketed and treated some of these games, It's like, yeah, maybe it is more about just engendering fairly. It's like soft power in politics. Like, oh, yeah, we'll build you a well. Or here's like, you know, here are some here's some food aid. And then later on, it's like, oh, yeah, maybe you can do something for us. So who knows?

2:26:11Chris Ansell:I don't know. None of these games on the I'm on the China Hero Project website right now. there are if you count lost soul aside there are 13 upcoming games from that and there are five upcoming india hero project games a couple of china hero project games have been canceled over time but most of them do come out which is interesting and i need to play more of them i think i've only played two of them like fist forged in shadow torch that one looks really good and right up my alley and a lot of people did enjoy that that's on like everything you can play that even on switch and xbox i think at this point so it obviously sold appreciably yeah but one final thing we've been talking a lot about hell divers and the future of games migrating to xbox and how there's so much muddied messaging and why i just feel like the messaging indicates that they're not interested in doing the single player stuff it's like again they're explicitly saying like coming to pc ps5 and pc ps5 and pc ps5 and pc ps5 and pc i mean that makes sense to me But that's just, they're not going to give you any of this stuff either, but they're going to give you the bigger things.

2:27:18Chris Ansell:And then people say like, well, they're not going to sell over an Xbox. And again, my argument is that they're not probably going to sell very much anywhere. So there's just, to me, it's just, I don't know if that makes sense to anyone, but it's just a little muddy. It's the same thing we've been saying about Freedom Wars, Patapon, everybody's golf from Pandai Namco. There's just weird. I don't, I want to know more. And again, this goes back to what we were saying earlier. Let's, let's bring it back. about speaking at this particular time as the acts are different in terms of the way things are being brought to market and console consideration and all that or whatever.

2:27:52Chris Ansell:So anyway, shout out to those guys. I'm sure it was very exciting to have Sony knocking on your door or actually you submitted your game and then Sony picked the winners. But very exciting. You'll have their marketing and their money and you'll have, maybe you'll be like Evo Tinction and just come out and no one will know.

2:28:10Colin Moriarty:we'll see yeah real quick i mentioned that gameplay yeah a little bit of an interesting thing about this so i sent you guys a link this has 206 views this is what i saw earlier and i clicked around on the youtube channel i was like oh this is someone's ue5 project or something like that um but then i went and i found this guy's twitter account that is listed on the youtube channel because it says uh hitsatsu games i was like well that's not the name of the studio but this guy is from the same country on twitter so maybe this is gameplay it's just not i don't know there's there's a weird trail here that i've been discovering

2:28:55Chris Ansell:yeah i'm watching it now i mean it's it doesn't look very fine but it could be this is just a proof of concept even maybe yeah minimal pretty minimal ui yeah um but who knows who knows who knows games don't look good until they do i've found in my own experience all right a couple other quick pieces of news this one comes from windows central this is relevant to us just because of forza horizon 5 success millions of copies sold on playstation 5 it appears that forza horizon 6 will be revealed perhaps according to documentation i guess seen by windows central at tokyo game show no and that that kind of announcement i think it's not the early xbox 360 era anymore where they microsoft was aggressively chasing exclusivity on xbox to draw japanese gamers to their platform which was a wise decision it didn't work out well but a lot of good games came out people love blue dragon and and things of that nature lost odyssey um these days it's clear that these are going to be multi-platform games and i would imagine you would want to announce your japanese forza horizon entry in japan on a console people can play it on in Japan.

2:30:03Chris Ansell:And so I'm just connecting the dots here. It seems like this is going to happen. Any interest in this, a Japanese? And by the way, this I saw, I didn't report on it at the time, but I think a couple of weeks ago, people were talking about a Japanese, a Japan based, I should say, Forza Horizon 6 because they were caught, not caught, but people saw people from playgrounds scanning a car that's only in Japan. And it could conceivably be brought elsewhere, but it's like a car that you really only see there so any interest in this sounds cool um i have yet to really get

2:30:36Colin Moriarty:into a forza horizon game i played some of five uh and it was cool but not really my thing so maybe if it has some weebish tendencies and of course when you play a game that it's in a location you've been to before kind of adds a little bit of uh interest there we have tendencies what are

2:30:56Chris Ansell:you hoping to see in here like car wraps oh yeah dude well dude when i did play ford's horizon 5

2:31:02Colin Moriarty:you can download from like their community thing i had like an evangelion character on my car you know it was uh yeah i would never do that in real life but in a game i mean why not why not do in real life dude there is a guy a few blocks from me that has one piece wraps on his car do you know him and it is i've never seen this man i don't know i'm a little afraid of him yeah like that's too far right right okay fair enough uh chris forza horizon you're you you're not a are you a forza horizon person horizon i mean i i forza horizon 5 i thought was really good and i did get i i got more into forza horizon 5 than i than i typically do get into those games and certainly more than I expected to, but not to the degree that I would be necessarily excited to pay full price for a sequel.

2:31:55You know, like, I think it's good. I think they're very good games. I think there's even a chance that some people who might think themselves to be not into these types of games might get something out of trying them, and they might find that they actually really like them. I think I played Forza Horizon 5 for, like, I think, like... I think 15 hours or something like a pretty, that's a long time for me to play a racing game like that. But obviously famously, if everybody remembers Forza Horizon five came out on game pass, obviously. And then I think a week and a half later or something like that, Halo infinite released the multiplayer early as like a surprise.

2:32:41And so I was just like, Oh, well you kind of undercut me there because I'm definitely not going to be i'm not going to be playing for its horizon over this so they kind of they kind of shot themselves in the foot as far as like getting me on board really but i mean it's a good idea it's a good idea to take that franchise in a in a different direction and to announce it at tgs i think it's smart and interesting i think it's probably gonna happen all right a couple more

2:33:12Chris Ansell:pieces of news and then we can move on into what we're playing and wrap things up with listener inquiries as we always do. This comes from Push Square, our friends over there. I just thought this was interesting because a lot of people are talking about this. They write, Sony's convoluted PS store refund process has finally been streamlined. And they write, quote, if you've ever tried to get a refund on the PlayStation store purchase, you'll know the process is quite painful. Fortunately, Sony's finally done something about it as the method by which you can ask for your money back has been made much simpler.

2:33:38Chris Ansell:While logging into your PSN account on the PS app for smarted devices or on the PlayStation store website, you can now simply hit a button while viewing your past purchases to ask for a refund. Here's the process via the website. Log into your PSN account, click your avatar, then account settings, click transaction history, find an eligible purchase you wish to have refunded, click it, then click request refund. On the app, it's very similar. While logged in, tap the menu button and select transaction history, choose a purchase and hit request refund. This is a much simpler route than asking PlayStation for your money back on PlayStation store purchases.

2:34:09Chris Ansell:It was previously a much messier procedure. while this is good news it should be noted that the ps store refunds policy is no less strict on exactly what can be refunded in a nutshell you can get a refund if your purchase was made within 14 days of the refund request you haven't downloaded or streamed the item if it has been downloaded or streamed item is found to be faulty and you can find the full policy on the website so this is good news um usually you'd have to like message them i think and kind of just ask and hope you were like they were going to treat you kindly and there were certain games i think that were was fine.

2:34:40Chris Ansell:Obviously, Cyberpunk was a famous example of that back in 2020 and early 2021, but more recently, Minds Eye apparently people are getting refunds for. And it's just, it makes sense. The rules make sense to me. It's like, yeah, you have 14 days. Don't download the game if you don't want it. And the second you do, the game has to be found to have been faulty or you're in. It seems reasonable enough to me. I like what Steam has done, but I also feel like that's too easy to abuse too. It's the best. It's good. but it's maybe not strict enough you could beat entire games in the in the course of the demo i mean i'm not saying that's common but people and i think people are very flippant with buying and requesting refunds and then reviewing things and should i just think it's strange

2:35:25Colin Moriarty:yeah well that's my main point was just that this is good uh because it was annoying at some point in the last year i accidentally bought diablo 4 i don't know how that happened but i had to go and request refund and it was annoying i did get it uh but yeah it's just so hard for me the steam refund is so awesome because there's games that i've been curious about uh and i can buy it and i can play for an hour and if i'm like yeah this is not really what i'm looking for or it doesn't run well or something like that then no questions asked refund and that's awesome i agree that it maybe a little bit too generous because i'm sure there are people that abuse it i think that there i think for steam it does say that it's not guaranteed and so maybe if you are like constantly buying games and refunding them over and over again maybe there is a limit because it still needs to be approved by valve to get that refund so maybe kind of that's where the balance comes in but maybe yeah the steam there's been a few times on playstation where i've bought a game played a little bit and i'm like man i actually within an hour know that i'm like i don't like this i don't want to play it and it's like oh well if i would have bought it on steam i could have my money back but playstation just uh doesn't do that yeah steam's come in handy a lot of times like the most recent one where that i can remember was kingdom come deliverance 2 when i got that on pc because i wanted to be able to stream it to my steam deck or whatever and it just wouldn't work like the controls on steam deck were for streaming anyway we're completely fucked like you couldn't just you couldn't move like it wouldn't register the sticks as like valid inputs so i was like oh well i'm i this is this completely ruins how i was gonna play this and i was able to get it pretty immediately and then just buy it on ps5 and so it's i mean it's it's it's useful if you're going to use it like ethically i think but you know yeah but yeah a lot of people don't

2:37:30Chris Ansell:But it is what it is. I mean, it's good to be pro consumer friendly. Make sure that you can transact easily if you buy something on accident. And I think that that's what they're doing is saying like like a slip, a slip of a finger or something, which is what happened with you at Diablo. I have this theory and I think it's almost certainly true. I just try to stay on the up and up with the various companies that I transact with so that if and when something like that happens, that hopefully they'll be like, oh, yeah, he really needs a refund. It's like with Amazon. I buy so much shit from Amazon and then I very rarely send things back.

2:38:01Chris Ansell:And I think that that works in my advantage so that they just algorithmically believe me when I say that there is actually a problem. And so there should be something about that too, like implemented through AI or whatever on Steam, where it's like, you do this too much. You're like access to doing this is cut off. You're not doing it in good faith. You're treating it like demos. And really, that's not what our intention is. But whatever works for them. I do wonder how they do it. they must they must have like money in escrow or something that is immediately charged for the game and then it's refunded back that in other words like the credit card transaction fees on steam's part is probably really high if they're actually refunding your shit do you guys know is like does your card get hit i have no idea that'd be interesting to know i'm sure it's well known but i just don't know because i don't buy games on steam you when you request a refund you can

2:38:53Colin Moriarty:choose whether to have it be sent back to your card or to be added to your steam wall okay

2:38:58Chris Ansell:interesting okay so yeah they are charging you right at the point of purchase that's so that's extra interesting because that's expensive for them that's not a trivial thing yep all right a couple more things here and by the way i've never asked for money back on psn game because i just don't think i bought some shitty games but i've never had a game where i'm like this is unacceptably tech on a technical level or something like that okay uh skate the skate revival is on route um the full the well the full release is unknown because it's not coming out in a full release yet but the early access period which will be available on playstation consoles uh ps4 and ps5 begins september 16th 2025 and um skate announced this via their social media platforms the trophies are live so the early access period has trophies and people are already playing it in great numbers.

2:39:53Chris Ansell:So it must be accessible through, you know, they must be pretty confident in it. In other words, media types, journalists and whatever playing it. Skate hasn't been seen in a long time. I was looking this up in preparation for the show. I was like, when was the last game? And it was, it was 2010 Skate 3. And so a long time. And this was announced back in, you guys might remember back in 2020, they announced that skate was coming back. So this has been in development for a long time and percolating for a while. it's built on the frostbite engine. Not a huge surprise there. And I suspect that this is going to go pretty good for them.

2:40:25Chris Ansell:I don't know exactly, but it seems like the appetite for this game is fairly healthy. Are either of you going to check out the early access period that begins September 16th?

2:40:33Colin Moriarty:I believe it's free early access, not like a paid early access before the main free to play launch. So free to play. Absolutely. I've never really been into skate. At least when I was younger, I played like a few demos. I think in that, in that time frame, I was so tuned into playing Tony Hawk. And then when I immediately played skate and was horrible at it, it just made me frustrated. And I didn't understand that. I'm like, this is not arcadey like Tony Hawk is. So I'd love to check it out with fresh eyes at this point, understanding that it's different and with free to play. I mean, this could be depending on how they do.

2:41:10Colin Moriarty:It sounds like it's going to be cosmetics and things like that. I mean, that sounds that could work ideal. So I'll definitely check it out cool chris are you gonna skate yeah i think so i think i had the same experience that dustin had where i was just like i was so immediately bad at skating i couldn't get

2:41:24Chris Ansell:my bearings i was like this sucks that happened in the ps1 era there was a game i think it was called it was a thrasher thrasher the classic um skating brand the magazine or whatever there was like a thrasher skating game that was more serious than everyone kind of not everyone but a lot of people got into it or bought it rented or whatever because they assumed it would be like tony hawk but it was a much more hardcore game that was just like, I don't want to play that kind of shit. Personally, they get interested in this. I think it's, it's interesting though, because it's like, it's, it's more hardcore and more serious, but at the same time, it's, it's, it is a more stupid, like it is more wacky because like there's an emphasis and I love in the trailer that they put out, there's a big emphasis on the ragdoll physics, which I think was obviously like pretty key.

2:42:08And, uh, in the virality of skate, I, I still, to this day, see, there's always a clip of Jesus, doing the like doing the t-pose like skating that i see like every every so often like every week once a week i'll see that clevin i'm like man skate skate has a level of staying power that's interesting and so yeah i never got into it and i kind of regret it and so like it'll be a good it'll be a good way to get involved and they seem to completely understand that like the trailer just shows a bunch of people smashing into cars and like falling and like clearly sustaining devastating damage and it's it's nice it's cool uh i will definitely be checking it out although i'll

2:42:48Chris Ansell:probably be terrible at it again yeah we'll see and yeah we'll see what they they kind of garner from this this early access period again a lot of people are playing it now so i don't know what there must be a lot of people behind the scenes that have been testing it probably and have had access to it and maybe that's translating it to just kind of continual access up to the point of the 16th which is my mom's 75th birthday all right bob seger still staring at me oh jesus get him out of there yeah um okay a couple more things here matt piscatella over at their cercana group which uh tracks american game sales in the biggest market in the world obviously for consoles and pcs and elsewhere they release their data every month he does so on blue sky here the social media app this is for july 2025 and we there's a lot of data here what we really care about is the software of course and the hardware of course switch 2 was the best selling hardware in the for the month followed by ps5 in second place and that's both units sold and money made gross um okay so big month here for ea as far as games sold this is from july 6th through august 2nd and this counts unless otherwise noted so like nintendo doesn't count digital sales but most of these count digital sales and so on and so forth So EA Sports College Football 26 was the best selling game of the month.

2:44:07Chris Ansell:Not a huge surprise. Followed by the EA Sports MVP bundle, which is number two. That is buying Football 26 and then Madden 26 at the same time. Donkey Kong Bonanza, based only on physical sales, is number three in the United States. Followed by another new entrant in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and 4, which though on Game Pass, still slotted in here at number four. other notable games here grounded to um in at number eight including the best-selling pc game for the month i didn't know that grounded had such a hardcore audience i knew it was big people enjoyed it when it came over to playstation as well but i had no idea it was like that obsidian has turned into a very interesting studio doing a lot of very weird and disparate shit not unlike what insomniac was for a while and might and might still be um let's see what else is here death stranding two falls from number two to number 12 for the month elden ring night rain falls from number one to number 16 that's a fairly precipitous fall for the game i wonder if it's saturated itself not that that's bad it saturated itself to the tune of millions of players but that does seem that that is an unusual fall for a number one game um to go like it fell below death stranding but it is based on money by the way this is dollar sales and it is a$40 game.

2:45:27Chris Ansell:So it's a little deceiving. And interestingly, Spider-Man 2 is still holding on at number 19, popping back into the top 20. And these are, of course, overall best-selling premium games year to date. Monster Hunter Wilds is still the best-selling game of the year in the United States, followed by Oblivion Remastered. And EA Sports College Football 26 is already slotted into the third spot. Other notable games, MLB The Show 25 at 5, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is the sixth best-selling game of the year so far. Elden Ring Night Reign is number eight. And this is amazing. Forza Horizon 5, based only on its PlayStation 5 sales, is the 11th best-selling game in the United States this year.

2:46:07Chris Ansell:It's incredible. Doom the Dark Ages is at number 17. And Donkey Kong Bonanza sneaks in at number 20. Again, digital sales are not counted. Nintendo very stubborn with that. And they are not a vain company. And what I mean by that is like that you would think you would want to look as good as possible in these charts, but they really just don't give a shit. They like their proprietary information and then they put all the sales data in their own financials. And they're the most open with that stuff if you just give it a little bit of time. Civ 7, by the way, holding on number 14 overall. So pretty interesting stuff here.

2:46:42Chris Ansell:Nothing crazy to write home about. Anything that you guys want to pull from here? I mean, I guess I will say this. PlayStation games in particular The top 10 PlayStation only from July 6th to August 2nd. College Football 26, the MVP bundle, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and 4, Call of Duty Black Ops 6, Death Stranding 2 on the beach, Forza Horizon 5, MLB The Show 25, Grand Theft Auto 5, Minecraft, and WWE 2K25. So a fairly boring list. Anything you want to say, Dustin, about these?

2:47:14Colin Moriarty:It's not really PlayStation related, but Donkey Kong Bonanza being number three. physical only just shows that uh switch owners are still buying games physically a lot and they really need to figure out that game key card situation uh probably pretty fast because they are i think it's turned into a much bigger deal than they ever expected uh so pretty interesting though number three tony hawk did better than i expected just because i feel like it kind of came and went really fast not a lot of people we talked about it briefly i didn't even finish it um not that it was bad or anything but um so yeah dude that's doing well and then yeah i also uh did not know that grounded 2 was anything really just because i i wonder if that's a game that just appeals to kids more so or i don't know it's um yeah i mean it's i remember playing the original when it first came out and i thought it was charming and fun i i those games just aren't really for me and like they have to be like a very particular vibe for them to be for me and even in the cases that they are like i got into valheim quite a bit but even that was like that was like a sub 30 hour game for me you know what i mean like i didn't i didn't put that much time into it anyway i'm just not a mark for those games but grounded is a pretty big like i know people who like they love they think grounded is fucking great i don't know what they think about grounded too i haven't talked to them about it but um it's kind of this sleeper kind of undercurrent thing um that people really really are into and i get it i like the premise a lot yeah it's cool of like of like the honey i shrunk the kids kind of survival like it's it's it's a weird it's a unique premise for a game like that so i get it but it's never been for me

2:49:01Chris Ansell:and and remember it is everything is relative to on the charts like we don't have a baseline number to compare anything to so it's all relative to each other like tony hawks pro skater 4 though it did well on these monthly charts is not even in the top 20 games sold for the year and probably never will be therefore so it's I wish we had more to benchmark things but this is what we have to work with so yeah people do get access to this data like I told you this used to be the MPD data and that shit's really expensive to get access to but it was so fun to read through it at least for huge nerds like me alright last thing I wanted to discuss before we go new PlayStation Plus Essential Games And this is a really fairly impressive month, in my opinion.

2:49:44Chris Ansell:So for people that don't know, and I'm sure you all do PlayStation Plus, obviously the subscription service on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, etc. PS Plus Essential is the base version everyone gets. It used to be the only version of it. And that's where you get three free games or games as part of the subscription you pay is really the more appropriate nomenclature there to add to your library is always if you're interested in these games and you don't own them already, you should add them to your library. Now you can download them later, even after they're no longer available to download for free.

2:50:13Chris Ansell:You will have them in your download list as long as your PS Plus subscription is active. The following games will be available on September 2nd, and it begins with a game that I think you like, Chris, right? Psychonauts 2. Yeah. From Double Fine. So Xbox getting involved here a little bit and getting some of that PS Plus money. I don't blame them. That's a PS4 game. It'll play obviously fine on your PS5. And then a big one here, Stardew Valley. The PS4 version as well. there is no native PS5 version of Stardew Valley. You don't really need a native version of it. There is a Vita version of it.

2:50:44Chris Ansell:It's not included here. It doesn't seem like, but that's where I played it. Actually, I'm one of the five people that played the Vita version of Stardew Valley. So that will be available on PS4. And then finally, viewfinder, which is available for both PS4 and PS5 first person puzzle adventure game. You have until August 2nd, or I'm sorry, not August 2nd, September 1st, rather to add the current games that are available. at the time of recording and publishing, which is Lies of P, Daisy, and I know the game that Dustin really wanted to play, which is My Hero 1's Justice 2. So you can download those through September 1st.

2:51:19Chris Ansell:Anything here for you guys? Unfortunately, Viewfinder is not interesting to me, although I know people really love it. I own Stardew Valley. I think I might own Psychonauts already as well. I think I might have bought it when it was on sale at some point. So I don't know that there's literally anything for me, but I know people are pretty into this month. I think this is a good month. Chris, what do you think? yeah i mean i think so it's some strong games here viewfinder has always intrigued me um so i think i might jump into it now because i like the premise i like these like mind bending anything that has like portal energy which this seems to at least from a gameplay perspective like kind of a a mind bending kind of recontextualization of of 3d physical space i love it so i'll probably check that out stardew valley i think i i must own stardew valley on something i have so many goddamn machines i don't know but uh so that's not necessarily for me um and i own psychonauts too but man it's i i think it's a pretty good month i think there's like stardew valley and psychonauts 2 are just objectively very good games like psychonauts 2 is psychonauts 2 is just really fucking good like if you like platformers especially like you you you should absolutely play it um and stardew valley is obviously critically acclaimed viewfinder i don't know much about i don't know how viewfinder was received but i think the idea is really cool and interesting it's a good month i think it's just not necessarily like a heavy month for me i guess because i already have experience with most of these yeah it has very positive reviews on steam viewfinder anything here for you dustin no not for me but not because

2:52:56Colin Moriarty:these games are bad just because stardew valley i i just played it earlier this year for a long time doing the co-op with holly fantastic game highly highly highly recommend it it's just uh super satisfying super addicting the co-op also surprisingly very good viewfinder i bought and played this game when it came out and it's pretty good there's a similar game that i like a lot more called super liminal uh you enjoy these puzzle perspective type games also do you guys remember the clip that went it at least it was viral on twitter it's from a youtuber vine sauce where they're playing it and they hear a line of dialogue and just pause and then turn it off it has like marvel-esque the clip i was looking the the voiceover is like did you just shift reality and it just immediately like no like it was there you go so dialogue in this game not so hot but for free you like these perspective type puzzle games i recommend it and then psychonauts 2 when chris sees one piece and the characters and he finds them gross and uninteresting and and unappealing that's how i feel when i see psychonauts 2 yeah uh it might be a fine game but i i don't know i'm just not that interested in it yeah i could see it's like if i had to in fairness if there were a thousand episodes of psychonauts i wouldn't be watching it sounds like you went there that's that's 100 true

2:54:34Chris Ansell:well then all right my boys it's time for what we're playing we're back from our break um let's see here what order do we want to go in dustin let's go to you first actually this week you're playing hollow night as well as luminous arises demo or luminous arise has a date i think

2:54:51Colin Moriarty:in november now right yep yeah they just uh came out with the surprise demo and the date uh this game's fucking awesome so i think we talked about this when it was announced but this is from uh enhance which they did tetris effect um and it's also a lot of team that did um rez many years ago. And so it's very much like Tetris Effect, but with Lumines, if you've ever played that game, a classic on the PSP, you got to try this demo. I'm not very good at it. I've been trying to get my mind set to do like bigger combos and stuff like that. But right now in the demo, you can play three stages and you can also try an online battle mode.

2:55:39Colin Moriarty:dude i was trying this battle mode online i have not won a single game um and it's it's partially because i'm waiting dude it and it's not even i am bad at the game so that is part of it but some of these people that i'm that i'm playing against i'm like how i have no idea how you can play this fast and get this many combos because as soon as i basically all the games start the same where i'm trying to be deliberate with my piece placement stuff like that and then because it's like tetris battle mode the walls start coming up from my the opponent's uh plays and then i just start like panicking where i start placing things quickly and then it's all it's just downhill from there so definitely check this one out it's free uh i'm probably going to keep playing the demo just because it's easy to hop in and play those three levels and it's infinite it's like tetris you can just kind of chill and play that over and over so highly recommend that the main thing though over the weekend was playing hollow night i had started this game probably three different times over the years and never got fully into it and with silksong coming out everything i've seen from that looks amazing particularly i'm so intrigued by the movement of the character in silksong that I'm like, man, I think that one's really going to connect with me more than Hollow Knight.

2:57:08Colin Moriarty:But I wanted to do my due diligence and play Hollow Knight finally. Since it's really by a lot of people revered as one of the greatest Metroidvania games ever of all time. So with my playthrough, which I got a little bit of feedback about this already, I when I when I posted my tweet about it, I basically mainlined it and just got the base ending. And so my completion at the end was 50%. And I don't, I've been thinking about going back and playing more, but I just don't know if I like it that much. I can see what people see in it. And I think it is a great game. But I think the thing that bothered me the most, ironically as a from software fan is having to get back to where you were when you die just like super insanely annoying to me where i'm out exploring i haven't found a uh like a checkpoint yet which is a bench in this game and if you die then you get sent all the way back to that bench the bench that you were at it's like you just go ahead walk back walk all the way back and this happens all the time and i don't know maybe it's a skill issue but i just found like that at some point i was like okay this is just like i feel like i'm wasting my time by having to do this all the time luckily for most of the bosses you don't have to do too much like there's usually a checkpoint for a boss that uh makes it a little more convenient but But just overall, when I was like, it made it the act of exploring way more stressful for me, where I was like, dude, I need to find a checkpoint soon because I really don't want to have to waste my time if I die here.

2:59:03Colin Moriarty:Walking all the way back here, figuring out where I was. So overall, probably the thing I like the most about this game and the thing that has had me thinking about going back and playing more as the boss fights in this game are awesome. particularly the last boss of the game which i just i won't get into the last boss of the the minimal ending was really good so it's got me a lot more excited for silksong just because i went and re-watched the gameplay uh the or the recent trailer for silksong i'm like yeah this is gonna i think this is gonna be more satisfying to me than hollow knight i hope that the checkpoints are a little more generous just because it's one of the that's like the type of skill or i guess like gameplay difficulty that i just am not always down with um and yeah i a lot of i was trying to reconcile in my brain like why is this not okay why don't you like this here but you are okay with it with from software games and i think from software games the earlier ones are more have this problem where it's like your checkpoints are much fewer and farther in between uh so it makes it the more recent from software games i don't you know i i like those more and that's probably partially the reason so um calling you said you beat this game do you remember what your completion is because i was i was shocked that when i got to the end it said 50 percent no i i

3:00:31Chris Ansell:don't remember that at all yeah i beat it i was looking at my trophies actually to see when i beat it um maybe last week or whatever it was 2019 so it's been a long time yeah it's been a while i really don't remember very much about it i really liked it i remember i remember doing a lot of the optional stuff there are like boss gauntlets and things like that where it's like this is fucking hard man like this is really really difficult oh yeah that's the big thing

3:00:51Colin Moriarty:i remember about it yeah but i did one of those yeah i think i did i think i did quite a few of

3:00:56Chris Ansell:the optional things but i never got anywhere close to doing everything in the game and it's funny you went back to play because i was thinking i was like it would be cool to go back and play but i just there's just just a bad use of time for me right now in my opinion yeah yeah it's it's a

3:01:09Colin Moriarty:beautiful game uh i guess to point that out it's kind of obvious everyone it's not a new uh take at all but i really like it's kind of it reminded me of cuphead in a way in just that it's it's very clearly like all hand drawn the artistry level is there the way that it's animated is all absolutely incredible i love seeing that in games where it's like very clearly like it's almost like a a cartoon uh that you can control and so yeah i i think i'm day one for silksong despite these negative things about it um i i think silksong looks awesome yeah some of the movement the way it's that character's name hornet um yeah i think that the way she like moves and flips and she like throws her needle and then it kind of like uh it's like a grappling hook almost towards enemies looks real nice.

3:02:01Chris Ansell:What about you, Chris? What's going on? It says here you're playing Mafia, the old country. We know that because we just discussed it on Sacred Symbols Plus. That goes live tomorrow. Gears of War Reloaded, which I'll be playing tomorrow. And Sword of the Sea. And actually, Al Pacacino wrote in and said, Hi, CDC. I just wanted to shout out Sword of the Sea. What an amazing, beautiful, mesmerizing game. Journey Absu the Pathless and now this. These guys are one of my favorite developers around. Great music, visuals, and I think this is top three for DualSense features implementation after astro and returnal also curious what you guys think of the developers saying playstation saved them when the studio struggled with what you do keep it going cheers yeah i think they they noted that the ps plus money helped um yeah all right so yeah talk to us about what you're playing in any order you'd like yeah i mean so i'm not gonna go super deep into mafia the old country we did a whole spoiler cast about it you can hear our thoughts there uh i liked it i thought it was pretty good it's it's not my favorite mafia game i still think definitive edition for me is is uh my favorite but this is a close second it's very good because we we talked about it for two hours so you can go there to see what we have to say about that um but yeah sort of the sea man sort of the sea is really really good and it's it's it's i don't even know what i expected necessarily when i started up i i knew that they had made the pathless and the pathless was something that that was like a launch or like damn near close to launch yeah for ps5 and i remember like playing it and i did like it but it was it was missing something like i didn't really gel well with like there was like it was very it was very particular that game i dug everything else about it uh and so when this game came out i was like oh maybe it'll be the same thing again i'll give it a try and i ended up beating it i think i think i've beaten that game three times at this point which is not to say much it's a very short game you can you can really beat if you really want to run through sword of the sea you can do it in about two two two and a half hours it's it's not a very long game it really is experiential and there is kind of a new game plus element to it where you just get more upgrades and more capabilities for your guy if you go through again that makes that makes playing through it again a lot more satisfying um but it's very movement based it's very flow statey it's very good it's it's hard to describe it's like journey meets ssx or something it's very interesting it's like the way that the way that your sword because the whole thing is like you're kind of surfing across like sand and snow and water on this like sword but the way it like controls and the way it feels and i guess the dual sense probably plays into this but it just feels so good to move through and to get like air off of a jump and to hit a boost at the right time.

3:04:46And there's so much precision in the control despite it being so glidey. You can make really precision jumps if you're really good at it. And the upgrade system is nice. You get really meaningful. It's not like this convoluted upgrade tree where it's like... I mean, not that these guys do this ever, really. But a lot of games do that upgrade tree where it's like, I don't know, 5 % mobility or whatever. you know it's every time you get an upgrade from the store this this clerk guy that you meet kind of everywhere throughout the world it's like you're you're moving towards like a really meaningful upgrade like oh at this if i get this i can so you get like points for doing tricks or whatever and that's like that's its own thing but you get an upgrade that allows you to like generate a boost for uh every time you land successful tricks or whatever and it's just like it feeds into itself really really nicely the vibe is great the art style is great the music is fantastic the visuals of just like the of like reigniting the ocean across like splotches of desert and watching like the the animals and it's a really fucking good game and it's really respectful of your time it like i said it's a two-hour game um you could you could spend a lot of time exploring there's a lot of stuff to find and a lot of extra secrets to get a lot of uh you know, money to grind for time trials, which are not particularly difficult, but they're there and they add something.

3:06:18It's a it's really fucking good. I think this might be my favorite game of theirs personally. I just really dig it. I love any game that were movement. Just the base feeling of moving through the world feels really good. Like that's a good way to get me. I can suffer through like the worst story imaginable. if I if if your game just feels like a joy to move through the whole time. So that's sort of the C. I recommend it. It's really good. I think it was. Is it a PS Plus game or is it a? Yeah, no, it is.

3:06:50Chris Ansell:It is. It's on both PS Plus and Game Pass, I think. Yeah, well, highly recommend it if you have it. Definitely check it out. It's really respectful of your time if you don't like it. You know, yeah, it's not a huge time sink worth checking out. And the other thing I've been playing is Gears of War Reloaded. um because i was like i might as well i don't know i'll see what this is about i was most curious because i've played the original gears of war campaign many many times on uh series x because it's it's backwards compatible there you can play the original trilogy entirely which is cool but man i would like that on pc or anywhere else but um but i was curious to jump into the multiplayer because we've been talking about that's been a consistent point of conversation whenever gears of War comes up as far as the relaunch on PlayStation is how seriously difficult Years of War multiplayer is.

3:07:47And I've put several hours into PvP and Gears of War. And I think I'm like level, I'm over level 10. I know that. So I've put some time into it. And I'm not particularly good at Gears of War online. i'm not particularly i'm not the best shot i don't know the i don't know the deeper end of movement tech or anything but it's it's fun like i can't deny that it is just fun to load into a map shoot a bunch of people curb some people and even just get your head like what's so funny and i knew this intrinsically because gears of war is not like it's not like a memory for me it's pretty fresh always for me but like i love that the headshot sound effect is clearly like 50 decibels louder than every single other sound in the game it's it's fucking ridiculous i'm sure it's a mistake but it's it's great and i'm glad it's still there awesome so i've been i've been really enjoying the pvp actually like even as somebody who's not good at it it is good fun genuinely to play it um as far as the campaign goes i think i'm in act two i really only expected to play the campaign for a little bit but i'm just kind of like i might as well finish this at this point and it's very good i will say i've run into some weird bugs like like very bizarre ones that i don't remember experiencing in the original i don't know if it's like a if they plan on addressing this i don't even know if these are originally from the ultimate edition but like there's there's that famous uh that sequence with the the berserker where you first see the berserker in the church and you have to lure him outside i lured him outside but then like there's a there's a piece of debris that falls in front of the in front of the door that prevents you from going back in so you have to fight the berserker outside i had that happen but like the berserker was still inside so like i just couldn't fight him and he was just like a lot and there's like a couple other instances like that where it's like oh this is kind of buggy it's not game breaking buggy because you can reload the checkpoint it'll like it'll fix it but it's weirdly unpolished from that perspective and i'm curious as to why that is it's still very good it plays really really well i think it looks really good one thing i would say is i think they kind of fucked the original art design of the original gears of war with this i would actually recommend bumping all the contrast to high if you can because there is something a bit and maybe you can even see it from like some of the gameplay footage that you've been able to see online it looks like really gray or like and not gray as in like 2005 like 360 gray i mean like genuinely like washed out like it's not color graded and a big thing about the original gears of war and granted that was like a byproduct of unreal engine at the time was that these like harsh lighting and these harsh shadows but i think what made years of war good was that they leaned into that and it actually accentuated a lot of a lot of like the atmosphere of that game and it is somewhat missing if you don't have high contrast and like lower brightness a little bit that's so i've been doing that and the games looked fantastic but you can look it up online like there's certain if you don't do that and to and to some degree it's still kind of ruined but if you don't do that certain scenes are just completely like like this is a great shot of like you approaching a building in the dark and it's like heavy rain and in the remake if you don't fuck with the lighting settings at all it's like all that atmosphere just goes away it's very it's very weird um

3:11:32Chris Ansell:it's very oh no go ahead i was gonna say it's funny you say that just because i when i set the game up yesterday and mike and i you know i set the game up down you know downloaded it on in the era of hdr i think i said this before like i before hdr i used to jack up the the the brightness on everything yeah i feel like hdr has brought at least for me like just better you know colors and lights and all these kinds of things and so i just kind of actually do what they say to do now these days which is often it's just done for you but like make sure the logo is barely visible so i when i did that actually with this and i agree it's weird because i just thought it was me like i turned the game on and started playing it i'm like wait a minute and i paused it i like went to the brightness and i'm like i gotta put the brightness like where the logo is like jacked up and it's like mega bright and but you're totally right so it's caught in between the space of these generations um and it's weird it's weird i i it's funny you say that just because i noticed that i didn't mean to interrupt you but i just thought that no it's it's worth bringing up because i i do think gears of look gears of war is not the it's the first gears of war is not like of the original trilogy it's not the one that plays the best it's not the one with the best story but i do think what it does excel in at least in the original is like this foreboding kind of atmosphere like especially in the there's there are sequences in the dark that i'm um that i love that i loved from the original and uh if you play with high contrast and and like somewhat lower brightness you can get that feeling back like and it and it's unchanged But like the way that it has it set up default, it's like everything is bright always.

3:13:09And it's like there's no feeling of like being actually in the dark. And I think that's that's a bummer because that's such a big part of the original Gears of War. The original Gears of War is more of a horror game than an action game, although there is action in it. Like it it leans more into that. And then the sequels go more adventure. And I do think there's something interesting about this game because it is built off of the bones of the ultimate edition where they put a lot more color into it. Like a big criticism for the original Gears of War was that it was very gray. It was very monochromatic.

3:13:38There wasn't a lot of color. And I think it's funny because around the time Gears of War Ultimate Edition came out, that was the big course correction from the previous era was like, all right, let's get color in here. Let's like Sunset Overdrive and things became more colorful. I feel like now we're at the reverse point where a game like Gears of War actually does somewhat stand out if it is gray or if it is like more like depressing or like i don't even know what to say what to call it but so to see the the artistic philosophy of the of the mid-20 teens kind of brought forward it kind of feels like i feel like they kind of missed something or like they might have um they might have been better off kind of following the original design because there are certain characters that like dude dom even just the character models i was i I was looking at comparisons because I was like, is this all in my head?

3:14:34And I'm like, no, like they're all very clean in like the new, like it looks like everybody's showered. And in like the original gears of war, like everybody's grimy, like they're covered in dirt. Like they look gross, but it's like supposed to, I don't know. These are all really like minor nitpicks. The game's really, really good. The story is really, really fun. The level design I think is great. I think it feels just mega satisfying to, to play through this game and obviously 60 frames 4k all that stuff it's early you know higher resolution higher frame rates it's all really cool to to see this original game brought forward and especially if you do the the the video sliders like i suggested like you do get like a feeling of like oh this game's been brought forward in a really authentic way some some minor bugs um but it's it's good i just um man i wish i could have this experience with gears too two and uh and three that's all i think about when i'm playing it it's like it's good but man collection would have been so sick uh but maybe we'll see maybe we'll see uh we'll see that in the future or like the other two at least um yeah i'm looking forward to

3:15:45Chris Ansell:getting into it it was funny just to kind of play it for just we just played for like five minutes um i was like yeah it's been a long time i don't really remember this so it's gonna be it's gonna be fun fun experience for me so please look forward to it and it's happening right now it's already happened probably by the time you hear this actually all right over to me yeah like you said mafia the old country i platinum did that's platinum number 188 i think it's excellent i love it highly recommend it like chris said i just recommend you listen to the spoiler cast on patreon.com slash last damn media we get deep into our thoughts and we have lockboard on there as well we give the game about two hours worth of time which is a one-seventh the game time so that's a pretty deep conversation about the game.

3:16:22Chris Ansell:So two other things. I, uh, system shock to remastered the 25th anniversary remaster, which I guess would have come out last year on PC finally was migrated over to PS five. And so I bought it when it came out a couple of months ago, but I finally got around to playing it and I only played for a couple of hours. I want to get back to it, but, and probably restart it with a different frame of reference, but there are two things about it kind of bother me one is not really the game's fault one is the game's fault the thing that bothers me that's not the game's fault is this is very much mafia definitive addition to mafia 2 and there could very well be a superior game underneath the skin in fact everyone a lot of people feel like system shock 2 is like one of the great games of its kind and certainly gives way to bioshock uh whatever it would be eight years later in its timeline but it's uh it's not we knew I knew this the whole time.

3:17:17Chris Ansell:It's like it's not a remake. It is just a port like an up res and they did a lot of bells and whistles to it on PC or whatever, but it's just a primitive game and I'm not crazy about playing it in combat, which is a necessary sort of thing. You get a wrench just like you do in Bioshock or whatever and you beat the shit out of things with it, but it's just it kind of suffers from that a little bit for me. The thing though that bothers me more and the reason why I was kind of a little annoyed with it and I got to just restart it and maybe just got a button map and stuff is they they really did nothing to update the game for from pc like as an example it's like to fire your your weapon hit use the fire button to look at your map go into the menu use the menu button kind of thing i'm like what are you talking about like i don't know what you're saying and then i have to keep going into like the button map and looking at things and i know these are little things but it's just it's just stopping from, I'm like, I don't want to play this right now.

3:18:13Chris Ansell:I can just be playing other things. So it's there. I don't want to be too hard on it. I know it's a wonderful game. I just got to get back to it at a time where my frame of thought is references are different or whatever. But there's another game I've been playing. Drake Heinhorst wrote into us on Patreon and says, Colin, on summon sign, I'm not going to pay for early access on MGS Delta. Cut to an always sunny title card. Colin gets Scott. So how has the game been and was it worth losing your principles over? Just kidding, of course. I can't wait to play it later this year when my backlog clears up.

3:18:41So when it became clear that I wasn't really into system shock and because I was originally just gonna be like, oh, maybe I'll use this time.

3:18:47Chris Ansell:And then Metal Gear comes out the 28th of the day we're recording this. But there's a two day early access thing to be for it to be available the 26th at midnight. And so I wasn't in a system shock, too. And I'm like, well, I want to use my time wisely here because we have a bunch of games coming out, right? Like Shinobi's almost here. Hollow Knight's almost here. Lost Soul Aside is almost here. it's just no time to waste so i was like you know 10 extra dollars i'll just get the two days early access of metal gear solid delta so ironically everything i'm about to talk about i'm about halfway through the game i did it in the early access period so i feel like i got my money's worth actually it's like okay five dollars a night whatever um i gotta say i really love it i think it's fun metal gear solid 3 is my least favorite of the first three games and it's the one I came to latest I mean that's true for a lot of people but for me especially where I just wasn't into it at first even when it came out I just was like I don't know I'm not feeling it um I still think two is the best one and I think I would love to see two remade in the same way I think would be fucking sick the thing about the game that I think is really funny is that it translates really well to you can play it in the old style like fixed cameras and all that kind of stuff but you can play it in a new more fluid third person style third person shooter style I should say cover base shooter and it's really fun and it makes the game so much easier which i know because i remember the game like especially the boss fights like i was dreading some of the boss fights and i'm like that was kind of i'm doing a no no kill run by the way so and it's like this isn't really that hard i'm playing on normal i'm trying to unlock some things so that i can maybe try to do like the foxhound run at some point which is like you have to beat the game in like under five hours without anyone even being alerted to your presence i don't know if that's really going to happen for me or not, but we'll see.

3:20:36Chris Ansell:But there's a big thing about the game's performance, and I'll be curious what you think about this, Dustin, because I know you did a video on your YouTube channel about this. Adrian Pinter wrote in, said, hey, gentlemen, with the launch of Metal Gear Solid Delta, I've been thinking a lot about performance in games, or more specifically, how little it seems to matter to critics these days. Despite a wave of technical issues and bugs, games like Baldur's Gate 3 and Elder Ring still get showered with perfect scores and universal acclaim. So my question is, when did performance stop being a meaningful part of how games are judged are we at a point where the overall vibe or ambition of a title outweighs how well it actually runs at launch curious to hear where you guys draw the line i'll hang up and jerk it thanks the reason i wanted to bring this question up and thank you for writing in adrian um and have yourself a good session um but the reason that i wanted to use this write-in is to say like i went into this game with my eyes wide open knowing that there was going to be technical issues with it especially apparently on ps5 pro and yet i have no idea what anyone's talking about as I play the game.

3:21:35Chris Ansell:I'm not a savant by any stretch of the imagination, but I don't know what anyone's talking about. I'm like, well, I don't know what's wrong with what would be different about it if it was fixed. So I kind of went in half cringing being like, is this thing going to be like really unplayable? And from my perspective, it's been perfectly fine. And it makes me wonder a few things. First of all, I might just not be seeing it again. I'm not super tuned into that, but I'm more tuned to it, tuned into those things than I've ever been before. So I kind of trust my instinct on that. But the second thing is, is if it goes back to what we said many years ago with Ben, Ben Smith and, you know, Returnal where it's like, are there just, or me with silence Hill, silent Hill to remake where I was like, dude, it's crazy that people are playing this with the level of fucking shimmering.

3:22:24Chris Ansell:And maybe it's just these one off, not one off, but just these limited issues that only certain people, discern or see the PS5 seems to be giving distributing these sorts of things to people so I don't want to say that that's what it is either but I just don't know what anyone's talking about that's my whole thing so it sucks like I guess what I'm saying is I guess for some people with Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate 3 and I don't remember what specific issues they even had but it's like those things are probably happening to some people some people are probably not noticing them but I bet you some of it's just not even happening the way it's being described and I feel like people have written about this, but like the, the digital foundry of vacation of, and like looking at everything through these specific technical lenses is maybe poisoning the well more than it should be.

3:23:15Chris Ansell:I don't think it's their fault. It's the way people react to that content, but what was, so what are people saying are the problems? That's like, what am I missing again? I'm playing it on PS5 pro. This is the console that's supposed to be fucked. Yeah. But I'm just not sure what that's all about, because, again, I almost forgot that that was even true as I was playing it. I'm like, you know, eight hours in or whatever. And then I'm like, yeah, like, what was the problem? Yeah.

3:23:41Colin Moriarty:So according to Digital Foundry and others, because I've seen other people.

3:23:46Chris Ansell:I'm not saying they're wrong. I'm just saying I'm not noticing.

3:23:49Colin Moriarty:Yeah. Yeah, particularly with PS5 Pro and where I get a little principled about it is just that it consistent, not consistently, but is often running worse than the base PS5 version in terms of frame rate. A lot of points where it's dipping into the 40s and just having a very inconsistent frame rate overall. Part of the reason there's a few different things. Colin the fact that you don't notice like god bless you like that's actually a great thing and a lot of people will play this game and not notice an inconsistent frame rate and that's

3:24:27Chris Ansell:fantastic well I think I think part of it is that it's so slow I'm not it's not I'm not playing vanquish right yeah I'm fucking literally slinking around like laying in the grass waiting for a guard to walk by me I guess I'm maybe just not there's not a

3:24:42Colin Moriarty:lot of action maybe in the boss fights yeah but I didn't even notice it there so yeah go ahead yeah so yeah it's the thing and bringing in who was this here was it adrian adrian yeah it was adrian yeah the technical issues bringing in adrian's uh question here about should it like as far as like reviews and stuff like that is that when discussing this there are so many variables that it's going to affect people in different ways it you might play it and it doesn't really bother you and and more power to you or you're going to play it and it is really going to bother you and also in this game too i think it also depends on how you play it because the the worst points in the digital foundry video are uh early in the game where's there there's that section where i believe um ocelot first shows up there's like a building yeah where in the digital foundry video if you shot one of the the barrels that explodes dude it was the frame rate was crashing down to 30.

3:25:46Colin Moriarty:So it's one of those things too where part of the problem with this release is that the frame rate is so inconsistent that it's going outside of TV's VRR window. So it's not even able to fully hide it in certain ways. So my main thing as I touched on earlier is just that the fact that the performance of this game is worse on the console that is$200 more expensive now is just so completely unacceptable to me that I can't do it.

3:26:21Chris Ansell:Yeah, I understand. I just I really I bought it to try to use the time wisely and assuming yeah, maybe things will be fucked up and they'll fix it or whatever. Silent Hill got fixed too. But yeah, I just I'm not experiencing it. I should be clear though that yeah, I'm playing a no kill run so it's all stealth. and the boss fights, even in the boss fights, I'm not killing the bosses. I'm, I'm, you know, diminishing their, uh, whatever it would be, uh, dexterity, I guess, or stamina, I guess I should say is what it would be. Contextary. Um, but even in the action, like when you're fighting the pain or whatever, and he's using a bunch of like hornets and all of the rest, it's like, I just didn't really, it's in fact, it's so much more playable than the original that it's, it's comical to me.

3:27:08Chris Ansell:Like I like, I personally, I'm like, this is awesome. I understand more of where the reviews came from. Although I assume maybe a lot of them didn't play on pro or whatever, but and so they wouldn't have gotten the worst performance. And it's like you're saying, that's kind of the thing. That's the straw that broke the candles back to you for you. But I was like, no, this is great. So I don't know. I'm personally really into it. And if it's if this is the baseline for it, then it's only going to get better than there. So I don't want to people will have a different savantish kind of approach to this in terms of what.

3:27:36Chris Ansell:What they notice, but I'm I'm very sensitive to that now.

3:27:41Colin Moriarty:so i calibrate for that as well yeah and it's important to point out too i know we cover playstation here but this also extends to the pc version which first of all the pc version is locked at 60 fps you can't unlock the frame rate uh but probably for good reason because people with fucking 50 90s are running this game and because it's an unreal 5 game on pc it'll just hard stutter and this has been i mean this has been the thing with unreal engine 5 games on PC as long as games have been being made in Unreal 5 is just that they have horrible problems. I think Dead Space was another one, Silent Hill there's a long list of them and it's frustrating.

3:28:27Colin Moriarty:It's gotten to the point where I think it was like Tim Sweeney the other day was like, oh actually the problem is developers that are waiting until the end of the game, the development to optimize and it's like I don't know, I'm not a game developer so maybe i'm i'm totally looking at this the wrong way but it's like if that's how game developers have been doing it this whole time and now they're using ue5 and suddenly now it's like oh shit this isn't working then there's some kind of there's failures across the board there's probably some failure from epic and how people are using the tools there's failures at development studios that aren't building the games and having the, at least what I view as the optimal goals for what the end final performance of the game is.

3:29:14Colin Moriarty:So it's just a, it's a frustrating time. I feel like if you, if you are spending, like some people are, multiple thousands of dollars on just one part of your setup alone and the game, it can't brute force the game and it still has horrible stutter issues. It's like, dude, come on.

3:29:36Chris Ansell:Yeah, I wonder. I wonder. People seem to really have a problem with UE5. I do wonder what's going to happen because I did see his little thing about that. I'm like, that's interesting. I mean, it's an interesting way to attack. It might be true. Like you said, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. It's I don't know if everybody's having the same problem. And if the industry is if the industry has been making games the same way for a long time without these problems and then you introduce an engine in there that suddenly that's the problem everywhere like it seems less like a problem for developers and more like the fact that you just didn't build a tool for the people like for the people who are using it basically right i mean it's like you you didn't you didn't build this with the uh with the understanding of how this typically goes and so like yeah it's unfortunate that unreal engine is so um is so compromised in a lot of ways i mean that was one of the main reasons i couldn't finish um or that i bounced off of oblivion where it's just like because the frame stuttering and it just got so ridiculous and i'm like my pc can handle this it's fucking oblivion right yeah there's no excuse and i guess it's the same principle here it's like dude this is metal gear solid 3 but this is running on a ps2 i should be getting a million frames a second on this thing even if it looks modern so yeah it's that's a bummer i think that's worth

3:31:03Colin Moriarty:pointing out i think what particularly bothers me about this release is that it is and oblivion as well it's like this is a remake of a game that yeah it looks beautiful looks way better and there's gameplay improvements but it's like charging 70 for this remake and it doesn't perform well anywhere that you've released it um because there are examples where like certain like i played final fantasy 16 at launch and it had performance issues and i didn't i didn't like cause a stink about it at the point i mean we all complained about it and how we thought it sucked but we played it anyway so i guess for for me the fact that it's a remake and it's like this full price thing that it's like oh you can't even manage to make it run anywhere nicely it's like dude fuck off you know it's just something about that it just bothers me yeah i understand oh i'm

3:32:05Chris Ansell:sorry i thought i heard someone coming in i thought it was chris i think we're just saying yeah oh i see um yeah i don't know it's a it's a strange situation i am really enjoying the game though i mean as far as metal gear solid 3 it is metal gear solid 3 beat for beat it is even using the the same voice acting and so from that and i just played mgs3 all the way through last in well for the only time i ever played it all the way through um for knockback like four or five years ago probably something like that maybe not even so it's somewhat fresh in my mind i really like the story it's obviously the earliest metal gear game in the timeline i think that's why they are doing it first and i love how it's wrapped up with like kind of the legacy of world war ii the cobra unit the bad guys are kind of all like world war ii veterans which is neat but it's it's within the era of early vietnam war era in the early 60s but in russia and you're kind of inserted into russia and you're sneaking through it's a very atmospheric weird game my major complaint that people used to make fun of me about with knockback was like i think the game should be in Russian.

3:33:14Chris Ansell:I know Chris hates that. They're all speaking. It's so great. I get it. It would be interesting or at least giving the like, I was kind of hoping and I don't know why I was thinking this. Like there's a there are two different things like the language that you want to hear, which I think is only English and Japanese. And then it's like all the language is written, which Russians in there. But I was like, oh, it'd be cool to have like a Russian voice track. It's not unlike what it would be much more complicated in Metal Gear because it's so fucking verbose. But well, I'll get into that in a minute because it's not as verbose as you might think in this regard, but I'll just say this because I'm trying to think of like how to, how to not spoil it.

3:33:50Chris Ansell:Snake in the game is speaking Russian to most people around him, but when he's on his codec, you would assume he's speaking English. I think that like all of it would be really interesting to just interplay. And they do make it clear with dialogue that he is speaking Russian and all the rest, but you're hearing English and that's an unusual in fiction. I mean, that happens all the time, but it would be cool. Much like what I was going to say was mafia. the old country has the Sicilian voice track that they kind of added with a little bit of pressure I think because everyone's like where's the Italian voice acting I don't know just something I think would have been cool but it's not not the end of the world and I know people are gonna make fun of that that I brought that up but I love the boss fights the boss herself is awesome of course but the Cobra unit I just think is really cool other than MGS1 it's the coolest group of villains and again I've always said Fat Man's my favorite but that's probably the weak MGS2 probably has the weakest villains I think it has the strongest story but I you know the pain with his horn.

3:34:39Chris Ansell:It's like it's so it's so cool. And and the fear. And I just love I don't even I was about to spoil actually a really cool part. Just there's so much when you're playing it. There's so much thought. It's very Kojima like that. You could do very specific, cool, strange things in the game. And it's fun to play. I really highly recommend it. well worth it. How about Eve? Oh, yeah. I mean, she just shows you some Allegheny

3:35:08Colin Moriarty:hogs.

3:35:09Chris Ansell:She's got some Allegheny hogs. She's got she's got them St. Petersburg hogs. But yeah, I love that. You know, I'm kind of awkwardly playing it to Mike is like sitting on the couch playing switch or whatever, and she's seen the game before she had played it on PS. I guess a PS3 iteration. But I was like kind of being like like looking over like what? She just unzips it. And then there's like that you could press R1 to just stare at her tits. It's very shameless. Like, it's very pervy. The game there's there's MGS2 and MGS1 were the same way.

3:35:37Colin Moriarty:But I remember playing this in my friend's basement in 2004. And it's exactly that. I was like, man, I hope I hope some parents don't walk down right now because this is

3:35:48Chris Ansell:just like, oh, geez, we're enjoying these Alleghenies and we don't want to have any disruptions. Right.

3:35:54Colin Moriarty:When I'm looking at these cans, cans, make them honk woman. oink let me honk make him make him honk plastic hearts podcast has the final inquiry here before

3:36:08Chris Ansell:we move into the listener inquiries for the end of the show he says why didn't konami use fox engine for metal gear solid delta's remake ue5 while pretty just has so many issues in a slog to run mgs5 on fox still looks and runs amazing i don't think there's a modern version of fox engine i think fox engine was only through ps4 and i think you really don't have proprietary engines unless you have your own teams right like frostbite exists within ea for its own teams they don't license it the idea that decim is probably the loosest of um like the decim has been used outside of the walls of gorilla outside of the world walls of sony first party second party teams i've used it but i just don't think you would have like a in other words i don't think konami would nurture a fox engine and then have to deal with third parties using it like a silent Hill team like Bloober or these guys.

3:37:01Chris Ansell:It's just a lot of external shit. That's what other that's what these external studio or these external engines exist for is that's like their whole bread and butter is dealing with that and the documentation and the tech support and all the rest. So I don't know if that's a good read on it, but that's kind of my feel on it. But I'm pretty sure that's true about Fox Engine is that it's just not supported.

3:37:23Colin Moriarty:Last time Fox Engine was used was on eFootball 2021.

3:37:27Chris Ansell:Oh, wow. So, yeah.

3:37:28Colin Moriarty:Well, yeah, which came out in 2020. But yeah, that was my my thought, too, is just is like no one's been updating or using this engine. And I'm sure that it was primarily designed for Metal Gear Solid V. So it would it would cost a significant amount of money. Yeah, to do it that way.

3:37:51Chris Ansell:Right, right. Like to me, it's like if you have internal studios, you want to shepherd them towards the things that are going to be cheaper and most effective. but if you're contracting outside studios and producing and funding their games and you really want to let them use what they want to use and it seems like they probably gravitate towards UE5 I mean maybe Konami has steered the ship in that direction but I doubt it and I'm not trying to be like a Konami apologist by any stretch of the imagination I just think that that that makes a level of sense they're a different publisher you know everyone pursued their own engines and still do as a money saving thing and and a control thing I mean you you master it you can get the most out of it and all the rest but not not having to license engines is a significant cost savings that's more than just like money around the edges it can save a project if you're paying five percent or whatever in revenue it's a lot of money so but they seem like they feel like it's worth it and yeah i'm ue5 seems like it's a problem i mean i remember wasn't um immortals of avium like the

3:38:47Colin Moriarty:first ps5 ue5 game that sounds right but i'm not positive yeah so it's it's it's got had a little

3:38:57Chris Ansell:time to work things out but it'll assume presumably be present for a while and hopefully they are able to work these kinks out a little bit you know tim sweeney kind of coming out and saying what he said who knows if that's true i suspect there probably is a little bit of truth in it but probably i think what you said is totally accurate though too if it's affecting everyone universally or seems to then it's got to be more than that yeah i i don't really know what to make of it it's it's it's it's hysterical timing too because it's like because there's that big halo thing right where it's like we're moving to unreal i'm like okay all right i don't know if anybody's excited for that yeah it's interesting but uh yeah because this is easily like the the worst this is the worst i think that unreal has been viewed in a long time like general like as far as like a general kind of feeling like i don't remember people really complaining about unreal engine for this reason in previous generations i remember people complained about like lighting and like how certain things would look or whatever but like it was never like a before it wasn't like oh this this is just not it's failing to run properly like that that feels like a new thing to me for unreal as far as like i mean maybe there's other instances that i you know were maybe like a little bit less high profile but that this has been a problem since dead space remake is i mean that's a while ago that's a it's a hot minute ago indeed indeed and shout out to dead space remake yeah all right you should have bought it you all should have bought you all fucked up you never stop you never stop you never stop fucking up dustin they never stop they never saw i bought it everyone's buying the wrong games i'm like uh screaming through the window um hank like yeah at hank yeah hank all right sorry i'm taking a little drink here a little sip a little sippy poo you're allowed all right let's end the show as we always do my friends six questions comments concerns thoughts and ideas from the audience over on patreon patreon.com slash last day media one of the perks the many perks you get over there for supporting us is uh access to the threads on the news feed each week for the various shows you submit your inquiries to those we pour through them and you've heard a bunch of your inquiries throughout the show already here are six more of a varying degree of topics we appreciate you taking the time to submit i like keeping you guys involved in the creation of our shows and thank you so much for all of you many thousands of you that support us on patreon.com slash last day media we'll begin with curtis blow who spells is named Curtis with a K.

3:41:37Chris Ansell:I don't know how I feel about it. He says, hi, guys. What are your thoughts on 2011's Catherine? I played the full body version recently and I'm fascinated by it. Both the addicting but difficult puzzles and the tantalizing style and story. For added context, this is my first Atlas game and first JRPG. It's not a JRPG. If you exclude Pokemon. Colin, I know you reviewed the original game for IGN back in the day, but would love to hear your perspective with distance from it. Chris and Dustin would appreciate getting your thoughts on the game, too. Thanks to LSM for the consistent and entertaining work.

3:42:07Chris Ansell:I'll hang up and listen. So, yes, Curtis, thank you for writing in some things to keep in mind. Atlas obviously is the publisher and Atlas is, you know, this was at the time before Sega owned them. So this is the Persona team specifically making the game in between, I guess, four and five Persona four and Persona five. And so that's why it reads like a Persona game. and I can see why you would think that maybe you would call it a JRPG, but really it's a puzzle. It's like, I don't know what a puzzle adventure game is probably what you call it. Pretty unique. Not that unique because there are a lot of puzzle adventure games.

3:42:47Chris Ansell:Danganronpa is a puzzle. By the way, you and I had a funny correspondence on Twitter where I got to use my favorite one of my favorite gifts, which is the Malcolm X gift. The Denzel is Malcolm X gift when he bangs on the table. He's like just writing. yeah he just bangs on the table because he got me you did you fucking nailed me pretty bad yeah actually got to play dang and rob a v3 um so what do we think of katherine so yeah i wanted to point that out not a jrpg but from a studio that makes jrpgs kind of reads like one in some ways but really it's a puzzle game most like cubert if you want to really compare it to anything and i was enamored with it when it came out i loved it and as he said i reviewed it on IGN.

3:43:28Chris Ansell:I don't remember what I gave it. I probably gave it an 8 or a 9 or something. Dustin, what are your thoughts here on Catherine? It's been a while. I mean, this is a one-off, a true one-off. There's really no way to ever return to this game. The full-body port that he's talking about is the PS4 port of the game. It was originally on PS3. It was also on Vita, but it was not released on Vita in the United States or in the West, disappointingly. So what are your thoughts here on Catherine as where years later it came out in both Japan and in North America

3:43:57Colin Moriarty:in 2011 yeah i didn't fully play this game until the full body version came out and yeah this game rules and i think one of the reasons i really like it just unlike any other game i've played before as far as being like you were saying it's this game about climbing up and you gotta move these boxes around it's very puzzle heavy but the subject matter being about this guy being stuck in a relationship between these two girls. Catherine with a C is the one that I think is more uptight. That is his his like actual girlfriend.

3:44:38Chris Ansell:Catherine with a K is his girlfriend. Catherine with a C is the blonde Catherine.

3:44:42Colin Moriarty:So, yeah, Catherine. OK, Catherine with a K is his current girlfriend who's very uptight. I think he kind of views her like a ball and chain situation. Catherine with a C comes into a life. she's a bit of a bit of a slut one might say and she kind of throws everything into chaos while he's having these crazy dreams where he's being judged for his sins really adult and interesting premise uh so i recommend this to everybody even if you're not into persona-esque jrpgs or games games in this style just because it's so unique and if you play full body there's katherine with a q added to the game yeah

3:45:23Chris Ansell:I never even have any concept of that, which is so interesting.

3:45:29Colin Moriarty:It's interesting. I'll tell you that. It's interesting.

3:45:34Chris Ansell:I feel like I don't need to Catherine with a Q, but we'll see. Maybe I'll play it one day. I'm sure I will. Do I need her? I don't think you would be interested in Catherine with a Q. What is that supposed to mean? What is that supposed to mean? Chris, have you played Catherine? I don't remember. i played the i think i've what the i must have only played the demo or something if there if there was a demo because there's no shot that i bought catherine when it came out like that's like there's like a an absolute zero chance of that but i do remember like the gameplay of it and i remember the experience of playing the like the qbert sections at least um but it must have been like a demo or like at a friend's house or something for like a a brief period of time i uh i i i've heard a lot about it over the last like you know 10 plus probably longer years um i don't know it's never spoken to me enough for me to like bite the bullet as far as like buying it with the intent to like oh i'll finish this um if it comes if it if it one day shows up on like ps plus or something i'll play it but like i just i can't i can't just it feels it it feels like a game that i wouldn't like i don't know i don't care about cubert at all like that game like that gameplay style of like the the you know the isometric cubes i was like

3:46:58Colin Moriarty:it's the least interesting part of the game that's right well cubert is maybe even not really even a great way to put it because it's not like you're hopping and trying to block you know clear every square you are moving and pulling boxes around and yeah it's the presentation it's it's the presentation of cubit i guess or like the the the stylistic um camera and like the the way the the way the level looks i don't know i'm i have no doubt that it's good i just i i don't know if it it would be for me and if it is for me the only way that i would find out is if it was like if i somehow owned it you know so like i'm sure it'll be on ps plus or something or i'll find some way to get a handle of it and then I'll play it but until then I'm good with Catherine with a Q

3:47:48Chris Ansell:yeah Catherine with a Q again I don't know anything about Catherine with a Q but yeah I love this game I always did and I love the subject matter it's like you said Dustin it's an incredibly unique and difficult story it reminds me a little bit of I mean not in any subject matter or anything that's about but just Gone Girl in the way it deals with like really dark relationship shit in its own way and um and yeah like what's real and what isn't and and all the rest and like what it's it's a really really great game it has no business actually being as good as it is and i think that was basically what a lot of people came away with when they when they did play it but um yeah let's see my review here is is on IGN oh this is a story this is like a preview of it I guess I don't know I don't know I don't know if they cite me or other reviews what did I give it oh I gave it a 9 oh yeah there it is July 17th 2011 it's a long time ago my friends a long time ago indeed alright yeah check out Catherine if you can it's on PS3 and the full body edition on ps4 it's also on pc i think it's on switch and of course x is it on xbox actually it's on xbox 360 i actually don't think it's on which so it'll be on xbox one and xbox uh series but i don't think it's on actually natively on those other things okay valiant hermes wrote in and said hey guys i have a bit of a statement and a question in reference to naughty dogs highly anticipated intergalactic the heretic prophet i shared colin's dislike for souls like many for many years but had my eyes open to how fun they are after playing elder ring so i thought it would be exciting if intergalactic was naughty dogs take on the souls like formula with it being documented that neil druckman has been inspired by bloodborne and elder ring what are the chances that intergalactic is actually a souls like and how would you feel about it what do you think of

3:49:51Colin Moriarty:this dustin my guess is intergalactic will be souls space like but not a souls like in fact Gene was recently on Twitter talking about Hollow Knight and someone misunderstood this, which is understandable. I would assume with the Neil Druckmann saying he's inspired by those games, along with it being a sword combat game, that there will be clear inspiration from Souls games. How much? That's the question. Will it be to the point that we could consider it a true Souls-like game? We just have no idea, but I would lock in that there's going to be elements be like, oh, this reminds me of Elden Ring or this reminds me or this this mechanic is kind of like this from Bloodborne, whatever.

3:50:44Colin Moriarty:So the question, of course, is just how far it will be.

3:50:49Chris Ansell:Chris, could it be that they would actually do a real Souls-like? I think I mean, to the degree that I think it would serve the type of game that they make. yeah i i mean i i'm not the biggest mark for souls likes i don't um you know i i didn't really like the original dark souls or demons and by the way when i say like i mean just like i could tell these weren't for me i think they're they're really nice looking games and stuff but sekiro and elden ring were really the only ones that got me and it's for good reason i think they're they're very very well put together and they're very very well designed elden ring especially is like very very easy to get into and it doesn't lock you into uh into the same kind of you know stall wall that like a lot of other souls games do and so like i think if they take elements from that that make um something like elden ring or sekiro special and just like frame it within the the general design of like a naughty dog linear story like i mean that sounds that sounds great like i'm totally fine i wouldn't want them to kneel I wouldn't want them to lean so deep into it that it ceases to be the games that they make and starts being this other thing.

3:52:01But I think there's definitely inspiration to be taken that would strengthen what Naughty Dog does. I think they can make a compelling story with this other underlying, really compelling, challenging gameplay. I think that'd be a really interesting thing to see. I wish we knew more of that. really what and like how much they're going to be uh learning from those games though i i guess i'm most fascinated by the idea of uh where this how far they want to push this if this

3:52:41Chris Ansell:is the direction they go in like could you get away with doing it could not at all get away with doing a hardcore game like that for the first time really and i think that even people like me overestimate the hardcoreness of a game like Elden Ring. The reality is Elden Ring has sold like what, 20 something million copies and has this astounding platinum rate and all the rest where people are playing it straight up. They're able to play it. It might not be as challenging for as many people as possible, and you might not be alienating anyone. In fact, it might or you'll be alienating some people, but you will attract a lot of people and a lot of attention that you might have otherwise and maybe even a level of respect that you otherwise wouldn't have.

3:53:20Chris Ansell:It just makes it I'm just I find it hard to believe that they're going to make something that would be inherently inaccessible.

3:53:28Chris Ansell:And there's an argument to just make whatever you want. I mean, you're Naughty Dog. You're one of the studios that can kind of just lean into whatever you want. So I don't, as a player, I kind of hate the idea of something that's very hardcore and off-putting. But on the other hand, as like a lover of games and seeing studios just do different things, it would be kind of funny if they just came out and were like, well, now we're doing this thing. and it's totally radically different than everything we've ever done before. It's like, well, that's kind of cool that you did that. And but it's hard to believe that that's actually the direction they will go in.

3:54:01Chris Ansell:We will see. I think we'll see more of this game this year. Maybe in September. Yeah. Imagine they showed it and dated it. I think it's a little too soon. Yeah. Cedric S wrote in and said, hey, guys, now that PlayStation is Xbox's biggest moneymaker, is it really crazy to imagine an xbox related announcement at sony's rumored september state of play speaking of say a trailer for the ps5 version of starfield or a release date for state of decay 3 honestly i could see it happening thoughts i'll hang dong and listen i'm tantalized by this because in let's say last year if you asked me this i'd be like there's just no way they would do that but really i think the indiana jones thing at gamescom last year kind of shattered that and then and like how that was their one last thing and maybe that kind of i don't want to say blow up in their faces but maybe that kind of rubbed people the wrong way to the extent where they are not going to do something like that again so i'm always like behind on this where i'm like oh they won't do that and they won't do that and they won't do that and then they just keep getting more and more aggressive so maybe i'm just the wrong person to ask about this but it just seems hard to believe that they would have like a an xbox announcement of some consequence that would be consequential to anyone outside of the playstation ecosystem especially so something like a state of decay three date it's like i don't think you want to do that in your playstation conference um but something like starfield maybe but then like you have all this dlc and all these expansions that are really catered towards game pass and all these other things as well and your pc audience your existing audience i don't know how they're going to play it obviously i've been wrong on this in the past because they've been they've been xbox has been so much more aggressive than i ever imagined they would be but it just seems like that would be crazy so i'm sure sony would love that but so my answer is no but who knows dustin what do you think i could see

3:55:46Colin Moriarty:starfield like a port of an existing game showing up at a state of play absolutely um just because it's a new platform uh for them and it's it's not a new game or something that they could hold for one of their own announcements um i i think it would be pretty dire like this this new halo that's been rumored this remake of combat evolved um while it still would be a huge deal that it's coming to PlayStation. If they announced it at a PlayStation event, I think that they have pushed their audience in many ways. I think that would just be a disastrous move. Just from a PR perspective, it's like, why even take the heat when they could just announce it at one of their own events or even just not at an event at all.

3:56:34Colin Moriarty:So, yeah. Definitely ports. Anything else? Probably not. Chris, what are your thoughts on this? I'm inclined to agree, but I also kind of feel like, why not? You know, it seems to me like... Xbox has made a lot of decisions that I don't understand and that I just can't really wrap my head around why you would do that. And this is one of those things that I would feel like, why would you do that? Like, why would you unveil State of Decay 3 at a State of Play? And because I feel like it's something, that I would view as a, that is insane, why would you do that? It seems to me that it's not off the table for them to do.

3:57:19I could easily see it. It would not be surprising to me in the slightest to see that. It would be weird and it would be confusing from their perspective why they would do that. But I really think anything is fair game at this point. It's kind of like the old perception of what we assume the console space to be is kind of not even i mean you got the odsts and hell divers you know what i mean like it's it's i don't i don't even know what to make of this landscape like why would it be ridiculous to see state of decay at a state of play and compared to like any of the other ridiculous things that they've done and has been true well i think you're right that's what i was saying i think you're

3:58:04Chris Ansell:right it's like yeah anything is kind of within the realm of possibility at this point i would say but I just don't think new news sure it's something you show at the at a state of play or at the showcase whatever this purported showcase that might happen in September so I just that I think and I do that's why I think Dustin's right it's like Starfield is a different thing but even then it's there's so much new shit it would I don't know I just I want to be clear I want to be clear I don't think I don't think we're there yet but I think we're going to be there very soon I think we're going to be at that place like sooner sooner than I think people would expect All right.

3:58:40Chris Ansell:Next up is from Colin Moriarty. Brings me back. Says, greeting CDC. After this MGS Delta performance debacle, I've come to say enough is enough. There was a viral tweet a while ago that resonated with me. Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho was remade in the 90s shot for shot, but in color. This was considered to be a waste of time by audiences and critics. It has a 41 % on Rotten Tomatoes. Yet in 2025, this is the industry standard for games where classics are remade with shiny graphics that don't even work. properly in Delta's case, but receive almost universal critical acclaim. Delta sits at 86 on Metacritic as of me writing.

3:59:15Chris Ansell:I don't expect you to agree with the sentiment as I know Colin was excited for Delta and Dustin is excited for the next Persona remake, for example, but these all feel like artistically bankrupt endeavors to me. Am I too jaded or are these complaints valid? Should I just let people enjoy things and simply not buy them or anonymously complain to strangers on a podcast? Who can say? Keep up with the great work, fellas. So you're saying your name is not colon morafarty we have ourselves an imposter chris let's hear from you first this time where are you on this so-called creative bankruptcy of these remake projects um do they matter does it matter at all and i mean we're all consumers of them in some way so i guess we'd all be a little bit hypocritical looking to criticize it too deeply yeah i'm in middle i'm in the middle here because i think i do think it's it's a safe thing to do i do think there's not a lot of risk and um it is somewhat redundant the only thing that i would contest is that like a remake of a film is particularly pointless because there's no real video games are software and so they are really really kind of dependent on the machines that are available at the time to make them run it's not like i don't even know how to describe there's no real there's no real analog it's not like the wizard of oz comes out on jvc vhs and you can only use it on jvc v uh you know vcrs and you know like things things get ported like you could arguably look at like something like the you know the the ratchet or the uh what is it the uh the any kind of collection that you would see on the ps2 or in the ps3 era like uh the splurcel collection or um what was another one there was another ps3 collection that i can't remember sly cooper ratchet yeah like any one of yeah any one of those you could argue that that is the same as like you know taking uh something that used to be on vhs and moving it to dvd or moving it to you know um blu-ray or streaming or what have you the thing is with video games it's that there are often instances where things just aren't running right things can be improved um you know there's there interactivity limitations like you interact with this stuff so there is something to be tweaked there is something to be improved even if it's just some something as simple as an upres to make it or just something to make it run on modern hardware or make it more receptive to new controls.

4:01:54I mean, I think about Deus Ex, like running the original running the original Deus Ex on PC requires all requires an insane amount of like digging deep into it and tweaking it. Like I'm sure people are familiar with if you've ever tried to play Fallout 3 or Fallout New Vegas on modern PCs, like I'm sure you're all familiar with the fact that like those they barely run or they run well and then they crash and or there's like a fatal error or something it's like these things because they are mechanical they require a certain level of upkeep that films don't really need um and there and look i i don't even necessarily disagree that there are certain times where a remake um does kind of lean into what happened with psycho where it's just like they kind of misunderstand the the tone or they misunderstand the artistic direction i think about halo combat evolved anniversary a lot with that where it's just like they just they just did not understand the the general visual design but even with that where they kind of botched it they still ultimately at the end of they brought you know with the the graphical switch button they brought the original version of that game forward to be experienced by more people with more ease of access so i'm kind of i don't know how i feel about it i think uh i think there's no good way to compare films to video games because they are so fundamentally different in not only what they are but how we interact with them our access to them how we access them it's these are very very different things i and i i see the spirit of your question but i i think it i think it requires a little bit more delving into doesn't you have

4:03:34Colin Moriarty:anything you'd like to add let me give you 10 to 15 minutes on please yeah please do presently

4:03:39Chris Ansell:Please do.

4:03:40Colin Moriarty:He brings up Persona Remake. And this is really just a further extended example of what Chris is saying. I agree with Chris completely. It comes down to a lot of gameplay elements. Persona 3 and 4, particularly 3, the main issue with why Remake, in my opinion, was, I don't want to say it was necessary, but why it was very welcome is that since all the way up to Persona 5, the amount of gameplay improvements and not just like we've added new feature, but like we've fixed things. Persona three in particular, you cannot tell your, you cannot control your party in that game. You can give them like play defensively or, or heal me or something, but you can't control them.

4:04:27Colin Moriarty:And if you are coming from even just persona four, but in particular persona five, it fucking sucks when you can't control them. And you're like, man, the AI is just stupid as hell. and I want to be able to have a strategy here on how to play, but I can't control them. So it's modernizing games to what we would expect now. The problem is, as I totally agree with Chris, there are times where graphics and even music can be misunderstood. He brought up Halo and that's a great point. For me with Persona also is just that the characters in the PS2 versions are almost like chibi versions. which is like a cool, they're not quite chibi, but they don't, they don't look like Persona 5 characters.

4:05:15Colin Moriarty:And so the fact they were like, hey, Persona 5, this is, this is the game that really hit it off Persona series. What if we remade those games with Persona 5 sensibilities? I think it's fucking fantastic. And that's why I'm so excited. And why generally I can be really excited for these remakes just because some of these games, it's not that it's like they're unplayable, but they just don't hold up because games have improved or those series have improved so vastly. So it's not always done right, unfortunately, but when it is done right, it can be a really welcome addition. And it doesn't have to replace that either.

4:05:54Colin Moriarty:I saw a lot of conversations about Metal Gear. People like they they ruin this shot of Snake in the graveyard. And yeah, it doesn't really have the same feeling to it the way they did it in the remake. but the original is still there in a very playable way uh thanks to that um uh master collection that they finally fixed and is now at a point where it's like yeah it's it's available to you as well so don't it's nothing to be like they ruined it you know you can still play that original version i i can't think of a remake of a movie that that is as good as some remakes of some games that is also kind of the thing that i think and by the way i mean like shot for shot or like um you know just like spiritually like true like there's obviously there's movies that have been made over and over like star a star is born or something where it's just like the the story is kind of told many many times but like dead space dead space remake is we we brought up earlier is so good because it takes dead space which was already very good and just takes everything that was kind of middling or rough or bad about it and makes that all it elevates all that stuff to what the rest of the game is like the zero gravity stuff in dead space remake is game changingly good to that first dead space game like it's it's crazy like i i can't not that every game should replace the original obviously um but like sometimes they can and that's really fucking cool and I just don't I don't think that happens with movies really like movies are a little bit more because they're so passive and because they'll never you know you're not gonna you're not gonna be running a movie one time like later on and it's gonna be like oh my god it's running at 10 frames now you know it just doesn't happen right right yeah I've talked a lot about this myself I

4:07:49Chris Ansell:won't I won't linger on it too much but just I believe in the value of these remakes and just making things playable. And yeah, I think you guys have both said it, like giving people a variety of options. I will also say that I think it's easy money and should be celebrated for publishers and developers that you like to kind of buy time or like and there are a lot of just random ones that I think are really good like that Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster. I thought that was fucking dope. That was totally great. And so I buy a lot of the stuff. I'm not going to complain too much, but then you get games that are launched like Animusha and one and two have come out.

4:08:26Chris Ansell:And they're more traditional kind of remasters where we were talking about System Shock 2 and how that might strike you. I think there's a lot of different angles for it, but I don't really mind it because things, as you said, Chris, are so disparate. Like it's about unifying these different experiences for people to play in single places. All right. Yeah. Bruno Giuseppe Moreto wrote in. And said, hey, sacred guys. So No Man's Sky just launched another free update with tons of content. I love that the game has gotten a second life, but with no microtransactions or in-game store, I don't really understand how they're making money to keep things going after so many years.

4:08:57Chris Ansell:I'm not complaining at all. Just curious if you guys have any idea how they managed to sustain this when almost every other game is pushing microtransactions or paid content. Keep up with all of your amazing work. It's loyalty, I think. I think people like sticking around. There must be ways to spend money on the game as well. And it could be, Dustin, it could just be Joe Danger money as well. You never really know. But there is a Hello Games bundle, which is nice. It's$54 on Steam for all of their games. The Joe Danger 1 and 2. That game, The Last Campfire that they randomly did. And then they're working on that game Light No Fire, right?

4:09:40Chris Ansell:That's going to be kind of like No Man's Sky, but about a planet. And it's like an exploration game, I think. And the planet's supposed to be like literally the size of earth. So again, they're making like these, these claims that got them in trouble the first time, but I think that they've, I think they've learned their lesson. They're a great redemption story. And I think a lot of it just comes from the idea that you engender loyalty. People buy it. I looked up sales figures when I was preparing for the show. We don't have strict sales, modern sales figures for No Man's Sky, but it is, it was a 10 million copies in 2022.

4:10:13Chris Ansell:I think that's pretty healthy. Hello Games is also small. They also got a lot of money from Sony when the game launched and they have had other games that have done well enough for them to proceed. The Joe Danger games weren't huge, but they did well. Those were like timed PS3 exclusive. People might remember from back in the day. They're like weird, almost like site bike like racing games.

4:10:39Chris Ansell:And much more sophisticated, obviously, maybe more of something more like trials, actually.

4:10:46Chris Ansell:so yeah I don't really know how they do it but there there are these certain games that are able to thread the needle Guild Wars is the biggest example for me because as I understand that's like a you buy into that game and then like you kind of just get everything supported it's a model that I think it's a very dangerous model but I think it works pretty well so my assumption about No Man's Sky support is that it's a relatively small team it's relatively easy and cheap to do they're probably working on other projects they probably have publishing partners and outside funders and they probably heavily believe in their next game and they should I mean they're one of those guys that will be one of those teams I should say that would be easily be able to segue the success of No Man's Sky into Light No Fire or whatever the fuck that game is gonna be cool so that's my take on it I don't know if you guys have anything you want to add it's been a while since Joe Danger came out I forgot yeah I never played the last Campfire either which is kind of a more linear game i think i think part of it too if i remember either an

4:11:52Colin Moriarty:interview with sean murray or one of these updates that they said that part of the updates they're doing for no man's sky is that they're as they're building uh their new game they are incorporating some of the different things that they are building into no man's sky so it's like one of those things where it's like well we made this and i'm assuming it runs on the same engine why not we incorporate it into no man's sky and i think a big part of it too and this is related to the story that's been going around about um team cherry is that i was trying to find the head count for hello games which you were uh talking about this con but it can't be

4:12:29Chris Ansell:that i think wikipedia i mean i remember their office space being small it says 45 as of 2022 that's a very small team for what they're so even even if it's i'm assuming it's higher than that

4:12:41Colin Moriarty:now but even then they've made so much money they might just be like fuck it we've made a shit ton of money we're making a new game and we can just continue to support this and continue to get new sales from it and yeah just because they like it yeah they made enough money it's no one owns them so they're not beholden to make as much money as possible yeah i've been curious about no man's guy lately just because like i haven't played it really since like launch like i dived in like for like a second i think recently to test that on like steam deck or something but um yeah i don't know i kind of want to the new update has like group ships where you you can have like a ship with your boys and uh that sounds fun that last time i tried to play it and this was a few years ago so many years after launch but not recent like some of the different crafting mechanics were so in depth that it scared me away I was too lazy to learn how to do it

4:13:40Chris Ansell:yeah it really is one of the great redemption stories and it's well trod trodden territory but well tread territory where people compare it to what happened with cyberpunk later but I actually think it's a pretty distinct situation where underneath the hood of cyberpunk was a great game it just wasn't running right it was completely you know technically in bad shape but the game was there i don't know if you guys remember like oh you have to like really go back because it's been about almost 10 years but there was a lot of interesting controversy around the game when it came out about like things that were not true about it yeah the multiplayer stuff right like people being able to find each other i vaguely remember like people claiming they did find each other in a game but it wasn't technically possible or some some weird shit where it's like there was a lot of just things working against it and the game wasn't in in the shape that it was supposed to be it wasn't doing in other words it wasn't a technical issue it wasn't it just literally wasn't what it was supposed to be or what they were saying what it was and they really well turned it around as opposed to cyberpunk where it was always what it was it's just it just wasn't running right to be fair it was a technical issue as well because it was crashing a lot on on those original on original ps4 like in the original launch window i remember twitter just being lit up with just screenshots of you know the application is crashed or whatever on on the ps4 dashboard um but yeah so it was it was

4:15:10Colin Moriarty:everything i refunded it when uh when it came out on playstation 4 because of the crashing and it dude this is when i was i think holly and i were recently married and living in an apartment and poor and it's like i spent all i spent a bunch of money on this game and you can only buy i could only buy so many games at a time i was like fuck this i think i i returned the physical copy to amazon like they accepted it oh interesting um because they were having so many return requests for it and i'm like yeah i don't maybe at some point but not right now when when money is limited it's like it not for a broken game it can't be said enough that it's like a it's a great it's a great story that's unlike any other story i think just based on them turning it around i

4:15:54Chris Ansell:played it when it came out on ps4 i don't remember the crashing issues what i remember is it just being boring where i was like this is just fucking boring what are we doing here that was also true yeah life well wasted as the final inquiry this week for us he says greetings ss crew i listen to a good bit of gaming centric podcasts and have been noticing a trend if a podcast is centered around a platform a handful or all of the hosts don't have deep knowledge on the history of the games of said platform. Seems to happen with IGN podcasts, in my opinion. Should the host and co-host have to do homework before jumping in the seat?

4:16:24Chris Ansell:Thanks and have a great day. I find that hard to believe about IGN. I mean, I don't even know who the fuck does podcasts beyond anymore, but Podcast Unlocked, their Xbox podcast, is driven by Ryan McCaffrey, who is arguably the most knowledgeable person about Xbox I've ever met in my life. And And then there, I don't know who does a Nintendo show, but, but Damon doing game scoop is very credible person as well. So it's probably a little hit or miss over there. I really don't know what they're doing. But this, this question stuck out to me because I wanted to speak a little bit about my philosophy on our show and like what I think makes the best show, which is even for whether you have a platform show or not, like, so you have something like someone signed or whatever.

4:17:08Chris Ansell:I think you have that. you should have a variety of people with a variety of buy-in and different interests where there should be overlap and things you love but things that they bring different to the table so like everyone being a hardcore data nerd or really in the weeds on the most obscure shit doesn't really it brings replicated value to the show having three of me i think would be kind of corny and stupid um rather i think like we have what i love first first of all about having the two co-hosts i do is that you guys are younger than me so you have a whole totally different view on playstation especially than i do because playstation you were you were you came into a world where playstation existed basically and it was always part of the gaming landscape and i kind of saw it come in and remember a world before it and after it and i think that alone gives people a different perspective on the brand the access to the games and the games that struck them at different times and so having like staggering staggered ages i think is actually kind of nice too it's not that's not always possible it's not something you can program for but i feel like that's actually something that if can be done intentionally it ended up being one of the most serendipitous things about the show is it's not a couple of old heads necessarily talking or just a couple of kids who were not even around when the ps3 existed or something it's so i think that like we have a pretty nice balance of people like where should homework be done i'm yeah a little bit but i'm of the mind that we're all enthusiasts and we all kind of read up and keep up with things and then you kind of just have to prepare mentally for maybe the specific things that will come up on a specific show but homework i don't know if i would call it that it's what i've been saying recently about just the idea of being around and how games are such a unique unique medium where you can't really conceivably ever catch up if you're born into now right and then 10 years from now you're like a young kid and you're really interested in like the history of nintendo i don't know that you have any hope of being able to play everything right like how could you oh right yeah and it's not and i was i was comparing this i don't know what it might have been on the stream we did maybe dustin where i was saying like it's like film is different because it's there's so many films but you can just get through them quicker you can almost bang out like a shit ton of things if you're really focused if that's what you want to do you don't just consume media or whatever but i think that like the one thing i realized that is an advantage for me in the creative space is just my age and for every once in a while where people are like this what old man cares about this or he's talking about this it's like listen young whippersnapper there's something very unique about being in this position at this age so I guess what I'm saying life well wasted is there are many different ways to skin a cat but I think that people should be prepared for what they're talking about that's the least you can expect apart from like what you bring to the table I think it should be different for each person so yeah that's what I just wanted to say I thought it was a great question yeah do you guys have anything you want to add or are we good to wrap this this goddamn this silly show up this show was a little off the rails

4:20:27Colin Moriarty:yeah yeah the only thing I would just say agreeing with this question is that I think that it is essential if you're doing a platform specific or just even any podcast about one thing or focused on one thing it's like you got to have an anchor where if there's if it was just me and Chris then I don't know if just Chris and I really could do a PlayStation only show like it would not work so Colin if you die maybe Chris and I will keep the spirit of the show alive but I just don't know if it would I think you gotta have some level of deep authority so I don't know maybe that's what's happening at other places but um but yeah you gotta have that contrast and i think that's what what works for us just is that i know like when i read when i saw there was like playstation 6 stuff which unfortunately it was a little out of my grasp but i'm like okay this is the one area where i know colin is gonna try to lean more into what i think as far as technical stuff so i'm like okay that's what i bring to the table with shooters and and stuff like that that's chris's or xbox stuff having more of a foot in in that camp it's like we all have our different areas that we can try to bring as much as our x our quote-unquote expertise or or at least interests into the show yeah xbox becoming a bigger part of playstation is actually really serendipitous considering considering our makeup because like uh like i don't know if there's i don't know if there's going to be another i don't know if there is another playstation playstation podcast that is going to know gears of war as much as me quite frankly yeah true enough

4:22:09Chris Ansell:and i it's funny like because it's come up in the past like i i have thought about like what what would i do if if chris didn't want to do the show anymore or dustin left or whatever we would lose people it's like the one thing that i know for sure is that i wouldn't lean into replicating that version of the show ever right like so for instance we have like a more comedic and I think it would always be a little silly but like we have this like kind of comedics very natural whatever it's like you can't really go into that I might lean more into like the expertise thing right go in a totally different direction to to or even just stop doing the show and rename it do something else right because I think also the the individuals bring the the whole the whole cadence and nature of the show that's why again I brought up and it bothers some people but like my old old old show podcast beyond still goes and it's like this is a really weird thing that like i would just rename the show at some point and let people like unencumber themselves from the history of it at the same time i feel like that's very intimidating but i do wonder what i like well wasted what ign shows you're talking about because when i think of ryan when i think of damon um destin's not there anymore but he would be another one of those guys where it's like these are pretty knowledgeable people ryan is basically covered xbox the entire time it's existed.

4:23:26Chris Ansell:Which is pretty crazy. So I love him. I mean, he's a great guy, but I loved working with him. He was like, you know how you work with people in your professional life and you don't respect all of them, but you definitely respect some of them. He was like one of the guys where it's like, yeah, like I definitely like this guy. And Damon was the same. All right, let's get the hell out of here. It's time to go. We've gone on long enough. Let's go around the horn and say goodbye to everyone before we exit. Chris, goodbye to you. Be well. Are you going to go to the curtain store? i don't know i i think i might need a nap or something that sleep was just not good i don't know it's a bad a bad round yeah so i might just like uh catch like uh catch some 30 minute z's then back into gears of war i kind of want to just i kind of want to bang gears of war out because i have some time before like stuff starts coming out i do want to get to middle gear solid at some point um maybe maybe maybe i'll wait a little bit for a patch and just i don't know there's there's a lot coming out really soon so i gotta i gotta plan out my next couple weeks okay well godspeed to you be well good to see you as always you dustin goodbye to you any plans you want to say

4:24:36Colin Moriarty:before we go uh some shameless self-promotion but related because it's sacred simples plus related i'm doing my punishment of overwatch 2 on sunday night at 7 oh fun uh on my youtube channel so i will fulfill the debt yeah maybe not all any well not wait did i say sunday saturday saturday saturday night at seven jesus christ so saturday at seven with lock mort streaming overwatch be there um i don't know if we're going to do the full four hours that night but then we'll

4:25:08Chris Ansell:have the following day before september 1st so i'll be in the clear cool i uh and then yeah we'll be live well i gotta figure out what i'm gonna do on monday because it's labor day i have to go to a barbecue but i do want to be consistent so i want to at least do some small thing i might just like do you know do a q a or just kind of dick around for an hour or two but just so we're there we're live you know i'm not i always make fun of people for not being consistent so i'm not i'm gonna be the last person that's inconsistent so we have to figure that out yeah but uh yeah the gears of war stream will obviously already be it's going when this go or will be going right around the time this publishes so you can go find it in VOD on YouTube if you'd like.

4:25:46Chris Ansell:We'll make that free for everyone. Otherwise, just have a good weekend. Be well. Labor Day, right around the corner. It's exciting. Closing the pool soon and kind of segueing in the fall. It's in the 70s now. It's definitely cooling off. Days are getting a little shorter as we ease into fall. My friends, thank you again for your time and thank you all out there for your love, kindness, and support of all things Sacred Symbols and Last Day Media. Could not do it without you. Your support is greatly appreciated and indeed essential. Patreon.com slash last day media to support us however you can and last day media dot store for merch.

4:26:21Chris Ansell:We'll see you next time. Until then, goodbye. See ya. Take care, guys. Sacred Symbols, a PlayStation podcast, is a product and trademark of Last Stand Media and Colin's Last Stand LLC and is proudly recorded in the USA. The show is conceived by, is written by, and is directed by me, Colin Moriarty. My co-hosts are Chris Raygun Maldonado and Dustin Furman. The show is produced by executive producer Dustin Furman. All of Last Stand's theme music is by my best friend, Ramon Narvaez. As you know, all of Last Stand's shows, including Sacred Symbols, are fan-funded on Patreon at patreon.com slash laststandmedia.

4:26:59Chris Ansell:The following names are at the producer level on Patreon, our highest tier, and we're grateful for your thoughtful and kind contributions to our independent endeavor. Thank you.

4:27:37Chris Ansell:Basil Frank, Sander Svedson, Nashville Nibbler, Teddy Anderson, Nicholas Johansson, Uppercut, Hypeguy98, Youngstream, Marcus Mossberg, Evan Bake, Havard Oya, Fug Jug, David, Sammy Rocklin, Pabzi, Victor Blomberg, Thomas Person, Panic, Detective McNulty, Johannes Magnuson, Axel M. Bjork, Adam Shablawi, Zixton Larson, John Oman, Octo Fontas, Berg, David G, SHP87, Victor Fallin, Eric Steinsland, Philip B. Rainsford, DDDDDCCCCC, Havard, Rocketman, Fred Carlson, Jonas Johnson, Dennis Lofgren, Jorgen Stenhammer, Gilfie Tratterson, Marcus, Marius Carson Peterson, Breno Bezera-Bloom, Jennifer Rutkowski, William Holbert, Ross Marenka, Morgan Ashley, Azan, Michael Vecchio, Daniel Diamor, Patrick Leslie, Jacek Dabowski, Headbastion Joel, R.

4:28:33Chris Ansell:Ryam, Bjorn Johnson, Pantus Gustavusen, Bjorn Carlson Wendell, Bob Harrison, Elmator, Aaron Cham Turin, John Nell, Tee, Lucas Jagerskog, The Thaim, Taxmanen, Jerry Erickson, Lollipopper, Simon Erickson, Patrick Garbino, Johannes William, Gungner, Christopher Hansen, Jacob, Juke, Anis Malik, Janik Raphael Anderson, Kevin Rafa, Jackie Gatt, Lass, Kai L, Krang, Tommy Lofol Johansson, Emil Vissing, Patrick Hakirle, James, Nicholas Feer, Toby Rothensborg, Huy Tran, Emil M., Neil Amon, Blackjack, Kyle J., Vance Cody, Aaron Betke, Jean-Francois Forzi, Marcelo Goudes, Donald John Vaders, Boy, Lumo, Rafael Alves, Ricardo, John Cordero, Guilherme Dos Santos Merlin, Eduardo Perez, Alex Porto, Diego Dos Santos, Matthias Philippe Badowski, Victor Elmo, Bruno Baxter, Pizza Fria, Henrique Coelho, Guilherme Figueredo, Matthias Garces, Stove, Deadpool 2099, J.P.

4:29:36Chris Ansell:Lynch, Sweet Jones, Ethan Linares, Jiraiya, Wizard Infantry, Zen Red, MattMGS24, Angry Living Meat, Hugo De La Guia, Eddie Smith, Uncharted Shinobi, WTF, Wesley Mullins, Logan Little George, Timothy Tolkien, Brian Williamson, Jorge Padua, Rallo, Danio, Adam Refriended, Jordan Vallett, Ross R. Lowe, Will Williams, Shane Brekke, Michael Mash Potato, Aaron Temple, Sweaty Magic, Nate Izod, Hargeet Chani, Josh Sullinger, MyNameIsMayo, Eddie Medina, Jason R. Zahn, QN, Grayson Maxwell, Electric Soup, Whiskey Sin, Corey Bicom, Relentless Rex, Alan Tuniak, Dustin Klingman, Jad Rita, Terry Tip, Jacob Hancock, Dustin Graff, Zach Cohen, Peyton Stone, Fozzie Bear, Michael Buffel, Dan Root, Asak Paredes, The Shady Mailman, Christopher Morgan, Randall Holsey, Dio or Die, Josh Godfrey, Betty Ann Moriarty, H-Trons, Norse Nuts, Jake C, Trey Woodward, Antonio C, Allen Einer, Jay Getter, Bjorn Campbell, Jeff Mercado, Trelon, Zainal Yuichi, Gregory Slavinsky, Gus, Remington James, John Zial, Boots, Alex LaPere, Saul Balcazar, Eduardo Banda, Adam Bader, Matt Flowers, Joseph Baker, Kendrick Caius, Jimmy Rodriguez, Dave Alvarez, Chris Galvin, Mason Bouchard, Anthony Marola, Saqib Alam, Kyle Hagel, Colin Love, Daryl E.

4:31:04Chris Ansell:Naaman, Toby Ryland, Stewie 108, Patrick Montgomery, Ian C., Richter 86, Christopher Devayo, Chris Morton, Mark Liberto, Johnny Waffles, Lawrence Adams, Roto 24, Jonathan Coates, Simon Peterson, Sean Mason, Josh Gravelick, Organic Produce, Carlos Algaret, Miranda Grubba, David Castanez, Joosh, Martin Beck, Gavin, Jerome Ferreira, Nathan R., Joel McPartland, Gary Cavallo, Christopher Moore, Dennis Usel, Lou and Ray Loper, Jonathan

4:31:39Chris Ansell:Thank you.

4:32:05Chris Ansell:Joshua Smallwood, Shane Rayoum, Don Lee, Brad Cooley, MadMockMedia, and Jonathan Rice.