#378 | Underneath, the New Skin Breathes

18:18Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):they're going to call the new game uncharted yeah i think so since there is no no but i mean like uncharted oh oh just like just just call it the uncharted there is no there is no game called Uncharted.

18:32Dustin Furman:Yeah, there was that old well, nothing in that series and there's that old SNES game, I guess Uncharted Waters but and that was like a pirate game. Yeah, there's like nothing. I can't think of that. I feel like they wouldn't do that because I again, I have no information, so I'm not trying to like start any rumors. I just feel like there's obviously a Cassie Drake game I think and I think there might also be a remake of the first game. Yeah, which I think would be cool. Uncharted Fortune is a fucking great game. People were busting balls when we were talking about Kingdom Hearts. They're like, oh, you know, the first Kingdom Hearts is better than the first Uncharted.

19:07Dustin Furman:It's like, no, it's not. Like the first Uncharted game is actually really awesome if you go back and play it. It gets tighter and better, but as it goes on,

19:16Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):it's just two. It's just two is unreasonably good for the time. Like two, two. Even I remember like playing two. I was like, this is kind of, this is insane. And the jump between those games is wild. They made it in two years. It's like. Yeah. What? i just have this i don't know man i have this like romanticization like i i really love the idea of just the reboot and it's just the name you know because they're especially for series that don't have it like there is no game just called halo you know there is no game just called uncharted and so like my my dream is just to see like one of those one of those come up and it's just uncharted it's clean it's just halo it's just it's clean i'm just like oh it's all

19:57Dustin Furman:it's just young drake walking through walking through museums yeah it's a young drake trying to escape little saint james dustin i just wanted to say your name something scared me sorry about that what can i get you what can i get frightened him do you do that when i'm not around just say your name yeah just to feel something yeah just to feel i haven't felt something in

20:26Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):years you know many many years you scared you scared dustin did i frighten you let's see that that uh what is it always sunny and philadelphia scene where dennis looks all disheveled and gross and old and he's like did i frighten you oh man all right let's get into some uh topics of

20:48Dustin Furman:discussion and then we'll get into the news lots to talk about from the state of play and a few other things too we'll get into what we're playing i see we're playing a different cacophony of games here really not a good use of the word and then five or six actually six i don't know why i would say five six listener inquiries at the end of the show although i realized since one of the games that you put in here you we're going to talk about it'll be five because i'll probably end up pulling that inquiry in specifically about baby steps yeah but we'll get to that when the time comes jonathan turner wrote in i liked this inquiry i thought this was a good one because a name came to mind specifically for me.

21:22Dustin Furman:He said, hey, boys, if you had to choose, which Sony first-party mascot would operate the most financially stable and discreet gentleman's club in the greater southwestern United States? Let's say somewhere off of I-10 between Phoenix and Tucson with a reputation for clean books, efficient VIP bottle service turnover, and staff retention rates that rival the In-N-Out Burger down the road. Thanks. Dustin?

21:46Colin Moriarty:I have two that come to mind that are wildly different. I think Sully.

21:52Dustin Furman:Yeah, that's the name that came to mind for me. I mean, that's the obvious answer.

21:55Colin Moriarty:Yeah. Sully is the obvious answer. I mean, Victor Sully cigar, the cigar smoking alone, the class there, the shirts that he wears, it all it all fits perfectly. Now, I do have an off the wall answer, and that would be Aloy. Do you think like she's got a little bit, especially in the second game, she's a bit of a hard ass, right?

22:16Dustin Furman:Oh, so she's like a boss, like a girl boss.

22:20Colin Moriarty:Girl boss. Yeah, she's got the girl boss attitude. She's not afraid to degrade women a little bit, even though she is one. So there could be something there, but I think Sully is the, of course, go to. She's probably hotter than all the dancers at the club. That's part of the mystique of the club is the hot owner.

22:41Dustin Furman:Yeah. Yeah.

22:43Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):Interesting. hmm chris i'm the uh i don't remember his name but i feel like i see it so clearly it's that that uh the clancy the the guy that clancy brown plays in detroit become human the cop oh yeah i don't remember his name either who um he plays he's opposite connor um but like i just feel like he's i for some reason that makes sense to me i haven't played detroit become human in a very very long time but like that that that was the first thing that came to mind and then sully

23:14Dustin Furman:yeah right that's good did you look up i saw you looking it up doesn't did you look it up you said

23:18Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):it was the cop it's like yeah it's the guy that clancy brown plays i can't i can't remember his name for the life fancy brown clancy brown detroit become human um uh hank anderson yeah hank hank yeah this guy that's i mean that even that name sounds like you know what i mean like that's that's already the name of somebody who does this right hank anderson that's like witness protection what was the um zeke dunbar the the best friend in infamous 2

23:55Dustin Furman:or an infamous in infamous 2 he's like cole's best friend do you guys remember him he'd be another interesting character he had like the sunglasses and the who else might be yeah those are good that's good enough sully is the one that came when i read the question oh my god it's got

24:10Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):to be sully for sure yeah but zeke dunbar axel axel from twisted metal zeke dunbar it's not a

24:18Dustin Furman:name i haven't heard in many years and what else oh how about um what is deacon saint what is it

24:26Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):deacon deacon deacon saint gun or something like you can say john or something like that yeah oh yeah yeah some some insane now it's not first party but it's playstation oriented to me like the first thing that i thought of actually before i realized that it doesn't count because it's not first party i just associated heavily with playstation is um money bags that fucking bear

24:49Colin Moriarty:in uh spyro spyro 2 who's always known he's in all of them well no he's no he's is he

24:57Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):spyro i know yeah i know for a fact he's in spyro too i know for a fact and i think the third one as well i can't remember if he's in the first one or not but that guy's a dick and he's so like i remember i remember that was like my first experience feeling like that was really my first experience understanding greed class consciousness yeah it was like my first class conscious like Like, what is this asshole? Like, he just, he's completely being a middleman to a situation that would, to a problem that would not exist without him. What are you doing to me?

25:34Dustin Furman:It says on the Spyro wiki that he is first appeared in Spyro 2, Ripto's Rage.

25:39Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That doesn't make sense. That's when they start.

25:42Dustin Furman:And I like here, it says his role, like he's neutral in Enter the Dragonfly. He's the antagonist in Year of the Dragon, and he's an ally in some of these other ones. A hero. Yeah. So he's he's jumping around.

25:58Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):Much like, you know, much like somebody would have to if they're the owner of a discreet and stable gentleman's club. Right. In the greater southwestern United States.

26:07Dustin Furman:That's a good that's a good answer.

26:09Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):Yeah.

26:09Dustin Furman:It's not it doesn't qualify, though. So, well, whatever it was. Those were those are PlayStation games in our heart, obviously. Yeah. All right. Jonathan, nice question. Thank you for writing him. Eczema is unpredictable, but you can flare less with Epglyss, a once-monthly treatment for moderate to severe eczema. After an initial four-month or longer dosing phase, about four in 10 people taking Epglyss achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin

26:34Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing.

26:38Dustin Furman:Epglyss, LibriKizumab, LBKZ, a 250 milligram per two milliliter injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema. Also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. EBCLIS can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to EBCLIS. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems.

27:06Dustin Furman:You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with EBCLIS. Before starting EBCLIS, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Ask your doctor about EBCLIS and visit EBCLIS.lily.com or call 1-800-LILY-RX or 1-800-545-5979.

27:42Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):Venmo.com to learn more. Venmo-bundle terms and exclusions apply. See terms at Venmo.me-terms. Max$100 cash back per month.

27:50Dustin Furman:Currypowder84 wrote in and said, Hey, Sacred Crew, the question is about boar's head, so mostly for Colin, I guess. I normally get whole sandwiches from delis, and very rarely do I buy deli meat by the pound, but over the past weekend during grocery shopping, I saw the big boar's head sign in my local supermarket deli, and I immediately thought of Colin. I then decided to buy some fresh rolls and some deli meats. I got a half pound of each of my two favorites, boar's head, maple, honey, turkey, that's good, and pastrami. I was absolutely shocked at how expensive it was. The turkey was$15 a pound and the pastrami was$20 a pound.

28:17Dustin Furman:For a second, I almost wished I had gone for Hormel or Columbus, which was much cheaper at around$10 or$12 a pound. Was Boershead always this expensive? I do live in New York City, but that still seems crazy for a few slices of meat for a sandwich. I know Colin is a staunch Boershead supporter, but is Boershead really that much better than competing brands for it to command such a higher price? Yes. Hormel? Hormel. is what you're going to you're going to get you have an option between boar's head and whore mel columbus is like that's what you eat if you can't eat boar's head but if it was that expensive for you to buy you know as as individually then imagine how much it would be to buy a sandwich you're still getting a better value in other words by buying it now dude everything's expensive I am old now, so I'm having the realization that, and I said this, Boar's Head meat when I was in college was$5 or$6 a pound in Boston.

29:17Dustin Furman:So yeah, it's getting crazy out there. Now you're paying an exorbitant price where it's still expensive here, but it's like pepper turkey. We get like honey ham and some other things. That's like$12,$13 a pound now. It's worth it. It's worth every penny every single penny of it and the cheese too is really worth it so that you said you wish you got hormel hormel makes one thing and one thing only that's worth it and it's the mary kitchens corned beef hash that comes in the can love that shit love it the best pre-packaged from aldi that's what i'm rocking pre-packaged cold cuts offend me to a degree well that i can't even begin to describe to you it defeats the entire purpose let me clarify yeah a little bit because

30:06Colin Moriarty:there is like the kind that comes in you know it comes in that shitty plastic box right right right they have that at aldi but then they have a kind that it has like an individually printed label on it. It wasn't sliced at this Aldi, but it was sliced locally.

30:22Dustin Furman:It was sliced somewhere.

30:23Colin Moriarty:Yeah, it was sliced somewhere. Yeah. And it's it's a little bit of a step up. That's what I'm talking about.

30:30Dustin Furman:Yeah, I'm this was a thing I only encountered when I when I went to California, which was that you would go to a deli case at like Safeway or Vons or something, and they would just have the meat pre sliced, right? Like the cold cuts precise, and then they would just take them for you and give them to you and you could ask them to slice it and i would but that was expected that you would just go and get a half pound and they would just take it out of the case i'm like what is this this is the craziest shit i've ever seen in my life it was a total culture shock for me that people would buy things like that but they did yeah so it's

31:05Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):jarring it's jarring to see right you got to get it done for you when it's it's all part of it

31:11Dustin Furman:because you got to get and they also would cut it so thick it's like oh thick cold cuts is like it makes you want to cringe like you got it's got to be like paper thin so you can do like the little curve when you're putting it down you do the little thing you don't you know exactly what i'm talking about you put the meat down and you do the little motion with your hand like the wavy motion and it kind of curves it over and you do that on each oh it's

31:32Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):perfect it's fun it's a fun uh i love the feeling of like a like a damn near invisible

31:41Dustin Furman:right and you eat one while and you eat one while you're making your sandwich you just pull one out what they do in boston is they shave or chip the meat which is a totally different thing where it's so thin that it's almost like crumbled that's a pittsburgh thing too yeah

31:56Colin Moriarty:chip chop ham which is like paper thin ham slices with like some kind of barbecue sauce they made hot interesting chip chop ham dude chip chop every time i every time i think of

32:10Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):every time i think of getting cold cuts like that i think of that i don't know if it was i think it was disney it was like some weird depression era cartoon of like donald duck and like mickey mouse like preparing do you remember you know what i'm talking about the bread they're really thin like transparent sheet of bread that like i think that every time i go to the deli every single time it's like vivid in my mind

32:34Colin Moriarty:that's so funny i want to ask you guys because it's been many years since i've done this what are the what's the thoughts on deli cheese like sliced deli cheese last time i had i'm like

32:45Dustin Furman:this is significantly better yeah it is i get i get sliced i get we get boar's head cheese like yellow american or we get sometimes land of lakes yellow american but yeah you got to get it sliced it's good shit it's good dude american cheese is so good i can't believe people hate on american cheese it's like so good it's perfect yeah it's i didn't like i mean it's good yeah i wouldn't say

33:08Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):perfect it's like there's definitely parts of it like you get like a craft single and you're like

33:12Colin Moriarty:oh yeah that's something yeah that's oh come on man i mean that's not preferable that's not preferable i'm not saying it's as good but i like it i'm not gonna act like i don't like it it's good this is like good you know you have a barbecue you you're making burgers nothing wrong

33:30Dustin Furman:with a craft single on it'll do it'll do it melts nice yeah it's it's it's like craft mac and g's

33:35Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):to me where i'm like this is not as bad as i feel like it should be but it's like i've i can do so much better than this i just refuse to at this very moment you know i'm too lazy i'm too lazy to do better than this.

33:48Dustin Furman:God, I hear that. All right. Nego Fargione wrote in, said, hey, guys, Colin, has anyone ever told you that you've had your name come up in their wedding vows? Because that actually just happened at mine. I got married last Friday to the love of my life. She's not a gamer at all, never has been, but she knows about sacred symbols because I usually throw it on when we're traveling. What is wrong with you guys? It's so crazy. Have some restraint. She did like some of the political LSM shows and she's a fan of David Jaffe because she agrees with a lot of his political views in these episodes. Sorry, Colin.

34:19Dustin Furman:She really doesn't line up with you politically, so you're not her favorite. She gives me grief about it all the time. But here's where it gets wild. During her vows, she promised to be open to exploring more of what I'm into, even if they're not her thing. And she specifically said she'd play more two-player games and listen to more Colin Moriarty with me, even though she doesn't like you. Hearing your name pop up in my wedding vows completely caught me off guard and made me laugh so hard. So I'm looking forward to many more years of sacred symbols with my family. P.S., Please do more political shows.

34:45Dustin Furman:She genuinely loves to listen to those, even if she's yelling at you the whole time and I'm just sitting there cracking up. Yeah, definitely. It's something we should do. This is the perfect environment for it. Never has there been a better environment for that for that kind of thought. Thank you for having such concern for our business. I love that I loom large in your in your marriage already. This pleases me. It's not a good sign, though. Well, for me, it's fine. I mean, it's a neutral sign for me. For them, it's not a good sign, though.

35:12Colin Moriarty:Right. No.

35:13Dustin Furman:Right. Good luck, newlyweds.

35:20Dustin Furman:All right. Finally. Wait, what is this?

35:28Dustin Furman:Where did I? Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. I was like, did I put this in the wrong place? But no, I didn't. Massimo wrote in and said, howdy, CDC. I wanted to get in one last thought on Ghost of Yote before it releases since by the time you record next week, it'll be already out. You've mentioned a few times that overall hype seems low, but honestly comes across more like your hype is low. Same with the marketing. You've called it lackluster, but then admitted you haven't really watched much of it. If you follow PlayStation's YouTube channel, there's actually been a ton of Yotei content these past few months, probably more than I remember seeing for Tsushima.

35:58Dustin Furman:I guess that part that rubbed me the wrong way is a little is that sometimes it feels like you're presenting your own perspective as it reflects the audience as a whole. For me, that couldn't be further from the truth. This is actually my most anticipated game of the year. So maybe just framing it more clearly as your personal take would help. What say you? And just to be clear, this isn't meant as a negative at all or even complaining. Think of it as constructive feedback. I really appreciate all the work you put in every week. I'll hang up and listen. I can't qualify everything I say with the obvious implication that it's my opinion.

36:33Dustin Furman:This is my podcast. This is our podcast. we're not regurgitating news you know press releases or something like that so i just kind of assume it's just everyone is understanding this yeah sometimes i say in my opinion or i think or whatever but i would just assume that this was known um people

37:01Dustin Furman:are way too concerned about the things that other people say about the things that they care like care about or like it's like it doesn't matter we have no effect on the sales trajectory of ghost of yote so don't worry about it dustin it seemed like you wanted to say something i mean you were leaning in i don't know uh i don't know i i think that this is a reoccurring thing where

37:23Colin Moriarty:people kind of can they hear us speak but don't necessarily chris was saying this on the stream yesterday that i think people have it on in the background sometimes i have noticed that our feelings about ghost of yote has been particularly off-putting to the audience which i think all three of us numerous times have been like yeah we're we are excited we're we're looking forward actually is probably the better yeah i'm interested in it we're interested yeah we're all confident it's going to be great there's no doubt i mean there's no doubt it's gonna be great but it's just uh you know that's okay well we'll have more to say on it it's just and i think that it's not even that necessarily the marketing hasn't been there it's been in a million different playstation things to the point where i remember the last time they showed i was like dude enough we've seen this enough times at this point but it'll uh you know we'll have to see when the sales come out if it is if this same feeling is forever you know across the board or if it's just something that we feel personally you know yeah yeah yeah i don't know man like i i think it goes into what i was saying

38:37Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):earlier it's just like i i'm i'm looking forward to it i just know i did i feel like i just know what to expect out of it like i know what the game is going to be i don't think i'm going to be surprised by it i think i'm just going to be like okay this is good i was kind of surprised by Ghost of Tsushima. And I think a lot of that was because I think during that summer that the first Ghost of Tsushima came out, I think a lot of people were expecting it to be overshadowed by The Last of Us 2, but it turned out that that game was actually the big controversial divisive title. And so this thing came out and actually kind of cleaned up.

39:11Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):You know what I mean? It was just a very different vibe. And it was new for Sucker Punch. But this is more of it. And I've seen gameplay footage of it and i was like yeah this looks like more of what was good and i'm looking forward to it i think that the fact that they're doing legends again is cool like i think that's a wise choice although that's not coming for another year i think not literal year but like you know next year in 2026 um but yeah i don't uh i don't know and i do also have to say like i i want to mention this as well because i i feel like people think it's it's too insular i have a lot of friends who play i haven't heard anything about it from them either so that's also kind of where this comes in it's not just i don't think any of us are necessarily just talking about our own experiences when we talk about like the overall like feeling i think i think it's a general kind of mashup of just like what we're seeing you know and we could be wrong it really very well could be like completely like you know misaligned or poorly calibrated or whatever but like it should go without saying that it's our opinion yeah yeah i agree i also just think for

40:23Dustin Furman:ghosts specifically we'll have we'll start talking about it i guess not even next week but because it comes out the day i think we record next week but the week after we'll certainly talk about it on the show and um and then we'll do a spoiler cast review discussion for it i am very confident in its quality i mean there's no doubt about that for me i think it's releasing into a very different environment than than ghost of tsushima did in that i just feel like there's just a lot of this sort of thing going on like it's just visually it's not really remarkable anymore you know i mean obviously it looks beautiful but what i'm saying like the whole the whole samurai ninja warrior the east asian stuff that i've been talking about it's cool and i'm glad i mean if you're into that shit it's like you're in like a golden era right now but i feel like there's just a lot of it and it's just mixing all up so it's mixing into the and so it's releasing into that era and that has tempered my excitement for it.

41:14Dustin Furman:I really want them to move on to something else, but I am curious to see how it is. I will begin playing Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut this weekend just to get back into the swing of things. All right, let's get into the news. We're going to go a little differently here. In our document, it says all state of play reveals. We'll do that section after we go through some of the bigger games. So what we'll do is we'll go through some of the bigger stuff and then i'll go into the list and i'll read off everything that was kind of talked about and if you guys have anything to say or we want to kind of linger we can do that but let's get some of these big things out of the way first starting with wolverine which has predictably re-emerged out of insomniac with a fall 2026 release window and um i'm very curious to see what you guys think of this john wrote in and said seems like insomniac has been seeing people wondering if it will be violent or not guess that's settled holy hell so chris marvel's wolverine from insomniac comes to playstation 5 in the fall

42:13Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):of 2026 what are your thoughts yeah i mean it looks it looks great you know i uh i was kind of surprised to see it i thought maybe i well i i should say i i was more surprised to see it this this early i guess i thought maybe because it had been so long and because you know they had that big leak that they would wait maybe a little bit closer that they would keep the the launch window and the re-reveal window a little bit a little bit tighter not like fallout 4 tight necessarily but tighter than this where it seems like um it's going to be basically an entire year just about before we see it um but i think it was smart to do it in this way because i think it answered a lot of the lingering questions without necessarily you know giving away everything i feel like they addressed the big concerns which is like well how is this game shaping up turns out pretty well it looks great looks bloody as fuck which is uh what it was a big question because insomniac is not really um at least in recent years delved into that kind of

43:22Dustin Furman:thing yeah just resistance is the only thing that they've ever really done that yeah ratchet

43:27Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):ratchet's obviously very you know kid-friendly and you know sunset overdrive is raunchy but not not violent um in the same way and so like just to see to see that level of blood and gore in insomnia came was like kind of it felt novel and it was like oh this is this is different this is cool i'm i'm excited to see this i think uh i think they put a good foot forward here we didn't see much gameplay although although we you know we we've seen quite a bit of it technically yeah So if you want to cross-reference the gameplay that we know exists, that we know we've seen with how much more polished this trailer looks, I think it's shaping up to be a pretty good game.

44:09Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):And I think they have something here, but we didn't see too much. It was nice to see it again. But I'm a lot more excited about it than I was before, just because it feels like we have a more concrete idea of what this is going to be and how this is going to play. and we know that it's like stage based and so it's not like what is it? It's not like an open world. Yeah, like Spider-Man deal. Yeah, which is cool. I'm into it. Yeah, there's a great showcase for it.

44:40Dustin Furman:Yeah, there's a lot to say about it. There's that one shot where where Logan like or Wolverine is like rolling and then slices a dude's leg off.

44:49Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):Yeah, like

44:50Dustin Furman:the bottom of his leg and the guy's hopping and then he stands up and just puts his claw into the bottom of his chin like into his head and I'm like, this is fucking this is like really violent um yeah maybe the most by like truly violent game sony's ever made this was something i was thinking about yesterday it's like what what would be like god of war is really violent but it's it's like monsters and it's fantastic yeah it's fantastic

45:16Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):right exactly yeah these these are it's like it's like doom how like doom is like doom and Doom Eternal and Doom, you know, the Dark Ages. Like, those are, like, violent games in quotes. But, like, and it's really over the top. But, like, everything that you're fighting is so... Like, it's not real. It feels like a cartoon. Like, it's not real. But in Wolverine, it's just like, oh, that's like... It's like a 32-year-old guy. Right. You know, who just got his fucking brain completely jumbled.

45:48Dustin Furman:Yeah, it's crazy. It's really... There's something... visceral and strange. When you think about the violent games from the past in PlayStation history, like Twisted Metal is obviously cartoonish. And a lot of those games were not really able to show the fidelity of the violence that was really happening anyway, not until the PS3 maybe version. You have like Killzone, which is humans fighting humans, but it's not really that violent. The Hellcast look like fucking Nazis and shit like that. Resistance, obviously, you're fighting the Chimera, so those are aliens. It's just The Last of Us is probably one of the games that I would say is is brutal but not as violent as this it's it's much more visceral in that you're strangling dudes with your bare hands and fucking beating them with two by fours and like that so there's definitely a level of violence there too but this this just felt unusually violent um but it's it's what i think wolverine had to be we were saying this before we saw it's like how can you how can wolverine not be absolutely flagrantly violent with those two bladed hands.

46:51Dustin Furman:It's not like Spider-Man or Batman beating the shit out of dudes with their fists. I mean, fucking their lives. In some way, you'd want to be killed by it. You'd probably, if you're a thug, want to meet Wolverine and just be fucking filleted, as opposed to meeting Batman and knowing this guy's going to fucking concuss you to the Stone Age, and you're going to wake up with the mind of a three-year-old, but you're going to live.

47:18Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):Yeah, you're going to wake up with not remembering your family. but you're alive you're alive yeah yeah i don't know man i'm i'm glad i'm glad we got those answers because it you know it's those are the biggest questions i had um i don't think i need to see any more of it actually i think i'm which is funny to say a year out but uh but i'm good i'm also

47:39Dustin Furman:good i'd like to see like gameplay with a hud and like see like what it looks like but other than that i'm also good i agree with you chris yeah i'm sorry i interrupted you no i mean i think that is more or less what i was gonna say okay um dustin let's get your thoughts um so i'm looking at the trailer now 20 hours it was posted 20 hours ago from one recording 4.3 million views 359 000 thumbs up i'm i don't think we i don't know if it's gonna be spider-man level i don't think so but this game's gonna be fucking huge i i think i kind of lost track of that over time that because the game was announced and that was announced alongside spider-man 2 and then Spider-Man 2 kind of came pretty quickly.

48:20Dustin Furman:And then we got wrapped up in that and there was a lot of drama around Spider-Man 2 because like, was it really very, a lot of people thought it wasn't great. I liked it a lot. I thought it was awesome, but people were kind of soft on it, but then it sold extraordinarily well. Then we saw the NPD or the Circona data where like Spider-Man 2 is already the 18th highest grossing PlayStation release ever.

48:39Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):Yeah.

48:40Dustin Furman:So what are your thoughts on this? Do you think Wolverine will be a Spider-Man level success for Insomniac? What do you think of the game? What do you think of the numbers we're seeing here? 4.4 million views is really high engagement oh yeah as far as it being as big as spider-man

48:56Colin Moriarty:i think that because it's so violent that might cut off a younger generation that would maybe play it though i mean there's a lot of parents that just don't care like my parents wouldn't care and would have let me play this game probably at any age um but there's probably a little bit of that but i think overall it'll still be pretty big um and spider-man too i mean it's it's spider-man so there's there's that aspect to that wolverine while being a huge marvel character is just not quite as big as spider-man but the the one thing i wanted to point out because i i agree with you guys the gore is amazing there's a shot in the trailer uh where is it anyway it doesn't matter where he's like literally just like shredding a guy up completely.

49:43Colin Moriarty:And the blood is flying everywhere. And of course the shot with like the claws going into the guy's head is awesome too. So pretty fun. The thing that I really appreciate when we saw this trailer, the initial reveal is that we saw him in like the flannel and the cowboy hat. Right. So it was like, Oh, we're going to get like a, a more serious. I don't know. More serious. Isn't the right word. Naughty dog Wolverine. a naughty dog Wolverine. About his feelings? Yeah, his feelings and he's got a kid, right? That he's got to take care of. Sad dad. But in this trailer, we saw the classic yellow suit and I absolutely love that because did Hugh Jackman's Wolverine, did he not wear the yellow suit until Deadpool?

50:31Colin Moriarty:I think so. So, yeah, it's like, I get it. The yellow suit is kind of silly looking in some ways if you're trying to make, but I think it's all. Yeah. It's awesome. Like lean into it. And clearly they're doing that. It's a superhero game.

50:46Dustin Furman:Yeah. Like I told you, I don't know if you saw it. If you go to the PlayStation blog post, they don't have it in cover format, but the cover of the game is yellow and it's going to be him in the yellow suit. Yeah. So that's pretty cool. And I think I like that differentiation between the red, the very red Spider-Man, obviously like in those games and that theme and all the rest and having something very different yellow uh and maybe x-men if they continue to do that will go like blue if they kind of segue into like a full x-men game series which they obviously the least said that they're going to work on an x-men trilogy so this seemed this is kind of like we were talking about backdoor uh pilots and like this is kind of them doing that but we weren't supposed to know that's why i'm interested if at the end of this my assumption is that the end of this game it'll indicate that there's going to be an x-men game um you would you have to assume that that's what

51:36Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):they're gonna do the thing that's funny to me is the um i mean i can't help but imagine that that these games take place in like the same universe they do they do apparently take place in the same universe that's hilarious like the idea the idea of miles having his like lame problems while some guys like getting his head fucking it's crazy miles and his girlfriend yeah the juxtaposition of the juxtaposition of those two universes is very funny um just based on what we've seen already but as far as like the the look i think wolverine is going to be big and i i actually think the violence is probably going to help it just because i think the biggest question going into this is like dude if they're just going to make a wolverine game it's not violent like it's got it's got no spider-man hope you know what i mean like there's no chance of it like reaching that level but i do think like having a game like that and it being this unapologetically like balls to the wall like yeah this is visceral um i still don't know if it'll hit spider-man level because spider-man is like a uniquely like universally beloved character but i think it has a better shot now actually um that it's committing to that well as as like kind of a

52:49Dustin Furman:layman and outsider to this world of of superheroes and especially marvel i feel like i actually liked the X-Men, the old, like early 2000s X-Men movies? Yeah. My dad and I accidentally rented it one night because it was like a blockbuster case. We ordered like a different, got a different movie, but the X-Men disc was in the case when we got home and we were like so pissed. And then we ended up watching it and then we were like, oh, that was pretty good. So I accidentally saw the first X-Men movie and I was like, oh yeah. But the way I interpreted it is that I think people are kind of a lot of people are kind of not crazy about the way the x-men have been treated i guess a lot of that had to do with them being kind of so they were in the fox silo right and when marvel was going bankrupt they split up all their ip rights for film and tv spider-man went to sony fantastic four i think went to like paramount and yeah so they were with fox and i think they weren't crazy about the way it was being treated and as i recall there was that car that animated X-Men revival called X-Men 97 or whatever.

53:51Dustin Furman:Yeah, right. And people were like crazy about it. They were like, this is it. This is the way it does. And this feels like more like that, like embracing the old yellow suit. And the one thing I'm not a huge, I watched the X-Men cartoon when I was a kid in the nineties and my brother read X-Men. So I'm a little familiar with it, but not really is. I really like Sabretooth and I was kind of hoping he'd be in the game. I don't know if he is. This seems like it's setting up Omega Red as being the villain, although that could be a diversion. You don't want to make me want to show it. So I'm curious about like the direction that goes in.

54:28Dustin Furman:But I think you're right, Chris. It's going to be up to parents sensitivity to the M rating. There are some people that are really sensitive to that and some that aren't, but I could also imagine a kid getting this game. Their parents don't pay attention to that shit. And then they put it on in the living room and they're fucking getting filleted. But by that point, the game is sold. I am really curious about how it does. And I think it might move PS5s. I mean, I think the one thing that I was starting to realize and when I'm looking at the numbers on the trailer, because these are authentic numbers, because it's important to note that sometimes on YouTube numbers are spoofed because they'll draw in a video as an ad on another video.

55:04Dustin Furman:So you'll see videos sometimes with millions of views, but they'll have like a few thousand likes. And that's because it's being played kind of passively. these are active plays with 400 000 likes so there's like an activation here that i think is actually gonna be pretty good um and that it's gonna stay out of the way of grand theft auto is good there will be many more ps5s in the wild by the time wolverine comes out because of grand theft auto and the natural sales arc i mean we'll probably be more like around 90 million by the time it comes out as opposed to 80 million so um things are looking pretty good for this game i I think.

55:41Dustin Furman:And now one thing I wanted to ask him, Dustin, we can go back to you on this is. Where's your confidence on the game's quality? I was saying this on the stream that it's very, it's kind of like what we were talking about with Konami and Bloober team and Silent Hill 2, where there's a, and it's not the same reasons, but there is, there is a reason to be concerned, right? It's not unnatural for you, even if you're wrong to be like something about this setup doesn't seem right and the end result and so obviously with konami and bloober team kind of being unproven and all that and silent hill 2 not really previewing very well in terms of what they were showing remember the first time they showed silent hill 2 everyone's like what the fuck is this this is what you're doing and it was totally off base um so that's its own problem but i'm wondering it's important to note that games don't often lose their directors for no reason and Marcus Smith, who was on the video and it was awesome to see him.

56:39Dustin Furman:I was texting with him yesterday, actually congratulating him and talking to him a little bit. He came in to rescue the game and. I'm just I'm just curious, like what happened, I guess, because something went wrong. And there could be that there's something wrong still, but. I guess what I'm saying, Dustin, is that this game was announced five years ago. It should have been out already. And that it's not coming out for a year indicates that something went wrong. So are you skeptical at all after seeing what you saw or are you kind of feeling a little bit better about it?

57:13Colin Moriarty:I don't feel skeptical about it, primarily just because I trust Insomniac that they're going to make a great game. They haven't given me a reason not to. Obviously, Spider-Man 2 has a little bit of a weaker aspect, but that's mostly, I think, in the story. Right. People didn't like the story. and even then it wasn't bad I would say I played games with way worse stories than Spider-Man 2 just in comparison it was a little on the weaker side compared to the last few games

57:44Dustin Furman:did you see that there's like a there's a mod for Spider-Man 2 on PC to like remove anything that isn't you playing as Spider-Man and it creates like this really violent like juxtaposition as the game just like crashes into each other with no context because like you're not playing as Miles or doing any of that kind of stuff it's just there hmm that's crazy

58:02Colin Moriarty:but But yeah, I think that it's clear that there was some kind of development issue. It has been a long time. But the fact that they've taken the time, I would assume that that time was taken to fix it, whatever the issue was. And I don't know. At this point right now, when you just have this trailer, it's like, okay, well, I can only judge based on what I'm seeing. And what I'm seeing looks pretty dang good. so I think we'll be able to tell more once we get as you were saying earlier Colin like an actual gameplay HUD what is it like to play this game for a few minutes and I think from there we can start to put things together a little more but I don't feel like particularly worried at this point if we hadn't seen the game this year then I would start to wonder if it was ever going to come out

58:56Dustin Furman:at all but clearly

58:57Colin Moriarty:it's coming together quite nicely and overall people, not just us, but people in general are really liking what they see.

59:05Dustin Furman:I feel like... When we interviewed Neil earlier in the year, a lot of that had to do with Neil going to bat for us behind the scenes. And I know Marcus even better and go further back with him. And I wonder if I could talk to him and be like, you know, if you want to do the show sometime, we could talk about the game and they'll listen to you on that side. And here's my proof. so maybe we can ask him some of these questions you know about the game and about all these things himself because he would be agree i mean i've interviewed him many times but he's a great person to talk to um and he has such a wide array of um of experience directing these various games you know directing fps's directing third person action um directing open world

59:55Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):and so even a vr game i think so um yeah it'll be good it'll be good i'm excited so maybe we'll get more information about all this from him i will say the the one thing that i'm noticing or that it doesn't bother me really but it's something that i noticed is like they just they they really don't want to make wolverine as short as he is in anything because he's like five three or something yeah he's tiny he's a tiny guy he's a little manlet but he's always like just not that way in like a movie or like even like even cartoons and like games now it's just like yeah you could have made him short it seems like what they do i don't know

1:00:33Dustin Furman:if i mean he i guess he stands like this and has the same posture in the comics and stuff but they try to i think shorten him by his posture yeah he's kind of leaning in wrestling kind of posture yeah make him look small but yeah like that way in the cut scenes he does like an oompa loompa i

1:00:48Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):guess or whatever i guess but that's like part of it yeah it would be you're right it would it's

1:00:53Dustin Furman:what we say i mean it's it's similar to what i always say about megaman about how megaman is

1:00:56Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):four foot four so like how how disturbing that would be you know that's that's significantly

1:01:02Dustin Furman:more disturbing or because that's like cow cow yeah what is his name callaloo or whatever that's caillou caillou caillou yeah and he's like what is he like nine feet tall or something like

1:01:17Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):that yeah it's not real but like the internet the yeah the internet if you would if you googled caillou's height for a long time it would just just default to say he was like 11 foot six nonsensical height i think jimmy utron was something similar where he was like six six eight some obnoxious like horrifying heights it's awesome but uh yeah i don't know

1:01:42Dustin Furman:um here's some more information from the playstation blog obviously you should go there's so there's the trailer and then there's also there so there are two videos you can watch the trailer itself and then the behind it's called behind the claws and it's like four or five minutes long just like with some some stuff from insomniac spliced in with some gameplay and and cinematic stuff so check that out if you want on youtube but over on the playstation blog insomniac shows the cover art which is we said earlier and says quote bold resilient and volatile wolverine is a character that all of a sudden insomniac are thrilled to explore in collaboration with our friends at marvel games and sony interactive entertainment like our marvel Spider-Man franchise.

1:02:18Dustin Furman:We're once again combining our superpowers to deliver an original take on a beloved character based on Marvel Comics. Our Wolverine, a.k.a. Logan, is played by actor Liam McIntyre. So, this is a known actor. Was he in... He was in like some big Roman... Spartacus. Spartacus, that's what it is. Yeah, Spartacus. Who taps into the rage, pain, and nuances of this iconic character. In this story, he is on the hunt to uncover the secrets of a dark past that keeps eluding him. Unfortunately, in this world, they'll have to dig his claws deep to pull any shred of information that may lead to answers. Often that means shredding into a relentless onslaught of enemies who aim to stop him by any means necessary.

1:02:55Dustin Furman:Fueled by unflinching resilience and a rapid healing factor. Wolverine won't go down easy if it means keeping the mission on task. That was one thing that I brought up on the stream too that Wolverine always suggested it should be a game because of the healing. And I was noting that there are really clever ways the games deal with that. I love Amy Hennig's old explanation of Uncharted. Like that, the more red the screen got, it was that the bullets were getting closer and closer to you. And then when you finally started getting hit, you were going to die or whatever. And that's kind of explains the health system.

1:03:29Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):Yeah.

1:03:30Dustin Furman:And why you feel like you're healing, but you're really not healing. You're actually just getting really close to getting hit. And then when you actually get hit, you die. And here it's another thing. It's like, yeah, there's a way to just make it gamey. because he heals and that that's cool so you use that to your advantage i think it'll it suggests very much that they can make it into a great game it says here quote logan is the quintessential reluctant hero haunted by the consequences of unleashing the beast within once the claws come out wolverine doesn't hold back as a living weapon forged against his will he'll use razor sharp adam adamantium to dispatch enemies and untamed berserker rage to build momentum on the battlefield he'll leave an impression on his foes with fast fluid and rapid attacks and techniques that'll dismember or break anyone who gets in his way.

1:04:12Dustin Furman:Wolverine might be distant, but he isn't too afraid to get up close and personal when it counts. So there's some story details here, some information about when we're going to see more. So spring, and they said, Marcus said that I think spring 2026, we'll see more. I assume that's when we'll get like a really probably a state of play, I would assume dedicated to the game and then we'll see it come out. Now, I guess the final question, Chris, does it come out in the fall of 2026 or will it get delayed?

1:04:39Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):Yeah. yeah i think so i i think the game was already kind of um in the background and i i don't know if you would after this much time in the oven after clearly this much restructuring i don't know if you would play your hand like that unless you were fairly sure you were going to hit it because there's no real reason to do that you know like i feel like if there was a if there was a thought that this game might not hit fall they simply wouldn't have shown it right now i think they probably would have waited until spring you know what i mean um so i'm fairly confident

1:05:20Dustin Furman:that they'll hit it dustin what are your thoughts did will the game come out and fall 26 yeah i think

1:05:27Colin Moriarty:so pretty much for the same reasons as chris is that if they they weren't confident then you know it's already been it's been in limbo for five years so why not at that point just wait until you're ready and confident to speak so uh yeah i think so i think it will too i'm i'm i feel like

1:05:49Dustin Furman:there's a level of urgency to get the game out just because and i know this is crazy to consider but when the months after wolverine comes out they're going to start talking about playstation 6 you kind of got to start focusing on this new hardware i mean obviously ps5 will be supported for many years to come but and i think even a lot of the launch games on ps6 will probably be ps5 games but because that's just the way things are working now but um i just think that there's a there's kind of an imperative to get it off the calendar and move on this game was supposed to come out it's not even supposed to be on the calendar the the interesting thing though about that i was thinking about that i was kind of focusing on this last night when i was uh just taking notes was this game is going to fill the fall 26 first party window but it wasn't supposed to be there so what was supposed to be there in other words there's a cascading event of of things that were still like not are not popping up because we know of all the cancellations and again i'm not so hard on them on most of the cancellations because those games weren't announced but it just it just made me think it's like yeah this is a perfect spot for wolverine but why wasn't there anything else there wolverine was probably supposed to come out two years ago which is interesting to think about all right um the next game that we should talk about in detail is saros from housemark this game was announced earlier in the year and is going to come out on march 20th next year on ps5 they showed the game pretty deeply a lot of gameplay there's a lot of screenshots kind of plot information we dove pretty deep dustin let's go to you first what

1:07:23Colin Moriarty:do you think of saros from house mark yeah they showed off a decent amount of gameplay and i think all three of our reactions was like oh this is more returnal and i'm surprised by how much it's like returnal yeah it is it is very clearly the uh successor to that game and they did show off some new things like he the there's like a shield bubble that you can turn on they showed the revive mechanic um so and it looks visually very impressive i'm looking at the playstation blog and i realized that it's like uh this was captured at ps on ps5 at 60 fps using unreal engine 5 so um let's just uh take it easy here though if there's anyone to be trusted then uh it's housemark uh in terms of being able to actually pull this off on unreal 5 yeah they

1:08:16Dustin Furman:did they and return it was unreal 4 i think so yeah yeah i would say unreal 5 is in particular though a much bigger red flag yeah sure but um but yeah despite the it being a little bit more

1:08:30Colin Moriarty:of what we kind of have already seen that's completely fine with me a more refined uh gameplay of returnal but putting in a new setting and seeing how they reform some of the elements and I was trying to look through the PlayStation blog to see if they talked about like, is this going to be a roguelike still? How are they going to handle the story? There's a section about story as well in here, but that's kind of what more what I'm interested in is like, cool. They had that gameplay down, but a lot of the biggest complaints about Returnal were in its format overall. And I think that necessarily those complaints weren't that it was bad.

1:09:10Colin Moriarty:It was just it didn't necessarily appeal to everybody and how they wanted the game to be but i really liked what i saw looks cool dude the uh creature at the end of this boss fight looked awesome but i just like weird fucked up monster creatures i guess yeah what are your thoughts chris high level um yeah i mean i don't know if i have anything

1:09:34Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):to because i feel i feel like we were all pretty much on the same page about it where it's like yeah okay cool it's more it's more eternal um i don't mind that i thought returnal was really cool i think uh i think it looks really pretty i loved i just love the bullet hell kind of look of both returnal and this like the way the way the light like kind of like it's so gamey but also like not like the way it's presented it's it's it's it's just interesting it's an interesting style but nothing popped out to me as like oh this is like surprising if anything and i think you brought this up Colin where we were kind of thinking like it's surprising that it took this long given how similar it is yeah who like like given how much Returnal is in here like it's surprising that it's it's taken so long yeah it'll be five years between releases which

1:10:25Dustin Furman:is fine and that's kind of normal these days but yeah I was I think it looks awesome so first of all I loved Returnal I as long-time listeners might remember I had an interesting adventure with Returnal because I'm a huge housemark nerd as people know and this was the first time House Mark made what I think people considered a triple A style game. And it took me a while to get it. I wasn't as into it in the beginning. I'm like, I'm not really into the, the, the roguelike and like the kind of the, the ephemeral nature of the weapons. And you're not really upgrading yourself very much. And the collectibles are kind of sparse and, but I ultimately stuck with it and I ended up playing it for like 70 hours or something.

1:11:03Dustin Furman:I ended up really loving it. And so seeing more of that is great. But I am a little confused about a five-year cycle to give us Returnal 2, which is really what this is. And I do wonder about even having called it Returnal 2. I guess you want to make – Returnal doesn't have that much of a claim on the culture, obviously. Maybe you want to just have another chance to make another IP and see if that will take on. But just knowing Housemarque's history, as I do, it's unusual for them to make the same game under a different title. In other words, Super Stardust got sequels and different versions of it.

1:11:47Dustin Furman:Super Stardust HD, Super Stardust Delta, and other ones that were not even made internally, but they're all recognizably Super Stardust. And so they stay under the same moniker. Dead Nation and Alien Nation are different, but the nation kind of ties them together. And those are kind of similar games. And then you have like the, you know, Outland and Matterfall and Resogun and Returnal, like all these different games that are individuals. So it's just a different sort of cycle for them to do this with Saros, where they're making a game that's just like Returnal with obviously some different tweaks.

1:12:18Dustin Furman:And some of the things are answered what you were saying, Dustin, in the PlayStation blog post. It says, quote, the events of Saros take place on Carcosa, a shape-shifting hostile alien planet, one that changes on every death and offers a wide variety of environments and enemies for you to encounter. So it is like Returnal in that it's a roguelike. I think that it has to be. I was saying that again on the stream, which was it has to be. The game would be too static and boring, I think. It has to be replayable in a major way, and it has to be different to keep you engaged. So I totally understand that.

1:12:56Dustin Furman:And then it says, quote, for our first look at gameplay, we wanted to show real and unedited action from Saros and then layer by layer detail some of the new elements we have added on top of Returnal's award-winning third-person action. Our goal with these new elements has been to add more depth to our gameplay by adding a wider variety of tools. Arjun Sultari's advanced combat suit allows him to dash, melee, jump, and more. At the start of every run, you will select your loadout from a mix of Sultari human weaponry and Karkosan alien weaponry. in this video arjun is using the sultari phosphorus shotgun to defend himself and melt the hostile machines housed in the lost ancient city as you can see from our extended gameplay you can expect spectacular bullet patterns from enemies and brutal weapons to use which fuel the sci-fi power fantasy so there's something else there different too which is now there's like two sets of weapons um and you can kind of intermingle them so not unlike resistance or gears of war or halo um yeah which i always think is cool where like you kill the enemies and pick up their weapons and start using their weapons.

1:13:53Dustin Furman:I think I've always loved that, just the visual of that and the idea of that. And then it says, quote, let's talk about Arjun's unique abilities. Firstly, we have the Sultari shield activated by holding R1. And Saros, you can run into the hostile projectiles, absorbing their energy to defend yourself. Once absorbed, you can hit back hard with your Karkosan power weapon. The second unique ability allows you to charge up the weapon with energy harvested from hostile projectiles by pulling the L2 adaptive trigger fully, then discharging this explosive energy at enemies with R2. So this is kind of cool.

1:14:21Dustin Furman:This means that you can play the game really aggressively, much more aggressively than you can play Returnal realistically. And use the shield to your benefit by balancing it in some sort of design work they've done where you're feeding this super weapon by absorbing the bullets and getting closer and closer proximity to the enemy. So that's kind of cool. Power weapons transform Arjun's right arm into an eclipse-fueled weapon, corrupting him in the process. This gives them an alternate and customizable way to deal devastating damage to hostiles. And then there's the storytelling stuff, which is cool.

1:14:56Dustin Furman:There is the second chance ability. This is what were they people were referring to? Was it Sekiro? Sekiro.

1:15:03Colin Moriarty:Yeah.

1:15:05Dustin Furman:So there's that as well. I did see people talking about weapons. I don't know if it's in this specific thing. It might be in an interview elsewhere. but that it seems like there'll be more permanent upgrades that was a major problem i had with i didn't mind returnal first of all again i thought returnal was great but if i had a complaint about it it's that you just weren't getting any stronger and part of the balance in my opinion of these types of games is doing it over and over again but giving yourself a better chance and really it was a get good sweaty type of game instead which is totally fine but it's not exactly what I would have wanted.

1:15:45Dustin Furman:If it's going to be a get good sweaty type of game, I actually would rather have been a linear, repeatable game that you've got good at. So it seems like that was a major complaint with a lot of people. And as I understand, they are doing something about that. But I don't know where I read that. So we'll see how that all works out. But I mean, I am looking forward to this game a lot. And it does have a date, March 20th. Now, do we assume it'll make this date? I assume this date is probably locked and loaded and sealed up. You don't want to delay this into Grand Theft Auto. In my opinion, you don't want to delay anything in the Grand Theft Auto.

1:16:17Dustin Furman:March 20th is probably a must hit, I would assume. So yeah, very orange. I wonder if it's all it must change, but they've shown so much of this orange-red aesthetic that I think contrasts a lot with the blue and white Returnal. So that's cool. Anything else to say about this game?

1:16:39Colin Moriarty:Big miss that they're not doing a follow up to their iOS and PlayStation Vita classic firmans firmans.

1:16:46Dustin Furman:Yeah.

1:16:46Colin Moriarty:I always forget that. I was looking at the Wikipedia page. I'm like, oh yeah, they've been a game called firmans.

1:16:51Dustin Furman:It's all about you guys. What I guess one interesting thing is that Nixus is working on the game.

1:16:57Colin Moriarty:Oh yeah.

1:16:59Dustin Furman:Doing, I guess some assets and art. So, and it says PlayStation studios, creative arts is also working on it. That's not a huge surprise. Those guys work on everything but um so you have some external stuff to get this game over the finish line please look forward to it on march 20th and uh i'm sure they'll have more to say about it do they have anything else to say in the future we'll be sharing more about our mysterious monstrous and moving story including our plot ensemble cast of npcs and the lost off-world colony of carcosa you will experience wishlist saros on playstation store now maybe i will

1:17:34Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):what was what was it that made i feel like we all laughed at the uh because they were showing it and then they were showing the gameplay and then the guy the guy just shows up or the guy's audio cuts and he's like hey oh yeah it was like the director or whatever yeah yeah it sounded it just said it's so disinterested it looks really good though yeah he was um i gotta look that up he's it's interesting because they're a Finnish team, but he's American.

1:18:02Dustin Furman:It sounds like or maybe Canadian. All right. This was an interesting one. I wanted to talk more about the stylings of getting this thing onto PlayStation and the way it was announced more than it actually being there for we want to play it. Although we can talk about all of that. I thought this was interesting. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is coming to PlayStation 5 December 8th later this year. This has been long rumored and fairly obvious. It's actually going to be supported by PSVR 2 as well in 2026, which is awesome. So a free update will make that happen. So Sony's still showing a little bit of love to that.

1:18:33Dustin Furman:And I just thought it was interesting because so we did before we Brad prepared some questions for us and we had a competition before the stream in the pre-show where we made our selections and we were asked like, will Xbox reveal anything or Microsoft reveal anything? And I'm like, it just until they do it, it just seems hard to believe that they would really participate to that level. And now I feel like this is another gate that has been broken down because Xbox appearing at a state of play to announce a game coming to PlayStation 5, I think is a fairly substantial sea change. And it's just so much more aggressive than I would have been.

1:19:09Dustin Furman:I don't understand their level of aggression. And then we're going to talk about Forza later, and they're showing like a different level of aggression there. And I'm like, I don't get it. I don't get exactly what your strategy is here. It's very scattered. But this game is indeed coming over and um dustin will you be flying will you be doing real-time flights from dubai to los angeles um and dedicating yourself to the craft of of flight

1:19:37Colin Moriarty:that's what i'm going to be doing all christmas break yeah uh just getting it getting my flight hours right right um but i probably won't be playing this just because i i played it at some point on maybe not this one but maybe the the version prior 2023 or two i don't remember i played it a little bit on pc game pass and it's it's cool this is a this is a nerdy ass game guys like this is yeah some deep nerd shit uh it's and it's insanely well done this is like it's like the gran turismo of flying where it's like the interiors are perfectly crafted there's all these different brands and stuff like that it's it's cool if you're into that i'm not really all that into it um it is cool when i did play it i was just kind of flying around i flew i flew out of the butler airport which is right beside the farm show ground special special place in this area if you know what i'm saying and i just flew around my town it was it was cool so i didn't take anywhere near advantage of the level of simulator that's in this but But Colin, you mentioned about it being a barrier, but that they broke with doing this at the state of play.

1:20:51Colin Moriarty:I think you're right. But I if I'm thinking about the options that Microsoft has, right, they just did their TGS showcase this morning. And I think it would be more weird for them to announce a PlayStation port at their own show than to announce a port on PlayStation's showcase. Yeah, but they've already broken that other barrier.

1:21:13Dustin Furman:You know what I mean? like when Indiana Jones was announced at Gamescom last year, they had already done that. So they had already, in my opinion, broken that.

1:21:21Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):Well, that wasn't their show, though. Yeah, that was Gamescom, to be fair.

1:21:25Dustin Furman:Oh, you mean so you mean like it? But they're but they're a Tokyo game show now. I don't understand the difference.

1:21:29Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):Well, I'm just saying that he's talking about like the difference between like an Xbox showcase versus like a state of play. Like it would be weird for an Xbox showcase to open. And they're like, oh, Microsoft simulator, Microsoft flight simulator. I got you.

1:21:41Colin Moriarty:So yeah, because that was a Keeley event. Correct. Right. For the Indiana Jones. Because I'm assuming that they're like, okay, late September is when we want to start the marketing. Where are our options to reveal this? They have their own TGS show that happened this morning. And they probably when, you know, it was a possibility to do it, be included in the state of play. And it's like, well, it would be weird to do it at our own show where we're announcing shit for us. It to just be like, hey, this is something for the other platform, you know? so i think it makes sense but it's still i don't think that takes away from the fact that it is definitely still a barrier broken that it's like at the state of play it's also like i i was i was

1:22:23Dustin Furman:very curious and i went back and re-watched it to make sure it's like i was looking for an xbox logo and it is there because i was i was actually wondering like it's not really an i mean it is but it's not really an xbox game when you think about it microsoft flight simulator is the pc game yeah and it's it goes back to like what the late 80s so like long before xbox existed it's just like it's a yeah it's like it's an existent pc game that existed kind of parallel it's not even made

1:22:47Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):internally it's kind of like age of empires and things like that where it's just like yeah i mean

1:22:52Dustin Furman:it's not really right like that was microsoft that's like pc microsoft stuff yeah right and

1:22:59Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):i'm pretty sure like i i can't remember where i heard this but i remember looking it up and it was true i don't remember the game either but like microsoft themselves like used to publish like weird like i'm pretty sure there's a microsoft published game on ps1 somewhere like i think it's like some weird like it might be like solitaire or something like that but like they've you know before xbox they were kind of all over the place and so like flight simulator is one of those where i'm just like ah i don't know if that's really it's not halo yeah yeah

1:23:26Dustin Furman:or even gears or something like that so i yeah yeah yeah yeah didn't i think microsoft published

1:23:32Colin Moriarty:some games on Game Boy Advance, like the Banjo-Kazooie Game Boy Advance game.

1:23:37Dustin Furman:Well, yeah, because they were famously, I mean, we reported this at IGN. It was so unbelievable that no one still, not no one, but a lot of people still don't believe it, is that they were making Halo for DS.

1:23:48Colin Moriarty:Right.

1:23:49Dustin Furman:Yeah. And we had it, which was totally crazy. Matt Cassidy has seen the issues of fucking come up with some gold back in the day. He's like one of the heads of Apple's gaming stuff now. So, yeah, I agree with you where this is like the safest way to kind of break the seal. And I was surprised by it, though, and because there is a new level of aggression now. But yeah, now this is getting out there. Not my kind of game. Gosh, man, they're just like begging people to imagine if the 9-11 terrorists could have trained off a flight simulator 2024. They wouldn't have to go to flight school.

1:24:26Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):Yeah, they could have done. Maybe they used the old flight simulator anyway. Yeah, it was that good. that game is that game is really cool like i i just i can't get i can't get that into it i remember i downloaded it and it was a fucking huge game like the package file i remember when i downloaded it was like oh it was easy it was over 100 gigs for sure and i was like what the hell what is what is in this i guess it's the whole world so i guess it makes some sense but like i remember being shocked by that um let's see anything interesting here so 125 aircraft 40 ,000 airports 60 ,000 helipads so there's a lot of stuff yeah it's it's super cool

1:25:08Dustin Furman:is there because there's some fighter jets it looks like in here is there like a way to dog fight oh this is the civilian supersonic jet like that would be a cool game is like a dog fighting or like military style flight simulator where you're like bombing cities and getting into dog fights and yeah running sorties and landing on aircraft carriers and like that would be kind of i'm dead up serious like that would be that would be fucking sick i think it might be illegal yeah i'm not super sure how like how much they're allowed to divulge shit like that to like consumer grade electronics and software like you're just die bombing yeah like a city or something it's like holy shit that'd be fucking crazy jesus it could be a fictional city it doesn't have to be a real city a real p it could be aliens yeah but then it would just be ace combat or like battlefield like i always wanted to like every once in a while when i was younger i would play an ace combat game i think the last time i did it was on ps3 because i wanted to like it i'm like this is cool i just was so bad at it like i'm like i can't believe people play this

1:26:23Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):game it's hard i i played the shit out of the demo of like ace combat 6 or something i think maybe it was it was a 360 ps3 era like 2006 2007 and i remember just like i remember liking it but like i was very much like you i was like i can't i don't know what the fuck i'm doing i wish i i wish i liked this more and i wish i was into this but i'm just kind of not let's see here i'm

1:26:47Dustin Furman:I mean, it's a beautiful, certainly a beautiful game. There'll be a. Let's see. Oh, early access December 3rd if you preorder. So five days early access. So it's actually December 8th.

1:27:04Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):Pearl Harbor. It's an interesting.

1:27:08Dustin Furman:Happy Pearl Harbor. Here's planes. But seriously, like imagine being able to play a game where you're like a Japanese zero fighter pilot. during Pearl Harbor. Like, I know it sounds crazy, but just think about it. How is it any more offensive than the Normandy landing in Call of Duty?

1:27:27Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):No, but well, I think I think you can do. I'm fairly certain you can do what you're saying. Like, I'm fair. I'm fairly certain, like there's like Battlefield games where like you play as like the Japanese and you're on like a facsimile of Pearl Harbor. I'm certain that that's real.

1:27:43Dustin Furman:I love you're probably right about that, too, about at the at the level of flight simulator.

1:27:50Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):the most inaccessible just be like eve online but for like real sickos right

1:27:56Dustin Furman:right and you can get like a really sick steel battalion style controller set up yeah yeah because that was what i was fascinated by i remember actually i always like looking in the in the cockpit my mom when i was a kid i i've said many times worked for delta and so i was around planes a lot as a kid and that was before 9 11 so like you could they would leave the cockpit doors open when they flew and they would let you into the cockpit and we would just dick around and all that kind of stuff and i was so fascinated by the interface even as a child when it was much more rudimentary where i was like dude there's so much shit here and when i was on a plane to boston you know earlier in the year they had the cockpit open as they were preparing before they closed the doors and they they really are like pressing the all of the buttons and like the all it's not like these things that just exist you don't really use them they're like switching all the dials and i'm like jesus christ like how do you know it's a lot man it's it's it's it seems like it's kind of crazy that we like fly these things through the air and they're they're so sensitive and i don't know it's it was really interesting so it would be fun to play it would be fun to play around with that kind of show like i want to go in there and press the buttons

1:29:02Colin Moriarty:yeah i'm going to recommend something to you colin i know you're not going to watch it but season two of the rehearsal yeah is this speaking to everything you're saying right now

1:29:13Dustin Furman:that's the show that michael likes i think right or or it um what's his name nathan fielder fielder yeah yeah um oh that this is the rehearsal is the new one right yeah it's a show on hbo he used to

1:29:29Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):do nathan for you that's that's the one that she likes yeah which is which is also great but the rehearsal is it's great in a different way but yeah the season two is all about like aviation and stuff and it's i won't spoil it but it's it's it's it's it's outrageous it might be one of the

1:29:45Colin Moriarty:i mean even though it's not fiction it is one of the greatest payoffs in the final episode in ever that i've seen in in tv it's great mike has been for a year for years been telling me that

1:30:00Dustin Furman:that nathan for you show that she's like i think you would really like that show

1:30:02Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):I can't believe you've not seen it

1:30:05Dustin Furman:It's cringy right It's like something you have to watch Am I getting it right

1:30:10Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):I don't know I just feel like you would like it It might be cringy In a way that maybe you think You won't like but I Feel like it's entirely I feel like it's entirely your company

1:30:24Colin Moriarty:Well because yeah Nathan for you is about Him each episode is him going And helping a business With a business it's always like an outrageous idea right or right like his most famous one is that there was a coffee shop that was struggling and there and so his idea was to capitalize off starbucks by making a parody starbucks so they literally just called it dumb starbucks and they opened it up and it was like huge like super successful that's fucking hysterical obviously it was a problem there's also yeah there's there's other fun parts too where he helps like individual people like the one is like he's trying to help people they want to lose weight and so he's like okay what i do is that i will set up like a letter that's something embarrassing that i have to send so he has a guy that wants to lose weight if he doesn't get that you know that weight then he has to he'll send the letter of what's in it that nathan already has it's him in a naked in a hot dog bun like a giant hot dog bun so it's like threatening yourself that's that's the lady like recorded herself saying something super racist and she's the one that actually lost and it got sent to her boss that's sophisticated that's

1:31:45Dustin Furman:really sophisticated humor which is good like i like that like long it's not the same but it reminds me of like the the allergy and that kind of related stuff where you have to there's like a just in a you have to kind of buy in and then give it time and then it pays off um and it being so funny so yeah i i should check that out i don't want i don't watch anything anymore i did get hbo i have it right now because um we finally sat down and watched the gilded age season three which is so good god i love that show i can watch nothing but the gilded age they made 100 episodes of it

1:32:16Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):you should definitely watch Nathan for you and it's it's not sequential so you can just pick any episode okay like in any episodes good to start with I've written this that's on HBO as well I think so maybe uh last time I checked but it was that was like a maybe like eight months ago

1:32:31Colin Moriarty:okay Chris I'm gonna send Colin the clip where he's like the only thing that's worse than death

1:32:38Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):being a registered sex offender yeah do you know I'm talking about that dude I see it dude there's so many good episodes of that show there's one that takes place like kind of in my neck of the woods that's like it's it's the gas station where like they sell gas for like a dollar but like after rebate and the rebate box is like in a mountain somewhere it's it's good shit all right

1:33:00Dustin Furman:cool i will check that out i've written it down here in my notes all right this was an anomaly i wanted to talk about that a lot of people were confused about and and drew a lot of conversation which was that Sony revealed these wireless speakers for desktop, presumably PC gaming, called the Pulse Elevate. And they write here, quote, We're excited to share our first look at the Pulse Elevate wireless speakers, the newest addition to our lineup of PlayStation audio accessories, which we revealed earlier today during the state of play. Pulse Elevate builds upon the immersive next-level gaming audio experience we introduced to players with Pulse Elite wireless headset and Pulse Explorer wireless earbuds, combining powerful technologies like planner magnetic drivers and playstation link into new form factors for players to experience with their favorite games as the first wireless speakers developed by sony interactive entertainment pulse elevate fits seamlessly in a ps5 pc or mac mac desktop gaming setup and can be enjoyed on the go with a playstation portal remote player or smartphone the wireless speakers feature exceptionally lifelike audio ultra low latency and lossless playstation link wireless connectivity i like this this thing i noticed this when i was reading this earlier as the first wireless speakers developed by sony interactive entertainment because sony itself has obviously already made many wireless speakers um does that what so i think i understand the play and we were again we've talked about this pretty deeply in the um in the stream but it's worth reiterating especially because we've had time to think about it is that they want to make a play with pc players and i think sony's heritage of making things like electronics is their strength.

1:34:36Dustin Furman:It's what makes them, it's like the, in the competition between their, with their two competitors, even their three competitors, if you can steam, so steam, Nintendo and a X-Box, it's like, they're the electronics maker and they've done a pretty decent job of leveraging that they have the best controller. I think pretty easily in dual sense, like the most sophisticated controller, they have like a pro style console. they have the portal they have the edge they have these earbuds and this headset so like it's cool that they're making and they're not shipping these things i mean other companies do make third-party stuff but i think it's neat obviously the backbone was first but then they have the portal there's obviously third-party headsets but you have the first-party headsets so i think it's kind of cool that they invest in this sort of thing this isn't a play for me so i'm trying to look at it a little bit more objectively because i'm also i'm not i'm not really an audiophile with my games so it's not for me there i'm not a pc gamer so it's not for me there what do we think here chris yeah i mean it was one of the weirder things that we saw at the show

1:35:41Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):for sure like just because hardware when you see hardware announced at like a gaming showcase it's usually i don't want to say usually like i guess the expectation is that it's going to be more exciting than speakers you know like her just in recent years it's not really been the case it's usually been like here's a new controller um you know with scratch and sniff functionality or something but um I don't know I feel like this doesn't speak to me I don't I don't really know who it's for either though I gotta be real because I do feel like you can get really great speakers for probably less than these I think if you're really really into PC you know speaker setup you probably understand what options are going to suit you better than these and so i don't really know what to make it is i think it's cool to get in the space just because i think it's just cool to make new electronics i think like new hardware is cool and interesting no matter what like even just like when when they had like you know playstation gps and stuff like i think it's i think it's cool that that exists um but i don't really see personally or even stepping outside myself, like trying to envision the type of person who would like, who's in the market for new speakers that would like be like, oh yeah, I think I'm going to use these PlayStation ones.

1:37:04Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):Like, I don't, I don't really know like who that would be.

1:37:10Dustin Furman:Dustin, what do you think? I'm curious. I went into the comments on the PlayStation blog, which are always so negative and they're not, they're not negative for this. Yeah. That people are actually like, oh, cool. Or how much or whatever. So, yeah,

1:37:24Colin Moriarty:interesting surprising i think what do you think yeah i my main confusion is just about some of the different aspects of the product itself the main thing that i'm confused about and this is a bullet point here built for both desktop gaming and portability so it has a built in rechargeable battery which then they described and said players can take pulse elevate on the go when gaming with a playstation portal remote player via playstation link or the mobile device or smartphone via Bluetooth. If you are on the go and you set these bad boys up with your portal, you're a psychopath. I totally agree.

1:38:03Dustin Furman:Just telling you straight up. Very weird, very weird use case.

1:38:06Colin Moriarty:So, and I just don't understand the idea about them being portable in general. I guess this could be very effective. If you're the type of person, you're like, man, I need speakers for my computer. And I also want like a JBL that I can take or a Bluetooth speaker. And so you could use these as a stereo Bluetooth speaker setup that you could take on the go. It's kind of multi use, which I think is good. But then again, it's like, if you're in the, I said this on the stream, if you're in the market for good PC speakers, I'm guessing there's going to be much better options at a much lower price. They also advertise to about how it's PlayStation link, ultra low latency or whatever.

1:38:51Colin Moriarty:And I'm like, dude, there's no, If you're plugging into your PC with these speakers, which if you care about your PC setup having wireless speakers, then I guess great. I've never cared if there's a wire from the back of my speakers to my computer just because it's tucked in behind the desk. But some people want as few wires as possible. So good for them. But I just don't really get it. The only silver lining I think that could be. I know that makes it sound really bad. The only surprise that could come through with these is that PlayStation did buy that audio company, Audis, Audis Nuts, as we called them.

1:39:31Colin Moriarty:Right. And they're supposed to be really high quality. So maybe these end up sounding really stinking good for a really affordable price. And that's where I think it could become a lot more compelling. But we'll have to wait and see.

1:39:44Dustin Furman:So they come in white and black, two speakers, I guess, with a dongle. and it says here white available while supplies last from direct.playstation.com and select retailer so i guess the default color is going to be black and the white is some sort of special edition they have the bullet points here as lifelike desktop audio built-in mic with ai enhanced noise rejection playstation link ultra low latency and multi-device connectivity built for both desktop gaming and portability yeah that's the way that's like a weird bullet point and highly customizable audio. So no price. It'll come out in 2026.

1:40:23Dustin Furman:I do not know how much these things would usually cost. It seems like they're kind of going for that $200 price point for a lot of different things. Just the edge, the portal, this can maybe enter that. I think one of the headsets is$200 as well. So maybe they'll hit that. I don't know. I don't really know anything about, about speakers. So I won't say how much they'll probably cost, but they'll probably be pretty expensive comparable to other things that you can buy all right so we're going to move into other news shortly but i want i want so for this isn't important for people listening but for us the three of us scroll back up to the all state of play reveals and now we can get into some of the things that were um were shown here are there anything well let's get into a few things that we can speak about specifically and then we can get into anything else we want to talk about we can dive into anything we want daniel ross wrote in and said, hey, bozos, they definitely pulled the trailer for that rumored God of War game, didn't they?

1:41:16Dustin Furman:That controller announcement was made to follow the trailer. I am staking my life on it. Cheers. And then he says, it actually says cheers. Thanks and cheers. So maybe he had a stroke while he was writing this. Who knows? What did you guys think of the controller? The God of War 20th anniversary limited edition DualSense controller. Very minimalist. It's a white controller with red accents and then kind of a red crimson line. as it would be on kratos's face i'm not crazy about it i i i just feel like they're not doing a good job with their special edition controllers really they they need to make more controllers they need to make better colors there's 80 million fucking ps5s plus people there's a demand for this sort of thing i just think that the controller stuff's pretty weak it's so much it is so much weaker than the ps4 controller setup like how many ps4 controllers they had the different colors and the options it is way weaker but chris what do we think of the god of war 20th anniversary controller and was it was kind of a cock tease because it did seem like something you would show with the god of war 2.5 d game that is fairly well known to exist yeah still hasn't been shown the controller is up for pre-order on playstation direct october 3rd so what do you think well i

1:42:26Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):thought i think i even said during the stream where it's just like oh so the like that controller commercial ended and then playstation studios showed up and i remember being like oh i guess it's got a war then you know because it's just like it would it's a weird order to do that in i guess but like they wouldn't just show a god of war controller with no context in the middle of a state of play but that's exactly what they did um my gut is telling me that something probably was pulled because it just feels so weird and out of place like i don't know why you would i know that it was the 20th anniversary or whatever and that's that's cool but like to celebrate the 20th anniversary with a controller and nothing else seems odd to me i would i would have probably i would have probably bet that the 20th anniversary was supposed to be celebrated with the controller and and that game whatever that 2.5d thing is and that i guess just was not ready and was i guess not necessary because it was already kind of stacked you know you had wolverine to close and sarah's to open so maybe maybe you don't maybe you maybe it's a blessing

1:43:35Dustin Furman:in disguise yeah it might be a game you just reveal at a marketing beat with a big playstation blog post and a nice trailer and stuff like that or it could be at the game awards as well yeah

1:43:45Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):that's that's something else too where i was just like oh okay maybe but it does feel weird that it was just there because i feel like if you went back and looked at any other state of play or any other kind of event where they showcased a trailer of a controller for something it's usually followed or preceded by a trailer for like you know a game related to it i don't know if that's true like holistically i haven't done the math or done the research but like that feels accurate so it's just off to see it but i'm in agreement where i just like i just kind of feel like the dual sense is um i think the like the form factor and the design and the the touchpad in the middle and uh just the amount of lines on the thing and the amount of lights on the thing make it a lot harder to make um outstandingly good designs that work more reliably than not like i think like the series x controller is so plain faced which in some ways is boring but in a lot of ways is like good because it means customizability is high it means that you can get a lot of flavor on it without necessarily it looking out of place but i just i feel like most of the ps5 controllers that i've seen so far have just looked like they've just looked wrong and i don't know why or how i just i feel like it's just there's a lot to the design of it and i think the touchpad doesn't do it any favors and the lights in the front don't do it any favors um i know you need the touchpad for ps4 compatibility and like for whatever war game in the future where you know it gets crazy simulation enhancement where you get to write a letter home to your grieving widow on the touchpad when you fly out to fucking pearl harbor whatever like um i think that's i think that has come at the cost of like just having like a nice clean canvas of a controller to make designs work on more reliably that's my thought on it yeah i could

1:45:46Dustin Furman:I mean, I've long said I could do without the touchpad and it is unfortunate that it just needs to be there now because because so many games use it. Yeah, it's just and there are there were a few games that did cool things with it. But generally speaking, it could have just been more like the thing I think about it when I look at it, I'm like, this could just be like buttons. It could be dead space, but it could just be more. Remember, like the white and black buttons on Xbox, the original Xbox controller, like just more. Yes, which would you don't have to make it like the Atari Jaguar controller or something where it looks like a fucking remote control.

1:46:15But Dustin, one thing I do like

1:46:18Dustin Furman:about this God of War controller that I will say is that I do dig the buttons. Like the triggers are red on one side and white on the other side as the line goes around it. So that's kind of cool. Like they're actually red plastic. So they're, and I do dig minimalist designs. I just think that I'm just not impressed by any of these things, like any of these controllers. Are you going to pay$85 for your God of War controller?

1:46:44Colin Moriarty:no no no no i'm good on dual sense controllers but i think i'm on the other side of this with than you guys and that i like this design i think it's cool minimal it's not in your face it doesn't have like a giant god of war logo on the touchpad and i think maybe partially the reason why i kind of like this is just in comparison to the the last controller that came out which uh maybe just is coming out in the next week or so that ghost of yote the the shit stain the shit smear yeah yote controller that's just absolutely awful um so and i i think there have been some pretty clean ones i think most people really like the uh astrobot controller was pretty cute so i like the minimal look of this but i just don't need it so and i also don't care about I like God of War a lot.

1:47:38Colin Moriarty:God of War Ragnarok, I think I said it was my game of the year, the year it came out. But Kratos just isn't like my guy, you know? So I don't need his minimal face on a controller.

1:47:50Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):Yeah, I like minimalist designs too. I just feel like the controller itself isn't minimalist. So it makes it hard. It makes it clash a little bit. I think maybe the thing that's throwing me off too is like, I feel like the stick should be a different color. Like I feel like the stick should be red or white or something. i know that that would be like a nightmare but like i mean they've made whatever white sticks i think in the past yeah like i i think they did i feel like certainly um but yeah that's i i don't know it's it's it's it's one of the better ones i will say i just kind of i just think unfortunately the dual sense like the face plate design is just so busy that like i just i don't know what you can

1:48:29Colin Moriarty:do with it really i'm gonna take something back about this controller because i was looking at the overall PlayStation blog post and I clicked into the one that's just about the controller. This is so nitpicky. The right trigger is red. Yeah, that's what I was saying. It continues that design. That's what I was saying earlier.

1:48:46Dustin Furman:I like that. You don't like that? That's what I was saying. That's what I just said that I really liked about it was. I didn't connect the dots. I think that's actually the only cool aspect of it is that it's asymmetric.

1:48:58Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):I kind of agree. I kind of like that it's red. I don't know. And the other side isn't. It's one of the better ones, I will say. I don't know. I like the red color on the faceplate buttons and the D-pad. I like the little accent. Although I do miss, I don't know, man. I'm such a purist. I miss the multicolored buttons.

1:49:23Dustin Furman:Let's see here. Blue Dougal wrote in and said, did Chris just manifest Deus Ex Remastered into existence?

1:49:30Colin Moriarty:Chris?

1:49:32Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):That was nuts. uh because i only got into deus ex in like in the last couple months and uh and now they remastered it um although like i don't know i looked deeper into this and i'm just like man it looks like the it's i think i even said on the stream like it just looks the same uh well it reminds me a little bit of what what um was done to system shock one where it's like a lo-fi sort of well maybe it's more to me i mean look aspire's been doing this like they just do like very very minimal touch ups like that the that's they did that with um soul reaver and they did that with um oh my god tomb raider and i thought that those were pretty solid jobs this one though like i for for whatever reason i am so attached to the old look of like there's something about the look of deus ex that looks very unique and very specific like jc jc denton as a character like i don't know what you can do to modernize that character that doesn't in some way ruin like the design and the charm of him and i will say like the the back and forth like comparisons i'm like i don't know man it looks worse that's interesting in the uh in the new in the new version i don't mind it though because if it's if this is an aspire this is an aspire thing which means you'll be able to i assume i don't know if i don't know if they've confirmed this or not but i assume you'll be able to toggle between the new graphics and the old graphics just like you can in the tomb raider collection and just like you can in um uh legacy of kane's soul reaver so i'm not too bothered by that because i would rather play it in the old graphics anyway it's really more of like having having the the original deus ex playable and accessible on modern hardware without having to jump through like weird mods and weird hoops um and it not being the ps2 version so it's it's not this kind of like segmented um somewhat compromised version that i played it's it's it's cool to have a game like this playable but i do think they kind of drop the ball on the art direction in in some of these with some of these characters and some of these locations

1:51:43Dustin Furman:I'm like, well, I will say the lighting seems harsh. Like if you look at this, the early screens, there's like a darker hue because there's a there's I guess this is the main character that there's a picture of on the PlayStation blog is like a comparison. There are things that make him look obviously way better. Like he has actual fingers, for instance, as opposed to just being one texture, right? Like a black texture and things like that. But the lighting you can see in the original is much darker and grittier and so much brighter. if that's the same screenshot then it's just so much more saturated so i think there are some things people are probably not going to like but it says here the remaster isn't just a visual upgrade but a preservation of deus ex's dna carefully modernized without sacrificing the conspiratorial paranoia that made the original game so iconic each location has been overhauled with new lighting dynamic shadows particle systems and upscale textures for the first time you'll see this dystopian future rendered with rebuilt character models lip sync dialogue and ragdoll physics.

1:52:38Dustin Furman:And this is a big thing here. Controllers control optimize. It says it says when Deus X first released in 2000, its control scheme was built for keyboard and mouse tailored to the PC audience of the era. Complex key bindings and dense menus gave players unmatched freedom, but also made the experience a challenge to translate onto a controller. Early console ports struggled to capture that same precision. The control scheme has been optimized from the ground up designed to feel intuitive and responsive, whether you're sneaking through back alleys or storming corporate headquarters. So that's cool because I did feel that that was a little bit of a problem with system shock to remastered yeah which was i was like they didn't really do anything to make this more playable on a controller the other way you can look at it is like damn dude just make it so you could you should fix the controls but you should also be able to play with a pc and keyboard on console that'd be kind of cool yeah yeah i mean this is

1:53:28Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):cool i'm i'm really more into this from the preservation aspect and just being able to play like the proper original deus ex on modern hardware instead of because i played i played Days X the Conspiracy which is the PS2 port of the original which I thought actually played pretty well but definitely a little finicky I'm going to be playing this for sure but I'm probably going to play with the old guy I just think there's something so charming about like the way it looks so I'm not really interested in this I just like this first shot of like the main character like it does the swoop to show what he looks like now and it's like look at it and it's just like this looks like you've taken a PS2 game and made it a ps 2.5 game really like it doesn't look that it looks better i guess but not in a way that i think serves serves the charm or the art direction like this this in my opinion from like an artistic perspective is way more of a miss than like tomb raider or like legacy of kane was but just having this playable is so cool like i'm i'm in on this on day one i'm so into the that

1:54:31Dustin Furman:first deus ex is so good yeah i was intrigued when you were talking about it and i did want to get to it because it is available as a ps2 classic but i'll probably just wait for this and play it at a quieter time um yeah that'd be wise yeah so i'll look forward to that personally so yeah that's december and then lil rendler wrote in and said hello gentlemen they finally did it they brought back back megaman in the exact way colin has always wanted in a sonic game will any of you be playing sonic racing crossroads now that megaman will be in it as someone who isn't normally a sonic fan i can say it actually is great and in my opinion better than Mario Kart World.

1:55:04Dustin Furman:Thanks for all you do. So yeah, another announcement that was notable for me anyway was that Mega Man and Rush and Dr. Wily and Proto Man are in Sonic Racing Cross Worlds, which is, that's the one that's getting better reviews than Mario Kart. Or was it a previous one? Is this not the one that's out yet?

1:55:24Colin Moriarty:I think it was getting really good reviews. Okay, it's an 83 on OpenCritic. 9 out of 10 from IGN.

1:55:31Dustin Furman:Wow, yeah. So here's the thing is that and it's funny on the stream, I heard we were talking and then I was like, wait, that's Mega Man, the music, the music. And this had been rumored to have been a collaboration. I didn't think it was going to be at the state of play, but there was box art that was revealed. I guess like an insert that comes with what the game physically says that there's like Mega Man content coming and other IP as well. But so this was probably inevitably going to be revealed. It looks really cool. there is a I think it was called Battle and Chase or something there was like a Japanese only Mega Man racer of some sort from the 90s where Mega Man drives in like a rush cart and they seem to have taken that and put that in here which is really really cool because Rush for people that don't know Mega Man, Rush is Mega Man's dog and he transforms into different things that he uses so like a jet or like a way to what's called the coil he like jumps on his back and jumps high and all that so he would of course turn into therefore a cart racer as well and Dr.

1:56:31Dustin Furman:Wily's in it. So there's a stage that's Dr. Wily's stage for Mega Man 2 or Dr. Wily's Castle for Mega Man 2. So that's really cool. I really love it. A lot of love there. Proto Man is in it, which is neat. I was hoping that it would be cool if Bass and Treble were in it as well, but they're not. People have been asking, are you going to play it? And the reality is, no, there's no way I'm going to play it. It's not even that it's a Sonic game. I mean, that's funny. It's funny that they refuse to do anything with Mega Man except for put him in Sonic. like it's so so for instance chris gets deus ex remastered i get megaman in a sonic game like it's it's a cruel thing but but um i just don't like kart racers it's just not my thing i'm not going to play a kart racer because megaman's in it it's i don't play smash brothers because megaman's in it so it wouldn't be any i mean it was it's cool as hell that he's in it but that doesn't matter to me i want a megaman game so but i i thought the visual like i love dr wiley like in his in his craft and it all looked great they did a really great job with it there was a shot where like the little met hard hat was like crossing the crossing the uh course slowly he's probably gonna be some sort of hazard or something in the game so yeah that looked pretty cool and then um do you guys have anything you want to say about that or no probably

1:57:43Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):not um well i mean well he writes it and it's like oh it's it's uh better than mario kart and uh yeah of course no it's not i played the demo it's anyone who's saying it's better is i i have no doubt in my mind that it's better listen i i can i can abide by the crash team racing being better than mario kart but i think garfield kart is better than mario kart i think i think diddy kong racing is better than mario kart this guy diddy kong racing you're just a shit talker at this point no i just well dude i gotta say like dude hearing the mega man music was just like i i love that's like my favorite mega man for like music i'm sure there's better ones or whatever well no i mean the two is the one that i mean i think there are better ones but most people do think two is the best for that that that dr wiley theme is like ingrained and so i heard i was like oh this and hearing it like kind of done up a little bit it's like oh this is good man it's a shame yeah people i mean people love that that's an iconic it's so funny

1:58:48Dustin Furman:because megaman 3's wily song is a fucking banger and i always always like damn i'm so surprised people don't like this one but they don't all right other games to discuss here i'm just scrolling through if there's anything that you guys want to check out i thought i'd shout out the game chronoscript the endless end coming to playstation 5 in 2026 it's a 2d action adventure game it looks really pretty it's hard to describe i think you should just go check it out just go look at the trailer i wanted to highly recommend that for you guys it's got a very artistic spirit i'll be interested to see how it plays but i wanted to shout that out and then is there anything else oh they showed crimson desert with a release date of march 19th so that game looks awesome and one of the notes i was making on the stream that i want to reiterate here for people that didn't here it was i'm generally tired of open world or or semi open world fantasy rpgs in the like unless it's the witcher or something like in other words it's got to be of the highest quality because there's just so much of it there's so much competition in the space they require so much time and crimson desert from pearl abyss is one of those games where it's like yeah this is obviously going to be a high quality game i think and it looks awesome so wanted to shout that out what else is here um they showed the new halloween game which comes out in a year so but obviously it's it's almost spooky season so i guess they wanted to take advantage of that what else what else neo 3 the release date leaked before the show so it wasn't that exciting but february 6th my sister ally's birthday neo 3 will launch on playstation 5 so that's another exclusive to look forward to out there and then i know dustin i know you were really excited about the seven deadly sins origin oh yeah which launches january 28th and then there's uh zero parades for dead spies which is the new za um game the guys that did disco elysium although is that how

2:00:50Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):it said oh i don't know i just like that's how that's how i see it every time i think it's za um

2:00:56Dustin Furman:now i'm a little confused i i haven't really read about it but how excited should we be or how excited should disco elysium fans be there was like wasn't there drama that studio and like Like some people aren't there anymore. So I don't know exactly like if it's the same team per se.

2:01:12Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):I think the key people went off and made something else or they're making something else. And this is, I think, like what remains of the team, if I'm not mistaken. I mean, I haven't looked super deep into it, but I remember hearing something along those lines. And I remember seeing that kind of criticism coming up and like, well, I don't know what this is going to be like. How good can this be? I mean, it looks pretty good. it looks like the art design looks really solid i i don't know necessarily what the game's about which is kind of nice i like when a trailer is kind of vague um but i don't know disco elysium is one of those games where it's like it's sitting in my backlog and i'm just like i feel like it's intimidated by it there's something really intimidating about disco elysium to me i don't even know what it is really i just i know it's a lot of reading i know it's this like big deal um and i feel like i don't want to tackle it until i know that i'm like open to it and ready

2:02:07Dustin Furman:yeah i'm i'm totally open to it i bought it when it came to ps5 but i just haven't or even ps4 whatever it was but i i uh i've not played it yet either there's a huge part of their wikipedia page or disco elysium's wikipedia page called the breakup of z-a-u-m and there's like it's a lot so i'm not going to get into it here and i don't really understand most of it but it's like people were suing each other and there was people kicked out and then some people rehired and then kicked out again and it doesn't seem like it's the same team um yeah so it certainly there are other people responsible for the game being good i'm not saying that but it's a little disingenuous i think too to act like that didn't happen to the team it's like a band breaking it's like a band using the same name but half the members are different i mean that matters right who was the songwriter who was the who was the great performer or whatever you need to so but i love the zero parades for dead spies is a great is a great name i'll give them that it is yeah it's a really good name is there anything you guys want to call out from this list before we move on we should touch on the playstation plus oh games right october right um so yeah the the games that are for everybody are

2:03:14Colin Moriarty:alan wake 2 goat simulator 3 and cocoon which that cocoon game had a little bit of buzz about it when it came out i haven't checked it out so uh and dude i'm gonna check out good simulator 3 i played the first one on some when it was free at some point i thought it was actually

2:03:31Dustin Furman:really fun they never made a second one right that was just no yeah i think three is the second

2:03:36Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):one it would be funny if they made two after this but uh that would be actually would be funny the i think i play i think damn ghost simulator one i think might have been like a games with gold or something maybe like i played long ass time ago but uh if it's if it's available i'll check it out i'm sure i'll get like tired of it within like an hour but um i just wanted before we moved on let it die oh yeah that looks weird that looks weird as fuck i don't also paid title

2:04:06Colin Moriarty:this time what do you mean like the original let it let it die was a um free-to-play game oh i didn't know that yeah um and this one is i looked on steam i think it's 25 or 35 bucks so they're changing up a little bit of the structure of it yeah it's PvPV right

2:04:26Dustin Furman:something yeah Cool, yeah. So that's Let It Die Inferno. That comes December 3rd as well. So there are a few games coming in December, which is cool. I think that's a great place to explore for some smaller games to kind of find their way. Oh, the other thing for PlayStation Plus as well were some retro games too. Let me scroll back down there. So Tekken 3, which is an original PlayStation game, PS1 game, is coming to the premium games category. catalog and soul caliber three from ps2 is coming over as well as tomb raider anniversary which i think is a remake of the original tomb raider on ps2 and i think that leaked because i think the trophies were scraped off of psn so people knew that i was coming beforehand but um and the last of us part two and the last of us part two remastered enter the game catalog at the extra tier as well which is cool that's a nice high value thing there so some cool stuff coming as well.

2:05:25Dustin Furman:Obviously, the classic games Tekken 3, SoulCal 3, Tomb Raider Anniversary will be available a la carte as well. So you don't have to be a premium member on PlayStation Plus to play those. Are we otherwise good? Oh, so we should before we move on, like what did we think of the overall presentation? I'm going to stick with the score I gave on the stream. I'm going to say a B. I thought it was a B. I don't see it being any higher than that. I don't really see it being any lower than that. I think you have to look at it with some lens of objectivity that's simply in an environment with a million games, many of them are just not going to be for you.

2:05:59Dustin Furman:And I, but I think that a lot of the games, so like Battlefield 6, for instance, is probably really not for me. The campaign might be cool. I'm totally open to playing the campaign if it's good, but it's not for me. But obviously that's a huge game and a big get and a good rival marketing kind of boost for them with kind of Microsoft and Call of Duty being together. Code Vein 2 is certainly not my thing, but people like their souls like and souls born games. Crimson desert is awesome. Day XX remastered is cool. Dynasty warriors three was there. I mean, that's not a big deal. A new controller, GT seven DLC, new Halloween game.

2:06:35Dustin Furman:There was that game last epic. Let it die Inferno. And then of course the first party games, Wolverine and Saros along with something from the second party, like Neo three. We were talking about the ZA UM game earlier. I feel like that's a solid B. I'm comfortable with that score.

2:06:53Colin Moriarty:Yeah, I agree with you, mainly because first party support in this new era is pretty low. So to see two of those games, I think the only thing that would be scored higher if there was a surprise first party. We knew about Soros. We knew about Wolverine. Wolverine, it's been a long time coming. but I think that anytime there are any type of showcase from any publisher, there's always people that are mad or upset. And it's like, man, the days, the E3, the crazy E3, where it was like last guardian and Shenmue or whatever, and a bunch of other stuff like the crazy E3s. Oh yeah. Final fantasy seven remake.

2:07:35Colin Moriarty:Those days are done. They're just not happening anymore. And games are in particular also just announced. all over the place now. Particularly, too, this is a state of play, not a showcase. So I don't know what people's expectations were with this, but overall, pretty good. I said this on the stream, too, but none of these games in the showcase were like, man, that's a game I'm pumped for. I'm pretty pumped for Soros, right? But there wasn't anything that was very particular Dustin game. But that's okay.

2:08:11Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):not everything's for me yeah i i kind of flipped on wolverine a little bit i'm looking more forward to wolverine now that i've seen it and now that i now that i know way more about it like i'm actively like okay that's that's for sure something i'm definitely interested in um as opposed to being something i i think before i had seen it today it was something that like ah yeah i'll play it like i'm not really looking forward to it now i'm actually genuinely looking forward to it um i would say probably like strong it's a strong i would say it's a strong b minus and a light b you know i think it's it was a good it was a good showcase nothing really really like got me out of my chair or anything i think deus ex was the closest thing and upon further examination it looks it looks somewhat bungled but still still worth it so like that's kind of compromised a little bit for me but yeah it's it's far from a bad showcase and it's far from a bad state of play and lord knows we've had uh we've had bad state of plays yeah definitely we

2:09:11Dustin Furman:definitely have so i i think it it yeah it lacked big surprises as we've noted but i think it kind of cleared the cleared the plate too it's like okay we knew about saros here it is here's the date wolverine's been lingering for years and we've been wondering what's going on with it will it ever pop back up again here it is here's the release window so now it leaves a little bit of time for the unexpected and just a little bit more clarity on specific things we know about like fair games i didn't put it in the news because i don't know i don't know that it's particularly newsworthy but like there is this claim that that from 4chan you know the the forum that yeah that haven is basically done and fair games is canceled the funny thing about citing that obviously is you don't know who it is and if it's true or not so you would never use that as a as a citation but it's just funny that it's not uncommon for things to be posted there that are true and like completely 100 true and so that's always interesting but still we need clarification on fair games and then we really need clarification on intergalactic which i think we'll get at the game awards and what would be wild is if they were also going to release that in 2026 although i doubt it i think that will kind of that's what i was that's what i was going to ask

2:10:25Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):you is like so we know wolverine is then we know saros is is we know saros is where it is we know wolverine is where it is that to me kind of all but confirms right that like in my mind that's

2:10:36Dustin Furman:like that's like uh intergalactic is 2027 yeah maybe spring 27 i don't think you want to it's i mean it would be interesting if it was like a ps6 launch game that obviously was a ps5 game too but that like they actually launched the console alongside of it and you can have like the most enhanced version of this new naughty dog game or whatever i doubt that that's something they're going to do. It seems like spring would be 27 would be a reasonable time to expect. So yeah, so there's a few and the God of War game, again, to their credit, they haven't announced that game. Like it's just that it's been like someone told me about that game.

2:11:08Dustin Furman:Other reliable people have been talking about it in much more detail than I was told about it because again, I was told that there was a 2.5 D God of War game. People have elaborated that it's like a Metroidvania style game, which makes sense. Those kind of go hand in hand. I don't know what you would you could make. I guess I don't know why in my mind i was envisioning like a more straightforward action game like a god of war kind of interstitial action game but it seems like uh they're gonna go with a more metroidvania style maybe if the rumors are true so there are a few things for them to clarify and then of course the unknowns which is fun i guess marathon would be in there somewhere as well um but there's a lot of unknowns and so that's what makes now the future kind of exciting that the next state of play could conceivably or in my opinion would conceivably have a new reveal and that's where I think I think that's what people want but I am so inundated like I know and we were making fun of it on the stream it's like where are the games it's like dude it's just crazy out there right now like I can't even begin to wrap my mind around all the games I want to play you have to really not like video games and I don't mean that as an insult it's like you're just not into it if you're if you see nothing there for you nothing now nothing in the near future and nothing in the far future nothing from any of these showcases it's like come on man come on yeah all right state of play we leave you now september 2025 state of play i guess that will be will that be the last one of the year i don't know probably probably there's there's room for maybe one more november yeah but yeah i think you just go into the game awards yeah yeah and have one or two things there.

2:12:44Dustin Furman:All right, but we have more first party things or at least second party things to talk about. This comes from Push Square, and I don't know if you guys saw this. It's all around the hullabaloo around Tokyo Game Show, which Tokyo Game Show seems to have a special sort of lighter spark this year compared to previous years. Like TGS, even when I went to TGS a couple of times, was kind of on the wane. And it seems like it's kind of like Sony's there again. And it seems like it's kind of coming back in a way. But Fizzint, we know all about at least that it exists. This was announced by Sony alongside Kojima last year and is the upcoming presumably PS6 game that I guess will be on PS5.

2:13:27Dustin Furman:It's supposed to be a stealth game and we've kind of drawn comparisons that it's probably like him wanting to go back to Metal Gear. And as we see with OD, which we're going to talk about next, that's kind of him going back to PT and Silent Hill. So it seems like he's satiating his want to do these old things that he used to do. So we have a poster and it's of a man holding a machine gun, a rifle in front of some sort of concrete building that looks kind of stylized in like a art deco. But I don't think I don't know if that's supposed to be. I don't know if that's supposed to be some sort of time travel indication because the gun is much more modern, for instance, and his clothing is much more modern.

2:14:07Dustin Furman:It says here comes the feeling on the poster. and then it says fizzant and in huge letters a hideo kojima game obviously and this is what we have as well as some casting charlie frazier don lee and minami minami hamabe hamabe hamabe god i'm struggling i should have had you read that because i know you read japanese doesn't right fluently um so just a little bit of a taste dustin what are your thoughts

2:14:35Colin Moriarty:i absolutely love this poster it's got all the kojima uh staple look to it what's his um the art guy that he works with shinkawa oh yeah shinkawa um i it's not in this um push square article i don't think but i think at this event he said that um he wanted uh batman what's his name to be pattinson robert pattinson he said he wanted robert pattinson to be in the game and he wanted him to star it so that actually dude if that ended up happening that would be sick which robert pattinson at least he's done interviews where he's talked about playing games like he talked about playing final fantasy 7 on playstation one so maybe he would yeah be interested that would be cool yeah it's still so far away um and they talked a lot about like the the face capture and stuff that they're doing interestingly enough i don't think in this presentation or in this write-up they talk about whether or not he's using decima for this game so that could be a change maybe maybe not it's probably still so far out that they're just kind of exploring the different options any thoughts chris we don't have much to go on but we're starting to become more real yeah man i don't know man the the the posters

2:15:54Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):poster's fucking sick i love it um i feel nostalgic looking at it which is a strange it's always straight like i i can't pinpoint how this works or how this happens but like i know this is this has been something that i felt before looking like feeling nostalgia for something that i clearly that clearly has no relevance to my past at all but like some things are able to like ignite that feeling for whatever reason this does like there's something about like the the composition of this um you know just the the mystery of it i'm a sucker for any time like they have this like uh here comes the feeling and like half of it's written in like the white and then half of it's written on the image itself like there's something about that i i think it's great um obviously it's just a it's just a picture we don't even really know what the game is um at all um but i'm in for whatever this guy's doing quite frankly at this point like he's he's kojima's uh thoroughly earned my trust at this point yeah he's a master like i i

2:16:56Dustin Furman:don't i i often think that creatives get a little too much play sometimes but especially in going back and playing metal gear solid 3 via delta again recently having played death stranding one and two and platinum in those although i played death stranding back in the day and just being always being a big fan of mgs1 and mgs2 like he is a master i mean this is this is it's not to say he hits every time or like i i wasn't a huge zone of the enders fan or something like that you know like i wasn't huge in the bach tie i'm not saying like everything he does is is like my cup of tea but this the core shit he does it's good stuff and it's really it's thoughtful

2:17:30Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):and meaningful and and fun at the very least like i will always be like thoroughly interested in it like even if even if it's something that doesn't hit for like good like middle girl solid four didn't hit for me when I first tried it. But like it's intrigued me the entire time because I'm always just thinking like, what the hell is this thing?

2:17:53Dustin Furman:But yeah. Well, a few important things to keep in mind is in my research is because he's talked about the game a few times. It was revealed early in 2024 at a similar state of play that one we were just covering and And there are a few things to keep in mind. Number one is he gave an interview earlier this year where he said the game is probably five years away, if not more. So we're looking at a PlayStation 6 game that will come out in 2030, 2031. So a long time away. The second thing is, is I believe he reiterated at TGS that he's basically only the only one really working on it. Obviously they have technicians and artists working on some things.

2:18:34Dustin Furman:He showed renders, for instance, of some of the characters, like the art, you know, they're basically capturing and starting to mess around with things as they cast people. However, he's noted that the SAG after a strike kind of injured their ability to cast people as quickly as they wanted to. And I wonder if that will set the game back more because I'm sure he has to have some sort of visual and idea of who he's writing for and who's going to be in the game. And then I think the big part of it that we can't overlook and that I think is going to play a key role in this, and I think this will come to fruition later, but will bear fruit concurrent to when Fizzit comes out is that there's some sort of Columbia Pictures, Sony Pictures component to this.

2:19:12Dustin Furman:The way they revealed the game, it seems like that's an inherent part of it and no one really seems to talk about that. But it seems like they've developed it from the beginning as being cross media or they're doing some sort of Alan Wake style real life thing that will be integrated into the game, which could be both. I mean, you're getting to the fidelity because he does say, and I have this here on the Fizzit fan, the fandom wiki for Fizzin. And it was, he was saying, he said something interesting. The game director said that the tech underpinning in Fizzin is even more advanced than that powering Death Stranding and the upcoming OD because it's due out later in the future.

2:19:51Dustin Furman:So it's unclear. Like he's probably working on some sort of, he might be working on Decima, but some sort of next gen version of it or just something that is bespoke. But Sony's involvement seems to indicate that I would assume it's some sort of Decima. next gen Decima game, but we don't have confirmation of that. And you'd think they would confirm it, but maybe they don't want to do that yet. Like they're not building the game yet. So maybe figure it, feel things out and see what the right tool is. I remember Sony having similar conversations when Bend revealed that, um, that, uh, days gone would be on unreal engine, which was unheard of at the time for a PlayStation game.

2:20:28And now that's becoming more common.

2:20:30Dustin Furman:So those are a couple of things to keep in mind as we move forward. Um, I'm particularly interested to see the cross-media stuff because it's very important. Sony's all over that. It seems like they're developing things now with that in mind. We went into it a little bit a couple weeks ago when Variety or whoever the fuck it was or GQ or whatever interviewed Neil Druckmann, which was there is cross-media stuff that they're working on for Intergalactic. That's already like those talks and those things are moving. So they want that. They see the virtuous cycle, as it were, the benefit of these things feeding each other and how The Last of Us has benefited particularly and how it's such a shame that there's nothing for Twisted Metal to take advantage of.

2:21:15Dustin Furman:That's a bummer. There were supposed to be. All right. The other Kojima game that was shown, and this was shown much more deeply, Farmer Jimmy wrote in and said, Hey, Boner Boys, Kojima Productions just dropped their knock trailer for the presumably Xbox exclusive OD. Given the shift in the landscape since its announcement in 2023. Do you think Sony will also be home on day one for what clearly looks like a spiritual successor to Kojima's PT demo? Thanks for everything and stay erect. So OD was shown. This is an Xbox Game Studios shepherded second party game from Kojima that was announced a few years ago.

2:21:52Dustin Furman:And I was saying earlier that if Fizzant seems like a direction back towards Metal Gear and espionage, this seems like a direction back towards something that was much more unexplored by Kojima, but something that he was beginning to broach, which was horror and Silent Hill. Now, obviously, he did some horror stuff earlier in his career, but it seems like he's wanted to do something more literal. Death Stranding is a little horror, but not really. It's different. It's it's just it doesn't have the same viscera and all the rest. So this looks pretty cool. To former Jimmy's talk, I assume this is going to come to PS5 at the same time.

2:22:25Dustin Furman:I maybe not, but we'll see. but that's why we're talking about it here because they were it actually said at the end of the trailer for like all players and screamers or something like that i don't know something great for all screamers and creamers for all screamers and creamers and i'm like well i'll be there uh dustin what do you think of od yeah this trailer was pretty good it didn't get me

2:22:47Colin Moriarty:crazy excited obviously just like fizzant their big emphasis on the um motion capture the face capture and it certainly does look like it's going to be pretty creepy in terms of will it release on playstation at the same time and i think well oh yeah you're moving things around here so i don't want to jump to the chase no you could go there's another game forza horizon 6 which we're going to talk about is xbox first and then playstation they've already said and so i wonder having a kojima game it's a pretty big get for xbox and it's i wonder it's tough because i could see either way where they're like yeah we'll be able to sell millions well i don't know we talk about death stranding always not being like a crazy yeah i don't i don't know i don't yeah millions might be too much so i could see them wanting to spread the field but at the same time kojima that would for me, if OD only comes out on Xbox and PC, I'm not waiting for PlayStation.

2:23:57Colin Moriarty:I will be playing this probably either on PC or maybe, maybe actually on my series X hasn't been turned on in two years, but I would get to this as soon as possible. So that could be a big advantage to tear it out a little bit.

2:24:12Dustin Furman:I agree. I agree with what you're saying. And it's, it gave me pause about Forza, which we'll talk about in a minute as well. the strategy that they're employing again muddled by stuff like flight simulator like anyway chris before we get into all of the the semantics what did you think of od was it intriguing to you

2:24:27Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):oh yeah absolutely like the fact it is so pt coded and and knowing that that's like um actually going to be followed through this time or like you know presumably like i guess it could it could be canceled like we don't know but like assuming that everything goes according to plan and we get this thing and uh there's no like fractured relationships or xbox doesn't vanish um i mean yeah i'm all for like seeing that idea realized or at least like kojima fully like going through um with a traditional kind of horror game and by the performance capture in this trailer is insane yeah it's incredible like for a good for a good portion of it like when the beginning started i was like is this that's a real door right and then the hand comes in and i was like oh maybe it's a game yeah i think it's a game and then it goes into the room and i'm like is this a game like it it actually it really like fucked with me a little bit because i was like i can't tell it really only became clear to me once the the match animation when uh when she starts to light the matches and it's the same and it's the same more or less animation every time i'm like okay so it's so this is the game but that was really the only thing that gave it away to me um granted it was like compression and i'm sure that probably helps but like dude like this this i can't believe games look this good it's really crazy uh so i'm

2:25:57Colin Moriarty:i'm all for it i'm excited something worth remembering too about this i i had to look it up because i knew there was something that when this game in 2023 kojima described the project as avant-garde and then in august 2025 he said it was something totally different people either love it or hate it and that the real about evaluation of this game will happen 10 to 20 years from now

2:26:22Dustin Furman:it's just it's just you light just you light candles in it yeah i he's kind of fencing

2:26:29Colin Moriarty:OD right now. And I wonder with graphics that look this crazy, is it possible this game is really not that much of a playable game? Where it's more so you're making decisions. Yeah, I've been saying that

2:26:44Dustin Furman:and some people, yeah, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Chris, please. No, no, no, go, go. I was just saying I could see it. Yeah, I was going to say that I've been saying that for a while and some people have been contesting it because to your point, Dustin, I feel like he's been talking about it, you know, here and there, like it's not really a game. And it's certainly not a game like Metal Gear or Death Stranding or something like that. What I'm trying to wonder, what I wonder is like the depth of it or no, I shouldn't even say that the breadth of it. Is it three hours? Is it a movie? Is it 10 hours? Is it a walking simulator?

2:27:13Dustin Furman:Isn't it an adventure game? Like PT was an adventure game. I mean, like what they showed was and what I mean that about that is like it's puzzle oriented and it's problem solving and all the rest. It feels like it's kind of. And it's for all screamers and creamers. So I feel like. It's I think it's not what people in my opinion, it's not a game game. It's I don't think you're going to have like an inventory screen and health. And I don't I don't which is cool. That's totally fine. It's cool to get something different out of him. but it seems like this thing has been in development behind the scenes alongside death stranding and indicate and now with visit and it just indicates that it's something that they can do in addition to and so it indicates that it's just something smaller though very beautiful very high production value very high quality yeah you can and it's like chris was saying it's it's incredible to the point of being lifelike it's exactly what you said chris like the re the way it becomes fake is actually the way the camera is framed before you even get to the lighting of the candles like when the camera snaps and it's like oh either this is a real camera being used to make it look like perspective first person perspective or it's actually now we're in game so it's a game but there was nothing about the quality of the graphics that would indicate that it wasn't real and that's amazing it's yeah it's it's crazy um and i could see this

2:28:39Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):being like more of like a like a hellblade 2 kind of thing you know what i mean where it's like this is this is a graphical showcase this is um all it's all writing and character and like maybe some maybe maybe more obviously leaning more into pt it's it's more about like puzzles and stuff and like yeah i would be surprised to see like an inventory screen or something like that um but i'm into it you know if if anybody could get me into into a game like that it's probably this guy you know uh hellblade 2 i just did not work for me because there was already a hellblade 1 that was more of a game you know this is a brand new ip you know or a brand new original story like from the ground up so like i'm more interested i'm more i'm more open to the idea of this being kind of like a weird demo type experience or however you want to put it something um this is

2:29:33Colin Moriarty:from the wikipedia page which i didn't watch the the presentation but some important details from It says during the presentation, Kojima said the game would revolve around different fears, citing the sound of knocking as one of as one of his. Kojima stated that Peel would be handling a different kind of fear and that the game would be episodic. The other creatives participating apart from Kojima and Peel are yet to be confirmed. So it's an anthology video game. Ooh. So this is just one of the episodes called Knock within OD, which is going to be interesting. Interesting. Interesting. So the collaboration aspect, pretty interesting.

2:30:12Colin Moriarty:I'm wondering, man, so they have Jordan Peele as one of them, but I'm imagining like a collaboration with Kojima and Ari Oster for an episode. Dude, that would send me top, top of the charts for hype.

2:30:29Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):That would be insane. I would have to imagine Garibald del Toro is probably going to be one of them, too. Yeah, I feel like I feel like they're really. I feel like I see them together all the time like every time I open Twitter there's like some new photo of them people I don't even know like sharing an ice cream coat ice cream on one of those two seater bikes so yeah nonsense I like that's a lot more interesting than I even thought

2:30:51Dustin Furman:it was yeah all right we we kind of tease this here because it's related which is Forza Horizon 6 was announced and it's coming to playstation 5 but to dustin's point it is actually a staggered release a la indiana jones so at gamescom what was it last year then before indiana jones came out they're like indiana jones has a release date of december whatever on xbox and we're bringing it to ps5 next year so they're doing a similar thing here where they're saying xbox and pc will get it in 2026 for sure and that it will come to playstation 5 post launch and they write that playground games and turn 10 studios are also working together to bring forza horizon 6 to playstation 5 post launch so something a little bit vague there but it is coming uh as predicted forza horizon 6 takes place in japan the tokyo game show reveal therefore made a lot of sense now again this is where i think the messaging gets a little muddled because i understand wanting to take advantage of the japanese setting and the fusion that you can get by announcing in the tokyo game show and having that but it not being on playstation basically neuters its entire ability to be played in Japan unless people want to play on PC.

2:32:03Dustin Furman:And I'm not entirely sure how big PC gaming is in Japan comparable to the West, but it'll be available there for you. But I just think that there's that's a little weird. I was kind of sure that it was going to be on PlayStation 5. And I think that's kind of why they had to say that it was coming, even if it's not day and day, because it would have been even more peculiar. It's like there are literally there is no Xbox market in Japan. It's just not a thing that really is happening there. But the game looks cool. People are amped about it. The trailer is doing well on Forza's official YouTube channel with over a half a million views in about eight hours.

2:32:35Dustin Furman:So what are our thoughts here? I'm not into Forza Horizon. I'm not a racing guy. I'm not a car guy, obviously. But any thoughts, Dustin, do you want to share?

2:32:43Colin Moriarty:Yeah, the Japanese setting of no surprise sounds pretty cool, but I've never really gotten into any Forza Horizon game. I appreciate them greatly. what I have played of them it's like I can see the quality there and obviously Japan as a landmass has a lot of cool stuff whether it's Mount Fuji or being in the streets of Tokyo or maybe some of the more traditional places in somewhere like Kyoto there's a lot to work with so I think it'll be a great setting for the game and yeah you're totally right that there is almost zero Xbox presence in Japan at all maybe that handheld will i don't know if it's going to move the needle but i think it would be maybe more appealing to a japanese audience but this game doesn't really have a chance of taking off there until that playstation version is out uh anything you want to share about forza horizon 6 chris uh not really i mean i i think forza i played a little bit of forza horizon 5

2:33:48Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):i think or 4 i think 5 and i liked it i thought it was cool but i'm just like I think ultimately I'm just you know these are it's like flight simulator for me where I'm like I appreciate this this is cool I know a lot of people are gonna like it but it's just not my

2:34:02Dustin Furman:company really all right so Forza Horizon 6 coming to PlayStation 5 at an unknown date maybe later in 2026 maybe 2027 Forza Horizon 5 was a smash hit on PlayStation so I'm sure they're gonna sell many and that was sold at full price so I'm sure they're gonna get many many many many takers many millions of takers seems fairly guaranteed please look forward to it all right a couple more things i wanted to get through here and then we can move on colin's mom did tylenol while pregnant and it shows wrote in and said hey gents when i saw the news of the new playstation trophy reward program i immediately fell to my knees and started throwing up and shitting myself in the aisles of costco how dare sony expect me to pay additional money for a pin or a t-shirt why call it a rewards program if it isn't free in all seriousness i've seen nothing but complaining about this online, but I think it is pretty cool.

2:34:53Dustin Furman:It's completely optional, but let's hardcore fans buy a little something extra after earning it. If anything, I hope it goes further into the future. For example, you are the first 25 ,000 platinum to Ghost of Yotei, so you get to buy a six-inch platinum trophy replica with your name on it. I would definitely shell out cash for some of my favorite games in that case. So he is referencing an interesting thing that's being talked about in the hardcore PlayStation circle the last few days. It's from the PlayStation blog. It writes, And they write, Ghost of Tsushima players can now unlock special ghost rewards merchandise for purchase.

2:35:22Dustin Furman:And they write, quote, if you've ever felt like your Ghost of Tsushima journey deserved to be remembered beyond the screen, we've got something special to share. Starting today, we're introducing a new merchandise program that celebrates your in-game achievements with special collectibles, beginning with ghost rewards. Players who have earned the Mono No Aware gold or Living Legend Platinum trophies in Ghost of Tsushima by December 31st, 2025 can unlock access to a selection of limited edition merchandise. These items have been designed to honor the spirit of Jin Sakai's journey and the dedication of fans who have walked the same path.

2:35:52Dustin Furman:Two commemorative Ghost of Tsushima rewards for pre-order purchase are available starting today for those who have earned those trophies with designs inspired by the island of Tsushima and Jin's legendary armor. Each piece was created with close input from Sucker Punch Productions to make sure they authentically capture the game's atmosphere and artistry. after earning the required trophies in game you can head straight to the ghost reward store at ghost rewards.playstation.com to secure your collectibles after signing into playstation ghost rewards are available to ship the players in the u.s canada australia europe and the united kingdom additional availability may be introduced at a later date um the commemorative pin is available only for those who have risen to the ultimate challenge and achieve the living legend platinum trophy and connect to the PSN and show that off by December 31st.

2:36:40Dustin Furman:It'll be$25 USD. And then the commemorative t-shirt is available only for players who have achieved the mono no aware, or it's probably a war a gold trophy in ghost of Tsushima. I'm sorry. I don't want to offend that because I know Dustin's a Japanese speaker and I don't want to offend them. Gold trophy in ghost of Tsushima with a connected PlayStation account by December 31st. The commemorative t-shirt is$30. This is just the start. They write ghost of Yotei rewards. will arrive later this year, giving players another opportunity to celebrate their accomplishments with unique merchandise. We'll share more details closer to launch.

2:37:12Dustin Furman:Dustin, what do you think?

2:37:14Colin Moriarty:I think this is awesome. And I don't understand why that you would hate on this. I guess, I don't know, you have to earn the ability to purchase something. I can understand on the surface level that maybe sounding a little gross, but it's totally optional. I think the pin is really cool and I can imagine them having a series of these pins for different platinums, different trophies, things like that. Kind of reminds me way back PlayStation 4. There were certain games. If you got the platinum, you would get emailed a code for a special theme. Bloodborne, I think, was one of them. Yeah, I have that Bloodborne one.

2:37:52Colin Moriarty:And I remember thinking that was really cool. A nice little bonus. Obviously, that's free. But Chris, I want to ask you, didn't Bungie do something kind of like this, where if you beat a raid you can unlock the ability to purchase yeah merchandise with your

2:38:07Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):like team name on it and stuff yeah they had things like that for um for certain i don't know if it was if you just beat the raid or if it was like if you if you cog would know more about this it's i've been so uh disconnected from destiny in recent years but i do i do believe that they do have stuff like that where it's like yeah if you beat the raid i think maybe within within the the first 24 hours or if you're you know the first however many people to beat it or i think maybe it was tied to world's first the race for uh world's first like you would unlock the ability basically to um to buy merchandise that really only your team had access to or really the only people who completed the raid in that amount of time had access to i think it's cool i think it's um i love this stuff and i know like like you said like on the face of it like the words that comprise the concept of like oh i have to unlock the ability to buy something i get that that's like that sounds lame but i i don't know i think it's i think it's cool to have like this kind of exclusive uh these things that are exclusive to get and the only way you can get them is actually by like playing the game and not necessarily by like um you know paying for the privilege i guess you know like the way that microtransactions work where it's like oh i don't want to play the game and have to unlock all these weapons let me just like spend 30 dollars and skip 30 levels it's kind of the opposite of that it's kind of like all right well yeah you can't get this thing there's no amount of money that you can pay for this you have to do the thing i think that's cool um i guess theoretically you could pay somebody to do it for you i guess but like that's kind of that's on you really at that point like um but i dig that stuff i think it's cool i want to see more of it i i don't know why anybody would have an issue with this yeah i don't um

2:39:52Dustin Furman:i don't i have the ghost of shima platinum trophy i don't really care about this stuff i don't want to buy this stuff but yeah i find it inoffensive and not something worth complaining about i i think it's cool that sony is trying to to their credit trying to do things like trying to you know playstation stars didn't really work out but they tried and it just seemed like people really weren't interested in it and they had the things like we said with bloodborne and the kind of the rewards programs that it's funny every once in a while you'll see people with old avatars on playstation network from the ps3 era where i don't know if you remember they were they were rolling out a beta where you were going to be like a pro level player, like a select level player or something.

2:40:27Dustin Furman:And they like engraved it into your icon and you can still use those icons. So like people still have those icons up from all those years, but like they've, they've tried a bunch of things. PlayStation plus was an experiment. Um, and that ended up working on and becoming a huge pillar to PlayStation and drives incredible amounts of revenue for them. So this isn't going to be a huge thing. This it's funny. This, this post was written by Katie Lennox, director, franchise rewards. This is a person that's focusing on that's paid good money to try to figure out how to circle people into these games, convince them to stick with the games.

2:41:01Dustin Furman:You don't want to get too sophisticated with it and maybe think too deeply about it, but it's even just the thing of if we can convince people to spend 10 more hours on Ghost of Tsushima and platinuming it to get this thing, yeah, we get a little bit of money, but that's just hours they're not spending on TikTok. Or you know on twitter or something it's just way doing it's just new ways to engage people and continue to try and i'm more i'm more surprised that people have a complaint about it because the ghost of tsushima platinum trophy is fairly trivial too so it's not like the bloodborne thing was much more difficult yeah and you got way less for it so it's uh so yeah i find this inoffensive there's nothing to be bummed about i'll be i'll be interested to see what they do with yote and if they do uh other stuff with other games coming up too because maybe there will be a game that i really care more about like if they did that with the last of us or something maybe that there would be some cool trotsky that you can buy i don't know so that exists if you're interested all right a couple more things here metal gear solid collection volume two this is interesting i just wanted to bring this up the twitter account metal gear network mgn which has 66 000 followers on Twitter and seems to be pretty well liked.

2:42:16Dustin Furman:They had this information and clarification. So let me back up. Metal Gear Solid or Metal Gear Volume 1 or whatever it was, the collection, Metal Gear Collection Volume 1. That came out a while ago and had everything up to, I guess, through MGS3, including like Metal Gear 1 and Metal Gear 2. You can buy some of this stuff a la carte as well. So they split it up into different packages. So those games are available, but people are really interested in what there would be. if collection volume one exists, then certainly there's a volume two. I mean, it's just implied. And they were asked about this.

2:42:44Dustin Furman:So there was a press conference at Tokyo Game Show where Konami was talking about things and they were taking questions from the audience. And what's interesting about this is that the questions weren't on the fly. Like they actually had them being asked in text, like on the screen behind them. So they vetted these questions. So they were prepared to talk about this stuff. And they were asked about Metal Gear Master Collection volume two. and they basically say that they're making it. So I know there's been some skepticism about this. I mean, this means that Metal Gear Solid 4 is eventually, maybe in the next couple of years, who knows, be playable somewhere outside of PlayStation 3, which would be pretty remarkable.

2:43:26Dustin Furman:So I didn't want to get too deep into this, but it is interesting to know that they have confirmed that they're working on it and that they need a little longer, I think they said in quotes before they're ready to talk about it. I would presume this would be what was peace Walker in the peace Walker was not in the collection volume one. Right. So no, no. So it would be peace Walker for or I mean, in order of release, it would be for peace Walker.

2:43:56Dustin Furman:What would it what would be after that? I guess. Ground Zero. Yeah, Ground Zero's mainline.

2:44:01Colin Moriarty:Right.

2:44:01Dustin Furman:Ground Zero's five.

2:44:03Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):That's a pretty robust collection. yeah that's a big that's a big package peace walker four ground zeros phantom pain what the hell was metal get why am i wrong was there a game called metal gear acid what the

2:44:16Dustin Furman:fuck was that was a psp game i think that was a psp launch game so a turn-based collectible card

2:44:24Colin Moriarty:tactical role-playing game yeah well there's a sequel too so yeah maybe the acid games would

2:44:30Dustin Furman:in there i i there's like a few like uh vr mission style things because they they also re-released all the metal gear games remember that that it's funny like we make fun of games being re-released but we didn't have a problem with it when the metal gear games just got re-released on the same platform with like just some new content we were like yeah this is sick so oh yeah like subsistence right exactly it was sub it was mgs2 substance and then mgs3 subsistence i think right was that was the two um i don't know if mgs1 i think got re-released released as well maybe not no i think that might just got into reprinting because it was so popular yeah and then four it might have just yeah good no i think twin snakes might might account for

2:45:11Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):that i guess like that like kind of like update or whatever even though it's a different obviously

2:45:14Dustin Furman:silicon so just wanted to throw that out there if in case you need more kojima in your life if you don't have enough we haven't talked about him enough today maybe maybe they'll put rising

2:45:26Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):or that'd be sick rising i want to play that i have it physically actually remember i bought it

2:45:30Dustin Furman:chris because it was so cheap i was like i should just buy it so what no well oh no no you're right that i'm sorry rising is the rising is is riding with the sword right that was uh yeah that was

2:45:42Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):team ninja right yeah it's a completely different team but like i mean i don't know i'm trying to think of like what you could pack into this no i think that that would be that would be oh no i'm

2:45:51Dustin Furman:thinking of and then there's metal yeah metal gear no that was platinum i'm sorry metal gear rising revengeance yeah it's platinum 2013 yeah that would i mean that would be interesting they could totally i mean that would be so in in order of release it would actually be for peace walker rising and then you get the ground zeros and phantom pain so that would be a very robust collection and if they split them up and release them a la carte that would be pretty sick it would be cool to see ground zeros and like five properly like you know brought together because i mean

2:46:26Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):that's that's clearly the intent that was clearly the intent at some point yeah i think konami was

2:46:31Dustin Furman:like i don't know the full story behind it but it seemed like konami was felt like they needed to release something it was taking a long time like every metal gear game was late it's just that things were getting worse and worse and worse i think and getting them out and i think they felt like they needed to get something out wasn't it only a few hours long i didn't play it yeah it

2:46:49Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):was like one it was one map but i remember it being fucking cool it was definitely one of those things where you you kind of you know what it was it was you know it was like a halo 3 odst type situation where it's just like yeah this is dlc basically and it's full priced but it's like it's kind of really good so like i don't know how to feel about it because i feel ripped off but i also don't was it weird price at launch it was it was it was more expensive than yeah like it wasn't like yeah i guess it wasn't full price but it was more than it was more than what people at the time would be used to paying for as much content as it was perceived that to be it was literally like one small it was just one base basically it was one base but there's there's

2:47:34Colin Moriarty:like a lot of missions there's a lot of like there's like one main mission and then there's a bunch of different types of missions i actually played ground zeros a little bit uh like a month ago because it's a lot easier to hop into ground zeros and play for a little bit as opposed to phantom pain which is like you really gotta you gotta commit to playing that game yeah it's cool i could i mean at 40 bucks when it came out i could understand why people i kind of remember that being like what is this 40 demo but it was more than that it's a it's it's that game's a lot

2:48:06Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):more dense than people give it credit for but it is it is certainly you know it's not as much as you would expect for 40 bucks even back then. All right.

2:48:16Dustin Furman:This is just confirmation of something I think we talked about last week, which was that Yakuza Kiwami 3 was being released. This is, of course, a remake of the original Yakuza 3 and follows the release of last decade of Yakuza Kiwami 1 and 2, which were remakes, ground up remakes of the PS2 original two Yakuza games. So this is indeed coming. It has some sort of expansion with it called Dark Ties. And then they confirmed a few other things. There will be native PS5 ports for Kiwami 1 and 2. Those are PS4 games right now. And there will also be a PS5 native port of Yakuza 0 Director's Cut. And there's a little bit of controversy around Yakuza 0 Director's Cut because there's no upgrade path and even the saves won't work between the consoles.

2:48:59Dustin Furman:So it seems like it's some sort of new package entirely. Any interest here? I mean, we talked about this pretty deeply last week, but I did want to confirm that that's a pretty big, big deal. and a lot of the Yakuza games coming over natively to PS5 just make it more and more appealing for me to like actually finally get into it we have like the full run of games here basically I mean I would be busy for for years probably with just those first two Yakuza games simply because I wouldn't want to play them all back to back so it's already stacking up yeah I do want

2:49:29Colin Moriarty:to do this at some point man and the fact that they'll have director's cut I guess I would have to buy it again. I can't remember when that director's cut. It's exclusively on Switch 2 right now. I'm wondering how different it is, but the fact that Kwame 1, 2, 0 and then they'll have 3 all on PS5. You're right that it is highly convenient then at that point.

2:49:53Dustin Furman:I'm going to be a little vague about this next one because I don't want to spoil the game because I want people to if they haven't played it to play it. I mean, it's so fucking good, but Mafia the Old Country, the fourth Mafia game. Obviously we highly recommend it. One of my favorite games of the year. Very easily. I saw a story from Push Square and I'm going to ignore, I'm going to not say who the actress or the actress is or the character is in the game just because I don't want people to be able to make any connections, but she was basically on a Twitch live stream and was asked about the game, talking about the game and she basically said that Hangar 13 was approved for a sequel.

2:50:25I

2:50:26Dustin Furman:say, I want to be vague because it's a character who would know, I guess I'll say, if you've played the game and that will that will make sense if you've played the game and know so it's a character that would be a firm to have you know maybe been told about this because they might participate in it and i want to be big about who the actor or the actress is because i just don't want you to know exactly who it is there's quite a few characters in the game uh but i just thought that was really exciting news um yeah she would know well deserved the game is awesome i think to take two i was saying i saw strauss on cnbc right when the game came out and he was saying that they were really happy with the release of the game it would be i think illegal for him to lie about that um publicly because there he has a fiduciary obligation as the ceo of a publicly traded company to give um good information so just wanted to throw that out there i i think mafia the old country was awesome and really excited for to see them continue the series in that style probably in empire bay or something i think you probably get a little closer to me now to the timeline of the original mafia game but we'll see yeah so i'm looking forward to that and then finally i just thought i'd throw this out here i don't know what you guys make of it ampere analysis released a statement or a study that shows that xbox players play more games than playstation or steam users but playstation players play more hours than xbox or steam users in august they say that the average PlayStation player played for 12.7 hours.

2:51:57Dustin Furman:The average Steam user played for 11.9 hours and the average Xbox user played for 7.7 hours, but that the average Xbox player played 5.7 games while the average PlayStation player played 3.7 games. So maybe not a huge surprise because the game pass and all the rest. But the reason I wanted to bring this up and I tweeted about it too, was I just thought it was so interesting how much this brings into focus, how unusual we are as consumers. And this just reiterates that. And I noted on Twitter that 12.7 hours, so that's the average PlayStation player in August. I do that in two to three days, every two to three days.

2:52:34Dustin Furman:So we're just so far disconnected from the average experience on the console. And we might be some sort of financial driver like whales in mobile gaming, but the reliance really is on those people that just circulate between those few games, play the games when they have time, life intercedes and stops them from playing more. Maybe they just don't want to play more. I just thought that was fascinating. People are not playing very much comparable to the way we play and the people who listen to the show. So I just wanted to throw that data out there. If you guys want to check it out, it's from Ampere Analysis and it's called, it is literally called Xbox users play more games than PlayStation or Steam users and it's by Luis Woldridge.

2:53:18Dustin Furman:Okay, let's get into what we're playing. I'll go first and get out of the way quickly. Alec Rock wrote in and said, What's up, Sacred Brothers? Colin, last week you mentioned that the Traveler and Kronos sound a lot like Selene from Returnal, although it's not the same voice actress. I completely agree, and I think Kronos was inspired heavily by Returnal beyond that, so much so that I can't believe I've hardly heard anyone mention it. The voice acting is extremely similar in tone and direction. That I absolutely agree with. Elements of the Traveler suit are very close to Selene's, the utility belt around the waist and thighs, gadgets on the arms, a shoulder-mounted light scanning device.

2:53:49Dustin Furman:Even story elements such as the traveler finding previous members of the collective those who paved the path reminded me so much of Selene finding her dead bodies from previous lives as she tried to progress further just some things I've noticed but maybe I'm delusional what what you do boys keep on keeping on I see some of the crossover there too I think there's a lot of different sorts of games in in Kronos I am so I'm on my new game plus playthrough on hard I am I don't know four fifths of the way through the game something like that at this point. I played it pretty late last night. That's one of the reasons why I'm so tired too.

2:54:22Dustin Furman:It's so good, guys. It's a really great game. And if you're a Dead Space fan, so I think it's most akin in some ways to Dead Space. I think it's visually similar. There's a lot of differentiation between the two. I think there's also a lot of other games that inspire this too um again i think it's very much like almost like a walking simulator in a way uh it's psychological horror as opposed to there's some grisly horror in it too but it's much more psychological it's really interesting and i think if you're a dead space fan dead space especially dead space remake is like the best this is better than the callisto protocol which i think was also a dead space like game that i liked i thought it was it was good and And what the shame, I mean, it's not a shame.

2:55:11Dustin Furman:You don't want to insult the game, but it's like the cluster protocol sold millions of copies. And this game is a game that very few people are paying attention to comparably. And I think that's a real shame. This is a really great game. And I'm really excited to to dive into a deep with Maddie. And that's going to be, as I said earlier in the show, the next Sacred Symbols Plus episode. So I'll leave my deeper conversation around Kronos to that. But Dustin, I wanted to ask you because you don't have it listed here, but you kind of fell off of it. So you're feeling differently than I am.

2:55:45Colin Moriarty:Yeah. Well, I don't dislike it. I got particularly frustrated the last time I played it. And I also, now that Silent Hill F is out, I was putting all my focus into that. I got frustrated because I was in a situation where I was pretty low on resources, whether it's healing bullets, like whatever. And there was this one part where there were so there was just continually enemy after enemy after enemy. And I got to this point where there was like one or two left. And then I was just completely out of everything. And I'm like, dude, I'm charging up my shots. I'm trying to get headshots. and so i started to like run away and so this the dude then part of the uh combat of this game is that the enemies can go in and slurp up the dead ones and become more powerful so i was running around trying to find resources and i'm like oh cool so i just now that i'm i've been i've been double punished because now the last enemy left is huge and i'm like what am i i don't know what supposed to do here eventually i did beat it i had to like load back to another save and then just like buy a bunch of items but i was like i hate being punished and then being punished on top of it in games for example dark souls 2 does that a lot where it's like every time you die you then have less health until you use a special item and i'm like dude i i hate that so it's i was uh you know skill issue potentially in this part of the game but i'm told there's a section of the game called the steelworks i'm told that after the steelworks is when it really gets your hooks in you from a story perspective and i found the story interesting so far and there's one particular thread that i find really fascinating but it's just a little slow so far what the games i mean

2:57:47Dustin Furman:this is not a spoiler i mean like the high level like what the game's about synopsis kind of thing is like you're you're called a traveler you don't even really know who you are and you're basically traveling through time to try to figure out the mystery around this heinous event in this polish

2:58:07Colin Moriarty:soviet town called new dawn right and they've like discovered something there that's like

2:58:14Dustin Furman:horrifying and you basically find evidence that other time travelers have been also coming to this place it's it's really fucking cool um and but it is slow and it has pacing issues but i really think it's because it's it's not you It's not like Resident Evil. It's much more scripted. And then there's like combat and there's places to explore. It's a little bit of Silent Hill. They were making a concurrent with a different team internally of Silent Hill and you could see like some of the influence. Silent Hill again much more puzzle oriented in my opinion. But I really really like it. And the economy is scarce.

2:58:54Dustin Furman:It's a very stingy economy. The game is actually far easier on hard in New Game Plus because you just carry all your stuff. shit over because once you have like full i use like the pistol you get basically two kinds of pistols two kinds of shotguns two kinds of um carbines or like you know rifles yeah and i have so i've kind of focused in on one of each of those and have them basically maxed out and i think all the enemies and on hard have twice as much health but like you're still just so powerful um and then you you absorb essences so the the game basically so your time travel this is the cool part of the game is that the reason your time traveling is to extract certain people and like get them out of this heinous situation and it's so strange and the new game plus has a secret ending which my assumption is will more closely tie into a potential sequel although I don't think the game is selling well enough to get a sequel but I hope so it seems like they're trying to build a small little universe here and I really, really like it.

3:00:02Dustin Furman:I hope people give it a chance. I know things are very busy out there. I know, for instance, Brad wants to play it, but there's no bandwidth. And so you're going to be attracted to what you're attracted to. I really like these kinds of games. So I'm into it. So if you like Dead Space, I would give it a go. I mean, there's even trams in it, just like Dead Space. Come on. And one of the things I think is funny too is, Dustin was saying this earlier, one of the major focuses of combat is like you have to burn bodies or yeah or they absorb each other or you just have to kill them quickly so that they don't absorb each other and then become like super powerful but there's a part in the game where it's like it's written in polish all the writings in polish which is cool and you put your like screen over and then it translates it for you and it's like burn the bodies with like an exclamation point and it reminded me of um it reminded me of dead space for the limbs yeah yeah like and isn't the story behind that that like they were like no one understood it so like they literally went in and wrote it in blood on the walls like this is the fucking limbs

3:00:59Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):asshole that's exactly why i i don't know man whenever i see white paint on a ladder like i get it but like i get the frustration i i guess but ultimately like i'm just ultimately i become okay with it because i remember that i remember that story about like people just not understanding

3:01:21Dustin Furman:well yeah people people use the insult like even when i'm playing they're like colin's a yellow paint gamer and i'm like yeah i don't want to run around like an asshole like just you don't have to i always think about the beginning of the last of us in the in the modern or like you know the when before everything goes off and he's like carrying sarah or whatever and he has to like run into this like field and there's like a light beaming down on where you're supposed to go and like flittering yellow flags and like it's so obvious like that they were like in in testing people were not seeing where they were supposed to go and i don't think it needs to be that loud but i don't mind like an indication of where i'm supposed to go like what is the big deal i don't want to just walk around like it actually i was saying in one of the games recently kind of ruins the immersion if you're like going and then you're like what am i supposed to do next and yeah there's and then i'm like walking backwards and like it doesn't make any it's just stupid i think the main

3:02:08Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):thing that people fail to account for in that is that like they compare it to older games where things that were interactable or the places that you could go were a lot more obvious because there wasn't as much detail it's it's kind of like how like you ever watch old cartoons or even even new cartoons i think to some extent i wouldn't know necessarily i don't watch that much new stuff but i remember growing up it was always funny because it was obvious like if if there was like a scene like let's say like it's like a bookshelf and it's like a painted bookshelf but one of the books is clearly going to be animated and you know immediately ahead of time it's like different color yeah yeah because it's it looks like it's on a cell and so it's like oh that's clearly gonna move older video games have that kind of readability where it's just like oh that's a ladder and it's clearly where i'm supposed to go whereas like now it's like i don't know mafia the old country or something like that where it's like there's so much detail everywhere it's it's just inherently less obvious so like you have to make up for that in the same way you don't you can't just make it stick out like it used to um and that's the way to do it i think there's better ways to do it obviously but like i mean i don't know i don't it's a weird contention that i think

3:03:12Dustin Furman:people have um so anyway chronos i recommend it but check out your reviews i don't i don't know how it's being reviewed um and then i picked up puzzle quest immortal edition i just feel like this is a it's proven to be it's just a great football companion when i'm you know dicking around watching football or whatever again i was gonna buy trails the trails remake but i just feel like I want to pay more attention to that. This is a much more turn based glacial game. I didn't play a puzzle quest very much. Originally, it was not very PlayStation centric at first, and I was reading more about it.

3:03:47Dustin Furman:And there's like a bunch of them. There's a puzzle quest three. And there's like a sci fi puzzle quest, and there's a Marvel puzzle quest. And it's just a match three game with like role playing mechanics so that you're using it towards fighting an enemy or going towards a goal. It's pretty cool. I know it was inspired,

3:04:04Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):I think by Peggle and yeah, you can obviously see that and that's cool.

3:04:08Dustin Furman:Peggle is a classic game, so nothing wrong with that. Um, and yeah, I think that that's, that's about all I have to really say. So yeah, that's just a game that I'm just kind of enjoying that on the side. It's nothing to write home about, but it was cheap. It's actually only, I think 1149 if you have PS plus. So very appropriate because it's a pretty meaty game. It's puzzle quest is what 15, 16, 17 years old, something like that. And I think they've added a shit ton of stuff to it and like, kind of sharpen the graphics and all the rest. And then before I move on, Mike Moran wrote in and said, Hey folks, listening to last week's episode, I was surprised to not hear final fantasy tactics as, as being a game con looks forward to playing oversight.

3:04:48Dustin Furman:Maybe I hope so. My question for all of you, what game or games are you most looking forward to playing before the end of the year? It doesn't have to be a new release, maybe an old gem or a personal favorite. Be well, gentlemen. Well, I won't hold you guys to answering this, but I do want to say final fantasy tactics. Yeah. I'm really excited about it. we just saw it at the state of play actually they showed it again but um when am i gonna find like when like i just i'm definitely gonna play it i just there's just so much on the list like i'm not gonna be able to play silent hill we're gonna talk about that in a minute until a little bit later i gotta go backwards and pick up some stuff like i never really got the shinobi i think i'm gonna try hell is us there's there's i never got to that game the alters oh yeah i had that one installed for a while and I just never got around to it so there's just a few things I'm missing so yeah like I'm dude I love Final Fantasy Tactics and I'm thrilled to see it's getting awesome reviews I mean of course it is it's not only reaching people that have played it before and loved it before on PS1 and PSP but it's reaching a whole new generation I mean that's what I'm really excited about are people that don't get that this is the cream of the crop it really truly actually is the cream of the crop and so yeah I'm excited about it I've also beaten it many times it's not like something I need.

3:06:02Dustin Furman:If it was a new Final Fantasy Tactics game, like Final Fantasy Tactics 4, I guess it would be at this point, because of the advance and advance two games, it's like, yeah, I would drop everything for that. But I know Final Fantasy Tactics. So it's cool that it's available. I'll get to it. Not an oversight so much as so as just being completely overwhelmed because unlike the where are the games crowd, I see games everywhere I look. When I close my eyes, when I look in the cupboard, when I go for a walk with the dogs just games everywhere dustin silent hill f you got the early access you got got

3:06:38Colin Moriarty:i got got uh well particularly i i did it because i wanted to make a video about the game and i wanted the early jump start um but yeah silent hill f it's finally here i was pretty excited about this one it's very unique silent hill game of course last year we got silent hill 2 remake, which is much safer, I guess. At the time, it didn't feel safe just because of Bloober Team making it, but it ended up turning out great. This Silent Hill game, though, is very different for the series. It takes place in 1960s Japan. You play as a Japanese schoolgirl that finds herself in the fog of Silent Hill.

3:07:21Colin Moriarty:And so far, I'm really liking it. It's really cool. It's different. I like that this game has more of a combat focus than other Silent Hill games. I think some people won't like that about it. I'm playing on hard because at the beginning of the game, it asks you if you want to like the difficulty options and there's story and then there's hard. Like, well, I don't know what the, you know, should I do story? I think story is like the normal mode and, uh, hard is like, you know, the hard mode, but anyway, I just, I just go for hard, you know? So, and, uh, it's interesting. I, I saw, I can't remember what outlet it was, but I watched a preview about it and they can said it was kind of souls like, and while I don't agree with that, I understand the thought behind it.

3:08:16Colin Moriarty:There's a lot of dodging. There's a lot of perfect dodges. there's like a counter attack move that you have to get your timing right on but god expand your

3:08:25Dustin Furman:vocabulary with the soul shit with all these people it's like come on man yeah yeah it's

3:08:30Colin Moriarty:i wouldn't call it souls like but if in particular some of these bosses i got the feeling of fighting a souls boss because i you really have to learn the the moves the timings and if you fuck it up you are dead like really fast on hard mode um there's breakable weapons in it as well

3:08:54Dustin Furman:and i hate that i i don't like weapon destruction i don't like weapon destruction uh lets you carry

3:09:00Colin Moriarty:it at least so far for me i can carry three weapons at once and you also can get items that heal like that um fix your weapons so i of the toughness of the game having a broken weapon has not been one of them. I've always had pretty much three weapons at all times. And the hard part for me, much like Kronos, actually, is just that I'm running out of healing items regularly. But it seems to be putting them out at a good pace. And this has all the core tenets of a great Silent Hill game. It's got great music that's very unsettling. It's got really creepy monsters in it. doesn't rely too much on jump scares.

3:09:46Colin Moriarty:The story is a little bit. I mean, you play as a Japanese school girl, so you're dealing with the psychological problems. Yeah, exactly. So you're dealing with those kinds of problems, but in a very Silent Hill esque way.

3:10:03Dustin Furman:So interesting.

3:10:04Colin Moriarty:So far, I'm looking forward to it. Pretty good. Pretty good. I like it.

3:10:09Dustin Furman:Cool, man. I'm really excited. Konami, man. the one thing they got to do because i was realizing this was silent hill 2 i think remake and then with metal gear is they got to go back to the old logo that red konami logo sucks and it's always sucked and they got to go they have to where is their wisdom to go like we're going back to the heyday we're bringing the orange and red logo that much cleaner logo back enough with this glaring oppressive red it's like oh what are we doing they should maybe that's Lords of Shadow Konami

3:10:45Colin Moriarty:yeah with Konami being such a broader company in Japan specifically since they have like gambling and fitness centers and stuff like that they should just have something called Konami games and then bring back that logo yeah it's kind of its own separate branding from the rest of Konami

3:11:04Dustin Furman:because I remember when they rebranded which was around the latter Castlevania games I think on DS it was like i didn't hate it because it was clean it was like part of that like oughts clean revision of graphics things becoming simpler and stuff and i was like but now it's like yeah that's enough already you know we get it go back it's time like embrace i'm so excited for them because i just think that things are just going better for them and they're they're obviously getting hungrier i think a lot of the stuff they were doing like when they brought symphony of the night to ps4 or they started releasing kind of quietly these really high quality collections i i think they were just seeing and getting comfortable and now i think that things are really moving and i'm just so excited like there's got to be something about castlevania man like come on you gave the universe gave chris deus x remaster chris didn't even like deus x until 10 days ago that's very true you know it's like what is this it's just like the the the fates

3:12:06Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):are so cruel and unfair well you could you could see that as like i mean i feel like dustin's complained about this before where like uh he'll he'll buy um like a like a game like an old game that's only available there and then like a week later it'll be available on ps plus or whatever yeah yeah he's got that way too where it's just like you could look at it as like i played an inferior version of deus ex because i waited so long and then like two months later they have like a perfect you know uh modernized recreation of it i don't know that's that's very like uh in the in the eye of the beholder kind of thing with the deus ex thing but all right chris well let's stick

3:12:45Dustin Furman:with you and i promised earlier that i would get into one of the six questions comments concerns thoughts and ideas because i didn't realize you were playing baby steps yeah i forgot to add it

3:12:53Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):i forgot to add it before because i did it way late last night but yeah it's all good squint

3:12:59Dustin Furman:Eastwood wrote in because a few people wrote in. So I wanted to acknowledge that this is something people want to talk about. Sup, Mooks? This one is directed mostly towards Chris and Dustin. So Chris, specifically, have any of you checked out Baby Steps? This has got to be one of the weirdest games I've ever played, but there's an undeniable charm buried in this laugh out loud, funny, incredibly frustrating and insanely surrealist physics game. While the gameplay is an exercise in patience and precision, the missteps are always hilarious and the dialogue is some of the funniest I've heard since the South Park games.

3:13:27Dustin Furman:Would love to hear if there's any interest from the sacred crew and as always keep up the great work so it seems here chris that

3:13:31Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):you are playing so take it away yeah so i want to be clear about it i i played the there's a trial that's available for four baby steps and i was like i was i figured oh i might as well try the trial and you know see what it is it's an hour long uh figured i'd knock that out before i went to bed last night and i would make a determine on whether a determination on whether or not i would play it further i think i'm gonna play it on steam though because it seems like a good stream game uh but i played for an hour um and yeah man it's it's i like it more than i thought i would for sure because when i first played it or when i first saw it i thought like okay this is yeah it's a good stream game it's a it's a little quirky and weird but is it weird for the sake of being weird like i don't like is that going to get old and i suspect that like maybe but there's more here to it than i initially thought like there is something like it's way more open than i thought um it's you have a lot more agency than i thought you would um there is a clumsiness to the controls that is that becomes really satisfying to get good at like Once you figure out how to time certain things and what surfaces are...

3:14:55Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):It actually feels like a step... And I think there was an interview about it with the guy who made it where he talked about Death Stranding being a huge influence on him where it feels like Death Stranding thrown to its absolute most absurdist level of focus and how much that game would demand of the player if it really... like if it really was like no this is a walking simulator now because we've talked about like that stranding before and how like oh it's it's one of the few true walking simulators in the sense that like you actually have to pay attention to like where you're stepping and you know you actually have to pay attention to the terrain and it is all about walking this takes it a step further where it's like no like literally every step is like mega important like not just every couple steps where you're gonna have to focus on the terrain changing like every single step is either a hazard or like an opportunity to gain momentum into a into a into a lot more progress and it's it is very engaging it's it's weirdly serene it's very indie like you can definitely feel the edges on it it's it's like slightly rough not so rough that it makes it unplayable I mean the whole game is absurd but you can feel like the edges on it where it's just like yeah they made something kind of interesting here and even just hearing the uh the voice of uh Bennett Foddy the guy from who has all of the the condescending lines and getting over it oh it was funny because I was like oh I remember you I hate you like I've grown to hate you when I hear you but it works it works totally it totally works for the for the characters that he plays and i don't know how the comedy lands for me like it's a it's i like it but i don't know if it's good and i don't know i don't know if it's necessarily funny but there it's it's funny that this is what it is that's like the best way that i could say like it's it's funny that this was written this way and it's funny that it was executed this way and it's funny that this is in a PlayStation game that was at a state of play and it's funny that this was like given as much time to cook and as much shine as it was but I don't I don't know yet I'm only I'm pretty early on and I and I I fucked up I think 45 minutes in to my one hour demo and I careened all the way to the beginning and I was like ah fuck okay uh that's that's the end of that I'll figure it out later but I am gonna I think I am gonna buy it I'm gonna play more I'm interested to see like what the rest of this game is because it is i don't know i i like if for no other reason than i just like comedy games and i feel like we don't get that really ever like i remember really appreciating although these weren't great games or whatever but like i remember really appreciating like matt hazard uh like eat lead and like um death spank and uh getting over it and the Stanley parable things that are like unapologetically like comedy is kind of the focus of it and the absurdity of like what you're doing is is the hook and I like that stuff I think it's creative I think Bennett Foddy is an interesting dude who just makes really bizarre really bizarre shit so yeah I think I'm gonna get it and I'll probably stream it but it's good it's better than I thought it would be and it can it's a lot less frustrating than i thought it would be too like i thought for sure this would be like it would be so frustrating that it would be like oh why would i fucking put myself through that but it actually is like um i don't know it's fairly it's a lot more forgiving than what you would assume because there were points where like i i slipped on like stairs where i was like oh my god i'm gonna careen all the way to the beginning and you don't really like you slide a little bit and then you're back on your feet it feels like it feels like they have a good balance of like exactly how frustrating to make it so as to not feel like it's pushing you completely away from the premise um so yeah i'm gonna put more time into it it's cool and weird and playing ball yeah i'm i'm trying man i'm as borderlands 4 is very good but man like so they recommend at this point that the game starts because there's a memory leak the game starts running really poorly after 30 minutes of play time so i've gotten into this habit of playing borderlands 4 for like about 20 minutes getting really into it and then 20 more minutes pass and then i realize that it's fucked or it's it's starting to get fucked and then i just kind of i put it down and i move on to something i just continue my day because i'm like oh maybe it's good that i i limit my play time or whatever but as a result of that i'm not i'm consistently like cutting myself off from getting really into it and getting into a flow like i can't it's not a game that i can play and lose myself in for like five hours because the game the game lets me know that i've been playing for 40 minutes by like just chugging after a certain point it's just like man this is such a bomber dude and on top of like the other things that i think were that not a problem would be a lot more forgiving like i i really just do think the ui is like a major step down i think um and not from borderlands 3 in the sense of like borderlands 3 was worse in this because it it literally chugged like the the ui just never ran at a proper frame rate um this i think is just poorly laid out i i think it's it's more generic than traditional borderlands i feel like going through inventory is a lot more cumbersome and maybe that's to do with the fact that it is suffering from this memory leak issue that just makes that stand out to me all the all that all that much more but i don't know it's it's just borderlands is kind of a bummer because i just know it's so i know it's good and it's just not optimized it's a real it's a real fucking

3:21:14Dustin Furman:shame uh but i'm i just don't understand how they they released it like that it really is crazy

3:21:20Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):how do they not know that there's a patch it looks like um but it looks like i i ran out of space so it said like not enough not enough disk space the update failed so i gotta like i gotta delete some stuff so maybe that fixes it i i really don't know but it really is uh it's a bummer it's a bummer because as as of right now the game's guys is not exaggerating as of right now this game's crashed 27 times for me and it's just like brother it's a high quality welcome that is so crazy that is so crazy and um mike has been playing it on xbox um and i just don't think she sees

3:22:01Colin Moriarty:the technical things to be honest yeah i mean god bless i say does she play them more than 30 minutes at a time i think so i think she's also playing on like her like portable computer whatever

3:22:13Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):i think it runs better on um console technically because it's like i think there's like a limited field of view so that kind of helps so i think like on pc the memory leak begins earlier like whereas like i think in on console i think you can play it for a little bit longer before it

3:22:28Dustin Furman:like really starts to set in yeah i saw like two hours or something um i just don't understand how that happened that's the that's the confusing part is like oh we we built this game spent all this money on it we tested the shit out of it we had qa testers playing it constantly like you

3:22:41Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):didn't know come on man yeah i'm just not really i'm really bummed about it because like again it's it would be one thing if the game sucked and then i could just kind of put it down and like not care but it is genuinely good so like that's like a tragedy in and of itself so i'm still I'm still playing through it I'm gonna try and finish it but like I don't know it's getting frustrating um hopefully this patch fixes it and I've also been playing uh uh just kind of in my off time I'm still I'm still I didn't write it down here because it's just whatever but I'm still going through Metal Gear Solid Delta I'm still trying to do my no kill run I've just kind of dedicated you know a couple of loading screens basically a night to just getting all the collectibles and just going through it I just reached the uh the bunker where you after the ladder oh that's the long climb the long climb so uh i'm on my way with that but i've also because i want to i want to get more i want more stealth i'm playing the hitman world of assassination or whatever which somebody somebody dm'd me i'm like that's they were like that's really insensitive you to be playing this right now i swear to god that's not i swear to god that's not like an intentional thing but it's uh i forget how good those games are man like i got really sucked into it like over the over the last couple days for whatever like every night i'm kind of going through like and doing a mission like a different way i'm actually engaging more deeply with it whereas like i think normally i would go through one level once and i would go through like one story but like there's so many different avenues in every single hitman level where it's just like there's so many ways to do it and I'm really obsessed about getting like perfect stars and like not alerting anybody and doing all this stuff I think it's probably because I'm doing that in Metal Gear right now that it's kind of awakened that in me a little bit so I'm going through that but that's really that's really about it so it's a lot I guess but that is a lot

3:24:38Dustin Furman:yeah yeah everyone's staying busy that's good yeah I'm gonna move on to once I wrap up Kronos which I hope to do I have to do tonight because we have to do the the show tomorrow from when we're recording. I think, yeah, I'll go into Tsushima and then Yote. So that's going to be what's busy, keeping me busy. And then I think things will clear up a little bit from there. I mean, there, there are odds and ends coming up, but then I can start getting back to some of the things that I missed. I think I probably go back to silent Hill after that. Cause I am looking forward to that. All right. That's what we're playing.

3:25:05Dustin Furman:Let's move on to the listener inquiries. We, as I said earlier in the show, and again, when we were doing our, what we were playing, we typically do six questions, comments, concerns, thoughts, and ideas from Patreon, patreon.com slash last day media there will be five here however because we took squint eastwood's inquiry earlier when we're talking about baby steps so it would have been redundant to keep it here so let's begin with tyler kidder and remember you can submit your inquiries over on patreon patreon.com slash last day media for the various shows in the news feed use the various threads the threads are deleted when we're done with them so they're not up for very long ours for sacred go up wednesdays and are deleted thursdays so keep an eye out tyler says what's up boys almost a year since the PS5 Pro release, how are we feeling?

3:25:45Dustin Furman:Watching Dusty Boy's new YouTube video brought up some good points in how the Pro hasn't been able to live up to what made the PS4 Pro such an upgrade to the original PS4. At$750, these issues are unacceptable. The gaming industry is so used to buying products that don't work or broken or have issues that shouldn't be there. Do you think these issues will cause concern or make people more wary to purchase the PS6 at whatever astronomical price it will definitely be? I do want to note that Moore's Law and others keep insisting that everything we know about the PS6 indicates that it's going to somehow be cheaper.

3:26:12Dustin Furman:Again, it's beyond my understanding of how that's all possible. But I saw your video, Dustin. We talked about it a little bit when we were streaming State of Play. It's doing very well. You caught some of the algo, some of that stream of consciousness.

3:26:26Colin Moriarty:Yeah.

3:26:27Dustin Furman:So what are your thoughts here on PlayStation 5 Pro? And we'll obviously get Chris on the record to all three of us have them. I think all three of us got it day one, right? Yeah.

3:26:36Colin Moriarty:Well, a little bit after for me, because I got the anniversary.

3:26:39Dustin Furman:Oh, right, right. So, all right, so talk to me. What are the problems here?

3:26:43Colin Moriarty:Yeah, well, the point of my video is just that there has been numerous examples of games coming out and big profile games coming out and having significant problems on the pro. And the most recent example is Silent Hill F. And you can see in the beginning, particularly Digital Foundry laid this out the PSSR upscaling not a very good implementation where you can see like particularly in like the clusters of grass at the beginning of the game that it is like pulsing in and out like this weird fuzziness to it and Colin I believe you also noticed in Silent Hill 2 remake initially the PSSR implementation

3:27:31Dustin Furman:it was a mess that's why I didn't play it at the time and waited because it was just a disaster yeah and these two games are not the

3:27:39Colin Moriarty:only examples of games coming out that are subpar on playstation 5 pro uh the update for jedi fallen order was bad the avatar game had problems and another big konami one was the Metal Gear Solid Delta, which ran at a higher resolution, but the frame rate was lower. So there's consistently just been high profile games that have these issues. And seeing the comments on my video has been interesting because there's things that I wish I would have pointed out in the video that I guess this is a great chance I can point them out now. there's some feedback that's like well these things don't most people aren't going to notice these things this is like the the digital foundry vacation of gaming now where people are zooming in

3:28:36Dustin Furman:on stuff and it's annoying i hate i don't blame them but i just i just hate that that's what's

3:28:40Colin Moriarty:what it's come to i i get that my thing with the playstation 5 pro is that this is now a 750 dollar console and it is designed for the people that care it is designed for the people that will notice if weird shit's going on in the image they bought the console they and most of them i would assume most of them i guess i don't know that for sure uh this is their second playstation five so they already had a console to play games on they spent 700 or now 750 games to run games at a higher fidelity, whether that's resolution, frame rate, or whatever. And in many cases now, they are not getting overall a superior experience.

3:29:28Colin Moriarty:And there's other games too. Borderlands 4 does not have PS5 Pro support. To be fair, it does run better on PlayStation 5 Pro just because of the raw GPU, but it doesn't have PS5 Pro support. And obviously that game has a litany of other issues that we just talked about. but it's uh it's disappointing and to be fair to the playstation 5 pro there have been many examples of fantastic games particularly sony first party and it makes sense it's their hardware they would have the most direct access to assistance whether it's from sony proper uh you know on on how to do this stuff so it's just the thing that annoys me is that i'm now at the point when a game comes out and it's like it's particularly if it's third party and especially if it's unreal 5 it's like man is uh is my ps5 pro is it gonna have something weird with it you know the fact that for silent hill f initially i was like should i my ps5 my old ps5 is up here in my office i'm like do i bring this downstairs and and play with that instead silent lf though overall it's mostly the beginning area that has the noticeable pssr issues so it's not that bad but the fact that that was a question for me uh from a 700 upgrade sure it's just like i feel like sony should do something there should be some kind of quality check for these games.

3:31:03Colin Moriarty:And I know they're not the ones designing. It's not their fault that PSSR hasn't been properly implemented or maybe shouldn't have been implemented at all. But regardless of if it's their fault, it reflects on their console that they're selling and that they sold with a certain ideal or promise of what you would get out of it.

3:31:23Dustin Furman:Yeah, it sounds like the blame, it would be similar to, I think, Epic and them being like you know tim sweeney being like they're just not doing it right you know that might be true but you can't say it you know you got to do more maybe they probably have to dispatch people to these various studios to at least for the bigger games to figure out these problems um yeah and it's funny we knew ps5 pro was coming forever because the documentation was out there forever people were being instructed on ps5 pro long long long before it was announced I mean, that's how we knew. And why it was, I remember that time when people like, everyone's like, it's not being announced.

3:31:59Dustin Furman:It's not real. It's like, dude, it's real. People have been talking about this thing behind the scenes forever. It's just so funny to me that they're not quite where they need to be. Because it seems like Sony, to their credits, gave them a heads up. But there's a level of dynamism, I guess, to that particular PSSR stuff specifically that requires a special touch. Chris, where are you on PS5 Pro and the various problems for it? Because from my perspective, like, I don't recommend it or not recommend it. I bought one, but I I'm too much of a layman to really be able to tell you what the problems are with it.

3:32:28Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):Well, I mean, look, I it's my default machine. I have my PS five in my room still. I think I've been meaning to like sell it because I don't know. There's no real reason for me to have two. But I am. I will say that, like, based on what I associate. My assumption of what a pro console would do is not necessarily what i'm getting like when i when i play metal gear solid delta um and i understand that like yeah it's not bothering me that this isn't running perfectly because it's a stealth game it's a slower game like i get it the fact that it's even something to consider given the fact that i just upgraded this machine quite recently and it's still like oh hey this is a game that's like running at like in a way that i would expect a base ps5 to run it um granted again this is individual games you know doing their own having their own issues engines having their own issues like whatever um and it could very well be just it's it just the perfect storm of like okay yeah like this new upgraded machine is available at a time where the most predominant engine also happens to be the most you know faulty and you know porous and so like you're just kind of getting this conflicting feeling of like i just spent a lot of money and now i'm running games that feel kind of worse it might not be either of their faults by themselves but like the fact that that's happening at the same time does not help and it just kind of exacerbates the feeling of just like oh yeah maybe i shouldn't have bought this thing um and i I don't know if I could really blame somebody for feeling that way.

3:34:12Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):Given, you know, what we have, like, I just know intrinsically that the machine is running certain things better than my old machine is than my old machine would. I don't know in what ways. I don't know how drastically, but I know that that's happening under the surface elsewhere and like in other things that I'm not noticing. So for me, it's easy for me to be like, maybe it's maybe it is worth it. Like I don't mind necessarily having the few issues that I have on the PS5 Pro because I would imagine that I would just be having those end more on the old machine. But there is something to be said about spending 700 plus dollars on a machine that still ultimately suffers from the things that you would presumably buy a new machine to alleviate yourself from.

3:34:58Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):I do think there is a case to be made of just like, yeah, this isn't really the most enticing piece of hardware. given what is expected of like a pro model of anything like I think about it like as if like if I bought a MacBook Air and then I and then I went to get a MacBook Pro and just that delineation you know what I mean of just have if a MacBook Pro functioned as as much better than a MacBook Air as the Pro works as the PS5 Pro works for like a PS5 I would be like wow what a this was not worth buying this computer you know um and maybe that's their mistake for using the pro label but like i mean that's you know that's what you do um i just think that label kind of comes with certain expectations of like a vast vast improvement in power that isn't just a next generation um console or maybe just short of it uh and i do feel like we kind of got that with the ps4 pro i do remember getting the ps4 pro and being like there's something there like it looks crazy like certain things at the time uh were somewhat night and day um but yeah i'm not really feeling that this time yeah i don't think it's um

3:36:19Colin Moriarty:i don't think it's necessarily anything wrong with the ps5 pro itself like the hardware even PSSR I think we're about to see with Ghost of Yote something awesome on PlayStation 5 Pro the digital foundry video is showing off they have a ray tracing performance mode and it looks really really good on Pro and just simply you won't be able to have that experience on base PS5 so the hardware is capable it's just the implementations from third parties is just all over the place, which leads it to having a mixed experience overall.

3:36:58Dustin Furman:Well, go check out Dustin's video on his individual YouTube channel. He gets into it. The channel is called Dustin Furman. That's what people do nowadays. Yeah, that's fine. I'm not judging you. Yeah. I don't know shit about YouTube. I've been on YouTube for like all these years and still don't even have 100 ,000 subscribers. Come on, man.

3:37:23Colin Moriarty:Come on, man. We need a plaque.

3:37:26Dustin Furman:Yeah, that would be fun. Yeah, that would be fun. All right. The next one here. A lot of people wrote in about this. So the first two or three, I'm like, all right, I don't really want to talk about this. And then I just saw that so many people were writing in about it that I put it in here and I put a thing in the discord last night for you guys to watch the trailer.

3:37:44Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):Yeah.

3:37:44Dustin Furman:White Tom Sweeney wrote in and said, hello, CDC. I need some confirmation bias from you three. Over the past week, the game Ananta, which is a PlayStation console exclusive free to play, not gotcha game, revealed two different gameplay videos in which they blatantly copy Spider-Man, GTA 5 and 6, Watch Dogs and even Uncharted. Not even just inspiration, literal shot for shot, bar for bar. The issue I have is that no one is calling them out. No one in the comments section, not even Reddit. They all just say, well, I can't believe it looks so good and stuff like that. I'm sorry for the long write in and I just feel like I'm in the Truman Show scenario and no one notices the blatant copying going on.

3:38:18Dustin Furman:Anyway, have a great rest of your weekend. Don't get divorced, Colin. We'll see. So I went and watched this trailer. There's a gameplay trailer. First of all, this trailer was published via TGS two days ago and already has 2.2 million views on PlayStation's YouTube channel. For instance, Saros, I think, is that 500 ,000 or 600 ,000 or something like that? So this is drawing a lot of interest. That is 160 ,000 likes. And the one thing I will say, White Tom Sweeney, that I disagree with you is that all of the comments are talking about this. that it seems like it's like one of the comments is I can't believe they made the sequel to every video game.

3:38:58Dustin Furman:And then another one says GTA five, Spider-Man watchdogs and sleeping dogs all mixed into one. Yes. Grand watches, endless spider for sleeping row is another one, which is a great comment. And then one of them says, finally, we have it the game. So what do you guys think? Dustin, you have anything you want to say about Ananta? You guys can go check it out. An A.N.A. NTA is the name of the game. A-N-A-N-T-A gameplay trailer, PS5 games on PlayStation's YouTube channel. And it does seem to have a lot of everything. It's a very chaotic, very robust game that people, a lot of people wrote in about.

3:39:36Dustin Furman:So let's acknowledge it.

3:39:38Colin Moriarty:So, yeah, this is for anyone who hasn't seen this game, to be clear, it is very anime. It's got a girl with a cattail. Not sure about that, but it is true. There are so many different elements of games. And I think what's maybe particularly weird is the implementation of these elements from different games are very direct. In the trailer for you guys, I'm at three minutes and three seconds-ish. It shows like directly beat for beat the character swap mechanic from GTA V, where it brings up a little HUD where you can see the characters' faces. it zooms out zooms to a different part of the map and then you're suddenly like in a car or something as that character and the other egregious one I mean there are many egregious ones but is the Spider-Man swinging mechanics yeah doesn't make any sense

3:40:31Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):the animations are completely the animations are completely ripped

3:40:35Colin Moriarty:by the way right that's I think the problem that I have with it is it's like cool so if you want to have web swinging if you want to do these other things cool but this almost looks like like I traced I traced the picture I traced the animation or it handles exactly the same way it's certainly impressive that they're putting all of these elements together under one game and I think that's what is drawing people to it I certainly if it's free to play like I want to see this game maybe I don't know is that unethical I don't think it's unethical I will say it looks

3:41:12Dustin Furman:extremely high quality in my opinion like just from a like it's it's it's expensive like they spent money and time on this it's certainly derivative derivative in a lot of different ways no doubt but i'm surprised by like this game just this is like a fairly expensive game it looks

3:41:28Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):like which is interesting there's a scene in in uh i mean the whole game's gta basically but there's in the trailer at three minutes and 33 seconds it's exactly the gta the franklin chase yeah exactly like it's where they're dangling from the dude it's it is nuts how my issue really is the stolen beat for beat animation so like i i don't i don't think i can like in fact the idea of like throwing all these gameplay mechanics into one game is actually like it's actually fucking cool um like it looks really part of me also feels like a lot of this is fake but like i don't know i don't know how to feel about it like this feels almost too high quality to be

3:42:11Dustin Furman:real and also but also a gameplay trailer i mean i hope they're telling the truth but yeah i mean i don't know and i don't know anymore man there's something there's something interesting about the graphical like the the world is not realistic because it's like colored strangely it's like a little bit of cell shading or something in it but the the characters pop a lot in the world like they don't look like they belong in the world and i actually think that that's kind of cool

3:42:36Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):yeah i like i like aspects of the art design actually even though it is like very heavy anime i just feel like i don't know man it's it's really the stolen animations that bother me

3:42:47Colin Moriarty:because i'm just like just just make your own animation at 6 36 you can see like the clearly like the grapple spider-man move and then the launch afterwards yeah it's like dude it's exact

3:43:04Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):It's the exact animation.

3:43:05Dustin Furman:Yeah, and it's fun. It is fun. And what I think is funny about this is I was noted in the letter. This is a console exclusive. So Sony knows this is what not that they can really do anything about it, I guess. But it's like they don't seem to give a shit. This is this is something that's on their own PlayStation channel, YouTube channel. It's not like some other things we've seen in the past where we were a little more befuddled by it. This is not getting by anyone. So we'll see. It's not like a light of motor room or something like that, where it's like, Jesus Christ.

3:43:34Colin Moriarty:um they had a white tom sweeney he said it's not it's a free-to-play not gotcha game i feel like this this i mean with all the characters i would assume that you'd be buying characters in the free-to-play model yeah maybe i guess maybe they're not random i'll see if i can find a i'm curious what their monetization will be but i mean this knowing how people have Overreacted to so egregious Genshin impact and the amount of money spent. I mean, this game PlayStation wants it as a exclusive because. Potentially could make a lot of money.

3:44:09Dustin Furman:So it's a net ease game that the developer is called Naked Rain. I found a press release from last December. It was originally revealed at Gamescom 2023, I guess, a free to play RPG set in the vast open world of Nova City. the highly anticipated game invites players to immerse themselves in a vibrant anime style world where the unexpected is the norm and having fun is the ultimate goal in ananta players take on the role of elite agents within the acd anti-chaos directorate embarking on an exhilarating adventure through a world that breaks all the rules um you're breaking rules not much yeah yeah I would say I would say so net ease and a naked rain there in China and Canada the studio spearheads major storyline production artistic creation blah blah so I think this game I wonder I mean like the the uh the me oh me ho me yo ho stuff is like so ridiculously big that yeah I think everyone's gonna be chasing that to me though this game is I don't want to use the like I don't want to say it's schizophrenic it's it's like brain rot it's like what is it it's brain rot the game in a way and i think it looks cool and it looks fun and it probably is really fun but it's like it's it's this and it's this and it's this and you do this and you swing and you drive and you brawl and you shoot and it's like oh my god like what are you what are you doing you know i can't get over these fucking animations man it's crazy well thanks for bringing us to our attention i guess we'll keep an eye out but a lot of you wrote in about it so i assume that's a pretty decent gauge every once in a while people write in about this thing i'm like why do you want to talk about this and then i go look at it i'm like oh okay uh all right hashim barakat wrote in and said greeting sacred pumpkin spice lads why do you have a somewhat negative outlook on licensed games the footage from wolverine looks amazing and we had a lot of great games based on existing ip like hogwarts insomniac spider-man and the batman arkham games to name a few i understand the licensing costs take a big chunk out of the profits, but I think as customers, it's a win if we get a great game and the devs are happy to work on such projects.

3:46:16Dustin Furman:Thank you as always for the great content as always. And I wish you all a great week. Allow myself to introduce myself. All right, Hashim, thank you for writing in. I don't, first of all, the license. All right, so let me be clear. As far as the financial implications of the licensing, I don't care. That's their problem. I'm simply expressing the confusion that you would continue to want to use on use licenses when you can just leverage more money by making your own ip so as far as the financial ramifications of it for these different companies that's for them to figure out i just think it's strange to want to rely on that so much but there are good licensing games and the era of bad licensing game license games are over it's over and it's been over for a long time and i think arco was one of the games that you know in 2009 started to or 2008 whatever it was started to bring it back and be like yeah this it doesn't actually have to be like this.

3:47:05Dustin Furman:We can do something more extreme and something more true. And we always bring up a Raven's Wolverine game from the PS3 era, which was really good. Sunsoft Batman on the NES is a fucking phenomenal game. So good licenses games go around, but, and I don't mind a license here and there, but I just want games to remain not distinct, but utilize like the leverage of being new. Tell a new story. Do something unique. It's very valuable to be a Batman game because it's a Batman game, but that also stymies and limits you in what you can do. If I were a creative at one of these studios, I think I can go two ways.

3:47:45Dustin Furman:I think, yeah, it would be fun to work on a Spider-Man game or whatever, but don't you want to work on your own thing where you can put your own imprint on it? Imagine working on a Star Wars game or a Marvel game where you have to like they're those guys are i know from full full well because i know people that work on these games and i know people that work at places like marvel where it's like they're nuts they like look at everything because it's all got to fit and it's all got to be canon and can't offend this sensibility and you can't do this and oh you're not allowed to do that and that's not it's like those rules don't exist when you're making your own thing so to me i'm more surprised that there isn't more attraction to just trying new things i know it's risky we were talking about chronos earlier like chronos is a new ip it's not doing great it's risky but i feel like it's derivative and boring after a while to focus so much on licenses and i feel bad for insomniac i think they're where they want to be it certainly means they're safe right if you're working on spider-man into wolverine venom x-men you're gonna be okay but but also like where's the fun at some point of making your own thing of going in and saying like we're making this up and it's not beholden to anyone that's yeah that's where i'm coming from so i leave it there chris where are you on this yeah i mean some dude some of my favorite games of all time

3:48:59Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):are licensed games like i like i think the games i think about never soft spider-man all the time purely because it's like the one it really is the one game from my childhood that is just not that hasn't seen any kind of like modern not even necessarily re-release or like remake but just just a way to play it in a convenient modern way you know um but i love those games like that one and i think the second was made by a different studio i can't remember vicarious visions i think made the second one but you know it's not so much that licensed games are bad like we we get a lot of good ones and there was a period of time where we're getting a crazy amount of good ones but i i guess the only negativity that i would feel is like in in the in the case of insomniac where they're just they're committed to that license for the next 10 years you know um one of my favorite devs ever uh r.i.p.

3:49:52Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):uh pandemic um they had a bunch of they had a bunch of original ip they had you know they were making destroy all humans they were making mercenaries they had the saboteur but then they also did like you know here's battlefront here's lord of the rings conquest and i think that's cool i think it's cool to be able to dip your toes into like existing ip and like put your stamp on it and do something cool i mean arguably battlefront is one of the more one of the more popular things to come out of star wars period and that's cool that just some random studio just was able to do that um and i'm sure the people at insomnia i feel the same way about like being able to put their mark on spider-man and being able to like spider-man ps4 being one of the genuinely one of the best spider-man stories i think um being able to say that and being like yeah this isn't ours but we were able to put our stamp on it and we were able to you know contribute to this thing that we love in a way that like the audience genuinely responds responded well to that's got to be its own reward but it it can't just be that you know like um it would be one thing if they were doing you know spider-man and then you know for sake of argument pretend like sunset overdrive doesn't exist sunset overdrive and it's it's their thing and then another one of their things and then spider-man 2 or or wolverine or something that's fine by me i think that's exciting um it's almost like the one for them one for me kind of thing where like i know a lot of directors talk about that or a lot of actors talk about that stuff i was like this is for me this is for you know to for the for the bank you know for the for the rent but when it's when it's all for them even if they're having fun doing it from the audience perspective it does kind of get a little bit um i don't know if sammy is the right word but it's it just kind of there's a what's the uh what's the term the cost oh my god it's a term benefit analysis no no just um oh my god i'm opportunity cost opportunity oh i'm sorry opportunity yeah and so like that's a lot of cool stuff you get spider-man one spider-man two spider-man miles venom wolverine but what what new thing didn't you get that you didn't know you wanted i guess and now you don't know because it just wasn't made now that's kind of how i look at

3:52:10Dustin Furman:it people would argue with insomniac that that is kind of the way it's going because there is a ratchet game in development and i think it's supposed to come out 27 28 something it's probably

3:52:17Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):a ps6 game um sure yeah i mean but but i agree that it is different i think people would also

3:52:23Dustin Furman:argue it's like when they do their own thing it doesn't always really work out very well and i was like yeah that's true too i mean arguably the marvel stuff saved insomniac because they were yeah they were diminishing i mean they were diminishing they were kind of floundering a little bit in the in the mid uh tens or whatever sunset overdrive and fuse uh didn't do great although they pivoted to vr and they and they made like a game with game stop and it was not looking great i mean sony and marvel i don't want to say they kind of did save them so yeah i uncontroversially i think that's true but but at the same time like i don't know man sunset

3:52:56Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):overdrive is fucking cool like sunset overdrive was a breath of fresh like i understand that like you look back at that game kind of now and like maybe it's like not aged super well because like the humor is like somewhat dated or or it's over the top in a way that feels try hard now but like i don't know man like back in that time like it was kind of a breath of fresh air to get something like that because that was right after like the piss filter gray era you know um which i have a fondness for but definitely there's no question that that became that became an entire you know aesthetic for an entire generation of games for a while and it was nice to get something splashy and colorful i still remember the first trailer for sunset overdrive where it starts off as if it's one of those games it's like a bunch of marines going delta niner niner and then and the dude bursts through the fucking wall with the with the garage punk playing and it's just like this is cool man um and we wouldn't have got that if they were working on like i don't know flubber the game because it was an existing IP that I think there was there's also games were looked as

3:53:58Dustin Furman:separate like bad licensing games obviously ET is the famous one from the Atari era but that's really when game licenses began and there was like a there was like a journey pinball game for like journey the band and I think Aerosmith and like other shit but they're they were like so separate I don't think there was a penalty for things being bad and then I think that there began to be a penalty i remember one of the or at least people looked at it and said like we could have done so much better than this one of the games i remember is enter the matrix which i think came in 2003 and how bad that was and people are like why is a matrix video game bad like it almost like it almost didn't even make any sense like why how i kind of like that game dude i love that game

3:54:40Colin Moriarty:i haven't played it since so it very well might be i was a kid to be fair so it might have sucked

3:54:46Dustin Furman:Well, what I remember about it was I was an intern at the time. And what I remember about it was that like, it was just obviously it was empty. Like it was, it was clear that like, there was not, it was not finished. And they were like, all right, time to go. Cause I think it was trying to be out in time, maybe for the second movie or something or the third movie. And so, um, but I think that the penalty started to grow. I think Batman was another thing. Like there was incredible fusion between, not that they were even, they were talking to each other but the nolan trilogy the arkham games all really at the same time and it's like damn well like this is this is really high quality like this is the best batman ever right and yeah how additive it was and i think people started to learn and said like if we actually try instead of just license things out and like there are still companies that like um game mill does this like the gi joe game like they do all these shitty games right it's like stop like you're from another era like just do it right and i think companies started to realize like actually spider-man is something worth investing in right so maybe that's my theory of the case i don't know dustin do you

3:55:53Colin Moriarty:have anything you want to add i think that some of the negativity about licensed games coming from this podcast specifically is just because over the last few years it feels like we're getting constantly barraged with star wars and marvel games and so it just kind of adds to the points that you guys were saying earlier about it's like man i i'm good i'm good on marvel i'm good on star wars and it is a good point to bring up like hogwarts legacy i think that that was a great licensed game in that it did something that was part of that harry potter world but also different It was in a different era of, of than the movies and the books.

3:56:32Colin Moriarty:And that's the best way to do something that's licensed. So, but yeah, there's of course, exceptions of games that are, are great. And we just talked earlier about it. We all thought Wolverine was great. Maybe we wish it was a different licensed game or a different non-licensed insomniac project, but I think we can still take it for what it is and, and enjoy it. Yeah.

3:56:56Dustin Furman:And I do. I just think that like if it's sunset overdrive, I guess you could say, but it's really like resistance is the last true new IP of any note that they made. And it's that's 20 years old, 19 years old. It'll be 20 next year. So there is a, like Chris was saying, an opportunity cost. I think things started to turn around in the PlayStation two era in a way. I remember you brought up Harry Potter and there was like EA specifically was doing Harry potter and um and what was it um lord of the rings and right and they were doing pretty good stuff and then star wars games started to be okay like the like the lego games and then you had force unleashed by the time you got the ps3 and all the rest but like people liked some of that stuff and obviously that began in the 90s with some of the shooters they were doing there was a little bit of care taken but i just think i just think people for a long time were like that's separate we just make extra money on that and i don't think they realize like how circular the entire thing could be if they just did it right and i really think batman specifically was yeah it's like damn dude these are some of the best movies of the last few years and some of the best games the last few years and it's licensed it's unheard of yeah well yeah i mean

3:58:09Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):it's crazy that spider-man 2 wasn't the one that did it you know what i mean like because even even the the what is activision when they were making the spider-man movie tie-in games like even they didn't realize like they made spider-man 2 and they didn't understand that they had made something amazing and then the next game was just kind of like whatever like it was just like a completely thrown together you know nonsensical thing just not nearly as good and so it's weird that that happens like but early on in the 2000s i remember a lot of great like harry potter and the chamber of secrets i think is a banger video game i think uh what is it uh return to the king was a banger license there's good shit there it's just like you know you want to see new stuff yeah well and by the way harry potter stuff's gonna get crazy because they're doing that show like i think but hogwarts legacy was nice because harry potter at the time that hogwarts legacy came out was kind of like there was a big question as to whether or not that meant anything and you had like the the theme park i guess that like is always popular because whatever it's of course

3:59:05Dustin Furman:right but those new movies weren't doing well like the the uh fantastic beasts was like no one cared

3:59:09Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):like those weren't even real to most people like there wasn't really anything happening and so that for that to come out of nowhere basically and reignite everything like that was an example of a license kind of being in some ways resurrected which is kind of nice but we get a lot of marvel stuff you know we get a lot of star wars stuff there's a difference and you're about to get a

3:59:31Dustin Furman:metric fucked on harry potter stuff i i mean i think avalanche has a big hogwarts legacy too or whatever they call it they should probably just call it something else hogwarts hogwarts dynasty or something yeah something like that um that's gonna be a big one yeah i mean people just came out of the fucking woodwork for that harry potter game it was crazy i thought it was gonna do well but i didn't think it was gonna do that well because i played it for five or six hours it was good but it wasn't like it didn't blow me away but i think it was so true for people that are really into it that yeah it's about as good as it's gonna get and avalanche just I didn't know they had it in them.

4:00:10Dustin Furman:I mean, that was the beauty of it was it was they did good stuff, you know, Skylanders and stuff, but like Disney unit or what was it? Disney Infinity, I guess was the last thing. Not Skylanders, Disney Infinity it was, but yeah, it's like, could they do it? And they did it. And they're arguably the most important thing WB has, which is so crazy because they were five years ago, they were like the least important studio. that they owned so things do change yeah that would be like me if media molecule like made

4:00:43Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):something that was at this at this point right like you know the biggest thing that playstation

4:00:48Dustin Furman:has ever done right yeah unlikely but not impossible um yeah well we'll see um that's a game i'd like to get back to as well me too actually i i liked it i just was like i was it was just it's the same thing actually with that lego star wars game where i think i played episode one and episode two and i was just getting so tired of it because i didn't want to I knew if I skipped into four, I would just never do the original. But then I was like, oh, it was a catch 22. And I was just not into it. That was an interesting year for licensed games. And I think it shows that just less is more. Really dump all of the money and time in this big, really high quality, oft supported products.

4:01:27Dustin Furman:And that's what they've done. I think Hogwarts Legacy 2, if WB smart, they doubled the fucking budget and are blowing it out. I mean, that's that's the move. All right. Jason H wrote in and said, who is the most adept and skilled player of video games on sacred symbols or at last stand? Who are you handing the controller to to beat Mike Tyson? We often say Chris. I mean, I think Chris is a great player of games, but I wonder what you guys how you guys gauge the talent. And if it's even really knowable, because even when you're watching someone streaming, it's not really like watching them on the couch or like if you were just spying on them.

4:02:04Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):Yeah. Yeah.

4:02:05Dustin Furman:So Chris is my my automatic answer to that. But I feel like it's deeper than that, probably, because I think that there is also like skill levels of different kinds of games. And if you like put us all together and I took the best component or the best components and removed our weaknesses and then made some sort of Voltron be a pretty formidable player of video games, pretty useless skill.

4:02:27Colin Moriarty:But you always you always talk about Chris. Does my Sekiro Platinum mean nothing to you?

4:02:32Dustin Furman:No, you're a high quality talented player and both of you are also younger so you're not suffering from the dexterity failures that I have now where I just I don't know if you guys are at the age yet but I feel like I know that I'm getting worse I don't know what that's all about but I definitely was better when I was younger and but my the thing is like some people have hand problems like my hands feel fine they just crawl into a claw like this right where I'm just like my hand just sits like this like the shape of a dual sense controller and then it just you just slip it in it's like a GI Joe yeah but I don't I and I remember we had a letter the other day about being like false modesty it's like it's not false modesty I think I'm a well above average video game player I mean there's just no doubt about it but in terms of the when I watch Evo or I see footage of Counter-Strike or I'm like come on even when i was seeing battlefield footage from like the beta it's like dude i can't play at that level like that's not happening right did they tone that shit down like i think they toned

4:03:40Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):um they nerfed the movement thank god which i'm so happy for yeah uh that made me so happy but i i feel like i feel like i don't know i'm good at very particular things and i can i can i can do well I can pick things up and play them well like I haven't played Mega Man in a long time I know I can get through Mega Man like I haven't played a lot of I mean Silksong is a really good example like I know like as I'm spending time playing Silksong every now and again like I know that I could get through it it really is a time issue with like runbacks and I'm just like I don't know if I have the patience for it which is in and of itself like a skill so like I don't know I would I would probably on the basis of of dustin having completed all those from soft games i would put dustin probably ahead of me purely for that reason because i don't know if i have that patience or that tactile skill because i've tried to but i've tried i still haven't beaten eldon ring i've put like two 200 hours in that fucking game i haven't beaten either the dlc or the main game i got stuck at Malekith and I was like I'm Yeah.

4:04:48Colin Moriarty:I'm good. I think though this Colin you mentioned this earlier though it depends on the type of game because I'm sure Chris is better than me at FPS games. But 100 % I did beat the DLC final boss pre nerf. That's my greatest gaming accomplishment. But I think there's something to point out here because he said if sacred symbols or at LSM it's probably Brad.

4:05:16Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):that would be my that would have been brad i would guess brad or maddie just but like maddie

4:05:20Dustin Furman:just because he plays so much yeah they play a lot of different things i've never really seen either of them play but i guess you could just presume that right if they're getting through this stuff yeah yeah um yeah i and i think it's very genre dependent too i would agree with that i think that i honestly would say that i'm probably not better at anything like any genre or any type of game than someone else. Maybe you would even say sports games, but then you would start bringing Cog in and other things like people that have really played them, you know? But I'm okay with that. I'm not in it for that reason.

4:05:57Dustin Furman:I also think it's interesting that I think people play games differently. Like, in other words, you sit down and watch a movie. I guess you can watch it the same way, but it's playing. But it's like, how do you interact with the game? How deliberately do you play it? how do you deal with things like damage and a good example is like in a lot of 2d games like i love brute forcing myself through games knowing like how much damage you can take and be like fine fuck it like as opposed to like being very careful and waiting and plotting just like all right let's go you know and just keep kind of keep it moving it's actually easier that way like mario famously like especially the first mario game is just famously much easier to play if you just keep moving like that's you just gotta keep moving um like you know in the in the end where like you're trying to get to the last castle and it's like all the fucking hammer brothers and the fire it's like you can't stand still uh so a lot of it is just knowing how to how to play and and all that but there are some like sophisticated players that don't get hit and get s ranks and i don't know I'm not that hardcore.

4:07:03Dustin Furman:It wasn't really until trophies. So it's been a while. I mean, it's been almost 17, 18 years, but where I really, really started playing everything at a deeper level as opposed to just the things that I liked. And I think it's actually been good for me in that way. And I've definitely spread my wings and gotten into more game genres because of it. But even 2D games, like I don't know that I'd be better. There's probably I'm certainly in the upper echelon of our people, but I'm sure there's better players. So who would fight Tyson? Who would fight Tyson specifically? Not me. Yeah, I would think it would be someone like me.

4:07:44Dustin Furman:I mean, maybe me or Cog. You, Brad, or Cog, I think. Yeah. Tyson's hard as fuck. So that's no joke, but Dagan, if he was still here, would be able to do it. but then like newer stuff like if i i've said before when the rare times i jump into an online competitive game if i get out with a kill to death ratio of one i am beyond amped it's like oh because often it's like you know the decimal 0.8 it's like oh yeah but i'm that guy that's me yeah the only game like that i ever got really good at was the last of us where i was like really starting to run the numbers up but otherwise i'm just very average very pedestrian and I think that that's that's fine and speaking of the cadence in which we play games I play games much slower than a lot of people do too because I just love looking at things and like just dicking around you know you find a fork in the road you take the left path and then you go to like halfway down the left path and you're like all right and then you like want to go back you go back and you like want to see like the right path and you go like halfway down the right path and you're like all right and then you go back to the left path and you get a little further down you're like trying to see like which way is the right way and you're not trying kind of that's the way that's so crazy so anyway all right a couple more oh no one more one more comes from gene parks uber driver writes in and says hey sacred dudes i'm curious what your top five genres of video games are in order from most to least favorite i took a stab at what your rankings would be based on the games you've discussed on sacred over the years there's obviously some crossover between genres, but I tried to use commonly known genres.

4:09:26Dustin Furman:I feel least confident about my picks for Dustin and most confident about my picks for Colin. How did I do? So I don't like the way you worded this jeans park Uber driver just in that you said. Let's see, I took a stab at what you're right from most favorite to least favorite. I think what you're saying more and what you're looking at here is favorites in order. Because in other words, you're not getting in the least favorites like my least favorite to be like puzzle adventure show like that. That's not here. here's what he says for us Chris he says your favorite five would be in order FPS immersive sim third person shooter action RPG stealth Dustin he says for you JRPG souls like FPS third person shooter platformers and for me he says JRPGs 2D platformers FPS Metroidvanias third person shooters I don't really agree with mine but I'm kind of curious about what you guys think chris let's go to you first so yeah does he does he nail you fps immersive sin third person shooter action rpg stealth yeah i mean if i were to choose i'm sure

4:10:32Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):there's like certain things that i'm not necessarily thinking of but like i think if i were to look at these five i think fps is probably number one i would put immersive i would put maybe third person at two immersive sim at three stealth at four and action rpg at five is how i would kind of reorganize it but more or less that's like yeah i would say i would say they nailed number one i love an fps game

4:11:00Dustin Furman:dustin what about you it says jrpg souls like fps third person shooter platformer

4:11:07Colin Moriarty:yeah i don't know for as particularly number two souls like it's so weird because and I've talked about this before I really don't like non from software souls like games Brad on the other hand loves them he played like the first berserker and another you know I guess the only one I really liked was Lies of P and I even had problems with that

4:11:35Dustin Furman:so even souls like is a genre like that's action RPG right I mean

4:11:38Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):yeah I guess yeah it's like the surge I guess it's stuff like that

4:11:43Colin Moriarty:right this is gonna sound lame but I don't even really think about like what my favorite genre is because I think about some of my favorite games of all time like Halo does that mean that that's the first person shooters are my favorites I haven't shut the fuck up about the finals last three weeks first person shooter my favorite one of some of the most fun I've had this year playing but I also do Donkey Kong Bonanza I love platformers I just don't think I can rank them just because a good game is a good game to me. Even a game, a puzzle game like Blueprints, one of the best games I played this year.

4:12:21Colin Moriarty:So I could say is Blueprints a top genre or puzzles top genre? I just don't even think about it like that.

4:12:30Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):Do you ever feel like like maybe like there's like I agree with that, but there are certain genres where I'm like, I'm definitely in my element with this. and that's kind of how i think about it more where it's just like everything kind of comes naturally in a way that like maybe for like a horror game i i love them like i love dead space but like there's like there's like some acclimation that needs to be like or even immersive sims really like there's a lot of acclimation that i have to do to really get into it because they are so specific but i love them um but fps like to me is just like i don't have to i don't have to do anything to like you know i press every button in the first five seconds and i'm like okay i'm i know what this is yeah that's what i always do when i play a game too just to see that

4:13:10Colin Moriarty:i don't even because he he put jrpg as number one and some of my all-time favorite games are jrpg's persona games um of course near automata which is kind of like an action jrpg but i don't know if like i don't care about trails of you know whatever trails of for skinnier in the sky or whatever like i don't tales of listeria tales for skinnia what kind of place is that like um so yeah i just it's always when we're when we did our like um our our stream where we were looking at the playstation store anything anime people like oh dustin dustin i'm like there's there's a character that's been created of me about my anime fandom that is really not as true i think as people think but yeah like brad is much more of an anime nerd right maddie maybe even maybe maddie not even brad because like brad's brad's not even caught up on one piece right now okay fake fan but when it comes to anime that is the only anime i've really watched maybe this year with dan to dan like it's like i don't know what i don't care about demon slayer movie don't care about my hero academia i don't yeah i'm not into that i think the issue is that

4:14:31Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):you you ran with the jar you ran the jar thing really dude okay no i introduced the jar

4:14:38Colin Moriarty:as a concept right and then it got applied on to me as a thing i do because i i exposed for what it is you introduced it because i introduced so i guess i gotta watch out it is on me i'm not gonna you know it's that's true but it's to me i i look at my list and i'm like there is

4:14:59Dustin Furman:jrpgs is definitely not number one i think at a time in my life a long time ago it would have been number one from the early to mid 90s through the early 2000s it's probably when that was like my shit for sure but um it would be in the top five 2d he says 2d platformers and this is where I just think this is it. The games that I like in 2D are not really platformers. The platform in them because it's a 2D action game, but they're 2D action games. Like if you think about a Mega Man game or a Castlevania game, a Ninja Gaiden game, those are not platformers. Yeah, this is why I just don't like that term really like in 2D platformers.

4:15:39Dustin Furman:It's kind of why I get it, but it's why I always say like there's no such thing as a 3D Metroidvania. It's like, no, that's something else. Yeah, he has Metroidvania is listed here. Metroidvanias I really do love, but I think that the zone's been flooded. It's funny we were talking about if you like something enough, you can never, like Souls with Brad, you can never get enough, right? I actually have gotten enough. Metroidvanias used to be more seldom and more special. They kind of came the flavor of the indie world after Shadow Complex, I would say. Some of my favorite games in the world are Metroidvanias, but I don't know that I would really rank them in the top five anymore because I just don't I'm not keeping up with it like a lot of other people are.

4:16:23Dustin Furman:I'm not that into it anymore because I just feel like it does get a little repetitive and then it becomes more about the world. Like I would kill for a Castlevania Symphony of the Night sequel or the next Bloodstained or things like that. So I think I might remove that and then he has FPS above third person shooters. I definitely like third person shooters more than first person shooters, but they would both be on the list for me too. So I don't really know. It's a very tough thing to figure out. I think it's a good effort. They're very good effort. But and as was said earlier, I think it's like ranking them.

4:16:56Dustin Furman:I don't know. It's easier for me to tell you the things that I just won't play. Otherwise, I'm pretty open minded to whatever. And then you're thinking about like third person shooters, but it's like I really like survival horror games. Why wouldn't that be on here? Or whatever. So yeah, and strategy.

4:17:15Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):Yeah, like even I'm thinking of like like a game like control or alan wake you know where i'm just like what is that i guess it's it's third person shooter technically technically but like i i wouldn't really describe like i wouldn't describe control in the same way that i would describe gears of war you know right exactly that's exactly right that's exactly right it's too i don't know that's why i've said for a

4:17:36Dustin Furman:long time chris we need to have some sort of convention where we figure all this out there's very specific ways that we talk about games why not

4:17:44Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):yeah no one has anything better to do as far as i can tell oh clearly good lord all right should we get out of here it's time to go yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah all right let's go around

4:17:59Dustin Furman:and say goodbye chris goodbye to you my friend what's on your agenda what are your plans for

4:18:04Chris B. (aka Chris in the comments):the rest of the day oh my god i'm i'm just gonna relax dude like i i recorded pretty much all day yesterday and then barely slept and then now it's you know it's it's thursday we recorded this i'm just gonna eat and just play games i'm not gonna do nothing tonight cool man sounds good day

4:18:24Colin Moriarty:dustin how about you what's going on well as soon as we finish recording i gotta get duke out uh because i believe that they recorded their pickup got to edit this show um so yeah just a with you and Maddie doing Sacred Simples Plus, will be a little lighter. So I don't have any plans this weekend right now, which is good. Yeah, that's nice. So we chill out, play Silent Hill F. Oh, yeah. Maybe get some finals in. Cool.

4:18:55Dustin Furman:Sounds good. Yeah, tonight, watch Thursday Night Football. I'm tired. I might just take a nap and I got to work out, got to eat dinner, walk the dogs. And then, yeah, this weekend, yeah, recorded Kronos with Maddie. And then I want to, Mike and I still haven't seen the Downton Abbey movie, so I want to go see. we just haven't had time so i want to go see that and we've been stacking up like people get especially michael like cracker barrel you know gift cards for christmas and all these kinds of things we're just like sitting on so much money so i want to get to the cracker barrel get that new cracker barrel experience that's basically just the old cracker barrel experience because they reverted everything so that's probably what's on the agenda this weekend and of course football and games lots of games all right my friends well it's good to see you guys again spent a lot of time together the last couple of days yeah time to get away from each other now for a little while rejuvenate.

4:19:40Dustin Furman:Thank you for taking the time to be here, though. Thank you for being here and be well. Have a good weekend. Thank you all out there for your love, kindness and support of Last Stand Media, Sacred Symbols. All the rest couldn't do without you. 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 you. Take care, guys. Sacred Symbols, a PlayStation podcast, is a product and trademark of Last Stand Media and Collins 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.

4:20:13Dustin Furman:My co-hosts are Chris Raygun Maldonado and Dustin Furman. The show is produced by executive producer Dustin Furman. All of Last Stand's theme music is by my best friend, Ramon Narvaez. As you know, all of Last Stand's shows, including Sacred Symbols, are fan-funded on Patreon at patreon.com slash laststandmedia. The following names are at the producer level on Patreon, our highest tier, and we're grateful for your thoughtful and kind contributions to our independent endeavor. Thank you.

4:21:05Dustin Furman:Brad Cooley, Brad Lohman, Brian Williamson, Cannonball Jones, Captain Verde, Carlos Algarit, Chad Lewis, Chris Galvin, Chris Morton, Christopher Devayo, Christopher Moore, Christopher Morgan, Colin Love, Corey Beacom, Corey Dustin, Dan Root, Daniel D 'Amour, Daryl E. Naaman, Dave Alvarez, David Castanez, Dennis Usel, Dio or Die, Don Lee, Donald John Vaders, WTF, Dustin Klingman, Eddie Medina, Eddie Smith, Electric Soup, Ellis, Enrique Perez, Fozzie Bear, Gary Cavallo, Gavin, Geek Aloud, Gio Corsi, Grayson Maxwell, Gregory Slavinsky, Gus, Hugo De La Guia, Jad Rita, Jake C, Jason Arzon, Jay Getter, John Francois Forzy, Jeff Mercado, Jerria, Jerome Ferreira, Jimmy Rodriguez, Joe McPartland, Joey Gondoliker, John Schultz, John Zyle, Johnny Waffles, John Cordero, Jonathan Coates, Jonathan Cortez, Joosh, Jorge Padilla, Jorge Pal, Joseph Baker, Josh Godfrey, Josh Gravelick, Josh McKinney, Josh Schullinger, Joshua Smallwood, J.P.

4:22:07Dustin Furman:Lynch, Justin Payne, Justin Wagaman, Kendrick Hayes, Kyle Hagel, Kyle J., Kyle Martin, Logan Little George, Madmoc Media, Miranda Grubba, Mark Liberto, Martin Beck, Mason Bouchard, Matt Flowers, Matt MGS24, Michael Buffel, Michael Gates, Michael Mash Potato, Michael Vecchio, Mr. Tom, Morgan Ashley, Mr. Mulf, My Name is Mayo, Nate Izod, Nathan R., Neil Amon, Norse Nuts, Ollie Fritz, Organic Produce, Patrick Leslie, Paul Joyce, Peyton Stone, Phil Crone, Pork and Beans, Randall Hulsey, Rallo, Relentless Rex, Remington James, Roto24, Ross Marenka, Ryan T. Mandel, Sakib Alam, Saul Balcazar, Sean Mason, Shane Brekke, Shane Miller, Shane Rayoum, SaulNZ, Stewie108, Stove, Sultab, SweatyMagic, Sweet Jones, Terry Tip, The Shady Mailman, Throw7, Toby Ryland, Tom Quinn, Trelon, Trey Woodward, Uncharted Shinobi, Vance Cody, WP Monty, Wesley Mullins, WhoIsStevenDay, Will Williams, William Holbert, Whiskison, Zach Cohen, Zachary Wood, Zenred, and Zainal Yuichi.