#375 | Never Meant to Fade Away

34:30Don't be listening to us. Put your finger in the butt, learn how to do that. Maybe think chiropractors practice on cadavers. That would be funny. Just like fucking breaking the neck of the cadaver.

34:44Colin Moriarty:That is an interesting question with a chiropractor. Like if you're what do you practice on it? Just at one point, you got to give it a go. You're like, OK, there's a 50 % chance I'm going to break this guy's neck. Right. But let's go for it. Chiropractors are so funny because half of people swear by them right and are like they changed my life and half of people are like these dudes will literally kill you and there seems to be no in between have you noticed that it has to do with the quality of chiropractors because i've i've been to one when i was a kid that i'm like yeah this guy my family figured out like he was gonna kill us at some point but i the current chiropractor i don't see him all the time and you can tell too because some of them are like you come in and they're like i need to see you twice next week and maybe after that they like they try to like really ring up the bill mine is just like if i have a problem i go in he uh adjusts me and then i feel good you know 24 hours later and i don't go back until i feel bad again he's not trying to ring me dry right right yeah yeah i don't know i don't know i don't know if i believe that it's even real to be honest with you a lot of people feel that way that it's not like I don't know.

35:58My mom really swears by it. She always has since the 80s. And I went to a chiropractor in the early 90s when I was a kid just because I would go with my mom and they were friends with the people in the office and so they would like do work on me. And I would just ask them not to do the neck thing. Because I used to watch them do it to my mom and I'm like this is indistinguishable from like what happens in like an action movie that I watch. Like I don't understand. I would just be there sitting in the I'd be in the cuck chair. And I'd be like

36:26Colin Moriarty:what the fuck yeah it looks like a little seven year old or whatever like what the fuck looks like a crime is happening with that stuff but i remember i'll never forget the only chiropractor i ever went to is i was i must have been like i know i was in high school i can't remember if it was 10th or 11th grade but it was like something like that and my mom was like no you got to go to the chiropractor i swear by it i'm like okay i guess my guardian if you swear by it and i have no i have no real choice i guess i'll go and i got my back i felt fine by the way before before this i got my back adjusted and then and then i felt nothing i was like okay i guess i mean i maybe i feel better kind of i don't know and then the next day i couldn't move my neck at all like for the first time ever until that point and since never have i felt that ever and and I couldn't move my neck and that day I had an eye appointment too so like like I had to get my like prescription done so like I had to sit in that chair where they like lower lower that crazy thing and I couldn't move my neck right so I was like I was like all arched and all fucked up I'm pretty sure I got the wrong prescription for like a a year because I just in searing you're showing with your glasses on and now I'm sure that was the butterfly dude that was the moment that yeah dude uh that's the butterfly effect the thing you're talking about that they bring down the little the lenses yeah that steampunk looking machine i always think about that and i'm like you don't know how to use this it's like all sorts of dials like different things in their and i'm like this is let's just get this on let's just get this over they don't they know how to use this like insurmountably complex machine it's just a bunch of lenses they'll be like a or b a or b and I'm like I don't know dude yeah at a certain point I am kind of at a certain point I feel like I'm just kind of guessing how well right right and that's what I feel like too and I'm like I gotta give him an answer I'm annoying him right give him an answer this is social pressure to like appease the doctor's time at your own expense right like you're paying for this like I'll ask him to go back and forth maybe once but after that I'm like I gotta make a choice this guy's thinking he's writing in my file right now that i'm a dickhead yeah this blind idiot can't can't tell if it's an e or a fucking q he's but i love that thing is so crazy that they bring up it's still so analog there's probably digital versions of them but the one you know you know i'm talking about like it seems like it's the same it's been the same for 150 years yeah it looks like something you said it looks like it looks like jack the ripper probably used it you know what i mean or something like that.

39:07Colin Moriarty:Ichabod Crane got his expression that way. Ichabod Crane is a great with his... Very timely. Washington Irving.

39:22Oh my God. Brando Kazooie, congratulations to your brother. Be well. Be good to the body.

39:31Colin Moriarty:I love that story of the guy dedicating his body to science and then his wife found out that they just blew him up in like some sort of like bomb experiment yeah fucking rules they strapped him to like minecraft tnt and blew him up you're not getting my body you're not getting my organs i'm getting incinerated and i'm going bye-bye you're not fucking with me no we're not having any of that you know yeah i don't want to have any space i don't want to have any corporeal evidence that i was ever here really right after i'm gone right you know the memory of you will die yeah right some carbon phosphorus the memory of you will die so much more intense than what i was saying i always think about that that at some point unless you're like a famous person like a really famous person that you know like elvis or something there will be a point where the last person ever thinks about you yeah and then it says if you never existed that's what that's what uh pixar's coco is about i'm pretty sure oh is it really i think so that's pretty deep for a kid's movie but that's not surprising it's good it's a good movie actually it's like one of the better ones but i haven't seen a pixar movie in years many years decades all right chad d violins wrote in this is a bit of a point of contention and when it comes up, it becomes a point of contention.

40:54Hey, Colin, I enjoyed your discussion with Micah on Summon Sign about people who let their dogs pee on other people's yard. I am a general contractor, and sometimes I have to put out, please clean up after your dog signs to protect my freshly laid sod when I build in an already established neighborhood. Recently, I found that my signs have just become a target for more dog owners to encourage their dogs to aim at when relieving themselves. What should I do? Remove the sign, double down, and get even bigger and more aggressive signs? I would appreciate any input you, Dustin, or Chris might have.

41:20Thanks. Love the show. People get really annoyed when this topic comes up for some reason. I don't know if you guys have read the comments about this or like I've noticed this when it when it has come up. People think it's a free for all out there. They think it's a free for just like you just let him pee wherever. Yeah. And Micah Micah kind of brought brought this up and I actually agree with her, which is if this isn't a if this if you don't if people around you don't care about this or you're just willy nilly doing it. like what condition is your neighborhood in you guys just don't care about each other's properties you don't care about like fucking people shit up and all that i just can't relate just can't relate to it you know so the thing with me is that if it continues and it hasn't since i put my little signs up then i have hd cameras like on my property right like i'll make a sign of you letting your dog pee on my property and then i'll put you on the sign and say like please stop doing this i'll just complete i'll escalate this like you wouldn't even believe so it's got to stop it's got to stop you know you can't be letting your you can't be letting dogs pee on random people's lawns you go to like common areas you curb your dog you let them pee on a tree shit like that no i don't care about that at all can't let people you can't let them pee on plants and grass though like people's grass people's plants let them pee on a fucking random blade of grass on a random field somewhere i don't care about that but you gotta stop stop justifying it stop justifying it i don't like it and by the way it's not a huge deal if a dog like just does a little squirt you know rush i'm especially with rush like he does his first pee on our property that's probably 90 of his pee and then after that he's just like doing a little squirt here and there it's like i don't give a shit about that that doesn't bother me but you can't let them let them do like the squatting pier whatever like where it builds and then it kills the grass it's in a circle and it bothers the shit out of me I wouldn't do that to someone so that's it so what is your what is the answer escalate unimaginably

43:32Colin Moriarty:yeah I don't know have a sign that says your dog will be shot right if I find if I see if I see you'll have you can have like a little you could hire somebody to hold like to sit in like at maybe in like the top window of your house facing the front with a laser pointer in addition to that sign so whenever the dog comes by you you know laser point it it's like oh it's in the sights the dog's not getting away right that alone i think will freak people off free people out enough to avoid your house entirely like that's the guy that for other reasons as well yeah sure it's the guy that assassinates dogs from a grassy knoll.

44:11Colin Moriarty:I personally do not care if anyone's dog pees in my yard. At all. Hmm. I don't have spots in my yard from when dogs pee in it. Yeah, I've ever noticed. I don't know. Now, taking a dump, different story. You got to pick that up, obviously. Yeah. I'm way less offended by the dump because it just goes away. People pick it up. That I could give a shit less about, pardon the pun. yeah i've never noticed this is a point of major contention with people i think it's rude that's my opinion yeah i don't do it to other people i don't let people them pee on the mailbox i walk two dogs at a time i don't let them pee on people's mailboxes on their lawns because it attracts other dogs as well and i don't want to be the one starting that but i guess i just care about my neighbors you know yeah fuck me right this is lame fuck me about your neighbors yeah yeah fuck me and fuck them right yeah piss and shit wherever you want no you know what you guys are right just your dog should just pee wherever it wants come come pee on my front door i didn't say that yeah it's been that's a bit different someone's grass though it's i mean it's just some piece grass it's grass right you gotta let you gotta let dogs piss shit vomit and come all over the place if you if you're gonna be like a member of this society i think yeah you know you just have to accept it it's fine oh no there's dog semen all over my mail oh no big deal get over it yeah you're right it's the price of society you're right dustin's right just let them do whatever people should just do whatever they want right we don't live in a society it's fine that's not what i said that's fine yeah just do whatever i said i said you know pooping because there was a serial pooper in the one in my one yard and that that did piss me off did you do what you do about it i put up a little sign and it did exactly uh what was it was it rocket man no or is that it's uh chad d yeah exactly what happened to chat that then they started doing it more um well that that's like so degenerate yeah like people like this was like big shit too it's like dude you have to understand something if if that if someone if you're doing something wrong and then someone is basically tacitly and trying to politely ask you not to do it and you do it more you're a fucking dickhead yeah right like totally a dickhead it's okay to say like oh maybe i didn't know or i wasn't paying attention i would be flipping but when you know it's a when you actually know and they're trying to and they're not confronting you they're not like doing and even if they were confronting you you deserve to be confronted but they're just trying to passively say like please stop doing this to my yard and then they're like no i'm gonna do it more now it's like you should get beat in the fucking head is actually what should happen like you're you're the you are literally the problem with society i mean that 100 not being sarcastic at all like yeah that's the kind of shit like that is fucking degenerate deranged sociopathic what um what how important is the size of the dog in this equation because Because I actually feel like for some reason, I feel like it's a really key part of this.

47:23Colin Moriarty:Bigger dogs. I mean, it's going to be bigger dogs are going to be a bigger problem. Clearly. But like, I think the way that I feel about some dogs, especially like there's some dogs that are so small that I'm like, well, that's like that's like trying to police a squirrel. Really? You know what I mean? Like, I can't really do anything about size. Yeah. Like, it's probably not that big of a deal if they pee. So like, it's but if you got like a Doberman or something. Right. Or like a husky. Right. And that's what I was saying. Like, like Rush really wouldn't be able to do much. He damages the lawn.

47:55And I know I like my own dogs do it to my back lawn. So I know what like what it can do. And I know exactly what it is when I see it up front. It's like, well, right. It is what it is, you know. But yeah, like dogs pee constantly when they're walking, but they really aren't peeing very much. So it's that one initial pee. You got to get it out of them. And then and then and then you really have nothing to worry about. But but yeah, it bothers me like to hear something like that. dustin just because it's like that's so degenerate dude that's fucking crazy degenerate i had a an

48:25Colin Moriarty:adult human male piss in my yard did i tell you about that i don't know this was a few years ago it was like around midnight and my camera went off and so i open it up and there is a guy standing in my yard and i didn't know what he was doing initially so immediately i go and i start to i get up from my I don't know if I was up here or in my living room and I go and I look out he's gone at that point because I was like freaked out like am I going to need to am I going to need to get the piece right you have to strap up dude it freaked me the fuck out and then I watched the footage back and the dude opened my gate because you know he didn't want to piss in the street he needed a little privacy opened my gate pissed in my yard and then walked out so I put a lock on that gate which is really fucking annoying when I want to go in and out of the gate regularly but it's like dude so there is a bar near-ish to my house so this guy was coming out of the bar needed to take a leak right yeah I mean I've peed outside of a bar before too I don't know that I've ever gotten someone's gate and done that you know I pee in alleys or I've never really been in suburban areas drinking I guess so that would be if he because there's like there's bushes on each side of the gate if he just went in between the bushes, pee in my bushes.

49:47Colin Moriarty:I wouldn't like it, but fine. But going in my yard, opening my gate. Right. That's a crazy thing to do. Yeah. Yeah. Not cool. Yeah. Go pee on. That's what I'm saying. Pee in a public place. It's the same exact, you know, it's the same exact with the dog. It's like, I don't care. Pee in the alley, pee on the fucking mailbox or whatever, like the blue mailbox. I don't give a shit. Just don't do it on my property. You know, we live in this. We can remove a few percent of people from society and live in the future. Do you know that? just the most sociopathic elements. And we could live in a society like no locks on doors.

50:21Straight up. Like, no, like just if you just just a few percent of people. You know, it's it's wild. And they're the dog peers. We can remove all the dog peers from society. We'd be in a golden age. Be like civilization six. Wow. and a little me i'll be roaming around the map evangelizing

50:47Colin Moriarty:i'd like to imagine that like the colin when your character is stationary you're doing that same stance from like the footage of you looking at the fern yeah yeah that's like you on a tiny that uh that tree is doing pretty well oh good yeah it's coming back that picture is like a that's like a cryptid photo yeah it's awesome it's awesome especially because like it's yeah it's so blurry i i had aphids on that tree i realized and it's so they leave a sooty mole a sooty a sooty mold or something on it and it's like this ashy shit and it and it doesn't actually hurt the tree it just suffocates the tree's ability to photosynthesize and it's crazy how it's and you have to spread it's like a it's like these little fucking and then i got the japanese beetles and do you guys have lantern flies down there lantern flies i don't know it's a big problem up here dude let me look to the point where i think the government some some agency was like if you see one of these kill it like please kill it and if you see one a bunch on a tree let us know so we can come kill it it was introduced in 2014 in the u.s yeah oh yeah i do remember that yeah luckily we don't have them too bad in butler but certain areas of pittsburgh you'll see them everywhere like there will be all over cars in a parking lot and they're disgusting That's heinous, man.

52:05Colin Moriarty:Gross. Jesus Christ.

52:10Fascinate wrote in and said, sup all. I was listening to the infamous Allegheny Hogs episode a few weeks ago with my headphones in because I'm a smart husband. I burst out laughing when Colin brought it up and my wife asked what was funny. I told her and she replied, if you ever want to see these Allegheny Hogs again, you will never refer to them as that. We do, however, refer to breasts now as Allegheny Hogs when we see them out in the wild. Let them oink. And then Weston J wrote in. and said, hey, Sacred Boys, I just wanted to write in a response to using last stand lingo on the last week of regret in using the Allegheny hog term in response to his wife's breasts.

52:44While I admire the man's boldness and courage, I would say not to fret in using last stand lingo around your loved ones. Over the last few months, my wife and I have been saying R.I.P. in peace to our teenagers whenever they are upset about doing chores or are in any kind of trouble. I may not be talking about a death, but as a way to tease them a bit. Instead of saying too bad or get over it. My wife and I just hit them with an RIP and P. So with that, I say, use last stand lingo around your loved ones. You just got to find that one that works for you. Thanks. And keep gooning that chicken. I was thinking about us in a Shakespearean sort of way with these things where it's like, um, you know, Shakespeare introduced a series of idioms into society that, and we're doing the same thing on this show.

53:23Um, and I'm really proud of that. We're changing the way this, this, the lingua franca of the world is being spoken one person at a time. I will say Allegheny Hogs has taken off a little bit too. I'm surprised by that because that's such a flippant thing that we came up with randomly. It's one of those things. Most of the things that I find funny only I find funny. It's very unusual that people would find everything that I find funny funny. In other words, what I'm saying is we're going on all cylinders right now. The oinking, the Allegheny Hogs, RIP and Peace being distributed around. I didn't make RIP and Peace up.

54:01Colin Moriarty:yeah we're popularizing it again our ip and piece is technically pretty i feel like i remember that from a long it's from that's an old yeah that's probably i understand you know so keep up the great work out there keep proliferating bobby t wrote in and said hey fats i noticed that the front of the helmet warning chronos looks like the hole at the tip of a penis uh you can't unsee it anyone else stay beautiful it's true i noticed that as well looking forward to getting into chronos in the in the coming days does it yeah it's got a penile like it's on i was looking at i was looking at the design like why is that even open at all is it for you to breathe i guess we'll find out chronos is out right now i bought it already it's preloaded i actually think it was available as of 10 a.m and you know what i was annoyed about by the way was i guess i could talk about this later but since it came since this game came up now is there was a 48 early 48 hour early access period for ten dollars that i would have done for the game because i actually had an opportunity to spend that time i ended up buying robocop dlc instead which is fine but and it just wasn't i was showing micah i'm like it doesn't tell you this like in any way when you're you know when you go to buy a game on psn and it shows you like the regular edition and then the special editions and then it shows the drop down of all of the things that the special edition comes in it didn't say early access in there you had to like click in and then read all the things and it's like oh and i'm like why wouldn't you say that more anyway that is p hole p hole man looking forward to learning more about you finally a correction and then we'll get into the news a level one cleric wrote in and said howdy heathens minor correction from last week you said eva from metal gear solid 3 had them saint petersburg hogs but as the game takes place in 1964 they actually would have been them Leningrad hogs.

55:51St. Petersburg, founded in 1703 by Peter the Great, had his name changed to Petrograd to sound less German during World War I than the Leningrad to honor Vladimir Leningrad's death in 1924, and then back to St. Petersburg after the fall of the USSR. As I know you are more of an American history enthusiast than a Russian one, I'm sure we can let this minor oversight slide. Thanks and keep them hogs squealing. I'm actually a huge fan of reading about Peter the Great, and so I know a great deal about St. Petersburg, and so I actually did know this fact, but it just came out. You're right. You're absolutely right.

56:18It was an historical and accuracy and i was foolish to make it eva had those leningrad hogs it's so it's so funny because she just unzips it at some point it's like why yeah why not yeah why not why not all right a level one cleric thank you for the correction let's get into the news this happened right after we recorded last week so this is old news but it's definitely worth noting is that ghost of yote is gold of course going gold in the games industry for the uninitiated means that the game is ready to be printed and published in its 1.0 final format and then it will be patched from there so this is a pretty big deal um they tweeted out and put on other social media posts as well over at soccer punch the developer ghost of yote has officially gone gold we're so excited to finally have reached this milestone and can't wait for everyone to experience the beauty of iso or ezo etso on october 2nd you can still pre-order now i saw that the uh i think i don't know if the console itself, but the special edition plates are out of stock.

57:18So, and that controller I think is also out of stock. I was, I went and looked at a dual set, like to buy a dual sense. I'm like, what, what options are there? They're not, they're not very many options. No, it actually put me off. I'm like, I don't even really, I have a white controller I haven't used. I'll just use that, I guess. Cause there's like, and at this point in the PS4's life cycle, I had a lot of awesome controllers. Just feel like they need to kind of get it together a little bit with that. Just colors, not not based on games or anything, but just lots of fun colors. Be nice to have those.

57:48But Ghost of Yotei obviously is going to make its October 2nd release date. I don't think we had any thought that it wasn't. What are our final thoughts as we await? I'm going to get into Ghost of Tsushima in the next two weeks, probably, and play it again just to prepare. Dustin, where are you on Ghost of Yotei?

58:04Colin Moriarty:Every time I see it, it looks awesome. But at the same time i'm not like super amped about it there's a bunch of other games i can think of right now that i i'm more excited for so i think this is in a good spot where when it comes out i can play it i don't really have high or low expectations i'm sure it's going to be great i'm sure it's going to be probably fantastic so it's it's nice to know i got that in uh coming up in october like October is Battlefield and I'll be coming off of Silent Hill F. So it's just a nice good stream of games. Right now it's a little crazy with games. So hopefully by then we'll be at a nicer clip as far as when they release.

58:52Colin Moriarty:And despite me not being like hyped or anything, I am looking forward to it. Yeah, I'm the same way. I'm not. I've said it before. I feel like I'm people like I'm being mean to the game or whatever. I think the game's awesome. I just I just don't really care. you know i'll i'll play it when it when it comes it's definitely like well i would be more excited for like i got a war game or something nonetheless a lot of other games like a horizon i'd be so amped if it was horizon 3 for instance i would be i'd be so fucking amped up uh chris where are you on ghost of yote as we go into it october 2nd not too far away now yeah yeah i this is this isn't that weird territory for me where like i'm kind of where you guys are where i mean i really like the first ghost of jishima i thought it was great that legends mode sick um it was a pleasant surprise because i think around that time i think everybody kind of expected that the last of us part two would be like the the darling and then and then uh ghost of jishima would kind of feel underwhelming in comparison but it was actually somewhat actually at least partially the reverse where people kind of um i think appreciated it more uh than people were expecting but it's i'm not really excited about this like because i just i feel like it's going to be good i feel like i know the ways in which it's going to be good because it seems like it's being built from a really solid foundation so like i don't i'm not expecting to be surprised necessarily which could be a good thing it means it means they can easily surprise me it's alien but um yeah yeah it's just like it's gonna be i'm sure it's gonna be good i'm i'm but i'm not like amped about it really i'm i'm i'm sure it will come out and i'll be like oh that's out and then i'll play it but i'm not like yeah i'm not about it the ghost of yote is a classic gray alien with big black eyes and that's the twist that'll be uh i mean that would that would effectively surprise me i will say it's cole mcgrath um all right uh yeah we are in the minority on this because i i have been reading like the comments on because i'm curious about it i'm like why am i so i'm just like eh whatever especially with like the dearth of games like we don't get a lot of first party games at all anymore so it's a big deal and but you read like underneath the social media posts you read the youtube comments on the videos like people are fucking amped up about this.

1:01:22So that's awesome. I'll be really interested to see how the game does. Yeah, because Ghost of Tsushima did well, but it was also a slow burn. It found a new audience on PC. They supported it with expansions that I think brought attention to it and they were able to re-release it on PS5. They're not going to have the benefit to do some of those things this time around. So because I think, well, obviously, they'll have an expansion. I'm sure the Legends has already been announced. You're going to miss that marketing beat. And then I don't think the porting of games in between consoles is going to be a thing anymore.

1:01:53So, like, that would be insane. Like, if they release The Last of Us on PlayStation 6, like, natively, I'm like...

1:02:05Guys, but I'm getting mad about something I don't think it's going to happen. So let's not go there. All right. Ghost of Yotei. October 2nd. Grab your sword and get going. You're going to be slashing away out there. You're going to be slashing. You're going to be dicing, slicing. You're running around. You're going to be on a horse, probably. Honestly, I've seen almost nothing of this game. not because I'm avoiding spoilers but because I just don't really care that's just that's like yeah right it's what you said it's like I know what it is and I'm looking forward to it right yeah it'll be fun but I hope this is the end of the ghost stuff after this and like it's time to go do something else now and I would I would like to see more of the whimsy back in sucker punch I think PlayStation badly needs it I'm not saying Sly Cooper or Rocket Robot on Wheels or something I'm just saying like, you know, infamous and I'm not saying even infamous, but that's like a level of whimsy I'm looking for.

1:03:01Something that's adventurous and fun and not about Japan in 500 years ago. It's just, it's just, we haven't, we've have a George and another George and another George and another George and another George Seinfeld, but everybody's George, right?

1:03:22all right but the big news of this week that i wanted to get into is well there's actually a few big news items from the first party um number one is that fair games has lost its creative director um this came unceremoniously by way of people just kind of scouting on linkedin and this is why i'm always on linkedin myself because it's a great resource for this sort of thing. Daniel Drapeau, who was the director and a founding member, I think, not a co-founder, but a member of the original team that was at Haven that came over, has left and gone to WB Games Montreal, where he'll be working as the creative director on an unannounced game.

1:04:00We don't know what that is yet. Crafton Picard wrote in and said, hey, fellas, question mainly for Colin. We can all get into this, obviously. With the director of Fair Games leaving is the game effectively dead are there any examples of a game coming out after the director leaves in the middle of the development and the game actually turning out good i can't i think i can't think of any but i don't have the knowledge that you do thanks i'll walk the dog and listen yeah i mean isn't final fantasy 12 the most famous example probably of a game that people ended up loving that had two directors but there and but there are other games like especially games as a service that i've gone through directors um obviously you have uncharted 4 is a key example of a game that had multiple directors.

1:04:40So yeah, it happens. It happens. And games turn out well. And so those are great games that turned out awesome. Certainly games in the... Are you looking at the Final Fantasy XII thing, Dustin?

1:04:52Colin Moriarty:I was trying to just search games with multiple directors, but I'll search that one specifically. Yeah, I think I'm pretty sure that Final Fantasy XII was the first game I remember as a younger person where I was like, oh, this game actually had two directors and one left. um i don't know what this means for fair games i was doing a little bit of research on this guy and daniel drapo and um he is obviously like now at wb games montreal like we said but he was a long time member of ubisoft and then he worked uh briefly at square enix i guess or specifically for a square enix studio um and he was the director of shadow of the tomb raider so So that was his only other game that he directed.

1:05:31I think Shadow of the Tomb Raider was a great game. So that's a good thing. And he was also a designer on Splinter Cell Blacklist. He designed Lost to be Adamus. I don't know if you remember that game. That was the Lost tie-in game. And then he was the lead designer of Rainbow Six Siege. So this is a person with a decent pedigree. And I was doing a little bit of research too. VGC in 2022 did some deep diving into Haven's makeup. And they found that 70 % of the studio had one-time work at Ubisoft and 33 % of the studio. so there's crossover obviously because that's more than 100 also worked at stadia so this is a obviously as we already knew a mixture of a google and ubisoft kind of team with probably some wb you know montreal quebec seasoning i don't i don't think this is a good sign the the one thing that i am a little confused about is that if how does the how does the director of a game that is doing poorly and and he leaves during production end up as the director at a different studio i don't understand that yeah um i don't know if you guys have anything

1:06:32Colin Moriarty:you want to add dustin yeah well real quick the final fantasy 12 stuff that is true i'm trying to figure out one source says that his official the official reason the original director left which is uh uh hiroki ito was that he was left due to a prolonged illness but another thing here says that he refused to come to work for a month after most of the team left to go join uh sakaguchi's new company mist walker oh yeah that was one that was they were making like blue dragon and or go on i guess to make those games so something went on there but you were definitely right about that we were talking about this either on stream or the recent episode of sacred symbols plus we did that uh fair games right now it seems like before it seemed like maybe a 50 50 shot whether or not this game was going to get canceled or not now with this news too it's leaning more like yeah maybe more like 60 or 70 percent that this game could get canceled uh just between the the leak that we had here on this show about it not previewing very well or not doing well in that uh closed play test uh of course jade raymond leaving and now this it's like it seems like everything is on fire over there.

1:07:53Colin Moriarty:And now with Herman Hulse saying they would rather fail early and cheaply, I don't think they're early and certainly probably not cheap being that they bought the team, but they would like to avoid another Concord situation. The question is, at what point do you just cut it off? Is it unsavable at this point? So I would expect, like, surely we're going to know one way or another. you'd think by the end of the year, like in the next few months, uh, whether or not this thing is going to crash and burn. There are two ways to interpret this, I guess, Chris, which is there. The positive, I guess you could take out of the best worst thing would be like, we're purging leadership and we're going to try to save the game.

1:08:42And this guy's gone, you know, Jade Raymond, obviously gone. Um, so, you know, you basically lost your producer and your director. pretty big deal. The other interpretation is that people are fleeing a sinking ship and that a person that was a game director on multiple games can get a job somewhere else. And he did before things truly fall apart. My assumption is that they are working on figuring this out and that is unknown what's going to happen to the game. I don't think it's looking too good, though. And I think a major thing they have to keep in mind is that it just seems like this game is optically shot.

1:09:20maybe it doesn't matter because it's just enthusiasts that care and they want this game to break out of the enthusiast sphere but it's just you need the enthusiast to kind of lead you know plant the flag and lead the way otherwise it's not going to find its way to the casual gamer and so this could just be a bad situation for them overall even if they feel like the game is savable to dustin's point it might not be worth it what do you think yeah i've had a bad feeling

1:09:39Colin Moriarty:about fair games for a while like i don't i don't really know what they're going for it seems it It seems like the type of game that they're making and the style that they're making in seems a little bit at odds with each other. Like, I'm not I'm not really sure what to make of it. But obviously, there was that preview of, you know, people who played it early didn't seem to be going well. I just feel I don't have a lot of confidence in this thing. And I feel like this is I lean more towards this being, yeah, this isn't going that well. it almost feels like an initiative kind of thing you know whereas just like people kept leaving the initiative and everybody was like oh maybe it's not so it's like no it's probably not it's not good you know so i think it's pretty safe to say that this is probably a struggling game uh with a with a a vision that doesn't seem particularly solidified and there's a lot of live service games that do shift directors and they turn out they might not turn out completely destroyed i I think about Halo Infinite is a really great example.

1:10:45Colin Moriarty:Like that went through like so many directors and it actually like turned out to be a pretty good game. Nowhere near as good as it should be given the pedigree of the IP and, you know, how important the IP is to the platform holder that publishes it. But by all by all accounts, Halo Infinite should have been a way bigger failure than it ended up being given. So I don't necessarily want to, you know, nail it down already or this early. but it's i mean that's an established ip with a lot with a lot of goodwill kind of already there um this is kind of following in the footsteps of concord um obviously not the same developer but the same the same ecosystem uh people are very aware of that connection

1:11:29Colin Moriarty:it i would not be even remotely surprised to see this canned uh before we see it officially I mean, dude, what was that Xbox game that was like announced? It just had it had like one teaser contraband. Oh, yeah. Contraband. Oh, yeah. Avalanche. It had like one trailer with Steely Dan in it. And then they and then now it's just gone. It's complete. Are you reeling in? No, it was a do it again. But yeah, I don't know, man. I just think it's looking bad. I don't think they have confidence in this. I don't think we'll see it. yeah it's a pretty high chance i think it's a pretty high chance that this thing gets kind of canned before before we see it yeah i wonder i wonder i think as i was saying i think the game's condition and its optics are two different things they could be the same but they are two different sums in other words like you have to so whether or not the game's worth saving is only it's like doing a video on youtube with a horrible thumbnail it's like if and bad title it's like you gotta if the content's good but no one knows it's like it's kind of pointless and i just feel like this the name of the game the i don't know people have been down as you said people have been down about this since it since it was announced i i have been way more positive about it i don't yeah i liked the idea i've said that many times but i also had more confidence that they could execute on a game the the montreal game scene is pretty hardcore and I liked that Sony was trying to make a play to be there, even if it was with a kind of a multiplayer studio.

1:13:15But I think a few things are clear as day now. It's like Jade Raymond shouldn't be anywhere near a game project ever again.

1:13:26And I guess people, I don't want to say are failing up. It just seems, how does this guy get a directorial job somewhere else? Is it not his responsibility as the game's director? the condition of the game i don't get it i know i've said this a few times on different shows but the big i just want to reiterate it's like that the big it's not concord and fair games themselves it's it's sony's buy-in to them and their belief in them it shows a lack of taste and a foresight that and forethought that sony was famous for no one really knew they wanted a game like uncharted until uncharted came out and now we're going to talk about 007 shortly it's like i wonder what that game's like yeah you know like there's there's a way to make your mark in all these different ways and there's a way to make your mark obviously in the games as a service space and games have done it and do do it and while it's fascinating to i'll just reiterate that concord and fair games failing and presume fair games presumably failing or not even coming out as second party games is a totally different story it doesn't look as bad right i think it's so bad because sony believed in them and they were dead ass wrong and they've been wrong about a lot of choices that they've made and i i just i i feel like this lack of conversation around like and sony doesn't talk and they're not transparent at all.

1:15:01And it's like, what is going on over there? I really have a lot of questions. Like, what are you doing? What if you were like, what? Maybe things are better now. Maybe you're like making better decisions. So maybe the better question is, what have you been doing? How could this have gone so wrong?

1:15:20And the bet that they made on games as a service. it's like we were saying about the Jets stumbling into it. Like maybe they would stumble into the playoffs. It's like, how did you not like, how did you deploy billions of dollars to like a dozen teams and almost nothing? Not even like duds, but games that are just canceled. Games that get published and then are unpublished. It's like you didn't even stumble into more than hell divers. Like you didn't even and they stumbled into hell divers. Believe that. yeah they're like they didn't know they didn't know hell divers was gonna be good

1:15:56Colin Moriarty:they have no fucking clue their instincts for life service are very very unhoned and very very like very very not solid like at all uh hell divers was obviously proof of that and i think obviously i and i do think look it's it's weird because i played a pretty substantial amount of concord And I know for a fact, like that game plays very well. Like that was by all accounts, a pretty solid video game. It was purposeless and bland in style and, you know, everything, everything else. But like the core of that foundation was pretty solid. And so I think what they saw in that was like, OK, well, we can't make the same mistake that we did with Arrowhead where we just don't own this big thing.

1:16:45Colin Moriarty:and so they just they you know they bought these teams with the with the assumption with the hope that like maybe oh maybe we can replicate that again we did it by accident maybe we could surely do it on purpose not really how it works but i think it i think in their minds maybe it justified even the insane cost of like buying a studio outright is a worthy expense considering the the risk or the chance that like if this does pop off then we then we own all of it and that we don't have this problem that we have with arrowhead now we're like now they're now arrowhead's so big and and so popular and so well off that like they don't need sony right but think about you're right but then think about it through this lens chris this is i think it makes it even crazier is that they could have made that decision about arrowhead before the game came out just like they did with fair games and just like they did with concord two games they actually believed in meanwhile they had this game under their noses the entire time with a studio that has only made hell divers for years and years and years and definitely could have been had at that time and they're like now we'll just release that game and see what happens it's like are you fucking retarded what like what like these are these are crazy and now so he's exactly right it's like arrowhead's like we don't want we don't need you you know yeah and but that and it's just it's just total it's it's like what it's especially embarrassing because our head of of those three acquisitions like and by the way potential acquisition i'm saying like haven um what was the uh fire fire walk and haven yeah yeah fire walk haven and arrowhead right it's like we talk about all the time like or like you specifically talk about like the the idea of like oh well invest in studios that you've worked with before arrowhead was that studio right exactly that they did work with and then they were just like no we'll pass on those we'll buy these things that these entities that we have no history with and it turns out if they had gone with the studio that they actually have a history with it would have turned out really really well for them and uh yeah man it's they do not have the skills with live service it seems or at least they don't they don't have the instincts or the or the canny like observational fortitude to understand like what is what or what matters or what's worth investing in clearly um because it's been a disaster like pretty much pretty much the entire live service initiative now well under the assumption that this game does not come out which seems you know not unlikely sony's live service ambitions lie purely with marathon in that case like that's carrying like pretty much all of the weight now yeah and presuming that fair games doesn't come out which by the way fair games could be a surprise it could come out and surprise people and it very that's very possible it might even be a pretty good game but good isn't enough you also have to make you have to you also have to make people care hell divers hell divers was a game that people kind of like were apathetic about and even sony was to a degree so it's why they showcased it in such weird kind of lazy ways in the state of play that it kind of became this smash hit surprise hit but concord people kind of made up their minds about and i feel like that might be happening now like people like it's worse in some ways to have a game that people are rooting rooting for the failure of than to have a game that's completely apathetic that they're completely apathetic to because apathy allows people to be surprised it allows people at the very least to be open to it but like i do feel like fair games even though we haven't seen anything of it from it i feel like a lot of people have already written it off perhaps unfairly maybe just through sheer observation of how this typically ends up for live service games but fair or not that's the narrative that's following it and um i don't know i don't know if it'll be as bad as concord as far as like success or adoption rate, but it's not looking good.

1:20:57I hope, I hope, I mean, I would love for the game to come out and be awesome and be what I believe it could have been or what I thought it was, it could be. But again, I'll just, I'll just hammer like, it's fun talking about the games and it's important and all that, but man, the decision making is crazy. And I really want to know, and this is why I think Sony should talk. And it's hard for corporations don't throw people under the bus publicly very often. And a lot of things happen privately. And there's a lot of politicking and all the rest. I get it. But. People, lots of people should have been fired after all this.

1:21:32Like a substantial number of people to act like there aren't people that could be doing this better is crazy. And. The games industry is chock full of talent, people that have good eye for things that. do well, that have a good track record. You'd think you'd be begging Shuhei Yoshida to come back.

1:21:57You think you'd be and again, I just look at Herman Holst and I'm just like, I don't know, man. Like I don't I feel like you're the guy that's supposed to know. Like you're the decision maker before you even ascended to the CEO role of the gaming label. it's like i don't know that i want you doing making you're not making good choices you're you're simply you have you have had to have been involved in this and that's like you have to have been yeah how could it how could if you weren't then what are you even doing and i just can't get over it i can't get over the decision making shit and i just would like to think that there have been lots of moves behind the scenes to purge people that were there like you how could you how could you go into that building and up with a straight fucking face if you were like on board for the haven acquisition and the firewalk acquisition and the bungee acquisition and all this money wasted if i were you know hiroki to toki or one of these guys you know higher up be like this what do you guys what are you doing what you're fired right like i don't i just don't know is it like a japanese culture thing is it because like the the games company is not really run with japan first focus anymore you would think in other words it would be really hardcore and more western at this point and it's doesn't seem neither hardcore nor western seems unusually patient and i just how did someone like me that just studies the culture of playstation and the business of PlayStation and all of that, understand it all better than people that are there.

1:23:51I'm not trying to be a dickhead or whatever or flaunt or anything or put myself in a position where I wouldn't be able to perform. It's like I would have made better decisions. Would I have failed? Maybe. I definitely wouldn't have bought Bungie. I'll tell you that. I definitely wouldn't have looked at Concord a year out before release and be like, we'll buy the team. Nope. wouldn't have made those choices. So I just would like to think that better decisions are being made now, but it's unclear to me if you can count on the same people to make good decisions. And I guess the proof will be in the pudding.

1:24:27We really won't know for a while. Right? Like we're not going to know the outcome of these bets until the PSX. And that's a heavy and hardy bet. And I hope it's not something as simple as listen, I've said this before. I know it's redundant, but from my viewpoint, Herman Hulse was demoted. And I wonder if that was an acknowledgement that they were like, holy shit. Like this guy, like look at all the bad things that happened when this guy was presiding over the first party and its expansion.

1:25:07And now he reports to the other CEO instead of being co-CEOs. but then I look at that and I'm like, who is anyone minding the store at all? Like, does anyone know what's going on? What is, what is when you're, when you go and buy a student, Sony's not a huge corporation. They're a big company, but when you go and make a purchase, like even a firewalk for hundreds of millions of dollars, right? Or Haven for hundreds of millions of dollars, certainly Bungie for$3 billion. You got to go sell that to the board. you got to go like you're going to be in Tokyo dealing with people and pitching and meeting and strategizing and it's like what I don't know I don't know I just I feel like I'm being repetitive at this point but it's a sad situation anything to say Dustin before we go

1:26:01Colin Moriarty:uh yeah i mean live services i've been thinking about live service in particular in a game that we're going to be talking about coming up um with the finals and um not to get into it too deeply but i'm like man the finals is a game that is so good and unique particularly in the live service space that i'm like man why i mean it's doing well and it had its moment but I'm like, man, this game should be way bigger than it is. And I think it's what Chris was saying earlier, that it's not good enough to even be acceptable. Like Concord's gameplay was acceptable. It might not even be good enough to be great in the example with the finals.

1:26:47Colin Moriarty:And obviously the finals is nowhere near Concord. They still have a very established player base. That team is making another game that looks awesome. so i guess to be the mega success it's like in some ways it kind of feels like the stars has to align for your game it has to have every element down right um so when you look at the way sony i mean i guess it's just repeating a lot of things you said colin is just that it's like you gotta at least get yourself in the position you gotta make these decisions in the ground floor to at least point yourself in the right direction. And clearly that wasn't happening either.

1:27:27Yeah, it's, I don't know. It's what more to say. This has got to play out though. And it will. And do you consider Marvel token fighting spirits as a game as a service? That might be a positive direction, step in the direction arc system works, obviously masterful studio to be partnered with. Great idea. and then you have other games that have just been languishing but then you have you know stalwarts like mlb the show if you want to count that but that's that's a product of many years decades of work so anyway we'll see what happens with fair games but yes the fair games is creative director is gone do games come out and succeed when they have another director yes so it doesn't necessarily mean it's over, but it's not a good sign.

1:28:18Directors of directors typically don't leave their own projects. All right. Here's another piece of interesting news. This one comes from our friends over at Insider Gaming. Tom Henderson writes exclusive Insomniac Games Wolverine is likely to be at PlayStation's next state of play. They write in part, quote, Insider Gaming sources have revealed that Insomniac Games Wolverine is ready to be shown off for the first time officially since the 2021 PlayStation Showcase. According to sources who wish to remain anonymous as they couldn't talk about company plans, PlayStation is currently planning its next state of play event towards the end of September.

1:28:53Other sources revealed that Insomniac Games Wolverine is almost certainly, in quotes, going to be at the event as the production of its next trailer has now been completed. If the game doesn't appear at state of play, then the trailer will undoubtedly be released in the next few months with the Game Awards being the next likely candidate. They write some other things in here as well that I thought was interesting. We can get to later, which is, quote, as for what else the next day to play event could feature remains to be seen, but it's likely to feature Bungie's upcoming marathon, a new Metroidvania God of War.

1:29:21Insider, and then this is what, and I know the Metroidvania, I didn't know it was a Metroidvania game, but I knew a 2D game God of War game was being developed. And we talked about that months ago. They say, parenthetically, Insider Gaming has it on good authority. A mainline title is also in the works, which isn't a huge surprise. Phantom Blade Zero, and possibly even Naughty Dog's Intergalactic, The Heretic Project. If the state of play is at the end of September is intended, that will likely see a deeper dive in the ghost of yote too so few possibilities here there have been rumors of either a state of play or a showcase and i think they're kind of distinct from each other but maybe not so much so i don't know that there's i mean i i guess having something called a showcase and a bigger deal than their state of play branding would just be a bigger punch for everyone and that would be nice right now but i'll take whatever at this point so let's begin here.

1:30:09Chris Wolverine reemerging Wolverine was last shown only shown once and last shown so long ago that I believe it was announced at the same time that Spider-Man two was. So that's a pretty interesting stat. Yeah. And this is a game that's on its second director. Marcus Smith is now the director, the director of the resistance series. It's in, I know Marcus personally is a friend of mine, so I am totally biased, but in very good hands. He also directed sunset overdrive and um ratchet the most recent ratchet game so it's in good hands whether or not it's gonna be any good i don't know i don't really have any love for wolverine i think he's cool but i'll definitely be interested in playing this when it comes out um what are your thoughts here on the possible re-emergence i mean do we so we do we see the game do we see gameplay is it gonna be a deep dive do we get a date are they gonna release this thing man i we we definitely have to see gameplay

1:30:59Colin Moriarty:at this point right like they can't get away with um like a cut scene or or something like that for for as long as it's been and for just for how marred in i don't want to say necessarily controversy but like how marred the image of that game has been just from you know their silence and obviously the the big leak that happened um it's so funny too because like i remember watching many many many i i watched a lot of that leak and i don't remember fucking anything so it's so it works it it's it's funny how the like it kind of doesn't matter what's what it's also funny that the leak without the leak there would have been so little news to talk about the last few years it's like it's dry here jerry dry as a bone yeah it's it's i don't know but i i think there's a pretty good like to see to me if i were making the decision i wouldn't show wolverine unless i was ready to date it like that's like how i would go about especially just because again with the leak with how long it has been since this thing was announced like i don't think i personally don't think that if i were making a decision i would be like yeah we're just going to show it and we're going to tease a release window like i would i would be like no it's it's this date maybe maybe like march or something you know what i mean like or you know something far enough away to you know um to delay gives so far enough away to give some time so that people have a have time to get excited about it because it's been so long that i'm i wouldn't be surprised if most people just forgot that this was even happening um sort of reignite that a little bit um i could see that maybe happening i i just don't um i can't imagine them re-emerging without a date i feel like that would be really stupid and just not wise uh i think we all understand intrinsically how positively people respond to games that are unveiled with imminent like i mean hollow knight you know just being like hey we're coming out in two weeks and it's it's doing well for that fallout 4 back famously back in the day was like a big deal because it was just a couple months away and i think wolverine more than any insomniac game needs that goodwill i think i think they need that kind of shot in the arm where it's just like oh it's it's fairly this thing's fairly imminent you know or it's right around the corner this thing um after so after so long in the dark i would i would expect a date but that's under the assumption that people know what they're doing it is um it is it's as you said my my fear my expect it's not a fear i mean it's like my expectation is that it will end with 2026 that's what it will say you know uh yeah i i mean i could see that happening too but i i think that would be so stupid yeah i i agree with you it would be awesome because i think there is something to the marketing strategy should the game be ready to say like let's just it's as you're saying to spell everything right off the bat.

1:34:04Just answer all questions. There's nothing to worry about. Even really assure people that there will be no delay. Should you renounce a date and all that? I would like to see that level of aggression. But yeah, I doubt it. Well, I don't doubt it. We'll see. Dustin, what do you think is going to happen with Wolverine? What are your thoughts here on this game reemerging? Again, I wonder when it was supposed to come out.

1:34:23Colin Moriarty:Right. I wonder it's tough. Like, would they try to synergize with Marvel? because the last Wolverine thing was the Deadpool movie. So maybe they were going to try to have it out around then. And clearly that didn't happen. I think this game, it's Insomniac. So I have a high level of confidence that it's going to be excellent, despite what it seems like there may be, that there was some turmoil behind the scenes. For me personally, I know not a lot of people are going to feel this way. When you think about a superhero game, like imagine before i i guess there's lots of spider-man games before insomniac but it was easy to imagine it's like okay insomniac they made sunset overdrive they have a clear understanding of movement and game this is a match made in heaven for them to do a spider-man game and i can be very clearly understand what that will look like uh for the batman arkham games when you talk about a batman game it's like okay a little bit of detective work beating the shit out of people maybe gliding around being up in the rafters.

1:35:33Colin Moriarty:Little sneaky boy. Very clearly definable. And again, a lot of people might not feel this way. But for me with Wolverine, I'm not excited about the idea. From what I know about Wolverine, and I've seen quite a few films with him in it, the idea of a Wolverine game is just not that exciting to me. It's a guy with, you know, he's got claws. He's kind of angry. I don't know. So this trailer for me needs to prove like Wolverine was an interesting enough idea or character that they thought we can make a game out of this that absolutely rules and plays into Insomniac strengths. Because that's the other thing, too, is they they kind of with these two Marvel games, they kind of started at the peak with arguably the peak with Spider-Man.

1:36:23Colin Moriarty:and now they're kind of dipping below and i don't want to say wolverine's by no means a low tier character but he's not spider-man at all he's not batman so this trailer when they come out needs to prove and again this is to me not to everybody because i think it's going to do just fine it needs to prove like why why was wolverine the character that we need to have a big triple a PlayStation first party make a game out of. So I have confidence, despite my skepticism of Wolverine being the choice, that it will still be great just because Insomniac, which again, dude, Insomniac, Insomniac the heavy hitter for Sony, this generation with Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man Miles Morales, and of course the new Ratchet and Clank game.

1:37:12Colin Moriarty:They just keep hitting over and over where certain teams like Naughty Dog hasn't really gone at all yet outside of releasing uh the last of us multiple times so they really have been the mvp so far hopefully they can continue that streak with with this game when we see it yeah i mean i'm sorry go ahead chris well i was gonna say i'm in total agreement with that too like i always felt that like i mean x-men origins wolverine is a really good video game like to be fair but i was gonna bring that up to you i was exactly i was gonna Raven 2009 it's that is a that is an awesome Wolverine game it is yeah it is it is really good but I also kind of felt when I heard that they were doing Wolverine I was just like well I mean that's not if they if they do X-Men Origins Wolverine again it could be good I guess but like I I don't Spider-Man is so clearly it's I don't know it is it is an angry guy with I almost feel like Santa Monica studio would be better equipped for a game like that.

1:38:14Colin Moriarty:Actually. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. I'm actually interested in the violence aspect of it. Right. Too. Like I don't, I've never seen the movies. I know Wolverine from the comics. It, it, it wasn't, it was like GI Joe in that it was not necessarily violent. It was kind of implied, you know, from what I read, you know, when I was a kid, I don't remember him like, you know, dripping in blood and shit. Maybe there was shit like that in some of the comic runs, but I don't remember that. But he's got blades for hands. this is, this is the thing I've wondered about this game for a long time. Like, is this going to be some sort of like gruesome M rated game or is it going to be goofy?

1:38:52And the, I don't know if you remember X-Men origins Wolverine, Chris, I think was released in two different versions, right? Cause there was like a nonviolent version that was like on the Wii. And then,

1:39:01Colin Moriarty:Oh yeah. I think, and then like a more adult version. I believe that's true for the PS3 and Xbox. So, yeah but it's funny because i was thinking about that game too because that game was that was when i used to have access to everything so i used to bring shit home and play them and i was shocked i was like this this game has no business being so good it's a movie licensed game for a movie that by the way was terrible like that was a terrible that was like not a good that was like a famous movie with like ryan reynolds is deadpool and he doesn't have a mouth and he's like he's got swords for hands it's fucking weird um but yeah i just i don't know they they i do think they did they have to prove the like why they they sought this out as as a studio that's used to making very locomotion heavy games like why focus on this character that isn't really he doesn't really have a mobility factor to him it's it's it's an interesting match and i'm sure it'll be good but um yeah man i'm i'm not i'm not super stoked about it i think um i just wonder like when we'll see it like i i see the issue with it is like if we see it soon then they're just going to say 26 you know because if they give a date it would have to be sooner than fall which would put it kind of in gta 6 territory which is not smart for anybody um that's not good for anybody that's not good that's not good for anybody but so like i but my only my the only thing that i want is like i want whenever we see this game take as long as you need right to decide when to show it but when you show it that game better be like damn near ready to go like there needs to be like almost like a i'm exaggerating when i say a non-existent window from from time of unveiling to time of release but like it needs to be in that spirit where it needs to be people shouldn't have the time to really doubt it you know what i mean like it's been way too fucking long i would hope for a i always think the trailer when they revealed the new god of war uh what year was that 2014 maybe that e3 yeah i don't know cory barlog was playing it live to me that was like one of the most immaculate reveal trailers ever where you introduce the setting you have the big pop moment of the reveal the character which obviously they can't do with wolverine but they literally immediately just showed you what this game is like it's like okay you know what god of war is before but this is the new direction and we're about to show you why it's awesome um so i guess i don't i would hope that this trailer for wolverine is like big reveal maybe at the beginning you don't know that it's the wolverine game then you see him and then it's like okay now we're going to show you the gameplay roll right into it i would love that but it seems like less and less we get game game reveals with gameplay as the first well i guess this wouldn't be the first marketing beat it would be the second so yeah it's been a very long time in between e3 2016 2016 okay right um there are a couple questions to ask me you brought up the leak that happened at the end of 2023 that was after spider-man 2 came out and that leak i wonder so i wonder when what went wrong with the game something went wrong obviously and people kind of important people shed or shed from the project and different people maybe more trusted people were brought in to fix things and kind of write the shit.

1:42:45But I wonder what went wrong. It might be it might be right to these challenges of how you make a Wolverine game and what it is. I also wonder if there was some serendipitous help in the leaks and people playing the game and you getting kind of unvarnished feedback that you're and you and it's free. It's like free playtesting. Like it basically was involuntary playtesting. Yeah. and and so i wonder if that might have helped but i also think a lot of that stuff was early and out of context games look like shit and play like shit deep into development often and things don't come together until very late so i don't even know if anything anyone saw or played like i didn't i looked at some of the footage when it leaked but i obviously didn't play it i wouldn't even know how to go about doing that um yeah but i wouldn't do that anyway I don't really I'm not that into I don't want I don't really want it's illegal you know like the stuff you're you have access to which is like you can kind of like look at the publications of the data and stuff but I don't want that shit on my machines and I don't want to interact with that stuff it's like it's not like not a good look but people did and um and I wonder if there was any information to garner out of that but I think I think so so the bigger thing that came out of the leak though that I wanted to remind you guys is there was a lot of things like multiple spider-man games that have never come to fruition.

1:44:05And then an X-Men trilogy. Right? And I will say this, that it is my hope and my dream that after they deliver this Wolverine game and Spider-Man 3, which will come, that they get out of this Marvel shit. It's enough. This might have seemed like a good idea when you signed all these documents. It probably was a good idea. When you signed all these documents and tied Insomniac for a literally 20 years to marvel which is the case didn't they have they had games coming out in 2038 i think in that in that leak like x-men games and shit it's like no let's just cut it off here uh and maybe that's crazy but i just feel like don't you you you obviously you benefit from having this license fair but at the same time it's licensed and don't you want god if you're out insomniac i guess there were people there that'd be like i will make marvel games forever for the rest of my life, but I would assume that you want to make something else.

1:45:05Something of your own, something different, something that's not tied to someone else's lore, Bible and characters. And it seems boring to me. So if anything comes out of this, us not getting that Spider-Man multiplayer game, us seemingly not, and maybe never getting that Venom shit that Tony Todd did. Yeah. And then, or maybe that ties into Spider-Man 3. Clearly, they, in other words, they've truncated their plans. There was going to be a mile. There was going to be expansions for Spider-Man 2. Never came out, right? There was going to be an interstitial Miles Morales game, like game. Never came out.

1:45:40Wolverine is in trouble. Spider-Man 3, we don't know anything about yet. Just cut it off and let's get back to business. But they would maybe argue this is being back to business. Spider-Man's huge and we can make X-Men huge too. And I think Insomnia can do great work. I think Wolverine will probably come out and be great, but I just feel like the Marvel, it would be like tying a studio to do Star Wars games. Even Ubisoft was saying Star Wars Outlaws, which was by many accounts great. They were saying it did well, but it was limited by the fact that it's Star Wars and it's just not the time. I think making your own games at least gives you the initiative to make your own time.

1:46:27And obviously they would argue that they're making another ratchet game in the background and all their ass. I'm like, that's cool, man. But it's time. It's time to see what your real, like your full team can really do. Like one full triple A team. What's a new insomniac product? And to me, that's almost unthinkable based on what they've been kind of in bondage with since Sony bought them. So and the other important thing is that a lot of those deals were made when Ted Price was there and Ted Price was probably the driver of those deals. Now that he's gone, I wonder if there's a different feeling about what they should do.

1:47:00And I wonder if they could even get out of those deals. So we'll see. Anything else to add before we move on? Nope. I think we're good. So we got a little bit of bad news with Fair Games. We got a little bit of good news with Wolverine. And we might know in the coming weeks a lot more information. curious what you guys think of this next story Giannis Conto wrote in and said hello CDC as it's being reported by Ideal Labs Sony is reducing the storage of the PS5 slim from 1 terabyte to 825 gigabytes while the price remains the same that's leaving less than 700 gigabytes of usable storage for the player after the OS this is reported to be for an EU SKU but I am sure it will reach you guys before too long so now not only is this model more expensive than it was when it launched, but it also has worse specs.

1:47:51This does not inspire confidence for the rumored cheap PS6. Do you have any thoughts on this? So yes, indeed, the renowned French website that seems to have access to things that are bespoke. DLabs reported via Push Square, which translated it. It says, Rumor, to avoid even more PS5 price increases, digital addition to get reduced SSD space. And it says, according to DLabs leaker Bill Kuhn, the digital edition of the base PS5 will start to have 825 gigs of space as part of a new chassis E series, as opposed to one terabyte of storage in the chassis D model. The launch PS5 models back in 2020 also come with 825 gigs of space as standard, but this was increased to one terabyte when the PS5 slim version was released.

1:48:40The leaker claims that in the case of the base PS5's digital edition in Europe specifically, it's getting reduced storage to avoid having to raise prices of the system once again. The console has already had two price raises since release. The new model will be available, at least in European markets, beginning September 13th. Dustin, what are your thoughts on this? Is it a big deal?

1:48:59Colin Moriarty:I don't think it's a big deal, sort of. I don't think it's going to be a big deal for sales of the console. I think that a price increase would bother people more. with that being said i mean certainly it's not ideal for them to give you less value for money i was trying to research and look because i there's an article on piece of all places pc mag so sony says 499 ps5 no longer sells at a loss because i was trying to remember if they were selling at a loss at launch and then eventually were profitable um because at some point i wonder I'm like, okay, if they are selling this thing and they are making money on it, could they just take the hit?

1:49:44Colin Moriarty:But clearly, Sony does not want to do that. Or the economics have changed so much that they are basically at the... I guess I just, I wonder if they're still making money on the console, if they are holding that so dear that they're willing to lower the storage space. to sony's credit i am glad at least that it is easy to add additional storage to it if they're reducing the space enough that it's like you if you really care that much you probably were already going to add a drive to it you know um but again i don't i feel like that's kind of defending the the the fact that they are reducing it but it's so weird right now with tech and and hearing about the pricing of everything and how much things cost either for raw materials or the end product like dude it's like leaked iphone prices for when they reveal their new phone coming up and it's like holy shit like consumer electronics are just keep going up and i wonder what the breaking point is and maybe that's what sony's worried about that it's like man we cannot afford to raise the price on this thing because that actually will be a deterrent and this while it's not favorable is less bad than raising the price again on a console that came out in 2020 and two also this isn't even like they already probably reduced their manufacturing costs with the slim model so they really have been trying to reduce their pricing uh their raw material cost on PS5 for since it came out and they're still having to do this I just wonder and someone like Moore's Law is dead Tom would know that it's like is it that the raw materials just keep going up is it that they're not willing to reduce the amount of profit that they're making on it either way it's all fucked and sucks what are your thoughts Chris I'm just I'm just so tired of winning I think look I don't know I think this is a better alternative for sure than like I guess like raising the price on something it's definitely going to it's a less it's a less sexy headline because it is so it is so centered on this more enthusiast angle of like you know specs and you know hardware and you know storage space which your average person doesn't necessarily care about they'll delete whatever they need to you know fit whatever whatever they need to on it we we care about space and so like i think it's it's wise to make that sacrifice if they have to make a sacrifice at all as opposed to you know raising the price for the same amount of storage but uh it's it's it sucks and it's it's it's lame that we're in this situation uh that it's even happening it's just it continues to boggle my mind that the that you were just you're you were better off buying day one it's just so crazy like it's it doesn't register me that that is even possible because i'm so used to you know 30 years of the exact opposite being the case um so it's an adjustment period but i think it's a it's a it's a wiser it's a wiser move than increasing the price i have a another take on this too real quick because i was thinking okay so terabyte is a thousand gigs correct yeah or it would be at that it would be 1064 or something wouldn't it like it let's let's let's get this right one terabyte in gigs um 1024 gigs 24 okay okay so 1024 gigs minus they're reducing it to 825 yeah 25 so you're looking at 200 gigs less assuming i'm guessing that the price difference so that they would raise it surely would be 50 right if they're going to raise the price it's probably going to be by a click of 50 right that's what they just did yeah yeah definitely definitely so in one way that you look at it you're getting you're still getting less right but the ps5 ssd that you can add on is 130 and you get an entire terabyte for that.

1:54:10Colin Moriarty:So I'm just trying to think like the economics, like, would you rather spend $50 upfront to have that extra$200 or to have that extra 200 gigs, 199 gigs, or have the option where it's like, okay, it's a little bit less, but if you really need the extra space, you'll be able to get a lot more value per gig by buying an external drive. Right. Yeah. That's interesting. You know, and I, again, like I don't want to defend it, but at least I would rather it be that option than pay an extreme premium for an additional 199 gigs. Yeah. I mean, I'm I like what you said earlier, and I agree with you where it's both a big deal and really not a big deal.

1:54:55It's a big deal in that it's it's shrink flation. It's the equivalent of getting a bag of Lay's potato chips with six ounces, fewer chips in it or something. But you're paying the same amount of price for it and they act like it's the same, but it's really not. And it sucks. I hate that shit. And it's hard to defend it, even because with economic forces. And I think a lot of this, because it's international and it's being introduced overseas first, it seems to me that this is not so much tariff based as much as it's about cost of goods coming out of East Asia, which sucks. It's just going up. Everything's going up.

1:55:28And we lived in a world where consumer electronics, as we all know, we're just getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. Like I paid$3 ,200. Well, I didn't pay my parents paid in 1996, as I said, for our Sony VA with$3 ,200 and that money at that time, which is an enormous like you couldn't even if you adjusted that forward to like what that would be worth today. So something more like 5 ,500 or something like that. It's like you couldn't even really spend that on anything but like the most insane computer, right? So things have gotten cheaper. But maybe things are starting to bump back up again.

1:56:05And maybe some combination of free trade, technological advancement, fluid, international monetary policy, all the rest helped us get this unusual generation of just cheap electronics. That's not really natural. And we saw little signs of that. One of the things that I remember, and this was what, 10 years ago at this point, but one of the things I remember seeing like being like, huh, was it's easy to forget now, but you should just get your phone for free. Remember that? If you signed a contract with your phone company, not only during the flip phone era, but the early iPhone era. And you would just get a phone for free and you would sign a three-year contract or whatever with the company.

1:56:47And they stopped doing it because they couldn't subsidize that level of electronic loss because electronics weren't necessarily getting cheaper and cheaper. These phones became more and more expensive. And as you said, Dustin, now they're like, I'm surprised by the prices sometimes where I'm like, really? I mean, in some way it's worth it because you're on it all the time and it's great. But so I understand. So from that perspective, I get it. It's like it sucks. It's it's you're getting less for the same amount of money. Your dollar is going less and less far every day. So technically you're paying more for less and it sucks.

1:57:17The other side of it, though, is and this is just a me experience. Again, I'm a single player gamer. Mostly I know that the package files for a lot of these multiplayer games are onerously large, but I doubt you're either filling up 825 gigs or one terabyte or anywhere close to it on your PlayStation five. If you're an average user, not even close. And I just don't think from a, from a use perspective, it really matters. And that's where the shrink flation thing doesn't really line up because like I'll eat the fucking potato chips if you would just give them to me. But with this particular thing, it's like, I look at my console storage.

1:57:53I often have 10, 15 games on my console at one time. I use maybe one fifth of the storage on my PS5 Pro. You know, it's at most, you know, when you go into it, it shows you the little lines and it's like, you know, pictures and all the rest. It's like little dashes and then there's a huge open space. And so I'm like, I bet you most people, I bet you some people play, if they play Call of Duty, Fortnite, FIFA, like these games with huge packages that are constantly updated and patched. I can see that being a problem. And that's going to be a lot of people. But I don't want to overstate the case either.

1:58:27If they were cutting it in half or something, that would be like crazy. But this, I don't really. So, yeah, I agree with exactly what you said, Dustin. It both matters and it doesn't. It matters because it's anti-consumer.

1:58:38Colin Moriarty:Right. But it doesn't matter because you're probably not going to use it anyway. So, and you have the option, like you said, to use an external drive. I think you can swap out your drives. so but i just i've personally and i've always felt this way since the ps3 was the last console i dealt with where i'm like i have to delete things on a constant basis to like get new things i have to like figure out and remember and then remember you the ps3 wouldn't know that you deleted something so then you had to reset the ps3 and then it would know and then you can go down so in other words if you like if you went to download something on the psn store it would be like you need to open up this much space so then you'd go to open up the space and then you go back to the store and it would just be like you need to open up this much space i think i remember that i was like i hated that fucking um that was the last time i personally ever dealt with that and a little bit on vita but specifically if you're using like a 16 gig card or something otherwise me my personal experience is i've had in the ps4 generation in the ps5 generation more than enough space on basic consoles or the pro level console when those came out so i don't want to make an argument just to be like, you know, rah, rah, pro consumer only where it's like, nah, it's a bad look.

1:59:47But from a use case, I don't think it really matters. I do think it's wise for them to avoid price increases again. I think they understand that they can't do it. The only other way they could have gotten away with it maybe is to hold this price increase that they just did and then made a hundred dollar price increase if they had to in the future, but they already kind of spent their, they don't have any dry powder in my opinion for this. So I think now they're looking at it and be like, we can't. We got to figure something out or sell at a loss. And I had brought it up on the Sacred Plus episode that people will get on Saturday that there are rumors.

2:00:20And I think it was on PlayStation Lifestyle or something I saw that people are getting offers, I guess, heavy PS4 users like$100. And I can't verify this because I have not seen it, but they've reported on it is there have been people that are getting like unsolicited$100 PSN card offers from Sony to upgrade to PS5 or something. So they're trying to get people to move at this point and they're willing to take a hit to do it, which I find interesting. So anyway, this will be available September 13th, I guess for their website resources. I'm sure that know this, but like, I guess if you're out there searching for a PS5 right now or want to buy one, I guess, look at the.

2:01:00The numbers on the box or something to figure out like which one you're getting. Because obviously you're not going to want if you can get it's like when people used to hunt for the backwards compatible PS3s.

2:01:10Colin Moriarty:I would assume they would have to put the box like it wouldn't just be the like there will be a thing on how many gigs are on it. Do you remember when people would find like the old it stopped in like 0809 or whatever, but like people would still find like new stock of the PS3 like the real PS3 with all of the fucking gizmos and bobs that they had on in the beginning. like the SD card readers and like four USB ports and all that. It's like, what is this? That's the desirable one, dude. Oh, I know. That's what I'm saying. And I remember people still finding those new and it being like, whoa. Right.

2:01:40Like super cool.

2:01:42Colin Moriarty:I wish I had one, dude. They they're cool. I mean, I don't care about having a compact flash reader on my PlayStation 3. But the fact that it plays PS2 games. Yeah, that's huge. They were incredibly ambitious with that machine when you really think about it, Even in the settings, like the printer settings and all this shit. It's like, what is going on here? It's insane. A lot of it didn't come to fruition, but it was cool that you could do that stuff. All right. So thank you for that report. Billy, Billy Coon, Bill, Billy Coon. What does he know that we don't? It seems like he knows quite a bit.

2:02:18All right. Next up, I wanted to ask you guys what you thought about 007 First Light. There was a state of play that aired, what, September 3rd. So yesterday from when we're recording and it was a fairly lengthy look. I mean, I think there was like a half an hour of actual gameplay shown of this game. Double seven first light coming from Iowa Interactive. Of course, the team behind the Hitman series and it comes out March 27th next year. We already knew this, but there is some information on the preorder stuff or whatever, but that's interesting. We'll get to that. But I'm more curious what you guys thought of the gameplay.

2:02:52Dustin, were you able to watch this? I should be clear. I didn't. I'm excited about this game. I think it looks awesome. I scrubbed around and watched like 30 seconds a few times of gameplay. I don't want to see anymore. As I understand, they showed two full missions. I'm like, I don't need to see this. I don't want it to spoil the game. But from what I saw, I thought it looked really great. What did you think?

2:03:11Colin Moriarty:I think it looks overall. My impression is very, very good. Obviously, Hitman. I'm a huge fan of the new Hitman trilogy or the Hitman World of Assassination. and it was obvious when they announced that they were working on a double seven game it's like dude this could be pretty awesome depending on how they do it and the trail the footage they showed it overall i thought was great there's a couple things that i'm a little unsure of the things i really like first of all is that i was worried that they would water down kind of the hitman experience in this game for a more streamlined approach it was very clear from this trailer that there are it is very hitman like um when you're doing your different stealth missions a large part of it was focused on like breaking in uh to this chess tournament happening at this like villa or whatever and clearly a lot of hitman dna in it but the thing that i really love is that there are certain sections where it's like okay this is a bond game it's got to have crazy action in it whereas in hitman it's funny they give you so many crazy different like high caliber weapons but it's like i never use them in the game because i'm always trying to sneak around i'd i'm trying to steal the clown's outfit in order to sneak in and poison someone's drink so but in this it's very clear where there's a part in the mission where it's like okay and it says license to kill comes up at the top and it's all right now it's time for balls to the wall where then it becomes more of like a third person shooter action game and by the way any game that you can throw the rifle that you're currently using directly at an enemy fucking rules i love that and there's multiple moments where he's like you know shooting some shots and then just throwing the gun there's parts where he's like diving over a car there's all kinds of really unique combat mechanics shown.

2:05:11Colin Moriarty:The negative parts, the car bit of the trailer, the driving looked a little boring, maybe a little bit too It's for exposition. Right. I noticed that as well in what I watch. I was like, eh, okay. I'm willing to reserve judgment. The last part, and I think this write-in coming up is about it, is just that I've talked before about when I when I've previewed games early like at Summer Game Fest there's certain games I played performance not good but I'm not judging it because it's not out yet like this isn't like a near final it's not going to be out in a few weeks surprised with this gameplay presentation that they were willing to show it off in this poor of performance at certain parts makes me a little concerned obviously the release date is still decently far away March 27th but it gave me this weird feeling like ooh I really they've got a lot to smooth out in terms of performance it makes me worried that particularly IO I mean the Switch version they just put out of Hitman was not very good and also Hitman when it was released on PS4 also I mean it was a different time back then in terms of what we expected of performance.

2:06:32Colin Moriarty:But I really hope they're able to clean that up quite a bit. But I do. The other thing, too, is I love that it was very I mean, clearly it's a James Bond game, but I didn't know if they were going to maybe make it more grounded. But then they show a part where you use your watch and a laser shoots out to drop a chandelier. And I was like, yes, that's the kind of stuff that I really want to see. And also there's like a crazy, almost uncharted-esque scene with an airplane where there's people fighting on top of the plane as it's trying to take off and people are flying off. I'm like, yeah, that's the kind of out of control James Bond stuff that I want.

2:07:13Colin Moriarty:So overall impressions are even better than I initially expected. Yeah. Rome scape imagery wrote into us on Patreon about what you were talking about. I said, what's up, Sacred Brethren? Just watch the 007 First Light State of Play. and first things first the premise seems awesome uncharted meets hitman sign me up now let's talk about the not so great the performance seems unbearable now two caveats to mention the first being that the game is still essentially seven months out this is what you said and they could be working on performance in this last stretch secondly youtube compression is an unpredictable mess that is true and that could be the reason for the horrible frame rate i don't know if that's true but it would be more than i'd be more worried about the resolution right of yeah all of that being said i'm fucking stoked for the game i also dig the fact that there are not multiple versions of the game and the only way to get 24 hours early access is through pre-order.

2:07:59I think that's really cool. What were your thoughts on the game? Was the frame rate as eye bleeding for you guys as it was for me? Thanks for all the content that keeps me distracted from the mundane details, daily tasks. I'm sorry. I don't know where I said details. Distracted from my mundane daily tasks. I'll hang up and listen. Chris, what did you think of the 007 First Light State of Play?

2:08:16Colin Moriarty:I thought it looked so sick. I thought it looked awesome. I was so on board with it. uh i love stuff especially now because like it it's a good it was a good time for me to see this too because i just wrapped up metal gear so i'm in a i'm in like a stealth kind of mindset and so seeing this was just like okay cool they're they're using a lot of hitman here there's a lot of hitman clearly uh instilled in this and i wasn't sure what to make of hit or i wasn't sure what to make of the news when i first heard that i was doing this because i was just like oh maybe like yeah i mean i don't know if i don't know if they're really in action like because 007 needs to be action oriented and i don't know if hitman is necessarily an action game but i thought the the combat looked awesome a little janky but not in a way that i think is bad like sometimes when we when 007 would be like brawling with people and he would like shove them into something which by the way looked awesome but it looked kind of like they were like gears of war like magnetized to it like there's something a little bit like weirdly quick to it but i didn't mind it looked like it served the gameplay really really well but yeah i mean this is assuaged a lot of my fears really and and the performance again it is so far out that like i just didn't register it as as as a concern if anything i registered it as it as like oh this is really the game and they're actually showing you what the game is and there's a level of confidence in that and there's a there's a level of like respecting the intelligence of the viewer and understand it's like look we're not we're not done but like this is what we're this is what we're going to be doing um obviously if this was coming out in two weeks i would be concerned because then it's just like well what are you doing showing us this um performance wise that's like that's not good but there's i think there's more than enough time to kind of iron that stuff out um there are so many explosive tanks in it when i'm looking at it's like there's so it's insane it's like what is this fucking i mean i guess it's an airplane it's a it's a runway so that makes some sense it's completely it's so over the top like it's such everything explodes in that scene and it's awesome i i totally i'm totally fine with it like i like the i like an over-the-top action action game and i think they they're doing something interesting by fusing just the the stealth the open stealth like gameplay systems of of uh you know hitman and and social stealth with these with this like uncharted kind of um action focus and vignette focus i think it's i think it looks awesome like it looks way better than i thought it would look and i'm not really worried about the performance um at least this early like i need it needs to be like release month or like you know a month before release uh and i would still have to be seeing these performance issues to really care so like it's it's not even really a red flag for me i think it's i think it looks fucking cool.

2:11:07Yeah, I do too. I mean, I'm definitely into it. I'll definitely play this when it comes out. I'm not a huge 007 fan, but it's not for lack. I like the character. I just think there's a lot I don't know. I've not seen most of the movies. I obviously am not familiar with the novels, but the games I've played, there have been obviously, I mean, obviously GoldenEye is a classic on N64, but there was some good ones on PS2 as well. They were just kind of linear shooters, but they were fun, linear third-person shooters like Nightfire. And a few of those kinds of things.

2:11:38Colin Moriarty:Nightfire multiplayer is awesome. I really like Nightfire a lot. So this is cool. I'm looking forward. I'm watching more of it. There's a really cool scene when they're fighting in the airport where like a black SUV of enemies pulls up. And the guy's like shooting. The player is shooting at the gas tank. And it leaks. And then the car parks. And then he shoots a barrel at the end of the gas. Like the leak. And it just goes up to the car and explodes it. Because I was wondering. I'm like, why are you shooting over there when the enemies are there? and I was like, oh, you're making something cool happen for the audience.

2:12:08I did notice when they're in the party, they're in the more stealthy area and you're kind of just walking around as a person. Very slow dev camera movement. I hate that kind of... I don't watch too many demos anymore, so it's so funny. That's done, obviously, to make the game more cinematic, but also it helps you avoid screen tearing and stuff like that. I'm always skeptical of that, but we'll see. The technical issues based on what i watch i didn't really notice i mean obviously the frame rate's not ideal um but people can check it out for themselves it's on the whole state of play which is 36 minutes long is on playstation's youtube channel it has 764 000 views in a day that's not so bad i and it should be noted because you're asking like well why are they showing it now and all the rest um michael bagby wrote it and said hi sacred gents i just wanted to ask what was sony's strategy behind showcasing 007 in a state of play the game looks promising but with fans wanting some clarity over the exclusivity of their games and what big games are in production was this the best move thanks for all that you do yeah this is a marketing deal i mean that's why i think there was probably it was probably time to deliver something and so the game was not going to be maybe in the best state and this is what they had to show and what they had in quotes is great i think it looks awesome so i'm excited about it but this is sony i think wisely getting behind a good third-party game that they can help market and probably defray the marketing costs that IO would have to pay in return for exclusive content like this that brings people's eyeballs to a game that's going to probably sell millions of copies and will be associated with PlayStation.

2:13:41So this is just a classic marketing deal.

2:13:45Colin Moriarty:Yeah, they did one for Borderlands as well as DataPlay. And also this idea like, what did he say here? Was this the best move when people are wanting to know more about their games? It's like, dude, Sony is not thinking about you. they are not thinking about the people that are wondering about the state of first party again tease our sacred symbols plus episode tomorrow while we are the most hardcore playstation users we do not represent the majority at all and they're not worried about what someone's going to think it's like oh well they're showing off james bond instead of ghost of yote it's like no they're not worried about they're not worried about it well speaking of io since we're talking about them and this is obviously their game they're also working on publishing external games or at least they were ign sat down with the ceo of io to talk about uh the publishing of their first external game which was mind's eye and ign writes um to say minds i suffered from a rocky launch would be a bit of an understatement or at least plagued by a poor critical reception refunds to players who purchased it and subsequent layoffs developer build a rocket boys debut game garnered its fair share of negative headlines and a column we already planned them but there was once a time when there was something to be excited about when it came to mind's eye so much so that ioi partners the publishing arm of hitman 007 first light studio io interactive saw enough promise in it to distribute the game so in a conversation they had with hakan abrak who's the ceo of ioi he told ig and quote the initial talks we had with those guys were to support them we thought they had some great ideas and a great world in the background that they were building and hopefully they'll get the opportunity to show more of that in the future.

2:15:28And we just wanted to help them distribute the game. And then the IGN writes, quote, at some point along the road, though, the development of mines, I clearly did not go exactly to plan and ultimately ended in that negativity laced launch. For IOI partners, it obviously isn't what it wanted to see happen after attaching itself to Leslie Benzie's helmed project. He says the CEO, quote, well, that was definitely tough, right? It was a tough reception. It wasn't what they hoped for and also what we didn't hope for at IOI partners. they're working hard on turning things around to regain the trust of the gamers out there and they have tons of potential and content they're working on so hopefully they'll succeed with that in the future end quote um they go on to ask so this is the funny part of it ign says the future of mine's i am build a rocket boy remains uncertain but what about ioi partners and its appetite to publish more games not made inside the danish studios walls ioi interactive will self-publish the upcoming James Bond adventure at 007 First Light, but can we expect more partnerships along the lines of the one they made with Minds Eye, or has this launch left a bad taste in their mouth?

2:16:29So the CEO says, quote, so IO Interactive will publish our own games internally. IOI Partners, that remains to be seen. End quote. Yikes. Bad news. Interesting, though, Dustin, in reading about this, we don't have to linger on this too long. It's just a weird industry piece, but he was using a lot of they. like they we hope they turn it around they had great promise they tried hardest but it's like there is a and he uses we a little bit but it's like there is a we here you did sign on to this game knowing what you were doing i assume and hopefully that doesn't scare them off from helping more developers get their games out but they were really i just thought it was an interesting opportunity for them to distance themselves as much as they could from the project but it's like i don't think you can do that i don't think that's really fair it's not like it's not like they just handed you like a a gold disc and were like publish this

2:17:24Colin Moriarty:so it's not what happened i'm trying to look just to make sure yeah i mean the thing for them if with mind's eye i think they definitely share some of their responsibility but also it's just the idea that i i always like logo i mean it's ioi partners but is on every copy of mind's eye and they are deeply associated with an extreme failure one of the most notable failures in recent memory uh they put them up when they did that weird ioi interactive stream at summer game that i had the absolute pleasure of being at um yeah it's it's definitely not a good look and i'm sure they're thinking about they're like man this kind of sucks that now we are forever associated with this game and see I understand him trying to say they but it's like dude you you let it happen you know to some degree you let this happen again again it's like the sense of denial coming out of Sony about their own games it's like who made the decisions right what do they say failure has success has a million fathers failure has none or something like that alright Chris anything you want to add before we move on no i i think i i just love the that remains to be seen it's such a it's such a diplomatic way of saying probably not well they probably lost money on it and they're not that big it's dangerous game to play pardon the pun if you're not at least breaking even or something like that and having some sort of prestige label i mean this is a bad bad start bad start talking about responsibility i wonder whoever was running that publishing arm if they're in trouble because it's like, well, why did you make this deal?

2:19:13All right. I'm very interested to see what you guys think of this. As of the day we're recording, which is September 4th, Hollow Knight Silksong is indeed out. It's unbelievable. It's finally out. And the bigger thing that I wanted to talk about, though, is its price, which is$19.99. This has caused a lot of conversation because it seems outrageously affordable, even cheap for the game. and not only for what modern games cost. I think the original Hollow Knight when it came out in 17 on PC costs 15 bucks. So this is a modest cost of living increase for it, I guess. Chris, let's stick with you.

2:19:53What do you think about the pricing of the game? By the way, there was some trouble with the game when it was rolling out too. It seems like it's all ameliorated now, but people are having a problem even downloading and buying the game today on multiple platforms, including PSN. But that seems to be better now. So I'll definitely be checking it out in the days to come. what do you think about this price of$19.99 I will say I will preface it by saying there's something about it that really bothers me but I I'll talk about it more about why that is

2:20:16Colin Moriarty:I think it's a perfect price I think um I think it's genuinely I mean look this is a small studio they're rich beyond their wildest imaginations anyway they could they could they could be they could be completely set selling it at nine dollars you know so like I mean 20 I think is right in that they're right in that perfect area where $20 1999 I could spend that on a game that I don't even intend to play really and I could feel good about it I do think the second it goes $10 more like when I'm 30 bucks I bought it already I don't know if I'll ever get to it but I bought it specifically because it was like oh it's 20 bucks whatever at 30 I'm thinking like hmm well I gotta play this you know, maybe not.

2:21:12Colin Moriarty:But I think it's a very shrewd price. I think it's good. I think it's great. I think Team Cherry is wise to do this. It just makes the game so approachable. It's a similar thing to what Helldivers did at the$40 price point, where it's just like, well, the price compared to a AAA game is like, I could convince my boys to shell that out if we know we're all going to be playing. And I think for a smaller 2D kind of platforming game that's taking this long, I think it's an awesome price. I have no issues with it at all. What are your thoughts, Dustin? I think Chris might be on to something with this idea of it being$20, not for everybody, but for a lot of people playing games and buying games$20 is a fuck it price where it's like I wonder if their thought process is like well yeah we could charge 30 but that extra$10 could be a slight barrier when you think about how long this game has been in development and how long people have talked about it that lead up there are probably lots of people like Chris they're just like oh 20 bucks well i'll see what everyone's talking about i'll see what the the hype cycle for the last seven years 20 who cares people spend like twice as much to just get some like mcdonald's door dash so yeah well well also dude it's that's the price of a fortnight skin you know it's like that's people are desensitized to that price point even yeah and so i wonder if there is this idea of Like we can cast a wider net here with that lower price point and maybe make more money than if we had charged 30.

2:22:59Colin Moriarty:I don't know. I think it's an interesting idea. Yeah. So this is this gets into my quote unquote problem because I should be clear. It's it's a somewhat facetious problem in that. I think it's obviously awesome to charge an affordable price for your game, knowing that it's going to be saturated by the millions of copies and that you're going to be perfectly fine, better than fine financially by selling it at twenty dollars. There's not a lot of you. you took a lot of time to create it based on the money you made on the original one i think that's awesome like i i love that level of accessibility i think that's dope so when people so people that are already mad at me in the comments forever you know stay your swords and let me but let me let me tell you why i am not upset about it but why it bothers me that's what i was saying earlier it bothers me i believe that this affected very few sales and that this is one of those rare games that could have extracted tens of millions of dollars more for themselves with probably no penalty.

2:23:53That shows a lot of restraint, but it's like the guy with the vein popping out of his head meme for me if I were there where it's like, I think people were perfectly comfortable and ready to spend 24 and even 29.99 on it, which I think would have been a totally appropriate price for the game. And I think about that just because I think, yeah, it's a comfortable price to get in. certainly it's going to lubricate the wheels of commerce but is it going to outdo you getting another ten dollars per unit of every game you would have sold in the millions anyway um and you could argue the game could have even been more expensive and maybe not even affected anything i think it would have gotten egregious above 29.99 so that's where i'm like damn like you're rich awesome you left a lot of money on the table man in my opinion a lot like tens of millions of probably.

2:24:41And so, so when I saw that price point, that's all I thought about. I was like, awesome, affordable price. You're going to make a lot of money. You're very happy to do that. Very pro consumer, all of that. But I just thought of that.

2:24:51Colin Moriarty:And I was just like, yeah, it's a lot of money, dude, but they're, yeah, but it's, it's a lot of money at a, at a point where money doesn't matter anymore. You know, like you're already like, what's, what's, what does more money do for you at a certain point? Like nothing really, you know, they're living, they're living insane lives. I bet. at Team Cherry as it is. So from that perspective, I can imagine it's like, yeah, we can make more money, but like, what is it? What is a million? What is a couple more million dollars really to us at this point? I think it was I think I read I could be wrong.

2:25:24It could be a different team, but I think it was them saying that a couple of the guys that work there like still just live in the same places like this that one guy like lives in the shitty apartment still and all that. That's the kind of shit I love when you have like legit fuck you money and you're like, whatever just because the status quo is not so threatening when you know intrinsically that you can just change it at any time like when it's time to change you can do whatever you want nothing's holding you here other than routine and habit so yeah that's that's kind of the unique perspective i have on why i had a problem with it is not because it's awesome and that it's affordable and accessible to people but that i think that they probably didn't change the trajectory of the game and thus i couldn't help but think of the enormous amount of money they left on the table and I want them to have it.

2:26:08But I guess the second best thing or the best thing ultimately is for you to keep it and I will gladly buy it and store it away. I'm not going to get to it anytime soon probably because there are just too many things to play, but people are already at it. I saw it was trending earlier on X, so obviously it's got a lot of global attention and I think it was something like 500 ,000 concurrence already on Steam. I mean, and you're right about like it's so funny. just based on the steam players that's like 10 million dollars in gross revenue from the people that are just playing it right now on steam all right like no one's even home from work yet

2:26:53Colin Moriarty:it's right right no it's it's i don't know man they're set they are and it's smart of them because like anecdotally it did kind of move the needle for me because i i still haven't even i have the first holiday night i still haven't beaten it um i don't even think i've really gotten that far into it uh but this was one that i kind of i was curious about but depending on the price point i would have had no issue skipping it so it's at least got one i should be clear because you're right obviously move the needle for you and there's probably a lot of i know you mean and money's made well it should be i should to clarify the formula for people it's that i and this is unquantifiable by the way but i don't believe that it would have sold more copies based on a cheaper price point then would have been made on copy sold at$30.

2:27:36So anyway, it doesn't matter. It's an awesome thing for people overseas. It's 1999 in euros as well and$2 ,300 in the declining Japanese yen as they become more unpegged. Oh, from the USD. So congratulations to Holland. We had a question about this, but I didn't even read it. Mark Byrne. Sorry. I wanted to see what you guys thought of this. um nielsen chapman wrote and said what's up fellas capcom president haruhiro sujimoto stated the ps5 high price point is affecting monster hunter wilds game sales although it's probably more due to the game being poorly optimized and various other reasons do you think pressure from major publishers can be an effective way to nudge sony to make the ps6 for a lower price point morris law is dead as stated he doesn't think the highest level ps6 will be more expensive than ps5 and has mentioned a cheaper model s style version as well thanks for all that you do this is becoming more in focus based on a recent story here so uh nikai the japanese newspaper in japanese interviewed as was said capcom's president and this is relayed by automaton media who often translates japanese media for us to use um here in the west they write ps5 steep price a barrier for potential monster hunter wild players capcom's president says and they say here quote while initial sales of monster hunter wilds were strong topping 10 million copies in the first month of release.

2:28:57I mean, that's really strong. Subsequent sales figures have been less than ideal for Capcom. Some attribute this to the game's lack of content or poor reviews, but Capcom president Haruhiro Tsujimoto says the cost of the PlayStation 5 is one of the sources of the problem. In an interview with Nikkei Gaming, Tsujimoto revealed that Capcom considered the PlayStation 5 as Monster Hunter Wild's main platform when estimating the game's initial sales figures, but accounting for the console, accessories, and monthly subscriptions like PlayStation Plus, the cost for a PS5 amounts to about 100 ,000 Japanese yen, roughly$677.

2:29:24US dollars. Add in Monster Hunter Wild's$70 USD price tag, and some people would rather pay for older, more complete entries, such as Monster Hunter World, which shelves for as low as$9.89 USD, and Monster Hunter Rise,$9.99 USD, than buy a new console for a game with currently less content. Considering many gamers are young and don't have sources of income, Tsujimoto admits the cost of entry to play Monster Hunter Wilds on PS5 is rather steep. Dustin, I'm curious what you think of this some people are saying this is excuse making and trying to find some sort of um way to defray the blame from yourself because as i understand and you you're a monster hunter person so you would have more information on this than me is that the game did sell well and was strongly received but there just is nothing to do in it and i guess it's not running well maybe in some places and so it's kind of falling off and people are going back to the old versions of this this is obviously not ideal for cafcom but it also is weird to me dustin that they would blame Sony.

2:30:22That just seems like a bold thing. Not that it really matters. They need each other. But what are your thoughts?

2:30:27Colin Moriarty:Yeah, I definitely think there's a lot of copium going on from him. It is true that from my anecdotal evidence in talking to people that live in Japan, different listeners and seeing online that it's like, yeah, it is pretty expensive to have a PlayStation 5 and all this other stuff and i could see that being a barrier to the point where even uh nintendo has released a japanese only version of the switch 2 that is significantly cheaper just for that market uh and it has like restrictions in it you can't change the language so it really is supposed to be a japan only switch 2 so there is some truth there but i do think that just monster on our wilds has not had the legs that they would hope for i haven't really kept up with i know they've added new updates and things like that but nothing has been as that much of a breakthrough to convince me and the the guys i play with to jump back in and check it out and you are right a big stickler for me not really relatable relatable to most people on this podcast but the pc performance is has been dog shit since the game came out and we dealt with it and it has not gotten better they've added plenty of uh bikini skins for the hot blacksmith and we appreciate that a little moink you got a little moink here and there but what's you know what's more sexy pc good performance 60 frames 60 frames a consistent 60 or consistent frame rates in general it doesn't even need to be higher than 60 it just needs to be consistent uh and it's just been it wasn't good back then and i've seen people still come i think it's on steam that their their reviews are still pretty mixed and also the other thing too about crying about how it's not selling that great it's like dude 10 million copies yeah at full price yeah well is it still maybe not now maybe once we get updated stats with like uh what uh the nca game but it was the best-selling game this year since it came out really so i mean yeah enough the copium real enough the crying fix the performance take care of those essentials first right right where are you on this chris um it Dustin said something kind of poignant last last week as I recall which was we're not yet at the at the top like people have a tolerance still for these expensive consoles there will be a point where you can't go any further maybe we're there in some markets I don't know Japan seems like it might be a little stubborn they're also more into mobile gaming and handheld gaming there so yeah yeah I mean I don't really know what to make of this I I remember trying both Monster Hunter World and Monster Hunter Wilds and I just I just didn't like either them at all so as far as like their performance uh i i don't i don't really i don't know i don't remember having any like issues with it when i when i was running it but i only played it for like an hour and maybe two hours so like it's it means nothing to me but as far as like as far as um you know passing the buck to to sony i think i think it's i think it's clearly just cope really like they don't have a game that says well we'll see this as their last one and that's fine that happens but you still sold a shit ton like what do you i don't know it just seems it seems like a weird thing to do yeah in general a weird statement to make i also feel like i i get their perspective simply from the from the point of view of we don't have the low i guess we could but we don't really have the luxury to raise prices right like you guys have risen raised prices and obviously the situations are different but everything's becoming more expensive but we're more constrained and we're doing the best we can I guess it's so I understand from some perspective I just think it is weird to throw your like partner under the bus like that and after Sony gets their cut or the other platform holders get their cut of Monster Hunter Wild Capcom made half a billion dollars already on the game get real There are bigger fish to fry than this.

2:34:53And there's bigger. And let's see here. Actually, since we're talking about Capcom, let me stick with this. I put it further into the thing, but I just thought this was funny. I put this in our Discord chat, actually, when it happened. But I've been talking about how there's this theory that Pragmata, the upcoming Capcom game that looks fucking sick, is a Mega Man game or a secret Mega Man game, mostly because the little girl like she has a fucking Mega Man arm buster. I mean, it's it's. it's obviously wasn't going to be a thing or probably wasn't a thing, but I thought that was weird and worth asking.

2:35:24It's even the same color, right? So you're kind of begging people. It's impossible for me to believe that no one internally was like, that's Mega Man's arm buster. It's not like it's another company doing it and unintentionally doing it. But anyway, they confirmed that it is not the case. Pragmata's producer and Naoto Oyama talked to VGC, our friends over at Video Games Chronicle, and they were asked about whether Pragmata is a Mega Man game in some way. and the producer apparently laughed and said quote Pragmata is not a Mega Man game it is a completely new game from Capcom I was actually one of the producers on the Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection as well so I'm happy to see people who love Mega Man are passionate about Pragmata too from my standpoint it's nice to see people being so positive about it so dreams crushed although not really I truly believe we'll see Mega Man soon in the next year or so well he'll reemerge yeah I have no inside information about that at all I just think it's time i think they they know we're getting on emotion for christ's sake and that's awesome it's like come on man megaman is one of the biggest things they do um or at least one of the most storied things that they do these days it's more like monster hunter and things of that nature i understand but megaman has potential they know it and you sound like uh you sound like me with

2:36:36Colin Moriarty:splinter so right right right right you're right any day now you're right you're right they did do that we we reported on it i want to say last year chris that they did that because i participated where they did that survey with fans. Fans were invited if they were Capcom fans to do this lengthy survey. They released some of the information and Mega Man was I think number two. You don't ignore that. I would hope you wouldn't ignore that. Maybe they would. All right. I wanted to know what you thought of this. We were talking about consoles becoming too expensive and there are two stories we can talk about really at the same time that indicate that maybe people are just continuing to stick around with these old platforms.

2:37:16We were kind of, I don't know if you guys remember, I'm sure you do in recent weeks, we were noting how games are starting to finally move on, right? Genshin Impact is leaving PS4. PUBG is leaving PS4. So maybe there were some behind the scenes shoving of people away. I mean, let's kind of like get over these platforms. But now the exact opposite is happening. The first is that Marvel Rivals is coming to PlayStation 4. Something is rising and it's not the shield hero wrote in and said, hey boys what do you make of marvel rivals getting a ps4 port i thought we were finally moving to current gen only games do you think this is just a one-off or is it a move or is it or is the move to current gen not as far reaching as we hoped i don't know because there's another rumor which is and this is a dust golem the famous resident evil leaker that is right about many many things has said that as he understands he said this on x in response to some people there Resident Evil Requiem will come to PS4.

2:38:19I'm like, what? What are we doing here? Dustin, what's happening? Are we leaving the PS4 behind or aren't we? Hmm.

2:38:28Colin Moriarty:Well, I think in the case of Rivals, a game like that, that is highly stylized. It's a live service game. It's a Marvel game. There's still a large player base on PlayStation 4. If it runs well, why not put it on there? I'm sure there are tons of younger kids or calling. You mentioned your your nephew's roommate who still plays on. They don't care. There's a lot of people that don't care. They just want to play what they have. I think that makes complete sense for Requiem. It's a little different in that. I'm reading this thing now because it said I'm sure if it'll be at launch. which my guess will be a different version with different tech, sort of like the 360 PS3 and Wii PS2 era.

2:39:15Colin Moriarty:Since some features of Requiem, like ray tracing are forced on modern platforms. So I, the one thing that gives me confidence, if that's true, it's not like they're designing for PlayStation four, and then they're going to soup it up for PlayStation five. It sounds like this game is being designed for current gen and they see a possibility to downgrade it to run on PlayStation 4. So if that's the case and they see potential in releasing it there too, then I guess more power to them. But I, I guess I'm just surprised that there, if there's someone that's really interested in playing the most modern new Resident Evil game at this point in the generation, it's like, bro, just go get yourself a playstation 5 at this point go down to the corner store yeah you know general store the general store go to the deli and buy a playstation the bodega with a concrete blob in front of it the bodega getting a playstation for a bodega is insane i think um i don't know i wonder if i part of me feels like this can't be possible because it feels like things don't work this quickly or or but like i wonder if you know the push was to move forward but then the economic reality kind of set in of just like okay well now the machine now the ps5 is more expensive than it was on launch which is even which is a bigger barrier from previous people who are stuck on previous generations uh moving forward than then there even was at the start when it was cheaper and they still didn't go when it was cheaper you know what i mean so like i wonder if this is like somewhat of a reaction to that like maybe like well now that the machine is more expensive than it was on launch like maybe we should actually look into maybe demaking some of these to meet people where they're at so that way we can still at the very least reach these players who are still very active and ultimately who like you mentioned earlier just kind of don't care about like the performance benefits of of playing on modern hardware like i wonder if if that's at all part of the equation um but i think really the main part of the equation is just the fact that there's so many people on ps4 and they're just looking they i mean like you said you said earlier colin like they look at it as like oh we're leaving a lot of money on the table yeah i'm interested in the coming and going i guess right and like you're right in that well there must be a reason it's probably a technical reason like at some point you have to look at it and be like what are we earning from this platform can we leave it behind and will it make it easier for us we're obviously leaving money on the table but what do we gain in return from just removing the ps4 you know better fidelity on the other platforms fewer things to update fewer packages to update it's just it's just funny to see companies concurrently in the space all successful making different decisions and the level of obviously they all have their own telemetry and there's probably different i would assume substantially different behavior between a Genshin Impact player, a Marvel Rivals player, a PUBG player, what they're looking for.

2:42:30Like PUBG, you would assume, for instance, that strikes me as a game that's more hardcore and that a person would be more likely to have good hardware. I don't know if that's fair or not, but that's my gut. Marvel Rivals seems like a much more modest game that probably courts people that have older hardware.

2:42:46Colin Moriarty:Yeah, I was actually surprised that Marvel Rivals wasn't on PS4. It just kind of feels like it doesn't feel like a it doesn't feel like a game that i couldn't imagine that from i wonder if because it should be noted that a lot of the games that we're talking about that have moved forward are specifically multiplayer games like live service games that get an influx of money kind of on a daily basis anyway so maybe they look at like they look at previous generations as like well this is actually kind of a bottleneck and it's it's prevent we can't really do what a single player game does and have two separate skews because that splits the player base and it's it's a bit of a headache let's just let's just dedicate our time to the next generation move on we'll still be making a lot of money every single day from this we we can we can cut that out whereas like a single player game kind of has to make a case for itself um it's more it's more bespoke it's not consistently generating revenue and so any way to expand that um is probably going to be a little bit more worth it than it would be for a live service game that's money making money hand over for uh every single day and there's also the fact that like a lot of these uh live service games are also on mobile which i feel like is probably like a way bigger portion of the pie than just ps4 or like xbox one is so that's probably that plays probably into it as well but yeah i don't know it's i'm it's way better to have this where we're targeting next generation but we're considering you know how to demake something as opposed to targeting the previous generation then uprising it to like you know 60 frames or whatever like i prefer this way of doing it but it is still kind of annoying that we just won't move on well i'm gonna continue to track these comings and goings by the way i could not find the press release that announced marvel rival is coming to ps4 i just see people reporting on it gamatsu reported on it i totally believe them but i can't i couldn't find the source because there's even a new press release that was published recently that had like more details for um it was it was the day that the ps4 port was announced there's like more details for season four or whatever but i was like where was this even announced it must have been on like a stream or something and i missed it but i believe the sources finally we have a new laura croft being played by sophie turner of Game of Thrones fame.

2:45:07I like the casting. That works for me. The, let's see, the series adaptation of the video game franchise, this is according to Variety, is officially set to begin production on January 19th, 2026. In addition, Amazon MGM Studios has confirmed for the first time that Sophie Turner will star in the series as Lara Croft. It was greenlit back in 2024. What was her character's name in, I can't remember. She was like, she was married. Sansa? Sansa, that's right. Sansa. you'd say it like the little finger or whatever the fuck his name is sons of he had like that kind of thing going on with his voice that show was great he had a couple things going on he was that was that was a great show drake heinhorst wrote in said hey gents this question is for chris i understand hollywood is pretty secretive so you may have had to sign an nda but can you confirm if sophie turner has contacted you for advice on playing laura croft I would like her to make her own creative decisions but hope that she can at least subtly reference the impact you have had on the character

2:46:11Colin Moriarty:yeah Sophie Turner and I go way back I didn't she was on some show that I didn't watch I don't know it was probably fine but I always forget that this happened to us and then like I'll remember it in the middle of the day and I'll smile it's a ridiculous it's a ridiculous thing to be true you know that somebody had a bunch of lawyers had to sit and watch that yeah it's awesome and they're getting paid like thousands of dollars an hour yeah so we have to write a check lose money watching our uh our amazing rendition do you have any advice i yeah man i just uh just find that clip of us doing it and just copy me exactly and you'll be golden, I think.

2:47:01Colin Moriarty:Right. What better advice can I give, really? All right. We're back from our little break. It's time for what we're playing. Looking at the games this week, I think it makes more sense to start with you, Dustin, and then go from there. So take it away. I've been in a weird in-between spot where I've been waiting for, literally today, for new games to come out, both Hollow Knight, of course, and Hell is Us. I believe I'm going to get the new everybody's golf. So I've been filling in with a bunch of random small stuff. First of all, Kirby in the Forgotten Land. There was a$20 expansion plus Switch 2 upgrade.

2:47:40Colin Moriarty:I never finished this game on Switch 1. So I was playing that earlier in the week. And it's boring. I can't get over how bored I am when I play it. I want to love this game. It's so cute. you know kirby's so cute he does the the mouthful mode where he's getting a big old mouthful of different things oh my god kirby could suck a fucking golf ball through a garden hose man yeah right the trailer hitch one might say right right and one might and he's he's face fuckable you know oh yeah well i mean he's got the he's kind of he probably has the right like texture he's squishy right so he's soft there's a lot of pleasure a lot of potential pleasure here sure anyway go on please go on yeah and i just it's it's not a bad game at all i am i've been hoping as i've been replaying the section that i already played that i would be like oh yeah really click for me but it's just not in depth enough uh like it's it's cool maybe i'll finish it maybe i won't now that these games are out i i was hoping that this second round would would get me into it but it hasn't.

2:48:52Colin Moriarty:I also played another weird little game called the exit eight. I think this game, let me check when I bought it, it was on sale for$3, at least on steam right now. It's$2 and 79 cents. This is not a very long game. In fact, you'll probably beat it in, in one set, one sitting. This game is pretty cool. and I recommend it just for a unique interesting experience it's going to be hard for me to talk about without spoiling it this is a game that's very much based on the like liminal space back rooms I do know type stuff but it takes place in a Japanese subway hallway and it's very cool it's unique I don't want to get into too much about it it's one of those games that there aren't jump scares in it but it is it feels deeply unsettling as you play it and so if you like something a little creepy if you like back rooms liminal spaces uh this is worth dude for the two dollars to to play it or two or three dollars whatever to get this experience highly recommend it but i'm just gonna leave it at that i believe they made a japanese film that's doing the festival circuit right now.

2:50:17Colin Moriarty:But yeah, even on the Steam page, it says your playtime is somewhere between 15 and 60 minutes. My playtime was probably closer to 60 minutes. So you want a neat little unique experience. Recommend checking it out for a one sitting playthrough. Last but not least, and I alluded to this to you guys last night when we were recording. the the other day brandon asked me to play no man's sky with him so i i installed it on pc because there's these updates and i started playing it and i'm like i just can't i can't commit to this it's wanting me to build like something to refine space materials and all this stuff i'm like i can't i i promise you brandon i can't commit to this game right now with all these games coming out.

2:51:07Colin Moriarty:So once some of the other guys started to get online, it was like, well, what do we all play? I was like, you know what? I want to check out this game that came out a few years ago now, but I've been hearing more and more about from YouTubers and stuff, and that's the finals. And I played a tiny bit of the finals when it came out, but I don't know if I just wasn't in the mood or whatever, but we decided to check it out. This game fucking rules. and I am shocked that it is not one of the biggest free-to-play live service games available. I think I looked there was only like, I don't know, 20 ,000 concurrence on Steam, which is still pretty good.

2:51:45Colin Moriarty:Like it's maintaining. But the main thing about this game and the ironic part is that I haven't even been playing the core mode that is the most unique part. I believe it's called Cash Out. And so it's not a battle royale. It's not an extraction shooter. They've made their own game mode that involves picking up cash, depositing it in these different receptacles. I can't remember. I don't think it's vaults or something. Vaults. Right. And it all sounds really cool. But the only problem is we usually have more than three players. So the two modes we've been playing are there's a mode that's very traditional search and destroy from Call of Duty.

2:52:27Colin Moriarty:That's like once you die, you're out for the round. So it's pretty intense at points. the mode we've been playing is basically a king of the hill mode, but it's a platform. So the platform starts in the center of the map. And when your team is on it, it slowly starts to move towards your base. And so the goal is either to be more on your side by the time limit, or to get it fully over to your base. And this platform, what's so awesome about it, one of the big things with the finals being that the developers are x dice developers is that the destruction in this game is incredible the destruction this game is better than battlefield six and battlefield six isn't even out yet that's dice proper yeah uh the the platform itself will just crash through buildings while you're standing on it and it just does not give a fuck at all you're crashing through buildings the debris is falling on you but the main thing that i'll just write home about the the finals and why i'm so shocked by it is that there are so many different ways to play this game and it's so refreshing from a first person shooter multiplayer aspect that I'm really getting into.

2:53:47Colin Moriarty:So there's no heroes in this game. You can play as a light, a medium, or a heavy. And so each one of those classes, they have some shared weapons and different equipment that you can bring in. But it's kind of like a rock, paper, scissors where the light moves super fast and have high movement abilities where they have like a grapple hook or they can do this thing where they blink around. But they are really squishy. They are really easy to kill. but their weapons do the most damage. The medium, of course, is kind of in the middle. They are not as fast, but they're also not as slow as the heavy.

2:54:22Colin Moriarty:And they're more focused on support for your team. So they have like a healing beam, kind of like Overwatch, Mercy. They have different ways to revive. It has like a defibrillator. And then the heavy, of course, has like a minigun that you can use, but they're also very slow. They're also very tanky, so they have the most amount of health. but the different ways that you can kit out your character and the different equipment i've been playing a lot of the medium so i have like the support beam or a turret but you can also have like jump pads because sometimes that that uh that platform that you're trying to get on is like too high to reach so it's like you have to figure out creative ways to get up there in order to try to take over the hill or whatever you want to call it so i'm just shocked uh by how immediately i was like whoa this game the destruction is so cool it feels so refreshing in that i'm not picking between preset heroes or whatever i'm just uh i'm pretty shocked by it and someone pointed out to me that their their next game uh what is it called chris the attraction shooter arc raiders arc raiders i went and was watching some gameplay of arc raiders like oh boy i am very sad i missed out on this beta but this also looks like it's going to be awesome so oftentimes i am uh when i'm checking out new games i feel like there's nothing new and while there's plenty of games i enjoy that even if it's the same experience it can feel a little bland but i was just so surprised that with the finals that i had written it off for the last two years is like another live service shooter game and then when i played i was like holy shit why aren't why isn't everybody why isn't this the big game yeah so if you're looking for something fresh you like multiplayer first person shooters and you got a crew to play with highly highly recommend it and i haven't even i haven't played the main mode yet that's the most ironic part there's just always too many people and you can only do three players it's that mode it's it's all really fun man like i i thought i because i can't remember i must have played it like early because i know i talked about on sacred but it must have been like it was definitely definitely before they had the king of the hill thing in it and i think it was just the cash out mode and i think maybe like one other one other thing but like and i think when i played it the heavies were like really broken like it was it was they were like impossible to kill but the finals is great like it is it that gunplay feels great the destruction is insane it's such a chaotic it's it got such a good what i love about it too is it's it's very readable like it's it's it's not it doesn't have the battlefield issue which is like you know like things look so realistic that like it kind of people get lost in the detail like it's very it's a very clean looking game but it doesn't like doesn't fall into cartoonishness necessarily it's the final some of those developers uh that worked at dice i think they also worked on mirror's edge yeah that's what it feels like and it shows in the environmental design it feels like a battlefield kind of mirror's edge mix and it's it's it's good shit man i gotta get back you you reminded me that it you reminded me that i liked it i gotta jump on it again yeah so good sometime maybe we'll do a stream or something but i need to play the cash out mode because apparently that's like the real sauce of the game that uh gets really cool where they're the one ability on the medium i don't think is even accessible in the king of the hill mode where you can like despawn parts of the like different walls and stuff and then re-enable it so if you like you can basically make the floor disappear if you think there's an enemy above you and do all kinds of wacky shit i'm like man this is so cool there's so many different ways to get out a character and play yeah it's it's a how i remember that that main mode that main mode is really fun because it's like you bring a bunch of money to like a vault and then you kind of have to stay in the circle and wait for it to complete and then it like gets points for your team but if you get it like 95 of the way there or at least this is how it was when i played if you get it 95 of the way there and somebody kills you and jumps in they could just take over that five percent for their team and then and then you've just right and it's and some of the sometimes they put the the vault in like an elevator that's going up and down and you could just blow everything up around it's it's awesome shit man the finals is great and bark is a really good like our curators too is is like a really good i don't know if i would it's an extraction shooter and i don't know how i feel about hardcore extraction shooters in third person i feel like i feel like it would be hard for me to get into that but it felt really good to play like to move around and and it looked gorgeous arc writers is releasing october 30th yep oh man yeah it's oh man oh no is that gonna be free to play or is that no that's paid i think i mean i'm good yeah i think i'll buy it i think i don't know exactly i think it's probably like a i would imagine like a 30 i can't remember how much on steam it says it says add to your wish list there's no price i don't think yet so yeah i would i would guess around like maybe 50 uh on wikipedia it says will be available for purchase for 40 dollars on release there you go easy hell divers price hell divers price yeah um okay so i'm looking here i thought this was interesting because you were talking about the player numbers when you were talking i was looking at the player numbers on steam db and the numbers are like supernaturally flat for like a year it's really interesting and then like they they do seem to have like uh you It's a slowly growing player base, actually.

3:00:12That's kind of not bucking the trend too much. But so, for instance, the game came out in late 2023. March 2025. So these are in thousands. So 27 to April was 24. May was 19. Eight. June was 28. Nine. July was 19. Five. And then August 25. Nine. Yeah. New season out. I think season seven came out June 12th. It looks like. So I don't know. that's a good sign for them yeah because they're obviously playing there's probably tens of thousands of people on xbox and playstation as well so three weeks ago and this is actually the

3:00:48Colin Moriarty:reason why i thought about playing again and it's not that i watch this guy all the time but i do sometimes uh chris i think has met him before moist critical yeah did a video about why the finals is like one of the best games available right now i thought maybe i'll give a shot though and so dude with someone with his audience he has the ability to influence people that it's like that could create a snowball effect that people are like oh that game was good maybe i'll go back and check it out and now that it's not it's what has way more content maybe there's not as much broken shit in the game that could really be a huge boost and maybe dustin firman on sacred symbols can create the snowball of the requisite the requisite energy i can push it the rest of way up commercial energy yeah yeah well possible anything's possible maybe they benefit these games have benefited from us talking about them not hugely probably but there's some benefit to it all right chris let's go over to you it says here you're playing medical your solid delta snake eater i even like that you put the delta sign in there you know the alt number pad code for that or do you know i wanted to be cute so i just googled it and then copy pasted it nice love that um what do you think yeah man i fit so i finished it last night um really really really late but it was like it was it was irresponsible for me to be up that late playing but i was i was right at the end and i was like i just wanted to get it done and then i was i was even stupider because i realized like oh i haven't even touched this ape escape mode and so i spent some time playing that and i really like it but i really i enjoyed it man like it's i still ultimately feel like metal gear solid 2 is my favorite of these original games but like metal gear solid 3 the changes that they made here were welcome and i played in the new style just because i mean it's a new game i might as well i think i might i think there's a trophy for starting it in both styles i think i'm probably gonna replay it maybe in legacy style just to see what that feels like but i think it's a i think it's a really good looking game it's really faithful to the original i think it's a great story um great characters great music great atmosphere great level design like i love stealth games so like this is a easy mark for me um and i overall i would say my my experience with it was pretty pretty positive there are there are sections towards the end where i start to feel like the controls get a little fucky or like there's certain game design mechanics where i'm just like or like certain design decisions that i'm like why'd you do this like why are you making me why is there an s like a like a flimsy escort mission at the end of this thing that that kind of feels really yeah yeah yeah but that's a problem with the original game whatever i think it's great even her allegheny hogs need to be escorted yeah i i thoroughly hated that i was like oh man almost perfect but i i would say really the only blemish that i have on it is you know there are there's writings about this where there are performance issues and while i did notice them and sometimes they were kind of egregious because metal gear solid is such a slow game it is like it's not something like the finals or doom or you know something where that would bother me a lot more it's more plotting like you spend a lot of time like crouching in in tall grass and like waiting for enemies to walk past you in the right way so like while i noticed that those performance issues were there and i think in in many ways that's kind of unacceptable especially for you know a full price remake of a game that is you know really really faithful to the original to the point where like there's an argument to be made it's like well why isn't this running better if this is ultimately a ps2 game um you know despite that i really had a good time with it i think it's great i think those original metal gear games are fantastic and being able to experience it at like high fidelity and you know looking that good especially cut scenes like man some of these scenes look really fucking gorgeous and yeah i was really into it i loved it awesome i um i'm curious about this and i'll read this especially for you dustin golden goose wrote in and said hello gentlemen i can stay quiet no longer what are what are we talking about when it comes to ps5 pros performance around metal gear solid 3 delta i played the game twice now i'm pro and have had zero frame drops and zero performance issues leading up to early release i feared for how bad this game would run only to have no issues and have a great time.

3:05:36It feels like one of the many in a long line of games I've been told play worse but end up being just fine. Am I the problem or are people just looking for the next thing to complain about in the gaming sphere? Thanks for taking the time. I'll shut up and listen. Dustin.

3:05:48Colin Moriarty:God bless you, Golden Goose, because you have been blessed, truly, that the fact that you said I have zero performance issues. Factually, that is not true. I can promise you factually it is not true. But like I said, you have been blessed in the fact that if you played this game and you thought that you had zero performance issues i would rather be you than be me or any of the other people that are looking at this and can be like that frame rate is all over the place uh so is the problem you no uh you are wrong you are factually wrong but again i would rather it'd be so much easier to not carry about care about these things or even notice them that's actually the ultimate thing to not notice and to not care golden combo there yeah so yeah i would just be happy don't worry about it don't worry about it it would be preferable because i do notice it it's it's hard not to note like there's certain parts where it's just like especially like um i notice it especially and in the faster parts where like there's because there's a chase scene towards the end when you're doing a big final boss fight on the back of a motorcycle and that was when i noticed it the most i was like damn dude like this is pretty egregious and it's and it depends too on like how much is exploding around you but generally it is a stealth game so it's i didn't mind it too much but like man it's i i do find it kind of unacceptable that it's like it's it's a 70 remake of a ps2 game like how is this not this should be fucking flawless and i know it's an unreal issue like whatever what is what a shame that that's the case but not every unreal engine game feels this like it's on par with oblivion in some ways but oblivion at the very least is like a budget title in comparison like it's not full 70 so like there's like at least some leeway there i don't know i feel complicated feelings about this i think the game itself is brilliant and fantastic but i've seen quite a few comments like this both in our circles and i think it was on my youtube video someone was like well i'm playing on a uh a 40 70 and i didn't even notice any i didn't get a single stutter like no you didn't like or yes you did you did get a stutter you just didn't notice it like factually i am positive there is no one playing this game on pc that doesn't have a stutter.

3:08:23Colin Moriarty:You can throw a multi-thousand dollar graphics card with a 5090 on it. It's still going to be stutter. The fact it's whether or not you notice or care. Stuttering, dude, stuttering is the ultimate sin to me. I would rather a game have mixed frame rate as long as it's not like hard hitching between different environments. And that's like the problem. Apparently, Kronos on PC also has that. But again, Unreal Engine 5, baby. I will say... And it's no disrespect to Digital Foundry specifically. They do a great service. They work hard and people really love their stuff. But I do feel like it dictates the terms of the way people talk about games.

3:09:03And I do think that Golden Goose is right in the sense that what is literally and you're saying this is like what is literally true is often not figuratively true to the person's experience. and things are kind of being poisoned because it makes it seem like things are unplayable or unbearable or whatever, and it's not the case. You're right. There must be literal problems with Metal Gear Solid 3 or Metal Gear Solid Delta on PS5 Pro, but I do not know what you're talking about. I'm like, this is a PS2 game. It's a more beautiful version of it. It plays so much better than the original one, but it also is a slow and plotting game, generally speaking.

3:09:41and i so so i speak from personal experience where i'm like i went in kind of you know cringing a little bit like is this going to be really bad or something am i stupid for playing this right now am i stupid for paying the ten dollars to get early access to it and the answer is no like and i'm sorry for people that didn't get to experience it uh or sooner because of that but maybe some people will be sensitive to those things i just wasn't so it's interesting it's interesting conversation so i agree with you i'm sure these things are literally happening

3:10:08Colin Moriarty:yeah well there is also the argument too to be made that like anytime that they get this game in the future it will be cheaper and better technically so you're not they're not they're they're not really missing on it especially because it is an old game like you're not really you actually kind of don't miss out on anything by waiting for them to fix this it is pound for pound the same game so it yeah there's nothing new in it at all there's there's like some nothing nothing to warrant like being like bummed out about not like there's astrobots added into the into the into the ape escape thing oh cool which is like it's cute but it's it's not like that's not gonna be like oh man i gotta you know i gotta see what this is they removed some like some of the glitches and and things like that and things that people used to take advantage of on speed runs i know but yeah it's a very faithful remake so you're right in the sense chris that you just be patient it's that it's true with everything really if you have patience right you'll get it for cheaper and you'll get like the perfect version of it or the most perfect version of it oh good one thing i one thing i did want to ask you colin like do you feel like look it's a great game 70 it's a remake of a ps2 like do you feel like that like what do you feel about the price of it yeah so was it was it was it was it 70 i feel like i I feel like I can verify.

3:11:28Yeah, go ahead. Well, yeah, I just want to make because I pay whatever it was. I paid$10 more because I got the early access or whatever it is. It's 70 on Steam. 70. So I paid 80, I guess.

3:11:37Colin Moriarty:Yeah. Well, it's 75 with tax, you know, obviously. Right, right, right, right. But. Yeah, maybe a little egregious. 60 would have maybe been a more appropriate price, especially. Considering it's not pushing the bounds of anything, and it's certainly not. It's not even a dead space level remake where they really changed a few fundamental things about it and added some stuff to it, but it's generally faithful. This is what I want Bluepoint to be doing. It's just making super faithful remakes that just modernize games. I will say though, and this gets I don't want to get too deep into my experience from here because we're going to do me, you and I think Gene are going to do the spoiler cast next week.

3:12:22So that will publish on Sacred Symbols Plus on patreon next week for people that are curious about us getting really deep into it but um i appreciate this game in a way that i never did before and i always you know i should say it's not true that i always did when i first played this game i didn't like it on ps2 and i'm like and then i didn't beat it until 2021 and i really liked it i liked the story i like the characters, but it's still an old PS2 Metal Gear game where you have to struggle with the controls and fight the controls and all the rest. And it's funny that you were saying playing in the traditional mode.

3:13:00I did try to play it just to see what would happen. I'm like, I can't do this like 10 minutes and I'm like, I can't play this. This is crazy that anyone would want to play this game like this now that you can play it the other way. So I had an interesting experience with it because I'm a big fan of Metal Gear Solid 1 and Metal Gear Solid 2. And famously, those games have very deep modes where you can play it on a hard difficulty and you can like shake down all the soldiers for their their dog tags and there's like this really intricate way of playing it that i never bothered to play it before because it was just too hard to struggle with the controls it was like i'll play it on normal i'll enjoy it and i did i loved those games and i played them both many times but i never did like the deep back before trophies what people used to do is make like a complete save file remember and then they would say they would share them online and stuff And that would be like the way that you prove that you did it.

3:13:50And I knew people that had those saves. It was like on Metal Gear Solid 2, for instance, like all the dog tags and you beat it without killing anyone. And but I just never did it. And because the game, because Delta controls on this new control scheme, in my opinion, so well, or at least so much better, and it's so much more playable. I played the fuck out of this game in a way that I never played a Metal Gear game before and came out with it where I'm like, damn, this game is so clever. and so deep that it's crazy. You would never know it or I would have never known it had I not played no kill runs, had I not done a Foxhound run, which is basically like a flawless run where you're never even seen by anyone.

3:14:28You never, there's no alerts, no continues, right? And the things that you can do and all of the little intricacies of it, where it's like, you can do that? Or that's a good idea here? Or why does that work? And there's like a million secrets to it and subtleties. And it's so unnecessary because most people definitely don't see any of it, but it's so cool. And it's to your point, because I love MGS2 especially, but MGS1 is obviously classic. And there is a remake of MGS1 on GameCube and it's good. But in my opinion, some people don't like it, but this makes me long to get MGS2, especially in this format, because if you can play MGS2 with proper controls, then I'll get to see that game in a way, a game I'm much more in love with in an intimate way that I never really did before.

3:15:25And so it kind of teased out a potential future of going back and fixing those games in some way. Metal Gear Solid has never been more playable than it is in this package, in my opinion. It actually makes the game somewhat easier because you can really feel the controls this time. But I beat the game twice. I did a normal no kill run, like normal difficulty, no kill run. And I did that blind. Like I was just like, I'm going to play it. I remember like what to do. I had like a little guide to tell you like, you know, in this map, keep an eye out for this trophy. You can do this trophy or whatever.

3:15:59And then I was like, all right, I was going to leave it there because I was like, I don't think I'm talented enough to do a Foxhound run. Foxhound is you have to play it on extreme, which is very hard and you can't kill anyone and you can't be seen. It sounds like literally impossible. When I was reading it, I'm like, I can't do that. And I was going to move on. And I'm like, you know what? Let me try. And I looked up a little guy that kind of guides you along and tells you when to keep an eye out for things or whatever. Some good tips, you know, try this year and this year. And I had a blast.

3:16:31It was awesome. It was really hard. There were a couple of boss fights, specifically the boss fight with the pain was really annoying in this mode. And but I figured it out. and, you know, got through all the bosses, didn't raise any alarms, didn't, you know, and when I raised an alarm, I just reset the checkpoint. And I did it and I ended up platinum in the game. It's my platinum number 189. It's a rare platinum right now. I think it'll become more common as people have more time to play it. And I just, I really, really, I always like, you know, since I, since I beat it and really sought for what it was, I've liked it and I've not loved the game.

3:17:10but I really appreciate it now and respect it because it's it's it's a thorough production and an impressive piece of game design and I highly recommend it I really do I highly recommend it I love the villains I love the story I love how fucking weird it is and there's something so I was saying this to Mike is like, this isn't, this isn't really spoiling anything. Cause it's, it's just about the, who the bad guys are. They're called the Cobra, the Cobra unit. And what's cool about them is that they all fought in world war two in the story. And we're like these prominent fighters for the allies.

3:17:55And you can just imagine like the pain on the battlefield with his hornets or something, or, you know, the sorrow and he's kind of like a supernaturalist or whatever it's just neat it's just neat how it melds cold war you know post world war ii cold war history with reality and i love it i thought it was great definitely one of my favorite experiences of the year easily um and john russell wrote in with something i can relate to he says hello ss crew long time first time writing in any show ever for anything i wanted to ask if any of you can recall a traumatic or devastating gaming situation for example I had been on a Foxtown run for MGS3 Delta and I got to the fear and quickly got worried that it just wasn't going to happen after a break I came back to it after 30 or so attempts I finally do it cloud nine is an understatement then later in the afternoon I read that you aren't allowed to use a health pack and I remembered using one on the pain the pain was a pain for me too just less so just complete devastation I don't think I'll ever forgive myself for being such a dumbass I've loaded up a save at the pain and I haven't gone back yet but he's there lying in wait Would love to hear from you all what comes to mind.

3:18:59Cheers. So there's a way, and I can relate to this because there's a way in Metal Gear Solid Delta to track all of your statistics. And I was constantly tracking them to make sure I didn't do anything stupid where it would, it would be like, you know, alerts, zero humans killed, zero special items used none to all those needed to stay that way. And I would constantly be checking to make sure I didn't accidentally kill anyone. And there were moments, there were things I learned that I didn't know. So like, if you kill an enemy with an explosive barrel, it doesn't count. so there's a time where like it's really important that you do that um right there are certain special items like the at camo which basically doubles your or the at camo which doubles your camo and makes it so that you can basically crawl by enemies even in extreme difficulty like you're just not seen you would have to bump into them for them to see you little things like that that allowed me to kind of get through but i i feel you john because i was really paranoid about that and thankfully I didn't fuck it up and I was so attentive and made a shit ton of saves because it was it was a real challenge to get through the the Foxhound run that's tough real tough the boss fights are unique because you can't kill them so you have to incapacitate them and just a quick shout out to the fury who is the coolest just want to say he's the fucking coolest love that guy you don't get to know him at all in the game you i i guess i don't want to say too much like he's the villain that's like least known in the game in my opinion and that disappoints me a little bit because he's just like he's a cosmonaut he's like a he's like a psychotic cosmonaut he's so cool yeah and the boss fight the boss fights are cool they're all clever and different and interesting that i won't spoil it here but the boss fight with the end is like so clever yeah and just really really dig it so shout out to that game and then i was in a space between and this is what i was saying earlier because i would have actually just bought chronos and went through it if i knew there was 48 or 48 hour early access but i was like i have a few days to kill and i was looking around i was going to get sword of the sea and then i was like you know what let me go back actually and play robocop rogue city unfinished business this is the standalone expansion for robocop that came out last year or two years ago actually it might be from the studio taon nakon is the publisher and it's just this kind of standalone 10 chapter thing where you're robocop and you're going to like some tower that's in the in detroit but outside of like the jurisdiction of the police department and it's been taken over by like these mercenaries and you're just basically climbing from four to four and like eliminating all the mercenaries and there's a story in there and there are side quests and stuff it's 30 bucks which i think is a little expensive but the game is also more robust or the expansion is more robust than I thought it was.

3:21:40It's long for what it is, and I'm nowhere near done with it yet. I think it's a little story heavy, a little. I just want to fight and kill things at this point, but it's cool. It's there for people that want to check it out, the story and the plot, the character and all the rest and playing the game is fun. I don't know if you guys remember me talking about it when the original Robocop Rogue City came out, but Robocop can't jump. He can't crouch. He can't take cover. So you kind of just have to roll through these places and be Robocop and absorb as much damage as possible and heal yourself as you go.

3:22:18And there are these cool upgrade trees to make your character stronger and multiple upgrade trees. You can use one with like circuits, one with experience points. So if you were into Rogue City, it's worth checking out. I think the combat's really fun. It's fun shooting a guy's dick off in this game, which is obviously a famous Robocop thing. And I like it. It's not the best shooter, but it was something that I wanted to check out. And it's because there was that other game, Metal Eden, that I want to check out. And that game looks fucking dope, but the trophies are apparently totally busted, so I'm not playing it yet.

3:22:50I probably would have gone down that route as well. So I'll get to that as well. But yeah, I bought, so I bought, well, let me get into this next inquiry. Anne Clank's Cyber Sage of the Singularity Apocalypse wrote in. Quite the name. as greetings meat puppets. With Kronos, the new dawn, and Hell is Us sitting at about the same score in Metacritic and releasing one day after the other, which one will each of you be choosing, if either one at all? Maybe one of you will be playing that obscure bug game. I personally went with Hell is Us, as the demo recalled games of yore that forced the player to progress by gathering clues from NPCs.

3:23:22Its strikingly bleak sci-fi imagery also impressed. No wonder because the director of the game was also the art director for the Deus Ex games. Needless to say, the game got its hooks in me. Whatever you guys are playing, I hope you enjoy. and remember when the time comes, abandon thy flesh and be reborn metal eternal. Thank you. That's very poignant. Are either of you going to play either of these games? I've decided against Hell is Us for a specific reason. I think I might get to it in the future, but apparently it's very puzzle oriented. So what I was expecting was a game where it's like we don't know what to do.

3:23:50It's actually kind of like Adam fall where it's like you're kind of in this world. You're not really sure what to do. You talk to people, you figure it out. But this seems like it's kind of like a puzzle game. and I'm like yeah I think that's gonna annoy the fuck out of me or at least required me to use a walkthrough and it kind of defeats the purpose of that sort of game if you're doing that so for now I've decided against it I'm gonna go towards Kronos instead which I think looks more like Dead Space and gets me very excited where are you on this Chris are you gonna play either of

3:24:17Colin Moriarty:these yeah I think I'm leaning towards Hell is Us I think um I'm not really a puzzle guy either but the demo that I played was really refreshing I mentioned it in the SS plus that we did but like I just feel like it it's a third person action game that plays very distinctly and what I mean by that is like there's so I feel like I play a lot of games now especially that are kind of designed to feel like soulsborne games and not necessarily in like design or you know how how difficult things are like that might be part of it um but i i mean in the moment to moment like the way it feels to move through a battlefield or the way it feels to fight something feels very lifted like i think about like stellar blade or lies of p like these aren't soulsborne games but like you could tell that there's a profile that they're going for in the way that in the way that they feel to move through and hell is us felt very distinctly not like that it actually felt like a 360 era kind of ps2 era action game in in some ways and and and by the way in a positive way not in like oh this is old and outdated like you know oh this is i haven't felt this way in a while and the face buttons do things that i feel like face buttons haven't done in a while um i think the the gadgets are really interesting i i love the idea of kind of needing to remember these conversations like i like the idea of sitting with with hell is us with like a notepad and like writing writing things down and i don't know i'm into that that's special and interesting and it's it's the kind of thing that i always talk about wanting to see from from the game space just like different ways of interacting with with um with worlds and and different ways of designing things and so i think i'm gonna i'm gonna play both of these i think ultimately but like i'm gonna go with hell is us first because i feel like there's something special there i'm in the right mood for it um and so yeah that's what we'll see but thus are you gonna go in either direction here yeah i have hell is us i was just checking my best buy order it says we're getting it ready to ship uh which is fine because i have hollow night uh for the next few days but the reason i went with hell is us is i played the demo i really liked it and that's already you know a strong sign chronos i think will also be good but i felt like it was a game that more than likely is will benefit from a patch or two uh just because of how silent hill 2 launched it being an unreal five game and so uh yeah i just decided to go hell is us and chronos i i definitely want to play it uh in the near future it's just there's just so much stuff going on and so that's like i said the game i think that will benefit more than likely the most from patches yeah you're probably right i mean i'm gonna go towards um p hole helmet man with this one but i just i i'm intrigued i've heard good things from people that I trust about it.

3:27:34We'll see how it turns out. And I'm happy to give them more money and hope that this game is good and maybe something new for them that they can get their teeth into. But hell is us. I want to see more. I'll be eager to hear more about what you guys have to say. It seems like a game that is not ultimately going to be for me. I want to like it. Maybe I would. But I'm apprehensive. But yeah, I'll get the RoboCop, get through that, and then yeah move on to Kronos and I downloaded because it's portal season now baby because football's on hockey's coming back you know training camp begins with that so hockey will be back in October so lots of sports lots of reasons to be distracted um and um so I downloaded or I pre-ordered Hot Shots Golf or everybody's golf so that'll be I've decided that's gonna be my portal game for now we'll see how that goes it's supposed to be okay I think Push Square gave out of six.

3:28:30It's but they said it was like it's like more hot shots golf and I'm like, well, what the hell were you thinking? I mean, that seems like it's normal to me. But we'll see what happens. All right. Let's get to listener inquiries and wrap this show up and get the hell out of here. Six questions, comments, concerns, thoughts and ideas from the audience over on Patreon, patreon.com slash last stand media to submit your inquiries into the threads on the news feed each week, not only for our show, Sacred Symbols, but for all the shows in our network done by other people defining duke our xbox podcast punching up our nintendo podcast summon sign our gameplay podcast and so on and so forth shit bob cock pants wrote in he said howdy fellas this question is more geared towards colin since he has brought up the emulation in the past but the others are of course free to answer as well are there any instances where emulating a somewhat newer game would be acceptable the way i see it is if you have already purchased the game itself whether digital or physical preferably physical to have concrete proof of purchase then emulating it should be acceptable no matter if you don't have the console or just want it to run better on another console i thought about playing donkey kong bonanza but the thought of buying an entire switch 2 for a single game that i only somewhat like the aesthetic of makes me furious what say you i'll watch madagascar while driving my gas guzzler suv into oncoming traffic and listen interesting um i think i think the only way you could possibly maybe ethically spiritually explain that away would be if you own the hardware and you own the game.

3:30:02And I'm pretty sure, at least it was claimed for many years, that that was some sort of circumvention of it. In other words, if you had an NES cartridge of a game, playing the NES emulation was not supposed to be a big deal, or at least that's what people used to claim and say. I don't know if that's true or not. But the reality is, is you shouldn't be emulating Switch two games at all. And it's theft. If people want to listen, you can justify it however you want. And I'm not attacking you shit, Bobcock pants. I would never do that. But people seem really eager to justify their behavior to others.

3:30:36And in my opinion, that to me is a sign of guilt. What are you trying to justify to me? If you're there's nothing to justify, either do it or don't, you'll have to live with the consequences. The consequences are probably going to be nothing. It's unlikely you're going to get caught and get in trouble for it or whatever. So it's just a matter of, I guess, in some level honor. It's part of the tradition of console gaming is buying the console for the games and understanding that if you don't have the console, the game is kind of off limits to you. You can justify that as being unfair that you don't want to buy the hardware, but nonetheless, that's true.

3:31:12So, you know, we always make fun of like, Like you wouldn't steal a car, right? Or something like that. You wouldn't download a car. Yeah, that's what it is. You wouldn't download a car or whatever. It's like there's some element of truth to that. It's fucking goofy to say. But we are too comfortable stealing art and entertainment. And by the way, I've stolen plenty of it in my life, right? But I was young and I justified it by being – well, I always even justified it. At some point, I didn't even know. I didn't give a shit. I was, you know, 13 or whatever. It's like, I don't care. So there's that.

3:31:49And then when you, when I got older, it's like you justify being like, well, I'm broke and I wouldn't have bought this anyway. Or, you know, and I wasn't really doing it with the games. I never downloaded and played new games at all. I don't think I've ever emulated anything past a Genesis or an SNES to be perfectly honest. But music, you know, I used to download music like crazy and I can try to justify it however I want, but it was theft. and because something kind of exists doesn't mean and you can't afford it or don't have access to it or whatever it doesn't give you the right to it and we it's weird that we treat these ethereal digital products differently than we do treat physical products when it's wrong it's wrong so do you want i don't care it's worth pointing out that he said though he was uh if you already

3:32:33Colin Moriarty:purchased the game itself whether digital or physical right well i said earlier in the thing though, that like that is the old justification of it of like that. That was supposed to be like the panacea of being like, if you own the game, then it should be OK for you to emulate Mario three. And I think I'm pretty sure Hogan said that that's like kind of not really true, but that was like what people definitely thought. And that's what I was saying. The best worst or the best case scenario is that like that. Yeah, I guess that's fine. But you bought one copy of it. so now you're going to get another copy of it to put i i'm just saying like this is a this is easy that it's easy enough to justify it however you want yeah i'm not going to come after you for it but i'm not that that wrapped up in it i just know that it's wrong and i wouldn't steal i've told the story that the only time in my life that i tried that i thought about stealing a service straight up or stealing like, you know, a product like that, like a digital product was when I moved to Santa Monica and Sunday ticket.

3:33:37So NFL Sunday ticket, the ability to watch games, they wouldn't give it to me in my building because, and the whole idea at that time was direct TV still owned it. And so they were like, you have a building that's eligible for a dish to get direct TV. You have to get our dish. And I thought to myself, you know, no, that's not happening. And, um, I told, as, as the story goes, I told them straight up on the call because it's just an exception thing like they can do whatever they want it's a fucking digital product that's sent to you over the internet so i i told them straight up on the call i was like listen i don't want to i want to pay you i want the games like this i'm gonna pirate them if you don't let me do this so like you either you either let me subscribe to sunday ticket as a digital offering without the dish or i'm just gonna pirate them and then they went away for a minute and then they came back and they're like okay we're gonna authorize your building or whatever like your zip code or whatever the fuck it was i was like okay thanks and that was the end of it because that was the only time where I'm like, no, this is bullshit.

3:34:29And if, and if things were that inaccessible where they literally, so in that case, they will not sell it to you. Like they're like, nope. It's like, okay. You, but it is available to, it was, I literally had it in San Francisco for 10 years. Why can't I have it here? That's, that's a more of a justification, but it didn't even go that far for me. Cause I didn't end up having to do that because I got what I wanted. So I get it. we've all been there I wasn't above it at one time in my life I was a high schooler when Napster came out I think you can imagine how that went I had every fucking song I ever heard in my life right like straight up I just anything you could possibly think of so I'm not I'm not above that I'm just saying and I wasn't above it I'm just saying like people gotta think twice about the ramifications once you're an adult and you're we live in a society and i think that there are a lot of the thing that bothers me is not so much piracy but how proud people are of piracy and i'm like that's kind of goofy a little weird like you're you're really proud it's i'm not saying it in this case but like i can't help but think like when i hear when you see people like so proud and so it's like that's such broke energy that i can't even imagine exuding it a lot like i would keep that to myself personally that level of like just capital b broke energy of saying like i'm just pirating everything look at me playing this new switch game that's that's that's not even out yet look at me playing this this this pc game that that we got what's that thing denuvo or whatever off of and and we're right it's like cool and you're kind of like rolling your eyes at them like really neat good stuff i don't know anything you want to

3:36:16Colin Moriarty:add doesn't yeah i mean i agree that we've all uh i'm sure the three of us have all pirated things in our time trying to think i know i pirated a show i had lock morton help me pirate a show that was not available to stream anywhere in the u.s and they would not like there was no possible way i was like all right well fuck it uh i'm i'm just gonna have uh lock help me torrent this because it'd been so long since i torrented anything and so yeah there's gonna be certain cases um and oh yeah and i also i technically pirated silent hill 3 sort of i mean it was an old pc version that's available on my abandonedware.org or whatever but um i'm just not spending 130 on a ps2 copy of it like i'm just not i'm not going to do it and everyone's gonna have their own these are normal except these were exceptions that long past the threshold for me where it's like, okay, all right, fine.

3:37:11You're trying to find a way to do it, right? And you can't, then there is the argument that like, well, too bad. You don't have access to things, but there is a part of it. So it's like, I mean, no, it's not so much that as much as like no one loses. Sure. So have at it. That's the way I feel. And that's why I feel that way about old and abandoned hardware. It's like, I don't give a shit if you pirate a fucking PS1 game, you know, whatever.

3:37:32Colin Moriarty:The modern piracy, whether it's PC or switch or whatever, I mean, first of it is definitely wrong and illegal and helps. I mean, I guess it doesn't help. It makes it. It's important that people, even giant corporations like Nintendo make money from games in order to make games. You may not agree with their practices. And certainly I do often with how they make their money. I guess that doesn't cancel out anything for me. so I think I'm a little bit more lenient than Colin is that if you are buying these games like if you have if you bought switch games and you modded your switch to rip the game off the cartridge and then you want to run it on your steam deck I don't really see any problem with that other than I would never want to deal with the potential issues in switch emulation which some of them you can even make the games run better via emulation which i think is cool um but just going and downloading tears the kingdom two weeks before launch being oh well i'm gonna buy it or not caring and not buying it all that sucks absolutely yeah understand that like most there's just no way that most pirates give a shit right and i don't think and i don't think that there's anything to be proud of with that i think that that's just strange and it's equivalent to stealing anything so but no chris you wouldn't download a car would you a car i would have to in a heartbeat but uh i think it's like one of the most useful things i know if only it's so crazy uh i um yeah i don't know man i think if you own the game already i i genuinely don't even i don't care like you could steal you could you could emulate that game like i could give a fuck really like i mean that makes sense to me i think if anything the arbitrage like let's say oh you don't own two copies of this game so like you uh you know you shouldn't be able to access it i i kind of feel the way that i feel about that is the way that i feel about movies like if i buy a dvd or whatever that's gonna run on any fucking dvd player you know what i mean like i'm just like i i put my money where my mouth is i bought this fucking thing i want to run it on this thing let me do it i don't that to me is completely morally justified i have no qualms about that at all like there's plenty of ps3 360 area games that i own that uh i can't really easily play really that i would have i would have no qualms about um emulating on pc like things like the saboteur or something you know but the thing for me really at the end of the day is that there's so many games available to me that are easier to access that i'm just never really i'm never really in the mood or in the mindset to really dedicate the time to figuring out how to do it and i know it's not super difficult i know it's like a very a fairly trivial process to run in an emulation on pc i just it's more complicated than just downloading something to my console and playing it or just downloading something on pc and playing it and paying money for the convenience so like that's generally what i do but i but generally speaking i i find it hard to care if you own something and you just want to run it in a better way i think that's fine if you're if you're trying to get access to old hardware or old games that are only available on old hardware something like the uh what is it like the never soft spider-man games for example it's only available on ps1 rip that shit it's fine like the never soft isn't even around anymore to see the fruits of even if you somehow bought it illegally which you know what is that even just from some guy who has it um that's not going to the studio in any real meaningful way so like it would go to the publisher if you care about that which would be microsoft i guess at this point but well they don't even they don't sell it right that's true okay yeah so that's kind of what i'm saying it's like they don't even sell it so like that that to me is whatever the only thing that i feel really string the only the only thing that i feel really stringent on is certain softwares like adobe they're robbing the shit out of you so i rob Rub them.

3:41:43Colin Moriarty:Rub them back. It's so egregious what they do with Premiere and the way they justify keeping the costs up and constantly changing it. I think it's almost a damn near moral obligation to steal Premiere. But I say that as somebody who buys it. I haven't bothered to go around and figure out how to get access to a cracked version, but I have no issue with people doing that. It's such an insane how we used to have a system. We used to have a system where you could buy a software and you'd own it. and now you don't have that option and to me i think about it from my perspective where it's like man i've put so much money into premiere monthly for years that like i've bought i've paid for that original ownership like tenfold by now so like fucking whatever but video games is i don't know it's there's a there are lines um you shouldn't pirate shit that you don't own that's new and before launch and shit like that like i think it's i think it's tacky and corny and lame, but what are you going to do?

3:42:42Colin Moriarty:People are going to do what they're going to do to get access to the shit that they want. You really need to say something. I was going to ask about Adobe. Do you guys see it? I don't know if they're still doing it that Adobe, if you try to cancel early, they will charge you a cancellation fee. It's a$250 cancellation fee. There's some crazy shit like that. Straight up. steal from adobe just like that is so that is so fucking egregious like to a level where like look if you want to have a cancellation fee for like i don't know i think a cancellation fee is ridiculous for a subscription but like even if it was like something like 10 bucks or it was like that's lame but whatever that price for their cancellation fee is so egregious that it morally justifies anything bad that you could do to them it's so outrageous yeah i i don't i personally don't support stealing from them what i support is taking your money elsewhere which is something that i should have been doing for years and still don't do so we are all part of the problem in our own ways right because i'm because it's daunting for me to it took me so long to learn anything about premiere it's daunting for me to like go to this new thing i just don't know if i can really do it to be honest i'm not young anymore i own final cut on mac i have um there is a really popular free software right now i can't remember what it's called there are multiple options davinci resolve davinci resolve yeah i i have that installed on my computer in fact there was a time this might probably like two years ago where i was experimenting and certain episodes of sacred symbols were uh rendered on final cut uh but the inconvenience factor was so high on those that i was like i can't i can't switch i'd love to make the switch well i guess it really doesn't matter to me i'm not paying for it but uh i would like to switch to something we don't have to pay every month but adobe got it locked down with premiere dude sucks brian borlaug wrote in said hey boys i recently completed a playthrough of all five mainline uncharted games in three weeks this had me thinking about two major things one how great was it when triple a games respected your time and could be completed in a weekend or two and two this was just a reminder of how much better no is the 99 % of developers out there.

3:45:00The gameplay, the stories, or the interactivity of the characters with the world. Drake touches a wall if he passes close enough to it. Production per square inch almost doesn't do it justice. It really excites me for the possibilities with Intergalactic, but truly, how are there so much better than most others? Chris, is Naughty Dog that much better than everyone else? I wonder what you think of this, because I do think the Uncharted games are this unique thing where it's like, man, no one's ever been able to replicate this.

3:45:24Colin Moriarty:I think in some ways, sure. I think in animation detail and and things like like i think they definitely hold the crown in certain things right um uncharted one though famously is a fairly like decent video game i think uh like it's it's good with the retroactive understanding that it leads to two other great games and obviously four but like uncharted one was fairly like this is good you know this is a really this is an enjoyable video game and it looked amazing on the ps3 at the time that is something that like i i very distinctly remember being like this looks crazy um but i mean i don't know i think i think a lot of i think a lot of naughty dog strength is in is in character writing and animation like i think like they excel at that and that kind of elevates everything else that they do it's it's why even though uncharted 2 and 3 have uh or at least in the state that i played them in which as the originals although those games have in my opinion kind of kind of dog shit shooting like like shooting in uncharted like uncharted 2 and 3 it kind of feels like not very good it doesn't feel like it's that bad because everything that surrounds it is so good the soundtrack is great you're invested in the characters you're invested in the story that's really well paced the environments look great the animation work is is superb like the accoutrements of that kind of thing like really elevate the rest of everything it's it's it's why i mean i mentioned it on uh on on a show recently but like dude i could i could i could sit through the worst narrative in the world if the game just felt like a joy to move through and uncharted and naughty dogs kind of the reverse although like even they've gotten like significantly better their gameplay i think in last of us too is uh for as many issues as i have with like the the pacing of that game like that game plays really really immaculately like the the combat's really good like the shooting actually feels great there's impact behind everything the animation work is great the mocap is fantastic the the detail so they're definitely I mean every accolade that they have I think they've earned to to some degree even if um not everything they make is necessarily my cup of tea um they're definitely fucking proficient you know where do you think dustin i pretty much agree with everything chris said and that it really depends on uh what you're looking for uh like i always think of last of us part two about that when the part with ellie and the rope that like the animation of her uh tying up the rope is like absolutely perfect and like that yeah that's amazing um i wouldn't say that last was part two is the best gameplay experience i've ever had in my life it's very very good it's one of the best ones i've ever had i think personally um so i did think of uh he mentions like nathan drake touching walls when uncharted 3 came out maybe it wasn't when it came out but around that time is when i was living with some roommates and my roommate ian was playing and he's like do i fucking hate him touching these walls like why is he doing that He's like constantly touching what he's like.

3:48:37Colin Moriarty:It's to the point where it doesn't feel they've tried to make it realistic with him touching walls, but it's become unrealistic because he does it too often. I don't remember if that's the case. It's been too long since I've played three, but I always think of him being pissed off at him touching the wall. It reminds me, too, just of kind of that touch of that flair of Amy Hennig, where when they showed that Star Wars game that got canceled that she was working on and the guy walks at like the the smuggler guy walks out of his house and he like leans against the wall and touches the wall or whatever as he's walking by and i'm like why is this a thing yeah and i'll always remember that see do you know what i'm talking about they show they only show like a few seconds of the game and it was a guy like emerging from his house in a most icely style kind of you know urban environment but yeah they're always touching they're always touching something that is something that like it is a shame though because i do feel like naughty dog contributed in some way to and it might not necessarily be their fault but like they contributed it's something that the industry i think is not particularly good and it's this like the the intense focus on being cinematic at the detriment of the experience of the game and what i mean by that is like there's there's certain i'm sure like god of war is the one that comes up although this isn't in uncharted from what i can remember that like squeeze the triple a squeeze thing of just like isn't this immersive like look at him slowly moving through this crevice and like touching the wall it's like it's like that wall is really there and it's like i don't i don't know if we need this necessarily i understand it's hiding a loading screen or whatever but it always bothers me the way characters duck under things in video games because they they needlessly interact with with everything about it it's like it's always like i'm crouching under a log but i've got to make sure to go like right and i'm just like no what you don't you don't got to do this shit i it's funny i think that shit's really cool i think the problem is is that it's it's it's not really a problem it just it's so hard to replicate because it's so difficult it's not that people don't have the technical abilities to make a naughty dog style game it's that it's really difficult and expensive to do right and it takes maybe not not worth the squeeze in some way now probably i think that's the most people i would imagine not i would imagine i think i think that's the bigger thing i think that they showed the barriers like of like of true immersion though it's surprising like i think the last of us part two especially especially having played it so many times recently earlier this year was, is like the, the realization of their ability to fuse the cinematic aspect of the game with real gameplay in a way that's never really been done in their games before.

3:51:07There's a lot of situational shit in that game that you'll never see unless you do it and you play it over and over again to even realize that there are differences. And I agree. I think uncharted, it's been a while, but uncharted shootings, a little wonky. I got used to it and I, I thought it was, perfectly i thought it was good if not great actually it's just it's not you know it's not

3:51:28Colin Moriarty:uh it's gears of war or something right but that's what like it's good it's good but in comparison to how good everything that surrounds it is it feels like the drop off is significantly higher whereas opposed to gears of war which like looks beautiful and feels like that oh they know what they're doing here clearly this is like there's also no platforming in the game it's technically a very different game but you know i don't know i know it's really good i mean the last of us and uncharted it's they're no they're no prototype or anything but like it's right of course of course of course yeah so i do i i won't i always fillet no idea dog but and i won't get too deep into it but it's like they are clearly better than almost everyone else but i but i in my opinion like it's obvious but my my opinion is that it's not necessarily the the personnel has a huge part of it and like the culture there has a huge part of it but it's just you give anyone not anyone if you give many teams a lot of money and a lot of time they'll figure out similar shit it's just that a lot of studios don't get that much leeway and it is true that during the uncharted era they were moving at a prodigious pace on those games like it's crazy how quickly those games came out and even to get uncharted 4 in four and a half or five years more like four and a half years especially after losing people that were working on including the director and the writer and they still got it out and it was awesome another example as you were saying earlier of a game with two directors so um yeah i think that there is something special about their games and i i i find it funny like that there's a debate about it really where i'm like i don't know what like what the debate really is about i i what i'm eager to see is what this new game is and maybe we'll see it later this month i don't know it would be really cool like i want to know like what it really is and let's get going on this and i think that we'll see that game in its full capacity next year as well but it's my my feel on it that'd be so exciting dude to get an audio game it's been too long all right well i mean we get the last wasn't last was part two over and over again but a new one a new game all right let's see brian thank you for writing in the one one wrote in and said, hey, CDC, don't know if you saw the news, but recently the Call of Duty team has reversed the decision of having skins from Black Ops 6 carry over into Black Ops 7.

3:53:52Apparently the reason being to keep Call of Duty's identity. Quote, we know there's been a lot of controversy recently about the identity of Call of Duty. Some of you have said we've drifted from what made Call of Duty unique in the first place, immersive, intense, visceral, and in many ways grounded. That feedback hits home and we take it seriously. We hear you, end quote. My question to the boys is but why now call of duty had a history of dumb skins was the beavis and butthead skins a breaking point to the community was the battlefield 6 beta stripe for realism i say let players keep their stupid skins they paid for let them use it makes it easier to headshot them for my camo grind have a good day gentlemen i think i don't know how you guys feel about this um chris you can go to you first is i think it's clear that they're feeling some sort of heat from battlefield yeah i still i still don't think that they have too much to worry about in the short term they might in the mid to long term but they'll be fine with their game but there don't you feel this is a response to the heat that they're feeling from a battlefield a quality

3:54:50Colin Moriarty:battlefield release sure but i i don't i don't like the excuse that they're making because it seems like it's coming from like this like altruistic place like they're just like well we really want to we really want to conserve the the identity of call of duty so all the money that you put into our ecosystem we're actually not going to let you carry that forward like it's like an it's it's kind of an anti-consumer sentiment disguised as like something that's really like laden with integrity dude like beavis and but look beavis and butthead is a ridiculous thing to see in call of duty it's self-shaded it's it's very clearly a jump the shark moment even even when uh compared to some of the more outlandish skins in call of duty but if if your justification for this is like oh we've lost touch with call of duty's identity like brother they're still i'm pretty sure i could be mistaken but i'm pretty sure in the trailer for black ops 7 not even not not counting the the skins that are supposed to be that were originally supposed to be moved on from the previous game to this one in the middle of the most recent trailer for black seven there was an ad that showed like pre-order bonuses and the skins are still ridiculous like they're like it's like there's like a robot with like an open heart or something it's like what do you is that is that the image i had it queued up because i was bringing up the exact same thing yeah like dude what do you look at this image yeah i know what oh we yeah we want to we want to keep the spirit of call of duty intact so every skin that you bought in the previous game it's not going to carry forward because we just care about the integrity so much but also here's ted the what the gestapo robot with like what i i genuinely think it's that it's just a complete bullshit that it's it's a way for them to to get away with not doing it at launch so they can resell you certain things later again in the new game and it's it's a way to disguise it as like oh we have so much integrity because we're focusing on the spiritual duty like no getting rid of beavis and butthead is not rededicating yourself to the spirit of call duty it's just undoing a really stupid idea you still have the most absurd skins i've ever fucking seen so i don't know that's that's my feelings on it but i don't know how anybody else feels i completely agree with you chris i think that it is i they clearly don't actually want to change course as we were talking about with these vault edition skins maybe their line is that they won't do crossovers or at least crossovers that egregious right maybe if they really care and i think it's our our friend jaffles that put this out i think i heard him on this on his show saying this or somewhere that if they really care allow players the option to turn off skins allow people to choose to turn it off they won't do it they won't so they'll be happy to sell you Harper and Ted and Reaper EWR3 in the vault edition they'll be happy to sell you some kind of weed smoking bong gun skin or something later on some of the gun animations that I've seen come out of the game are so over the top and look that look there's a place for shit like that like i don't really mind it like and i don't really care that much about cold duty one way or the other really anymore but like i i don't like the way they're they're disguising this as like some kind of like altruistic thing i think it's i think it's lame yeah and uh i think i think it's it's just so it's just so fucking silly um i was gonna say something i saw something oh you you mentioned like having a toggle for the skins like absolutely like that would be a great thing because they have that in um what is it the the master chief collection because they added a bunch of like cosmetics to that game that are a little bit out of place like you can have like a you can have an original xbox on your back and shit like that and if you don't want to see that and you just want like a pure and like there's all sorts of things like that like medieval armor whatever and if you want to turn that shit off and have like a really holistic original experience you can but most people choose not to do that because they're like that's new shit i might as well so like i really don't see what the harm in in doing that is at the very least like appeasing some of the people who do want that like more grounded kind of experience like allow them to shut the skins off and have the experience that they want and then you know for the people who don't care like it feels like a win-win to me because the percentage of people who are going to opt into that are probably like probably a vocal minority let's be real um i don't think there's anything to lose in providing that to to the audience speaking of dumb skins as a side note real quick i'm really sad i missed out on the hank hill skin on in fortnight i haven't played fortnight in at least a year they don't sell them in this skin this skin's early timed i think they rotate them in and out so maybe if i'm on the watch at some point it was on there for a few i think i just missed it really but now i wasn't into king of hill then and now i'm like dude yeah i want to play as hank he done got murdered over at tilted towers

4:00:05Colin Moriarty:it's really good for it for it makes more sense to me like for like right do whatever the fuck you wanted for it that's what that's that's what that's for i want to see i want to see hank hill and jack the ripper doing a fucking cover of the gorillas in the middle of a fucking fever dream battlefield like fuck it why not but like not every game has to be that dylan wednisky wrote in and said hello colin and the cdc crew wrong you put it in chat oh sorry he's keeping time stamps with 27 days at the time of recording until the release of my favorite game final fantasy tactics i had a question about trophies colin in regards to platinum hunting is it possible for an average gamer to get a world's first platinum trophy being my favorite game i'd like to try and be the first to get the platinum to really show my dedication and love for this game but i wonder if that's possible when there are individuals who to get the game early for review when do trophy lists typically go up i know the rest of the group isn't as into platinums as colin is but has anyone tried to want to be the first to get a platinum trophy it is possible but it's going to be incredibly unlikely because of what you said um final fantasy tactics i assume will be in people's hands soon ish and there are going to be mega fans that get access to it at websites that are role-playing or even Final Fantasy Tactics dedicated and they're going to platinum the game before you.

4:01:20So there's also no real way outside of the studios themselves to know who got, who gets the platinums first or whatever. And it doesn't matter when the trophy lists go live, it matters when the trophy itself was earned on your system. And I remember this specifically because when Infamous, it was either Infamous 1 or 2, my old co-host Greg Miller was told by sucker punch that he was the first person to get the platinum trophy in that game because they could see it in their own network um information but then a long time later someone synced their trophies and actually was before him um and so there's really no way for you to know you could use things like psn profiles and exo phase and stuff to track that stuff but it's it's since it's opt-in you're not and and it's probably opt-in with people that are going to be on the list because they care but it's not worth even trying the there was one game where i want i was the first person to get most of the trophies in meg if not all of them in megaman 10 which was really cool in the world uh including the one to beat it without dying and all the rest which is really cool when megaman x collection came out i was this close to being the first person to platinum it i was beaten like the i i was did it the morning after the person did it the night before which is a bummer but so is it possible yes but it's not something i would go after do trophies for you yeah that's where i've got i've gotten into that you know in the years is like i'm not it's obviously a way for people to see what you've done and it's cool badge of honor but i like doing it because i just think it's fun and so you got to find your way to do that too i'm very curious to see the final fantasy tactics trophy list very very curious the tactics ogre list which is kind of maybe going to be most similar to it was very difficult not because the game's hard but because there are so many choices to make final fantasy tactics has fewer choices to make but it's i bet you it's a multi-play through trophy list we'll see soon enough dylan i was looking at my psn

4:03:20Colin Moriarty:or psn profiles i was remembering nino kuni 2 the gold trophy for finishing chapter 9 i am the seventh achiever wow that's probably the highest i'll get on it and it's because i you had it early was i was reviewing it so i was playing it early so for a normal person to be able to do that uh i guess to get the platinum like you said maybe but probably pretty unlikely it would be cool can you check i know you if you click the trophy you can see like first achievers but it'd be cool to know like on my profile, what is the earliest or like highest I am across all of my games? Let me see here. I'm trying to find this because this will make this.

4:04:03I mean, I don't think it'll make you laugh, but yeah, if you go look like this is a funny one. So the Godfather 2, I've told the story about how we got this game comically early because we got like a final build of it and then they delayed it. So you can see like this is just one of the trophies you get for making your character. You can see me. I am the first person to get this trophy by three months, which is so stupid. that is funny this is one of those games godfather 2 where i got to go get the platinum because i'm only missing like one trophy i think that's so crazy all right uh this is one of your people from uh snark tank i think chris the ouya stuck between sween's tooth gap wrote in says hello chiefs how much pressure do you think sony is under both from competitors and investor expectations to integrate AI into its development pipeline or platform tools.

4:04:56By the way, they make you just read these names at the end of the show. That's what you do. That's why everyone's names are like this, right?

4:05:02Colin Moriarty:Yeah. Yeah. For instance, AI could theoretically reduce asset creation costs, streamline QA testing, or even help with player personalization on PlayStation platforms. But at the same time, there are risks. Over-reliance could stifle creativity, inflate budgets, chasing unproven tech or even create ethical backlash among players and developers. Do you see AI as a genuine opportunity for PlayStation to strengthen its ecosystem or more of a distracting arms race that could undermine the human-driven artistry Sony is best known for? Thank you. Dustin, what do you think about this? I'm sure there is pressure.

4:05:36Colin Moriarty:I mean, all technology companies are being pressured to incorporate AI. And truthfully, development has been using different forms of AI long before the large language model boom along with um the image generation boom just using ai tool sets in different ways um i would hope that they would continue to incorporate and use ai to speed up production in ways that aren't uh like image generation or asset generation where uh that's where I think you get into a weird spot where you're using some kind of model that is learned from other people's work. That's when you get into a weird spot. And the thing too just about AI is that we're still at a point overall that you can tell.

4:06:34Colin Moriarty:Eventually we're not going to be there. Right now though I think it would be way too early to do anything like that and there would be so much backlash as well. So So I like I said, I hope they continue to use AI tools that make sense that aren't generative AI. What do you think, Chris? Yeah, I mean, I feel like I echo that sentiment, really. Like, I would imagine that they are under pressure because it's just the entire tech spaces. And I mean, it's a key reason why. I mean, it's a key element of the of the silicon kind of race as well. I just feel like it's very clearly being pushed in some way.

4:07:16Colin Moriarty:My one hope is that they just use it in a way that's smart and not artistically bankrupt. I've been reading a lot of interesting stuff. I mean, I'm obviously a layman with tech, but there seems to be this things in the AI space seem to be coming to a head or at least the most recent head, which is that people are starting to. not flake out, but just realize that they're not going to be able to compete in the space, in these spaces. And it's going to start shedding people. And I think there's going to become more dominant forces in these various silos of AI. I think there's obviously plenty for Sony to learn, but there's probably plenty of for Sony to leverage in terms of their own data sets as well.

4:07:57And like what they can train and what they can learn. Um, the reality is, is that AI can be used in a million different ways and in some ways it already is used so oh it's yeah there there are and it has and it has been used even long before we called it ai in a lot of ways like you know

4:08:15Colin Moriarty:random foliage generation and shit yeah procedural generation right and what was that thing called um speed tree yeah speed tree so that's cool and i think that's fine because i don't know that there's like a lot of I don't give a shit really if the witcher 3 is hand built by an art like artists that make every unique tree I don't know if I that's a lot right but we want to make sure that there's some sort of real line between what this this technology can do and undertake and what it can't and it's going to be useful and the companies that unfortunately maybe but the companies that leverage it the best are going to be the most nimble and even if they make mistakes they'll be able to recover from them quick more quickly so companies that don't embrace it at all will either become boutique and novelty items which is cool and i think there's gonna be a place for that and there's probably a lot of money to be made in that space if you're like we don't use any ai at all but i think in the in reality and certainly in the triple a space there's going to be you know a host of ways to use it that we probably haven't even come up with yet but i also know that there's been a lot of losers and there will continue to be a lot of losers in the ai space and maybe we are getting a little ahead of ourselves about what it can do and what we need it to do as well.

4:09:28So I think that's all kind of coming out in the wash now. The final inquiry comes from Alex and he says, hello, DCC, longtime listener, first time writer. Colin, at the end of most episodes, I've noticed that you usually give a quick one sentence evaluation of the show, most often some version of that was a good episode. Seems a bit presumptuous and self-congratulatory given that you're the main host of the show. Why not let Dustin and Chris give you your grade instead afraid of what you might hear all jokes aside thanks for all that you do i'll fly a light aircraft straight into a flock of southbound keys and listen okay that's a pretty violent way to go

4:10:05Colin Moriarty:scary it is it's pretty great i like southbound is like a little flavor right good good writing yeah needlessly descriptive right good writing um chris how was this episode i think it's i think we started off a little slow and then we hit a we hit a good we hit a good groove okay towards the middle and later point but i think i also feel that way just generally because i just i woke up tired today because i was i fell asleep at like 5 a.m and i woke up at like 9 for the show so like i'm kind of like all fucked up yeah you're shot but i'm all shot up well you can go back to neap soon um dustin what how would you grade the show today yeah rough start with you claiming 120 hertz wouldn't be a difference for a 2D game.

4:10:53Colin Moriarty:Just absolute. I mean, we're going to miss the mark at some point in the episode, but for you to miss that early on and lose credibility. A little rough. We had to iron out some stuff with your man of my word. You know? Yeah, yeah. Honestly, after you didn't do the Kingdom Hearts hours, I didn't know if my paycheck was coming in this month. you know i think this is christ thankfully it did i mean what am i supposed to believe anymore yeah this this as gene would say this calls into question everything colin more yardy has ever done oh my god that's rough that's a rough reality for me to live in right now um all right well i'm glad we have a passing grade from you guys i thought that was a funny inquiry i appreciate you writing in who was that again i have to scroll down alex thank you i thought that was alex the tolkien of write-ins with that yeah very very good very good um all right let's get the hell out of here it's time to go chris goodbye to you be well uh are you gonna go back to sleep are you gonna try to write it out for the day what are you up to i'm gonna write it out i think like whatever i it makes sense to just get to bed at like a reasonable hour tonight and i'm not gonna be able to do that unless i'm like adequately tired i think um after this it's probably looking like some food then i think i want to polish up that the rest of metal gear i really only have the what is it the the rest of the ape escape stages and i i love me some ape escape i'll always love me some ape escape uh gonna polish that off maybe start hell is us tonight maybe very well oh depends on how the how the day moves cool well it's good to be here with you thank you for taking the time we'll see you next time yeah dustin goodbye to you be well any plans for you in your neck of the woods uh definitely silk song right after this gonna chill out i have to still i do have to confirm about that 120 hertz that's not a joke uh i'm gonna figure that out and yeah for the weekend probably gonna keep it pretty chill and dude hell is us chris you said you're gonna play that i have to wait for my copy to come in the mail but yeah a great episode oh cheers hey are you drinking precari sweat by the way i am yeah where did you get that you can order it on amazon now oh and holly is a huge precari sweat fan so i just set it up once a month we get a little little package of it jesus that's funny that's awesome that's a japanese drink for people that don't know it's fantastic it's really good people would talk before i ever went before i ever went there people talked about it i'm like what is it like and it really is called that i was like yeah the naming is a little bit off-putting to the west a name with sweat in it yeah not great you know not great but it's good all right cool man um for me well football tonight their kickoff uh it's the uh cowboys at the eagles it probably won't be a very good game the eagles are way better than the cowboys but it'll be good to have football back and um so i'll be worrying about that and it's supposed to rain tonight apparently let's see yeah well did you say i'll be worrying about that i don't know that watching with football oh did i say that i that was a freudian it's like even the thing you enjoy the most you're like i'm gonna be worrying about that i think that's what you said yeah you're probably right i am always worried i had a dream last night actually that i i lost my engagement ring or my uh my wedding ring rather and and i was like uh it was like freaking me out i don't know what that was all about i'm glad you said that i've been doing this whole show without mine on because I got right out of the shower.

4:14:29Colin Moriarty:I told you I was running late. I always take it off when I shower. Oh, yeah. I don't like them. It gets me. It leaves my hand feeling weird. Yeah. So I didn't want to be anyone to think something's going on with my marriage. Oh, yeah. You know, I didn't have Holly deliver coffee to let everybody know about my sexual status. Right, right, right. So everything's fine. Well, there's a lot of questions in the air now, I guess. All right. Well, we'll be back for sacred streaming next week. Of course, sacred symbols, sacred symbols plus a great episode that I've teased, but not really told you much about will go live tomorrow when this goes live on Patreon.

4:14:58So please look forward to it. Check it out. I think you guys are going to love it. Boys, thank you again for your time and consideration. Thank you all out there for your love and support. Patreon.com slash Last Stand Media for early ad free access. Last Stand Media dot store for merch. 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 was conceived by, is written by, and is directed by me, Colin Moriarty. My co-hosts are Chris Raygun Maldonado and Dustin Furman.

4:15:32The 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. 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.

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4:18:24Lynch, Sweet Jones, Ethan Linares, Jiraiya, Wizard Infantry, Zen Red, Matt MGS24, 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 valet ross arlo will williams shane breckey michael mash potato aaron temple sweaty magic nate izod hargeet chani josh sullinger my name is mayo eddie medina jason r zahn qn grayson maxwell electric soup whiskey sin, Corey B. Com, 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, Alan 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.

4:19:52Naaman, Toby Ryland, Stewie 108, Patrick Montgomery, Ian C., Richter86, Christopher Devayo, Chris Morton, Mark Liberto, Johnny Waffles, Lawrence Adams, Roto24, Jonathan Coates, Simon Peterson, Sean Mason, Josh Gravelick, Organic Produce, Carlos Algaret, Miranda Grubba, David Castanez, Joosh, Martin Beck, Gavin, Jerome Ferreira, Nathan R., Joe McPartland, Gary Cavallo, Christopher Moore, Dennis Usel, Lou and Ray Loper, Jonathan Cortez, Alex Hobeck, John Schultz, Adam Kay, Alan Tremblay, Ryan T. Mandel, Pork and Beans, Tony Zuniga, Shane Miller, Alex Cabrera, Corey Dustin, Nicolaj Hanson-Turton, Anthony Vasquez, Jorge Pal, Cannonball Jones, Mr.

4:20:39Tom, Phil Crone, Throw7, Adam Nix, John McKinney, Michael Gates, Alex Gates, Sean Chandler, Gio Corsi, Joey Gondaliger, Alex Monez, Justin Payne, Justin Wagaman, Austin Riley, Chad Lewis, Enrique Perez, Joshua Smallwood, Shane Rayum, Don Lee, Brad Cooley, Mad Mock Media, and Jonathan Rice.

4:21:03Another game day.

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