#396 | These Changing Years, They Add To Your Confusion

18:16Chris Ansell:And I had like a thousand people with me or whatever. And I had no moderator. I didn't know how to moderate. And I'm like, please just be normal. And I really had no issues. And I'm like, can't we just do an can't? It was all we were saying earlier. Can't we have an honor system? Like, can we not have an honor system? Come on, man. You know.

18:36Colin Moriarty:For this first one, maybe the move is that you have to be part of the last stand discord.

18:43Chris Ansell:I'm fine with that, like generally, because that will that will make sense. But we have fucking riffraff up the Yazoo in there, you know?

18:49Colin Moriarty:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. But at least they're good, good natured riffraff. At least they're paying me. And they're paying.

18:57Chris Ansell:Yeah.

18:57Colin Moriarty:So.

18:59Chris Ansell:I think it'll be fun.

19:00Colin Moriarty:We can figure it out.

19:01Chris Ansell:Yeah, that's not a bad idea at all. And that would probably be an easy way to do it as well. Make a little channel in there. But I'll email Jaffe and see if he's interested in doing that. But that's what we're thinking about for the next episode of Sacred Streaming. but we last week did the xbox developer direct that was fun so we got a look at fable and some other games coming to playstation uh we did a nice megaman stream recently we did the metacritic draft over there so check that out um and we'll get back to it with uh some some different game streams i was thinking high guard would be fun but it seems like that game we'll talk about that game extensively later but i i um feel like that's kind of already dying on the vine and I also feel like it's chasing a trend.

19:40Chris Ansell:You're playing it because of a curiosity thing is more than like you want to see it and you want to play it and you want to enjoy it. I don't know. I'm going to mix space with that game, but that's possible. One thing I did want to say though, and I think I put it in the show later, but I will, yeah, I'll just say it now and delete it, is there's rumors that there's going to be a state of play next week. So it's entirely possible that, and maybe even likely depending on the trustworthiness of the sources that by the time we talk again, there will have been a state of play. So we'll stream that as well.

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21:53Chris Ansell:That's code SACRED to get$50 in lineups after you play your first$5 lineup. Prize picks. It's good to be right. Sacred Symbols is sponsored by BetterHelp, an exceptional service that offers therapy where you are and when you need it. Learn more for yourself right now at BetterHelp.com slash symbols. My friends, life is hard sometimes. I know it and you know it. We all deal with trials and tribulations no matter who we are, and it's always helpful to have someone to talk to about what ails you. And I would know as I've used therapy on and off since the early 90s to great effect. But not everyone is as fortunate as me.

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23:32Chris Ansell:That's B-E-T-T-E-R-H-E-L-P.com slash S-Y-M-B-O-L-S. Again, for therapy that's there for you when and as you need it, head to betterhelp.com slash symbols today. All right. It's time for topics of discussion. We have a lot to get through here because there was quite a few things I wanted to talk about. Then we have news, what we're playing. Of course, we'll focus on High Guard there. And then six questions, comments, concerns, thoughts, and ideas from the audience to wrap things up as always. But let's start with DMACC, who wrote in with the key question. You see that Dustin met Brad's parents at the end of his dirty weekend away.

24:05Chris Ansell:Always a big step. Congrats on the growing relationship, boys. Now, it's important to note, you knew his parents already. Brad lived with his parents.

24:13Colin Moriarty:Right.

24:13Chris Ansell:So you're not going to be able to avoid them. Maybe they have some sort of palatial estate or something and they have like a wing. but I doubt it. No, it's Brad that has the wing. Oh, nice. Yeah. So, and I like that because a lot of people, I mean, maybe in the United States, a lot of people live with their families forever and parts of the world that's totally normal. In the United States, it's not normal and some people even look down on staying with your parents that long. I look at it and I'm like, you've come this far. You know? Right. It's like me with driving, right? I'm 41. I'm not going to get a car now.

24:49Chris Ansell:What are you doing? I've come. I've gotten all the way here. So I actually kind of dig it because it says to me, Brad has a good relationship with his parents and he's fiscally responsible and he's probably just going to get the house at some point in the future. So good for him. He's waiting him out. Now, let's talk. Now, let's talk about your trip. How was it? It was awesome. It was a really fun time. In and out. How many times?

25:20Colin Moriarty:Twice. OK, that's good. Twice. But I did get delicious Mexican food. Got a nice Al Pastor burrito. Now, I was observing the burrito based on last week's conversation because it came unwrapped.

25:36Chris Ansell:Oh, yeah. Like a San Diego style kind of thing. Yeah. And it held together. Nice.

25:41Colin Moriarty:Now, it wasn't one of those. It didn't have a rice in it. It wasn't like a burrito that was bursting at the seams. Right. But was it cut in half? No. No.

25:54Chris Ansell:So I got in Friday.

25:55Colin Moriarty:Oh, no. You got more about the burrito?

25:58Chris Ansell:No, no, no. I said, I said, well, I was just going to say, well, I see. I mean, oh, well, I see. Okay.

26:02Colin Moriarty:I got in Friday night, had In-N-Out Saturday. I think I mentioned this on the stream that I had a plug at Universal. Plug came through. so brad and i went to universal for the for the day universal studios hollywood it's okay uh if i hadn't already been to the one in japan because it was basically the the stuff i wanted to see was exactly the same harry potter park same park same rides same decor same everything the mario park slightly not as good as japan of course as you would expect very small and it's

26:40Chris Ansell:small and you're not able to understand everything in your native japanese as well so it's right

26:44Colin Moriarty:it's gonna be a little bit different for you right right right right so we had a nice time there i got this uh this is the only thing i have near me is this a chocolate frog tin oh yeah which colin doesn't know anything about but it has the it has the wizard cards inside is that from harry potter yes yeah this is from harry potter i read everything through azkaban was that in any of

27:05Chris Ansell:those books i don't remember yeah this is in this is primarily in the first book oh in the first book yeah i don't remember that yeah i don't remember anything about them to be honest i actually took uh sorcerer's stone off the my shelf to read it again i was like oh you know i i did i've been doing this for years like since hogwarts legacy and i literally read the first chapter i'm like i can't do this and i just put it back on the shelf i didn't even like leave it

27:29Colin Moriarty:on my table i just put it back on the shelf like yeah i can't do this yeah uh yeah universal the it was 10 minutes because it's in Hollywood. It's like in the northern part. It's on the Universal lot. Like you can see their sound stages and stuff. So it was only a 10 minute drive down to Hollywood at the Dolby Theater where the Persona concert was. There's a question about that. So we'll go to that in a second. And then the following day, we had a meetup with some listeners who were very appreciative. You know, I was getting made fun of for having the meetup last week. They had a great time. I had a great time.

28:06Colin Moriarty:Brad had a great time. hanging out uh we were in little tokyo and of course little taste of home little taste of home in little tokyo i was there what was funny i was i really wanted a coffee in the closest coffee shop there was one like two blocks but i was like i'm gonna go to this one here they were having a collab event with a gotcha game that's on playstation called um arc knights end field

28:32Chris Ansell:oh dude i was just looking at that last night because it just came out yeah um i was just looking at that and uh yeah okay so i waited in this like the line was kind of long because they

28:42Colin Moriarty:were doing this arc nights thing and when i got to the counter the lady i ordered and the lady was like okay which coaster do you want i said hmm how about this young lady with blue hair yeah right right and she laughed i was like i have no idea what this is but i'll take a free coaster so So, yeah, we had a great time. Then my flight got canceled. And then finally, what DMACC is referencing is that on Monday, Brad needed to record summon sign. And so his parents took me out to lunch, insisted on paying for me, insisted. I was like, OK. And then when we were eating, Brad's mom was like, has Brad shown you the beach yet?

29:23Colin Moriarty:I was like, no, no. And I didn't tell her like, yeah, I don't I don't know whatever about a beach. i've seen beaches but she was like oh well you got it you got to see the beach so afterwards they took me to laguna beach we parked we went down to the water we're like climbing on rocks

29:40Chris Ansell:and stuff seeing everything it was nice what you say yeah it was beautiful i don't think i've ever

29:49Colin Moriarty:been to laguna beach it was nice yeah maybe dude nice houses yeah holy shit around on the beach the beachfront property insane yeah they i mean they better be really nice for how fucking temporary they are they're at least it's it's the first time i'd seen a beach that was so mountainous on the coast not really mountainous but just like huge cliffs and stuff so yeah we had a nice time with them they're super nice super great people and then yeah i had my insane travel day getting home here i am very tired but well i was mostly dude yesterday i was wrecked from that day of travel dude it's not even that the problem is three flights the problem is getting on and off three flights in a day because you know there's people that they're standing at the gate way early then when you get on the plane it's a hassle trying to put your bag on and then when you land everyone stands up don't you hate that i i do i do dude oh yeah you're in first class so yeah but but still but but but but well i don't take first class if i'm flying

31:04Chris Ansell:unless i'm flying like at least halfway across the country or something like when i fly to when i fly to boston in new york i'm like i'm just i don't care yeah you can um get through it because it's not about it's not like a status thing it's like i'm gonna lose it if i have to sit in this seat for six hours at this point yeah um no but i uh i hate that it's like one of the most annoying things and people and i i intentionally like make it so that no one can pass me like because i always sit on the aisle so i'll be like you know like i'll if i see someone like trying to like do their thing and it's not one of those things where like the flight attendant will say like there are people with connecting flights they have to get off the flight you know whatever that's fine but like people that just are they think that like they're more important than everyone else and it's like no you'll wait you'll wait your exact turn and i always let the people on the row across from me go first too yeah absolutely it's good at it it's not you know i insist is is that the prime reason you uh you pick the aisle seat uh no i picked the aisle seat because i have loose bowels oh i see right i just the big thing for me is that i'm if if the flight is longer than three hours probably I'm getting up and I don't want to bother anyone that stresses me the fuck out oh especially on international flights where I've been like trapped and I'm like dude I'm gonna have to get up like five times probably or something at least like this is like a 16 hour flight or whatever you know um so yeah I always try to choose the aisle for that reason it's less comfortable but it just makes it so that I'd rather be the one interrupted than interrupting someone else yeah and like if

32:38Colin Moriarty:you're flying 16 hours that makes that makes sense i don't think i've ever i must have but uh i'm always window because i want to never be i i want to i want to be completely out of everybody

32:50Chris Ansell:like everybody's way yeah that makes sense too if i had more confidence in my my bladder and my in my poop hole sure i would uh wild i didn't have to say it like that i don't know why i said it like that but yeah wild choice yeah it was an interesting choice if i had more confidence in that though then maybe i would fair i would do exactly what you did anyway yeah go ahead i can't

33:12Colin Moriarty:i can't stand bitchy people on flights either and i understand the context like everyone it was crazy trying to fly during after this crazy snowstorm but on my one flight there was almost zero overhead space left but they didn't tell me to check it or i would have so i had to go all the way to the back of the plane i'm trying to make my way back up and there's like gridlock where there's people trying to get back i'm trying to go forward so i try to turn around and those people won't go and there's this woman nearby it's like oh i guess we're not flying we're just gonna stand in the aisle instead like what what do you fucking want me to do so eventually got it figured out but then i also had to bother someone because by the time i landed my next flight was going to take off in 10 minutes

34:01Chris Ansell:Yeah, you're one of the people. Yeah, yeah.

34:03Colin Moriarty:So I asked the flight attendant, like, is there any way I can move my bag somehow? Which for me to try to ask someone this level of inconvenience, very difficult. But I did it. And the lady was very nice. I got to move my bag up. But then my next flight got delayed by like two and a half hours.

34:20Chris Ansell:Oh, well, that was still less stress, you know? Yeah, it was less stress. But did you have an airport beer?

34:26Colin Moriarty:No, I don't. I love the idea of having beer at the airport. but I already have a tendency to get headaches when I fly. Yeah. Because of the cabin pressure and stuff like that. It's like, I don't want to, I don't want to risk it. So no, no airport beer. Rough. I did have a nice soft pretzel though. That I had to walk like a quarter mile to get in an airport, but it was worth it.

34:55Chris Ansell:Very interesting travel situation for you. It'll be funny. and you getting home so late and Holly kind of being stranded as well with the weather in Pittsburgh. It'll be a very funny story to talk about at the baby's name day ceremony.

35:09Colin Moriarty:Oh, right.

35:10Chris Ansell:The auction. Right. It'll be very, very exciting. Sayonara wrote in. Said, hey, gents. This question is for Dustin since he went to the recent Persona concert. Not sure where you sat, but did you run into any issues with people standing up and jumping the entire concert? the three rows in front of me were almost all standing but most of those on the side and behind me were sitting down the two guys in front of me were understanding and sat down after i politely asked but the others ahead of them refused to even though they were at the front and had a clear view of the stage without standing what made it more annoying is those people didn't even seem that excited to be at the concert and appeared to just be nonchalantly listening as if they were just there for the sake of claiming they went maybe it's just me but if there are seats at a concert you should enjoy while sitting down in respect for others with the exception of some popular songs where expected to stand up and get hyped overall i thought the concert was awesome and i had a blast but wanted to know if you were just as annoyed with the people standing and jumping up in front

36:03Colin Moriarty:of others the entire concert thanks and hope you enjoyed the concert as well so so yeah this was a weird situation where in my my section i was under the overhang on the first floor so pretty pretty decent spot, but not crazy. Half, we were the only section that was sitting down partially. And then at some points in the show, half of the section would get up and I was right on the edge. So I also had to stand up for parts of it. And here's how I feel is that I would prefer to sit the entire concert, but I'm not going to knock people for standing at a high energy concert you know i just it's fine my problem was uh as as he mentions that there's just people this was the people the concert flooded with annoying people kingdom hearts fans at the concert stinky near fans near fans were okay at that concert the persona fans insanely cringe people screaming like dude so the the guy one of the performers that's the rapper in the persona 3 soundtrack his name is lotus juice these dudes behind me when he came on stage we're screaming his name over and over and i'm like dude he can't hear you you're not going to get senpai's attention here bro you're not it's not happening so and just yeah i also don't know so because this was a very japanese focused concert they had those little wand like the light wands that you wave in the air oh yeah i'm like i'm first i'm not doing

37:52Chris Ansell:that did you save it well you have to pay for one oh they don't just like give them to you when you

37:56Colin Moriarty:they don't just give them to you and the guy beside me that's crazy was like this the whole show and he would wave it in my face and i was like come on yeah come on man come on man yeah

38:11Chris Ansell:like where you have to ask people to behave in some way i hate that shit yeah i've never really had that situation where i'm like i'm talking to someone at a concert but i just uh you know um it's so funny this comes up because i was just watching a clip of i don't know what it was like what what it was like the reason was but of a taylor swift concert we talked about this in the past it's like what is this what the fuck is this because you can't hear shit you know it's really like an experiential thing yeah because you're not there for the music it's a worship service yeah it really is it's like a religious thing like everyone's screaming and yelling every lyric it's like you can't even hear the music nonetheless the lyrics and i'm like damn this sucks i would fucking kill myself if I had to go to a concert like that personally but yeah feature and it's nothing against Taylor Swift I actually think Taylor Swift's really quite talented I just uh the whole it's like oh like it would be interesting if she had a wouldn't it be interesting and I'm saying this because I've been to a concert like this I'll explain a concert where they're like we specifically are asking you not to make any noise and now I saw Rufus Wainwright do you guys know who he is it's like a singer songwriter guy this gay guy like kind of show to me my an ex a long time ago was into him and I got kind of into him too he was really great and so I saw him at the Fox Theater in Oakland and he had asked he did like two segments like two parts and he's like for the first like the there's like a thing a person comes on stage for the first part is like for the Rufus asked that no one claps sings says anything or makes any noise for the first half of the concert And what I remember so distinctly about it is he finishes his first song.

39:59Chris Ansell:It's dead silent, except for like one like humorously gay dude in the audience. He's like, that was, oh, yeah. And they say, oh, like, I remember that. So, yeah, it was so awesome. I like that's like my biggest memory of that show. But I was like, it would be cool for someone even like Taylor Swift. To put not because she plays arenas, but to play like some sort of amphitheater or something for a ton of money and be like it's like a totally like you can share after the songs and get crazy but like no singing none of that so you can hear the music yeah because that to me i just don't

40:31Colin Moriarty:understand the point yeah i think i went to one concert like that it was like a like avatar the uh the show um they had like an orchestra kind of concert thing but and i think they and i think they did something like that too or they were like be silent between the things at the end we'll let you know we'll we'll let you know when we can transition into a different space but i like that yeah it's dude there's they the for the persona 5 segment they played the credit song just like this very slow emotional really a nice song and there was like you know some retard in the front that was like persona like screaming because that's you know when they summon their persona they scream that and it's like dude oh man don't not now boo not now you should have boot him yeah uh but overall i will say despite the annoying people the concert was incredible i'm really glad i went out for it and uh i had a great time it was fun cool man

41:39Chris Ansell:it's exciting now this was did they play persona 4 music yeah you said no only persona 3 and 5 Oh, that's too bad. I just I was like, do they put do they have like a female singer and like all the stuff for like signs of life and all this like that would have been cool if they played some. Yeah, I love those songs. Yeah, so I love that. That's how that persona for soundtrack is authentically amazing.

41:59Colin Moriarty:That's my favorite of the three of the three modern persona games. But they had the actual singers from persona three and persona five there.

42:09Chris Ansell:So right, like you're saying the rapper and everything.

42:11Colin Moriarty:I don't know why. The only thing I can think is that they're just waiting for the remake. Oh, yeah. They're going to do more promotional stuff for Persona 4. Maybe they're working on the music for Persona 4 right now. So they didn't want to have her travel and stuff like that. So. I don't know, but I would have loved that. So maybe next time.

42:35Chris Ansell:Live concerts, standing during a show, not a standing room show, but like in seats. I think it depends on where you are because I've definitely stood in seats many times. Yeah. And I've never been asked to sit down and I've kind of looked behind me and seen people are like sitting some people, but it's like, this is a whatever concert. I'm sorry. Like that. We're not, this is not a, I'm trying to even think of an example. Oh, like when I saw the gym blossoms or something, it's like, I'm not sitting down. Like, how can you, how can you sit down? I always get, I've said this before. I've always been mystified when you're at a concert and someone's just like, like not moving at all like just sitting and like staring at the stage like you look next to you and it's just and i'm like yeah i'm not saying you have to have energy and get going all crazy like you're just not moving like there's nothing about it but i've never had like i don't think i've ever truly had like and i've been to many as we've talked about before a shit ton of concerts we all three of us haven't i mean i've been to definitely i mean saying over 100 is that's easy i mean no doubt sure but um because again i've seen 311 almost 40 times so it's like just and i've seen dredge like 12 times and other things you know it's like so like you get to that number like after like five bands because i love this seeing the same shit over and over again but then all the one-off bands so it's probably like more like 150 and i don't think i've ever had like a truly awful experience at all every once in a while the one thing that always bothers me is that this doesn't this used to happen at 311 shows when i was younger it doesn't really anymore because everyone's old but like it's not a moshing show 311 plays fairly hard music but it's not like you're not like getting crazy with it you're moving around and jumping and having fun but every once in a while someone like you'll be close to the stage someone will try to be like throwing elbows and like getting and i've i've definitely like just like wholesale shoved people yeah you know like as hard as i can be like no yeah don't even do it you know like that's about as as close as it's ever gotten if you're at a different show then that's fine you know but

44:33Colin Moriarty:it's fun to mosh man it's fun to you know every now and again at the appropriate in the for the appropriate music in my yeah like enya enya right and yeah i just remember the timely reference i forgot to wear my new shirt oh yeah there you go i got the live shirt

44:50Chris Ansell:what did that was that 50 i think it was 40 yeah that's about right i will dude okay

44:57Colin Moriarty:so i pre-ordered this before i even left pennsylvania because they sent an email other like pre-order to pick it up make it easy because these video game shows people the merch lines are insane yeah yeah yeah i get there we go to where the merch pickup is they're like oh this is the line the line goes down the hall into a stairwell out down all the stairs outside all the way across the front of the hotel into a gas station parking lot you know next door and that That was the only way to pick up merch. And so it was either waiting this line for an hour to pick up the merch I bought, which was like probably$70 worth of merch.

45:36Colin Moriarty:I got the shirt. I got some enamel pins that are exclusive for the event. What are we doing? You know, I try to make things easy by doing this fucking pickup. The organization was not great in that sense, but I got the shirt. So.

45:55Chris Ansell:And you spent a lot of time with Brad. I mean, that's the big. is brad's bed in his room in the corner or is like in the middle of the room it's in the corner so do you get the do you get the inside or do you like the outside well

46:12Colin Moriarty:it all depends on the night i guess yeah yeah how things progress just curious i like the idea of the answer being middle no matter what middle yeah it's like really taking up space i know like i like i like my in my in my master bedroom here

46:30Chris Ansell:i have the bed in the middle obviously but like the corner bed i for like a normal like anything like a full-size bed or smaller i love the corner bed nice way to get out of the way comfortable yeah maximize your space yeah yeah putting the sheets on is a mess though that's oh yeah yeah

46:48Colin Moriarty:that's kind of the problem with it it's like i'm not doing this again you shouldn't change them it's fine oh yeah right i forgot i forgot we're men

46:57Chris Ansell:right right right we have to not change our sheets for six years i've been pretty when i was in college i was i didn't i like didn't change my sheets like when but when i was uh but when i became an adult i became very like fastidious about it like every week yeah every week yeah wow i do it about every week

47:18Colin Moriarty:Holly and I are not quite every week It's like every two and a half Wow That's valid, that's fine Three There are people who go like, dude Like, I remember I was over at a friend of mine's house And I was like, you clearly haven't changed that pillowcase In like five months minimum Yeah, it's gross when you really think about it And I'm like, what are you doing?

47:39Chris Ansell:Oh boy Wow

47:43Colin Moriarty:Why have we asked our contractor we found on Angie.com To be our kid's legal guardian? because he took such good care when redoing our basement that we knew we could trust him to care for our kids, all eight of them, should something happen to us. Are you my dad now?

47:58Chris Ansell:Uh, no, sorry, I do basements. Connecting homeowners with skilled pros for over 30 years. Angie, the one you trust to find the ones you trust. Find pros for all your home projects at Angie.com.

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49:30Chris Ansell:Serge wrote in and said, hey, guys, word through the grapevine is that some snow came rolling through since the last episode. How did you all make out? Colin, I'm assuming that your house was the most presentable and best plowed estate in all the neighborhood. Even in the winter, the work must be done. Thanks and keep that chicken warm. I will. So you missed it, but you came back into it. Yes. What happened up by you? Like, what was the situation? Just snow?

49:54Colin Moriarty:Thankfully, just snow. So we didn't have any like power outages or anything like that. But we did get at least a foot. It might have been 13, 14 inches of snow. So it was pretty bad here. But it came all across Sunday. Like it was a slow burn. and so uh thankfully my parents came um like not on sunday but the next day and they helped holly like the big problem is that frisk refuses to go to the bathroom when there's this much snow so we they went and dug her out like a little a little space yeah it's like a circle in our backyard where she can walk around uh so they helped holly out but the problem now i was i think i was telling chris this before we started recording is that it's too cold for the snow to melt it's uh 15 degrees so we just have giant piles of snow everywhere is it snow or is it ice well it's turning into ice now yeah it's like real hard crunchy snow so i was out yesterday briefly and just driving around it's like dude all of our two two-way streets are mostly like one way now because there's just so much snow piled up yeah everywhere there's nowhere to put it but But yeah, it's it's pretty bad, but we're we're doing OK.

51:14Colin Moriarty:It's not like, you know, there's places further south, maybe even a little south of you guys, where it's like there was ice like crazy and people don't have power. So thankfully, that wasn't the case here. But hopefully anyone listening. Well, if they don't have power, maybe they can't listen. They're just trying to survive out there right now.

51:35Chris Ansell:Yeah, it's it's I'm a little frustrated. Well, because further south of me, as you were saying, it got fucked up for a lot of people with the ice and everything. But the meteorologists were so wrong about like the storm and like what was going to happen by me in Richmond, in the Richmond metropolitan area, that it's actually quite frustrating and comical. Because they were saying at one point, like, you're going to get 24 inches of snow. And then like they started vacillating. Then it's like, it's going to snow and then it's going to rain and then it's going to do all. it just snowed four inches and sleeted and it didn't rain at all everyone like freaked out around here you know cleared out all the grocery stores wherever because of the meteorology and um i was fascinated by this one thing i was reading which was the most accurate predictive model of what was going to happen was an ai model and i was like it's kind of a good use of ai because it meteorology like the systems of weather are understandable we just don't understand them like somewhere in there is a pattern of that can like be better understood and uh but the thing that's exactly what's happening with you just and it's happening with us is it's been fucking crazy cold here for for virginia it never gets this cold.

52:54Chris Ansell:It's been like five degrees, 10 degrees at night. Oh, and so brisk. And so everything is, that's why I was asking you. Everything's just ice now. And I haven't. So my, my, my street is like a, is like perpendicular to the North South cardinal directions or whatever. So you, the house is my house faces South and the backyard faces North. Basically a little bit off. But the reason I say this is because I've learned that if I shovel my driveway and like my sidewalk and stuff and just give it a little bit of exposure, even if it snows again, it's like another inch. The sun will get rid of it and it'll be gone.

53:34The people across the street from me get no sun on their driveways at all.

53:39Chris Ansell:So like and some of them are like going to you've been to my house, like some of them are going down hills and stuff like that. and it's like they're fucked forever until it is ambiently warm enough because they're never going to get sunlight baking that shit off and then in our backyard it's what it's that problem for us so we have the same thing with the dogs i've been smart enough i'm a northerner i understand it's like you got to get out there and if you know it's going to get cold you got to get the snow off the ground so i i did that and made it for so it was good for the dogs because it's the same thing it's not that they don't necessarily want to be out there as much as they get confused where they are and they just start peeing and pooping in random places and i'm like you're peeing on the fucking porch dude you know yeah they don't they don't know like differentiate it right so i try to like clear it out you can't do you can't use a you can't use salt either because it fucks with dogs right and it's fucks with your concrete and shit like that too we have some salt alternative that's pretty good that micah bought actually on chewy i think um interestingly but yeah so that's the problem and so it's been really really cold it's not been above freezing at all here and they've not paved or they've not plowed our roads dude the road i've never ever in my life seen roads like they are here right now where it's like they're ice if i i wish i had my skates with me i think they're my mom's i'd be like i could skate on the road no doubt you know what about your pool the pool's covered it's iced the pool is iced over and then i have a uh like a pump in the to like get rid of the excess water which is just frozen in yeah and whatever so it would be cool to skate on it i mean obviously you're it's covered you don't want to undo that but you'd have a little like rink yeah it's too small it's too small some people do do that like there is way there are ways to like prepare your pool in the winter to do stuff like that if it's big enough or if you want to do that i've kind of have this fantasy of moving to new england at some point in the future like in mike and i kind of want to go back north you know not anytime soon but in like 10 years 20 years whatever and uh i want to just have a little bit of space and just build like a really rinky dink little like rink and um i would dude i just say this as a young hockey player when i was a kid and i lived in maine and new hampshire for years in massachusetts it's like over the winter i would live in the long island in the summer with my dad but it's like the we knew where the ponds and all the spots were i would skate all the time i if i had that kind of access to ice?

56:05Colin Moriarty:The best. But now here's the thing, right? Yeah. You're going to get access to an ice rink in about 20 years. Yeah. Yeah, right. I'm going to be 61. You're going to skate around when you're like 60. I mean, I guess it's not that unreasonable. The 60s actually pretty young. Not at a competitive level for sure, Chris.

56:24Chris Ansell:Yeah.

56:25Colin Moriarty:I mean, I don't know, man. I don't even know how time works anymore. I look at Dick Van Dyke and I'm like, I guess none of this is. It's incredible. I guess I just don't fundamentally understand it's incredible how like I when I look at the

56:37Chris Ansell:Dick Van Dyke show and I'm like dude how is that possible that that is you that he's still around

56:42Colin Moriarty:and he's like completely cogent yeah he's fucking crazy to me someone's gotta leak his regiment or something you know what I mean like so he's gotta like is it like this is what I do all the

56:53Chris Ansell:time I would do it because it clearly he understands something that nobody else understands I just think about someone his age because he just turned 100 right so it'd be like imagine living from my perspective like imagine living your life now and then you get 60 more years so twice one and a half times more time than you've already lived all the way back to the mid 80s you know it's like it's like Jesus Christ that's so much time like imagine being an

57:23Colin Moriarty:old man for longer than you've ever been anything else right yeah because he's been old for like 35 years at least if 60 is old which it is you know i mean it's not you know it's not elderly i get or it's not like decrepit but it's old that's 40 years of being old right that's a good point wow you get like you know a couple years as a toddler a couple years as a kid solid like eight or ten years as a teenager more or less that's the it's the majority that it like most that it's that's great. I can't conceptualize it. It's insane.

57:59Chris Ansell:It's very interesting. You're absolutely right. Good for you, Dick Van Dyke. Yeah, congratulations. So the weather situation is fine. Now, the problem is, is that I don't know what it says now. Let's see. Do I have it's supposed to snow again this weekend. That's what they're saying now. It's the famous New England snow on top of snow. Or I'm sure this happens in Pennsylvania, too. But I don't know if that's let me see here what it says on I'm on AccuWeather. We have a winter storm watch. Extreme cold. Four to eight inches on. Between Friday and Sunday, we're supposed to get four and eight, four to eight inches.

58:38Damn.

58:39Colin Moriarty:Friday and Sunday.

58:41Chris Ansell:Between Friday and Sunday. Yeah, it's supposed to just, I guess, Friday night, Sunday morning.

58:45Colin Moriarty:Yeah, those are not supposed to get this one.

58:49Chris Ansell:So it is what you guys. I like a winner. I don't mind that. That was the whole thing. so that was the thing about the mist the mist weather by the way was they were like your shit's gonna get fucked because it's gonna eventually they're like no more 24 inches of snow two days ago no we're wrong it's gonna rain right that was like their whole thing and i'm like and we were like oh no you know my mom has a generac i said this i think last week and i was teasing her via text i'm like you kind of want the power to go out right like if you had it i'm like i would kind of want to flex a little bit you look out the window everyone's houses are dark except for that person with the generac you wanted it to happen but it but it didn't happen will it happen this week i don't know we had to get instacart today because we can't leave well dude meanwhile over here we've got a record high tomorrow i dude i saw that you're in southern california but i saw yesterday from when we're recording the hottest metropolitan area in the united states was San Francisco.

59:51Colin Moriarty:That's crazy. Yeah.

59:52Chris Ansell:I was like,

59:53Colin Moriarty:because in San Francisco, like typically like kind of cold.

59:57Chris Ansell:Yeah, that was the whole day. It was 53. I think they were saying it like 7 a.m. or something. And it was that it was like the warmest metropolitan area or something like that. Yeah. So I think it was two days ago or one day ago. Yeah. Very weird. Yeah, it is. I miss that weather, too. But I like the seasons. I like a good winter. People are saying these winters are like the last two winters have reminded people of the winters of the 80s, which I don't specifically remember, but apparently on Long Island, there were bad blizzards like almost every year. So who knows? All right. We're running long.

1:00:32Chris Ansell:We could just get rid of this one. Let's see. Oh, yeah, I wanted to I wanted to bring you guys through this and we'll get rid of this one, too. You're right. I have a so this is a football related thing, guys. I don't want you to gloss over because I have an interesting story that I want to present to you. Like, imagine if this was just a piece of fiction, okay? I'll present big mom fan and the inquiry here first, and then I'll tell you what I was thinking. Says, this is for Colin, and I apologize to all the nerds listening who don't want to hear about sports. How does it feel knowing that the quarterback your team drafted and shipped off after labeling him a bust is now going to be playing in the Super Bowl against your wife's team, aka the dynasty that terrorized your division for two decades?

1:01:11Chris Ansell:Is it as bad as Aaron Rodgers badmouthing the Jets after beating them in week one and making the playoffs this year with the Steelers or is the pain softened by knowing Sam Darnold also played poorly when he was at other poorly run organizations? Will you be taking it as a small win around Micah if Sam and the Seahawks beat the Patriots? After all, Darnold was forged in the fires of MetLife. I'll hang up now and listen while I continue researching ACL and LCL reconstruction recovery timelines. Thank you for writing in. I have an interesting story for you guys. I don't want to bore you. Do you know who Sam Darnold is?

1:01:41Chris Ansell:Does that name sound familiar to you at all? no okay not even a little bit sam donald's a quarterback and uh we drafted him out of usc i want to say or it was a ucla it was one of those usc i think um the jets did in 2018 third overall so promising that's like a pick you use if you really believe in the player and he played for the jets for three years until 2020 he went 13 and 25 as a starter not very good and we're like all right bye and then he bounces around to a few teams he goes to carolina for a couple years and it's like whatever he went to the niners for a year and it was whatever but last year he played for the vikings and had this amazing year this like insane year and the vikings have a young quarterback that they already had drafted so like we don't really need to you know you have a salary cap and you need to spend your money wisely so they're like we don't really need this guy though he's great and they like let him go he signed with the seahawks the seahawks are now in the super Bowl with him.

1:02:38Chris Ansell:The Seahawks are playing the Patriots, right? The Patriots are the bane of my existence. It's funny because I have I've really softened on just being I hate the Patriots. Right. Like, but my wife's a diehard Patriots fan. And I want good things for her as well. So I've kind of I don't I wouldn't say I root for anything. That's not going to happen. But I kind of just lay off. Congratulate, you want to win. Good for you. Happy for you kind of thing. But I didn't expect him to get this close and then maybe even win another Super Bowl, which is intolerable. I'm just going to be honest with you, like totally intolerable.

1:03:22Chris Ansell:Now, here's where the thing, the story comes in. Imagine a cosmic situation, happenstance. Is it possible that the Jets drafted Sam Darnold in 2018. And all of this happened since then in order to put him in position to be the man who stops the Patriots. Because the Jets and the Patriots can't win and play in the Super Bowl. That's not possible. They're both in the same conference. It's about the two conferences sending their winners against each other. So that's an impossible matchup. He had to go to an NFC team in order to stop the Patriots from winning the Super Bowl. And I'm like, that's some story, dude.

1:04:05Chris Ansell:You know, maybe it was all meant to be, in other words, depending on the outcome of this game that we bought. We brought him into this world, into the NFL world, but had to release him in order for him to be in this position right then, right there. Right. To stop them.

1:04:24Colin Moriarty:A thousand lifetimes of planning. Right. It's possible. I mean, that seems like this is a little bit. I mean, it's not exactly the same, but spiritually, this is kind of how I feel. I don't follow sports that much. I don't follow baseball that much. But whenever the whenever the Dodgers win. I go, oh, that's the Brooklyn Dodgers. You're right. You know what I mean? Like, it's like you just take credit when things are good. It's like, I mean, that's an interesting. I like the roundabout nature of that.

1:04:59Chris Ansell:Like, you could write something like that, I think. Yeah, it's like it's a good it's a good story. it's funny man like the the uh they're part of my family my mom's side of the family are Mets fans because they were Dodgers fans and when the Dodgers left the Mets you know the Mets were an expansion team in the 60s and uh that I think a lot of Dodgers like spurned Dodgers fans became Mets fans which is interesting too um yeah I don't know I just wanted to present that I know it's not the most exciting it's a sports thing you guys aren't into it but it's like is it possible that there was this cosmic thing that he had to be the it's like an a meteor coming towards earth it's coming you just need something that was deployed to just knock it off course just a little bit so it's a little late or a little early to the planet it just misses that could be sam darnold

1:05:51is it accurate to say from my impression everyone hates the patriots but patriots fans they're like

1:06:01Chris Ansell:the yankees kind of in that regard because they're so good i would imagine pittsburgh people while

1:06:07Colin Moriarty:they're not amped for anything with the super bowl they're going to be rooting for seahawks

1:06:12Chris Ansell:over patriots oh definitely well because the steelers are in the same conference as the Patriots. So they have history too. You know, the Seahawks and the Patriots in the normal course of the league would only play each other once every four years. But theoretically, the Patriots and the Steelers could play every year, depending on what happened. And the Jets and the Patriots do play every year. So there's just going to be different levels of animosity, depending on that.

1:06:37Colin Moriarty:Sure.

1:06:39Chris Ansell:So that's my, you know, I'm happy. I just want to also say, because a lot of people are being like, oh, how do you feel about your old quarterback that you got? I'm like, I'm happy for him. Personally, I know what the Jets do to players. I know what they do to everyone that's involved with the organization. It's awesome that he got away and I'm rooting for him. Be awesome for him. And then that would also really bring the story together as well. I mean, they have to win. Otherwise, everything I just said is made up. Big mom fan. Thank you for writing in. All right, let's get into the news. just a few things to get through this week.

1:07:19Chris Ansell:I think it'll be fruitful. We've been talking over the last weeks and months about the potential of a PlayStation 6 delay. We're talking about PlayStation 6 like it's real. It is. But we're also talking about it like it's been announced and revealed. It hasn't been, and it isn't announced and revealed. But the rumors from reliable sources, including our own Tom from Moore's Law is dead, say that the console was being planned for fall 2027. and obviously you have to get these things going early and figuring things out and knowing what you're doing and i would i would be surprised if their their plan for the console has not already been locked in for a long time in terms of what it is but we've been wondering based on the economic situation and really the destruction that the ai industry has wrought on the manufacturer of components that it might delay the PlayStation 6 because the console would be extremely expensive to manufacture.

1:08:18Chris Ansell:And I went into how I don't know if that really is super relevant to Sony because you would have to assume that they have a lot of contracts in place. But my assumption is that the contracts are in place perhaps for X million units. And so once you get through that, then you're going to have to go back to market pricing and not the prices you lock down already. And it's going to be a big disaster. In other words, PlayStation 6 is going to be incredibly expensive at a time when they're trying to make the consoles cheaper, but at a time when inflation is ringing the value of the dollar out and things are kind of conspiring unholily.

1:08:53Chris Ansell:Over at Video Games Chronicle, they write, PlayStation 6 release date is likely to be delayed longer than forecasts suggest, analysts says. So they cite a Japanese language insight like report from sandstone insights japan which you can read and translate in your browser um it comes from a guy named david gibson david gibson comes from mst financial i was reading about mst financial just to see like what is that why do we care about what this guy has to say fairly substantial australian um company financial company so they would definitely know what was going on if you read about them and while gibson says according to video games chronicle in this report the japanese language report that sony's actually doing so well that they expect that sony is actually going to surpass their financial guidance which is a great sign for the company based on the performance of playstation he threw in this little comment there's not much to say here except for this one quote says quote sony sony expects the ps5's life cycle to be extended and the PS6's release is likely to be delayed longer than many expected.

1:09:59Chris Ansell:There's a lot in that one sentence because what it's basically saying is that their connections to Sony are the ones that are saying this plus the delay is already baked in. Delayed then longer than anyone expected. Right. So pretty hefty sentence in terms of what they're saying and what they're meaning. Now is this from Sony? Is this guidance from Sony itself? No. No. Could it be wrong? Of course. But I think it suggests what we all understand internally, which is we do not need new consoles. Times are different. And it's really interesting to think that it would be next calendar year that we would get the console under the old timeline.

1:10:43Chris Ansell:It's I don't know why, guys. I know we've said this before. It just feels it doesn't feel too fast. It feels light speed too fast. Like it's weird. And really, it's what we're talking about about years earlier in the passage of time and everything. Dick Van Dyke. It's like it doesn't feel like this console is old. At this point in the PS1's life cycle, we already had PS2. At this point in the PS2's life cycle, we already had PS3. And if you and then from PS3 to PS4, it would be next year. And then PS4 to PS5 would be next year again. So we're in the time. It makes sense. that things would be bubbling and yet all science point to it not happening chris what are your thoughts here on this this unholy alliance of all these factors conspiring to make it so that playstation 6 just doesn't make any sense

1:11:37Colin Moriarty:i mean look i like i'm selfishly happy about it to be honest like i just i don't i don't think we need it i don't think it's necessary i'm not excited at the prospect of a new console i think i told i think i even said like uh in one of the stories that we talked about previously that had to do something like this where like if i wasn't on a show about playstation like i don't think if next year were to happen i don't know if i would even i don't know if i would be compelled to really get the machine you know what i mean like i'm not sure really like it seems it seems too soon and there's a lot of reasons why like the generation has felt a little bit indistinct um took a little bit took took a little while to get going um there is also just the un unusual cross-generational nature of this machine versus previous machines that makes it feel a little bit more like like we didn't really get that much substantial obviously we did ssd all that stuff it is it is a night and day difference in a lot of ways but not in the ways that are front-facing and obvious and so yeah it just kind of leaves the generation feeling somewhat underwhelming and that underwhelming nature makes it feel like it hasn't really been going on as long because we haven't seen these big we haven't seen really huge examples of like why the machine is impressive outside of the load time thing which i which to be fair we might take for granted at this point that is also probably happening but i can't remember the last time i was like you know i saw something that came out of a ps5 game and i thought like oh this machine is like really really this is something you know maybe early ratchet like that that first ratchet game where they were zooming through like the different spaces and then you find out that you could just do that on pc also yeah they just lied about so like so like it was i mean obviously that was always going to be the case obviously technology is going to improve that way but like yeah it's just there's an identity crisis going on and and i think we could stand to have a couple more years to get a couple more heavy hitters the fact that like our big tentpole studios in the first party don't really have as often as many chances to go per generation also kind of contributes to that but i think a big part of this outside of just the ai thing is just like i think people are reading the tea leaves fairly accurately that uh things like to put it lightly things economically are not going to be going well for for a minute things are things are kind of trending in a very concerning direction i think as you know if you're building a machine to enter market in the next year and you're kind of expecting the obvious it's just like well people aren't going to people are not going to shell money out for this thing not only is there like a lack of it not only is there a lack of like interest and a lack of need there's also a lack of even by the time that this machine would be out there's probably going to be a severe lack of even just basic ability for even people who are just even if they're just tangentially curious or like maybe they want new new hardware even if they're not that into it it's going to be hard going to be a hard sell especially considering the components are going to be way more like this machine is going to be crazy expensive in comparison to i would imagine previous consoles that we've had per like per dollar amount the thing is that it wasn't supposed to be that's

1:14:57Chris Ansell:the problem like if you listen to the original reporting they were actually saying it was going to be a cheap console and that's just not possible to do now yeah it's so it really is just like a

1:15:05Colin Moriarty:perfect storm of just um just everything going wrong which ironically ends up in a place where i think benefits the ps5 a little bit where it just has a little bit more time to just kind of get some stuff out because dude like the fact that we're only getting like we're getting one naughty dog game in the entire ps5 generation even with with that extension

1:15:33Chris Ansell:yeah yeah they'll never make another one of this generation i don't think maybe well there is that second game maybe it is a ps5 game too but i don't know well i what i'm saying is like just like the the how often you know i i totally agree i totally agree with you i mean it's it's because games take longer to to make there's just fewer defining games for the console you're going to need to have more time for those games to get out if things are just different i know people lament and it makes sense it's like the uncharted trilogy was all on ps3 and i'm like i know man but it's just it's different it's different times you know um it sucks but it's just different dustin where are you on this playstation 6 purported delay i mean i mean again to reiterate i do think it's important to note that this comment from a well-connected analyst is saying that Sony is saying this and based on the verbiage indicates that that some sort of delay is already in the cards, but that the delay might be worse.

1:16:24Yeah, I'm of two minds about this.

1:16:28Colin Moriarty:There's what I personally want and what I think makes sense for Sony and the industry as a whole. I think that there's a degree where. the biggest system seller of the entire console generation is yet to come out the with grand theft auto 6 i would assume well the biggest system seller since launch because

1:16:53Chris Ansell:obviously i mean there's nothing to assume i mean that's that's definitely yeah gonna be a thing so

1:16:58Colin Moriarty:i think that they're looking at this from not only the fact that this machine could be very prohibitively expensive but they're having a hard time still getting people to move over from ps4 to ps5 i just saw a report or some a tweet or something that they're like putting like ads in the playstation store on ps4 like really trying to be like hey there's we got a new system here you might want to move off of this thing so from that sense they're like man there are so many people that are going to buy ps5 this year whether it's a ps5 or a ps5 pro for grand theft auto and then the the following year we're going to put out a new console that could be prohibitively expensive and ask people to upgrade then that doesn't sound like a recipe for success especially as chris mentioned all the other economic factors alongside it uh it makes total sense for them to wait for the time being.

1:18:01Colin Moriarty:And too, with so many people getting PS5 from Grand Theft Auto or other games that there's a lot of life still in this console. So on the personal side, this is disappointing to me because I feel like PS5 is been very good, but there have been examples of big games that it just wasn't quite there, particularly on base ps5 i'm thinking specifically of final fantasy 7 rebirth where right if you are the type of person that wants to play that on performance mode it was pretty soft pretty soft uh and i guess i mean maybe it's square annex problem but also like final fantasy 16 was a game that it's like ah this isn't quite there yet so some of these problems are being fixed with playstation 5 pro for people who care about it some of these problems are getting worse on playstation 5 pro for certain games as well so there is that element good the other thing too is just i'm very curious about this next gen and what tom had reported with morsel is dead that the focus on ai upscaling ai frame generation and a lot of that has been slowly getting way better on PC.

1:19:27Colin Moriarty:I think early on, people were really against frame generation because of the input lag and they were against upscaling because of the artifacts it introduced. But it's getting so insanely good. And so I'm really curious about what a proprietary Sony PSSR on PlayStation 6 looks like and what that could do, particularly for people like us that really care about their performance in games i really feel like playstation 6 is going to be the console where hopefully performance is like really locked down may it may or may not end up happening because i think that's always wishful thinking for the next gen they're like oh this is going to be the generation where it's all good but anytime there's new hardware developers will want to push things as far as possible and often performance gets disregarded less so now than ever before which is great but i love new hardware so i would want to see what's next but i totally get why it needs to be pushed back and playstation 5 pro still has plenty of room to grow there's a big the big reporting from tom once again is about a pssr 2.0 that is going to be a massive improvement for the playstation 5 pro we've never seen anything like that in the console space where a console is going to get an update that makes the performance across the board way better kind of interesting so maybe when that comes out that will kind of alleviate my feelings of of wanting a new console but i totally get it i think it's the right move but man this ram shortage situation is just incredibly annoying for everybody, whether you're a console or a PC gamer.

1:21:18Chris Ansell:Beacuffs wrote in. It's a good day, sacred gents hope all as well. With reports saying that the PS6 could see a significant delay. Do you all see this as a positive? Personally, I'm completely fine with my PS5 Pro and digging through the endless backlog for the foreseeable future rather than thinking about my current gen console becoming slightly more obsolete sooner than later. Sure, these companies want to push these out to appease investors and gain that added revenue, but wouldn't Sony benefit to just keep selling more of their current machine for longer if it's still selling very well anyway, especially when it feels like this generation's full potential has yet to be reached?

1:21:49Chris Ansell:Take care. It's interesting, B cops, because I think Sony's in a little bit of a pincer, but I feel like the situation they're in is not necessarily that bad. I was thinking about the contracts with PS6. I was bringing that up earlier. We're just making assumptions, but I talking to people that I, you know, like, like Tom and others, like these things are planned out so far in advance you have to clear the field and like get your partners in the line and get the assets you need to the components like it's it's a big making a console is very difficult that's why part of why they're so expensive um because you have to make that money back somehow although you make your money back usually on software and services and all the rest but my assumption on that is if they do have these like pre ai bastardization of the market prices locked in for PS6, but they don't really want to launch the console.

1:22:39Chris Ansell:And when I get out of them, I imagine the various manufacturers, the components would be like, that's great. Like, we don't want to make this shit for you either. When we can be making things way more expensive for other companies that need things on the fly. So, so from that angle, it's like, well, there's probably no big deal being like, ah, nevermind. But I also feel like, and this goes back into what we've been saying about PS4 specifically, is that there are just so many people lingering on PS4. I know I've said this a lot of times, especially in the last year, but it's like it's hard for me to envision a generation coming in which there are now going to be just three generations of console.

1:23:18Chris Ansell:It feels like things are not concluded. Specifically on PS4, and it's like you were saying, Dustin, like they're being more aggressive, sending people messages and shit like that, being like, you know, your console is fucking 13 years old. You might want to move over to the new one. that came out six years ago or whatever. So I think that they're just like, they have to deal with problems, perceivable problems from just many different angles. And the one thing that I do agree with you totally in, and I don't really disagree with you at all, B-Cops, the thing that I really think you nail is, this should benefit Sony.

1:23:57Chris Ansell:It's the same thing as PS4 just kind of doing well. It benefits them. It's this is just they've amortized all of the cost of PS4 at this point. Just having people percolate on PlayStation Network playing Fortnite and paying for PS plus or whatever, it's like they don't give a shit. That's like pretty profitable for them. I think that. Dustin, you brought up PS5 is grand. I thought I was going to obviously sell PS5. It's it's clear. In my opinion, it's fairly clear that PS5 is going to outsell PS4. because I just think you're going, like ultimately, because I think you're going to see this massive burst of PS5 sold around the world for Grand Theft Auto, especially with the Xbox being so finished as a console.

1:24:44Chris Ansell:There's no, it's not like when PS, when it wasn't even really competition because when Grand Theft Auto 4 came out, everyone loved 360, but there were options. You could play it on PS3, millions of people bought it there. It's just like, it's going to benefit PlayStation overtly in getting PS5s out into the wild and getting me like you said this last burst um i wonder what it means for games in the pipeline we don't really know what it means to be a ps6 game and what i mean by that is like are there really going to be ps6 games at first or we've talked about this in the past or is it going to be some sort of like soft intergenerational thing knowing that people are really not going to want to move over that's the one thing that i'm really curious about is like what it means for some of these games.

1:25:26Chris Ansell:In other words, is it just like a series of graphical sliders and stuff and they're like, yeah, this will be a more beefy version on PS6 and a less beefy version on PS5. I don't know. That's the thing that I wonder about is all that preparation, getting all the marketing in place, like all the wheels in motion, but it's just clear that this thing is not needed and not wanted. And by the way, I want to be clear. If they announced it, people would be excited about it. It would sell millions of units in the first quarter. it's kind of more about what happens in quarter three, quarter four, year two, year three.

1:26:01Chris Ansell:Like once you satiate that level of demand from your hardcore audience, what else is there? And if it's going to not take off, then it's really not worth it. Those same enthusiasts will just play on PS5. So I'm kind of hoping that this is true. The one kind of bummer about it is Project Canis, which is going to get caught up in this whole thing, which is the handheld. Because and that and that to me is like, man, maybe we should have just gone for the PS5 handheld. Maybe that was the move and maybe that's what they'll end up doing. Maybe that could be rejiggered in some way behind the scenes, you know, with components and your your architecture and all the rest.

1:26:42Chris Ansell:We're going to talk in a minute about a handheld PS4 that a person just randomly made. so yeah I think that that kind of seals it I think that we'll see the console probably no earlier than 28 now and maybe even later than that but I don't know I wonder what they I wonder it's very dangerous to be relying on old hardware because it could become pretty obsolete you might not be able to be nimble enough to change but it should be a money maker because again you've amortized a lot of your cost

1:27:16Colin Moriarty:when uh what when are you thinking this thing's gonna come out now probably yeah i would say 28

1:27:25Chris Ansell:earliest and maybe even 29 but i just feel like 30 is pushing it right yeah i would say i mean i even 29 is kind of pushing it just because it's like well really like but i i personally have no aversion to it yeah i don't have my nes well into the nes era and i was playing my snes well into the n64 era right like i i was buying snes games when the n64 was out you know like i'm i'm

1:27:53Colin Moriarty:i'm playing i'm playing xbox 360 games right now like i'll be i'm fine you know but that's the whole thing but yeah like i don't know like the so i would imagine like my base guess is actually 29 because they say oh it's going to be be delayed more than they thought i like i don't imagine that that the delay that they factored in would have been just a few months you know like i would imagine that that would have been a full year to hit that fall and if it's later than that i kind of feel like the same logic would would go so if it was supposed to be 27 and it's delayed that's fall 28 and if it's later than expected i don't imagine that that's not fall 29 yeah that's

1:28:44Chris Ansell:that totally sound like i don't know if i'm reading too hard into it but that's what it seems like it's saying to me well reading into these things is part of the fun and these guys make big financial bets based on this stuff too um sony is also as a wider company we talked about this with the kind of the divestment of their tv business and i feel like they're becoming an entertainment company before like more and more they've been an entertainment company since the 80s we've talked about this many times cbs music columbia pictures all these things that they absorbed and became sony at you know sony music sony pictures um and then playstation was really the third stool a leg of the stool i feel like they understand what time it is and that ultimately it's going to be more about content than delivery in the long term if they want to survive and because i the tech industry is becoming i mean i say this as a as a bit of a moron with this stuff but i i can tell like the tech industry is becoming splintered i remember when i when i saw that stuff from intel when they're like we lost you know i was like damn dude what like one of the titans one time like legit titans of all things computing processors and whatever intel going you know original investor in apple and all the rest it's like uh and they're like yeah we just can't catch up and i'm like damn it's becoming serious out there like there there's just there's going to be like very sophisticated electronics companies and there's going to be like mass production electronics companies and then there's going to be a ton of losers and I think Sony real and Sony very wisely realized this when they so doesn't Sony own like the Michael Jackson music catalog and like all like they realized this for long I think Pink Floyd and shit like that they've known this from all these films getting Spider-Man from Marvel for what five million dollars or something like that in 97 98 like hysterical when you look back at it's like the fuck were you gonna do with that five million dollars insane do you know the story behind that is that they apparently were offered like a bunch of other shit and they said no to it and they came back and said that we just want spider-man but it ended up being weird shit like i think ant-man was one of them yeah they were

1:31:03Colin Moriarty:they were offered like a pretty extensive like captain america i think was one of them and iron man also but yeah iron man that was the big one where they were and i think they were like no

1:31:11Chris Ansell:one cares about any of that like we want spider-man and we'll give you like seven million dollars they were right at the time but man the history of the mcu and sony pictures would have been very different if they just took all of it yeah yeah i think it was the right i think i still

1:31:27Colin Moriarty:think it was the right call to do that because i don't i don't know if you would have gotten a good iron man movie if if marvel wasn't forced to do it you know like the only reason they did iron man is because they had nothing else right that's iron man kind of iron man kind of sucked or like a like at the time like nobody really gave a shit and they you know they made something out of it it's funny because when i was a kid i liked that character a lot i didn't really know

1:31:50Chris Ansell:much about him i had an action figure with all the armor pieces and stuff and i was like i think iron man's super dope and like everyone was like everyone hated iron man and i was like why i don't i think but i didn't really know about him so it wasn't like i learned everything i knew about iron man i ended up learning from the movie basically i think there was a cartoon was there a cartoon yeah i'm sure there was there was um the era of iron man that you probably got into

1:32:14Colin Moriarty:though was when he he looked it's so funny looking at looking at it because he looks like he kind of looks like gi joe megaman right you know what i mean like from that era like the really simple shapes and like the the bulbous kind of armor yeah and like gun arms and all

1:32:27Chris Ansell:that kind of stuff i love that yeah 94 to 96 yeah that's what i i remember that iron man cartoon and That must have been the figure I had. The action figure. He's super cool. I love his like thing. Like Mega Man has the arm cannon, which is cool, but he has like the thing in his actual palm, which I think is kind of right. Yeah, very. Because it's cool for effects and all that. I like that. I even like the MCU version of Iron Man. I'm not that I've seen him. I saw the first two Iron Man movies, so it's not like I've seen everything, but I was like, I like him. He's cool. Yeah. Yeah, they did good.

1:32:58Chris Ansell:That first movie is really great. Oh, dude, it's so good. CGI and it's a really good too still by the way just hilarious I remember I saw it in the theater and I remember thinking like I like Iron Man like yeah yeah yeah he's cool I think I like this yeah but it was before it felt novel at the time right then they like just ran it into the ground all right we'll keep an eye obviously on all things PlayStation 6 certainly going to be good for business for us when PlayStation 6 is revealed or leaked I was thinking recently about when Project Orbis started leaking, which ended up being PS4, I was one of the people that leaked some of the stuff about it when I was still a journalist.

1:33:37Chris Ansell:And how there were just people working on stuff and it's got to be the same now. Although, like, I'm, I don't know if you guys remember, I was the one that ended up like leaking the controller. Because like, I knew people that were like working on it and it was like, you guys might remember that there was like a picture circulating of what looked like a PS4. It was the PS4 controller. But everyone's like, what the fuck is this? Like, because like when you look, I have it here. well this is not the color of it but it's like when you look at it you're like and you saw it for the first time you're like what the fuck is this it looked like and I remember people being like is that a screen like all sorts of different shit and and then I'm the one who wrote a piece because I knew people that were using it being like yeah that's it that's the that is it this is the controller you know and then people were so it's like I feel like that stuff's gonna start happening soon although these games are almost certainly constructed to spec on PC with PS5 controllers so and in the world of leaks and we're going to talk about leaks in a little while in the world of leaks they're probably gonna be more careful about that than ever um like nintendo obviously got very gun shy with switch to people still don't we don't have a switch to dev kit but that's to be expected but it's like no one does because they were afraid of of what people are going to do with them.

1:34:53All right.

1:34:54Colin Moriarty:If you're tackling a home project, check out Angie.com. From roofing to remodels and everything in between, Angie connects you with skilled pros who do such a good job, you might trust them to do other things like pull out your tooth or be your kid's godfather.

1:35:10Chris Ansell:Don't actually ask them to do those things. Just let them get the job done well. Angie, the one you trust to find the ones you trust. Find a pro for your projects at Angie.com. that's a-n-g-i dot com I just thought this was interesting this comes from Matt Piscitella over on the social media app Blue Sky Matt Piscitella of course is a senior director of Surkana and in charge of their video game stuff Surkana tracks American sales for game hardware, game software and a shit ton of other things in other industries as well I just thought this would be fun to go through Dustin some hope for you first of all only 49 % of PS5s sold in the United States in 2025 did not include physical media drives so a little more than half of people are buying a disk drive ps5 xbox hardware it's up to 66 so much more digital that makes sense because the game pass does that make you feel good in your loins uh well i wonder even if it like when you buy a

1:36:09Colin Moriarty:ps5 pro you cannot buy a version that's disk drive right so that probably counts but it does

1:36:14Chris Ansell:yeah i would assume it counts because we're gonna talk about many people like myself bought the

1:36:18Colin Moriarty:disk drive afterwards. So yeah, that makes sense to me. I'm glad people are still still interested in physical games.

1:36:28Chris Ansell:13. This is a big one for me. In my opinion, it's not for me. I mean, I don't give a shit, but 13 % of PS5 purchases in 2025 in the US were pro models. This is apparently totally in line with PS4 Pro. Very interesting considering the price differential, although So money is different now than it was when the PS4 Pro came out. So people are looking for the Pro, and that's going to satiate to our earlier point, people's need for a higher performance console. And this I really love to see. PlayStation Portal has a 7 % attach rate to PS5 hardware, life to date. That's pretty awesome. That means that that's a lot of people playing the Portal.

1:37:15Chris Ansell:this is a this has to be a nice surprise for Sony and again one of the impetuses behind probably Project Canis so wanted to just share nothing too crazy but wanted to share some interesting year to date or life to date numbers as well as year to date from 2025 so again 49 % of USPS5 sold didn't include physical media 13 % of PS5s purchased in the United States in 2025 were pros and PlayStation Portal has a 7 % attach rate, life to date on PS5 hardware, indicating that it's sold, what, a couple million, a few million units in the United States? Pretty nice. Not bad. And it is such a special device.

1:37:57Chris Ansell:It's in a dozen.

1:37:59Colin Moriarty:I was looking I was trying to search because I saw a tweet or something about someone speculating about an OLED PlayStation Portal but I can't find if this is like any kind of solidified rumor but so just the question they released a ps5 portal pro with an oled screen and the main thing it needs is better wi-fi like the wi-fi chip in it is old as shit would you be interested in that i don't know if that i would be to be honest like I feel like would I probably get a yes, but it's like I really have to.

1:38:40Chris Ansell:I look at that. It's very similar to how I felt about. Well, in reverse, OLED Vita, right? People loved. And then when they released the Vita to basically the slim, slimmer version, they got rid of the OLED to save costs. And I was like, this is still great. You know, so I don't know that I really need. It's a streaming device, right? It's not playing native games and doing all this. So I don't know. But like you're saying, would the Wi-Fi chip help the stream? I mean, the streaming is already flawless. I don't know. Like, again, I don't know. I have a very consumer level bullshit internet connection situation in my house.

1:39:17Chris Ansell:And it works perfect. So I don't know how much, like, I guess it can get better. But I don't. I don't know how.

1:39:26Colin Moriarty:This leak, this leak came from the Twitter account Zuby Tech. I have no idea if that person has any validity. But so just as a hypothetical, that's what would get me interested is just if it had better Wi-Fi in it in order to get rid of some of the weird hitching and dropouts and stuff like that. But I know it's great. Would be nice to. Yeah, I mean, I guess pricing would be important

1:39:55Chris Ansell:to I think one of the reasons that portal is successful is because it's I think it's quite affordable at$200. It's the same price as the edge, isn't it? It sounds in that range, which is like, I think that's a great, great, you know, I wonder if they'll be able to keep up that price. Because again, as we said before, the rumors were that these are all Xperia tablets, or at least the first wave of them were. And so this was reused assets. I wonder when they have to and I'm sure they already have had to start making them fresh, but it's like. Does is that going to affect cost as well? I also wonder we were talking about the ps6 earlier and ps5 it's like ps5's price might go up again and it really has it really has unfortunately because inflation's bad like tariffs are bad but it really has nothing to do with those things comparable to just the ai rush on components just drive like people getting their fucking personal computer like builds canceled because they can just be like oh yeah we can it's like weimar republic level shit where like you walk into the bakery and like the prices are being updated for the bread like while you're standing there like wait it's like the longer you're in line the more expensive the bread gets maybe the most timely

1:41:03Colin Moriarty:of references yeah definitely that's a definitely timely rep always a good

1:41:07Chris Ansell:Weimar Republic reference everyone loves that

1:41:12all right

1:41:13Chris Ansell:oh man let's see what else we have to work through oh yeah I brought this up earlier I don't know if you guys saw this I saw I think Push Square was the one reporting on this and I clicked in on it It's from Reddit, R slash PS4 portable. And the thread is called, this is a real PS4 portable. And this user built, as you can see here, their own portable PlayStation 4 unit. It's not consumer grade in that obviously it's all stitched together. And he shows the side of it. It's like very thick. It's like not it's like not something you would sell, but it's super cool. And I just wanted to bring people's attention to it and show everyone.

1:41:52Chris Ansell:and it's like damn that would be and he even engraved like i don't know if you see ps4p underneath it yeah so did you guys see this making the rounds i didn't see it making the

1:42:02Colin Moriarty:rounds but i looked at it when i was reading the show notes and i just am wondering initially i was like surely this has to be plugged in but the first shot of the video shows it being played on

1:42:15Chris Ansell:what looks like a sidewalk the person says it it will get it gets two to three hours of battery life and it can be plugged in while it's being used so it doesn't really matter but yeah it will

1:42:23Colin Moriarty:play independently that has to be well it's not the only reason but partially why it's so thick is the battery in that thing has to be insane for that level of power draw yeah just wanted to bring this up anything i like yeah i love uh homebrew projects like this it's crazy it's so i mean that's so ingenious yeah it's what i like about this machine though like if if anybody's like it's it's it's so elegantly inelegant i don't know how else to put it like you would like you said you wouldn't sell this this is a consumer grade it's it's fairly like it doesn't look ergonomic at all but also like there's clearly there's clearly a lot of effort to making it look presentable in a way that like i don't know i don't know how else to describe it like it looks like something that you could have sold in like the 80s you know what i mean totally yeah like a boutique like it looks like a boutique electronic from like forever ago which by today's standards looks really chunky and clunky and kind of bad i just love how he badged it and stuff like if you

1:43:27Chris Ansell:even look in the top left corner there's a playstation logo right that's what i mean it's like the presentation is really high yeah it's it's cool yeah and obviously i was looking too because at first the buttons i was like are those like lettered buttons but they're actually the face buttons like with the sacred symbols on them yeah everything's but those are like bespoke buttons i think right yeah i think so i think they're printed or something because they're small in the back huge fan in the back yeah the fan in the back to you it's i just i am as as a a person with no practical skills whatsoever you know writer podcaster history guy back in the day when i you know went to college for that and you know journalism and everything like nothing too practical can't do anything like I see people do shit like this and I'm like this is incredible I wouldn't even know obviously it's like of course you could learn I could learn but it's just it's incredible that people can do things like this I'm always fascinated by it I have great this is the kind of stuff that happens at the skunk works at Sony you know when they're making shit which is cool all right we're back next thing I wanted to say here piece going around from apparently reliable polish website ppe.pl we've actually talked about these guys in the past they they did leak some other stuff that did end up coming to fruition so um i think i saw video games chronicle and other sources that i would consider reliable citing this story so i think it's okay to do um based on what they understand about this place but um they write gta 6 and the box version retailers announce sad news for physical edition fans and they write and this is translated by Google, by the way, quote, because it's in Polish, quote, sad news reached the PPE.PL editorial office from the trusted Gress Dari, a leaker who in the past revealed the port of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 for PS5, the box version of Oblivion remastered and the release date of Sonic Racing Cross Worlds for Nintendo Switch 2.

1:45:20Chris Ansell:So a person with some random connections. The source who handles physical video game sales in Europe informed us that Grand Theft Auto 6 publisher Take-Two is currently not planning a physical edition of Lucia and Jason's story, at least not for release due to possible story or gameplay leaks as we saw at the last of us part two for example according to initial unconfirmed reports gta 6 will first debut digitally on consoles with a physical release only sometime later the source doesn't know whether this will happen a few weeks after launch or only in the first half of 2027 as one informant says and this is the quote from their their person quote we're hearing more and more that the physical version won't be released simultaneously with the digital version to prevent leaks we're getting conflicting reports.

1:45:58Chris Ansell:Some say the physical version will arrive three to four weeks after the digital release while others say it won't happen until early 2027. More information will be available in mid-February. End quote. Dustin, did I speak this into existence?

1:46:13Colin Moriarty:Maybe. This is crazy to think about because I'm sure Rockstar this is like a seemingly a huge win in that they will make more money on copies sold digitally for sure and when you're you know the thought of six the biggest entertainment release of all time we're looking at a lot of money i wonder though are there some people since this game is so big and goes across you know gaming enthusiasts and even the most basic of normies if some of them if they'll miss out on some sales because people just don't use, some people don't use the PlayStation Network at all. I would probably guess, though, that the amount of money that they'll make from doing digital only will far surpass that of those potential missed sales.

1:47:12Colin Moriarty:And some people might be like, well, whatever, I'm just buying it on digital, even though I normally buy physical games or I've never bought a digital game before in my life. This is the game that's going to make me do it. And not only that, too, Some people will buy it digitally when it comes out and they will buy a physical disc later. Not a large amount, but some people for sure. The interesting thing, though, is that how if this everything in this report is true, how dedicated they are to the possibility of leaks and stuff getting spoiled. It makes you wonder, I'm not the first person to say this.

1:47:51Colin Moriarty:Are there even going to be reviews for this game? will they just release it to everybody all at once right now i'm predicting the stores can't handle it like no one is playing gta 6 on launch night maybe if there's a preload situation but remember what happened with silksong and that's i mean silksong was a big deal but it's not GT6. Yeah. So it's going if this happens I have to think it's going to be at least to some degree a shit show.

1:48:26Chris Ansell:Yeah that's interesting. I never even really considered that. Not about GTI online but just getting access to download the package. Right. And preloading is probably going to be that they might even encourage that.

1:48:37Colin Moriarty:Yeah because you might be right because Silksong didn't have a preload. That was a big part of it. So maybe that will save

1:48:43Chris Ansell:it like preorder it and then just download it. Yeah. That's a good point. But who knows? Chris, what are your thoughts here on GTA 6 and this reliable source, at least in Europe, saying that physical copies won't be released day and date? Yeah, I mean, I think it's pretty smart of them to do this.

1:49:02Colin Moriarty:I think it makes sense. It doesn't affect me. I would have gotten this digitally anyway. But I don't have much to say, but I feel like Dustin hit on the main things that I would have brought up. But I just feel like... I feel like there's just no way this game isn't going to make a shit ton of money. So they kind of have an unusual amount of leeway to kind of act in ways that are fairly unorthodox. They just they know that there's no real risk in doing anything differently. In fact, there might be a benefit specifically to delaying the physical release for the same reasons that Dustin's. I mean, dude, like not even just the physical release.

1:49:41Colin Moriarty:Imagine when this game eventually comes to PC and then you have triple dippers, you know? potentially like who the fuck so i i think um they know what they're doing and um i can't really blame them although i know that it's not technically super consumer friendly to limit the type of audience that you're going to get i would imagine still though that audience is pretty slim in comparison you know to the everybody has the capacity to download it you know i'm i'm with

1:50:07Chris Ansell:you on that that i think that there's actually something dangerous about it which is why i respect it jamie hexam wrote in though kind of thinking about it a little bit differently wrote in and said, hey, boys, I want to get your thoughts on the prospect of Rockstar not releasing a physical edition for Grand Theft Auto 6 at launch. The leak claims it's due to fears of leaks as and as ironically, and as much as I appreciate that, I have to think it comes down to greed. They stand to make more digital cop from digital copies, and they know people will double dip on the game. They pulled this tactic with Red Dead Redemption when it released on PS4 and Switch in the summer of 2023, digital first, physical a month later.

1:50:38Chris Ansell:And secondly, if Rockstar really is this serious about leaks, do you think it means no reviews? Because that's where my mind is going. Could it be a situation where they allow some of the top outlets to come to them and play in studio under their supervision? I know people are upset at the thought of no physical copies, but whatever leads to a better experience for the GTA and gaming community as a whole, I'm all for it. Thank you, boys. Jamie, you pull on a few interesting things there that I wanted to touch on. The first is this idea that they could send people to play it. This is the way, I don't know the way it works anymore, and I don't know what games still do it, but that wasn't uncommon.

1:51:09Chris Ansell:Call of Duty used to be reviewed like that every year. You had to go to a hotel somewhere where they would send you and they would have a TV, like a beautiful TV and like the console played and you'd have like three days. And then you would go home. The game would never leave. Like, I think there were even situations where like they would come and take the games and shit like that because they were so afraid of it leaking and all the rest. So that wouldn't be unprecedented. The thing, though, that I think and so that's possible. the thing that I think plays in here though and we've said this before is that I think Grand Theft Auto is one of those unique games that really doesn't benefit from being reviewed it could be reviewed and become a 10 but it's actually just unnecessarily an unnecessary exposure for people to pick the game apart before anyone even has a chance to play it I would just advertise the game and make it available to everyone at the same time just like they did with Silksong the reality is is that people like us are just not that important anymore.

1:52:05Chris Ansell:And I don't mean that we were ever important per se, but I'm saying like an IGN review or a Game Informer review or something like that could make or break your game. It doesn't matter anymore. In fact, back in the day, I know this from people that worked at Game Informer back in the day, and you guys might know this intuitively as well. It's like magazines used to get game access really early. There used to actually be like two points of access. Sites like IGN would often get things a little later than the magazines would get because they needed it for lead time. So they would often get games like startlingly early, like crazy early.

1:52:35Chris Ansell:I just don't think Grand Theft Auto benefits from that. Like any exposure, I think it doesn't benefit from keeping things under lock and key and also playing into the almost anti-journalism, anti-critic like you all experience at the same time thing. I think just there's really no lose from that. The leak thing I all, and this is where I was saying, like I appreciate what Rockstar is doing. This, if this is true, this is going to be very unpopular with a lot of people. and I appreciate that they're willing to take it on the chin, not only because they know they're going to make it a shit ton of money, but they're willing to say, like, we care about this.

1:53:12Chris Ansell:If this is true, we we care about the sanctity of the experience. We simply do not want it to leak. And this is the only way we can control it. And as I've noted, Rockstar used to fly people to California to hand deliver copies of games to people because they didn't even want to ship them. so they're crazy they've always been this was 20 years ago um i feel like there's something kind of credible and interesting about that to say like yeah we know it's going to be unpopular we just we don't want it to be ruined and it is my hope that they pave the way for this happening more and the game as we've said ad nauseum that needs this is intergalactic right like if if one game doesn't need to be in anyone's hands if one game doesn't need to be physically published immediately if one game should just be left as a package for everyone to experience at the same time in their ps5 it's that game and uh we'll see we'll see what happens but i love the idea of um them doing it for that reason not for what jamie's saying which is possible and maybe plays into it or at least maybe makes it easier which is to say like we'll just make money later will they'll buy the game digitally and then they'll buy it physically later of course they will is part of it that maybe but i don't think they need to even be

1:54:36Colin Moriarty:manipulative like that no yeah i mean i think they know well they've spent a shit ton of money on this you know so like they're definitely going to be paying attention to ways in which they can maximize although i'm sure there's going to be a you know there's going to be shark cards and they're gonna be making so much fucking money it's ridiculous but i'm sure that plays a role into it and i and by the way i'm sure there's even uh a fair amount of greed in it but like again they've spent like a billion dollars on this thing they've earned some level of you know it doesn't mean that they get away with everything obviously um you know the way they handled the that those remastered original games was like shamefully embarrassing especially for a for a company that makes so much money like you would actually expect almost the exact opposite but i don't know their prime games like their main title like red dead redemption 2 is fucking like artistically immaculate i think gta 4 was even in that direction as well and so like i think they've earned they've earned a level of like artistic respect from an ip that i don't i I don't think many other studios have.

1:55:48And I would imagine that a lot more people are going to be okay seeing whatever they would describe as greed coming from them because they deliver something so unique and so weird and so important. But yeah, I think they're thinking about ways to maximize the profit for sure.

1:56:12Chris Ansell:Yeah, well, I think that just makes it an easier decision to make. yeah it plays into it but yeah i i know that that that's going to annoy a lot of people i i guess the thing is is that it's just like we all feed into this leak culture we all kind of play a role in it i don't i'm not going to sit here and and uh say because i haven't it's like i'm not going to leak games that like gameplay of things that haven't come out and ruin games for people that's what I'm saying I don't do that kind of stuff but just the idea of knowing the unknown is very tantalizing to people and so I think we all are to blame and yet you have to understand this is the result and I wouldn't I simply wouldn't blame a single solitary developer from doing this at this point because someone's going to get the access to the game and fuck it up right they are they are yeah there are a handful of people that got the last of us part two like I don't know how many people but it's not that many people that got access to it and fucked it up for everybody and probably cost Sony and Naughty Dog a substantial amount of money too it's like you got to just people are not Rockstar is different too like it's going to be so much more punitive against Naughty Dog that they'd be crazy not to do this like this is I just hope they know what time it is when when their when their card gets pulled and their game is about to come out.

1:57:34We'll see.

1:57:37Chris Ansell:I wanted to note this. We've been talking a lot about Ubisoft recently, and we did a lot of reporting or relaying of the reporting about Ubisoft straight from the horse's mouth, actually, about their reorganization into five so-called creative houses and kind of giving everyone enough rope to succeed or hang themselves and splitting all their IP between these creative houses. And obviously, this is going to come at great loss to the workforce of Ubisoft, which is unfortunate. Ubisoft employs 17 ,000 people. as I tweeted out yesterday just looking at their numbers as I was kind of studying things and make taking notes it's like this company is so bloated that you wouldn't I can't even imagine what a third of the amount of people there do comparable to what like just a completely bloated operation um I don't say that with any joy by the way I don't want people to get laid off or whatever it's just a a shitty and dangerous situation and yet to survive they have to do something, but this is obviously not going well with Ubisoft's workforce.

1:58:38Chris Ansell:It's also not going well with Ubisoft shareholders. As we noted when we were talking about Ubisoft stuff, like the shareholders didn't like the solution. I think the solution is fairly reasonable. I don't know that there's any saving the whole apparatus. I think that's why they split everything in the creative houses to protect some of the IP from itself. For instance, like the Vantage studios, they're not going anywhere. That's like Assassin's Creed, Far Cry and everything, but like getting rid of the poison pill of whatever and giving making it someone else's problem you know

1:59:06Colin Moriarty:the fact that they named one of the studios and left all the anonymous kind of that's like if you had like three kids and you named the first one and then the rest of them were like i don't know yeah it's like it's like the way people in like in antiquity used to like

1:59:20Chris Ansell:treat their own children right because like you know they the child might might not they would not name the child until a year two years three years later because they just didn't know you It's like, yeah, it's like, yeah, he's just that guy.

1:59:35Chris Ansell:So I understand, like, by the way, I kind of understand both perspectives. I understand what Ubisoft is doing and they have new investment. They need to make changes. And as we said, when we were going over the numbers, they've they've from a constant cost, like your salaried employees and your real estate and all the rest in your utilities. they've already cut 100 million euro from that permanently and they say they want to cut 200 million euro more from it annually which means that that's going to be an enormous amount of people they've also canceled a bunch of games they've talked about all this so I just frame this to say that the French there's a so Ubisoft is French they're obviously international but they're located in France and very pro-union pro-worker society which is great they have a series of worker unions that represent various people at Ubisoft.

2:00:30Chris Ansell:And they are suggesting that there is a company-wide strike because of all this. So they write, Ubisoft is no more long live Ubisoft. Quote, on January 21st, 2026, Eves Gilmont announced the end of remote work, closure of several studios, cancellation of projects, and a new 200 million euro cost cutting plan. We were informed of this at the same time as the press, as none of these changes had been discussed during the mandatory consultations with the Works Council a few days earlier. On January 26, 2026, management announced the implementation of a voluntary departure plan that will affect 200 people at Ubisoft's headquarters.

2:01:06Chris Ansell:These decisions are forcing us to act in order to protect those who keep this company alive. Since Ubisoft's founding in 1986, it seems clear that management has lost sight of the very driving force behind our industry, its workers. No dialogue, no respect with a wave of the hand, management dismisses the creativity of hundreds of employees by canceling several games without specifying which ones. The future of studios designed for closure again without any details, the careers of colleagues who are being let go, the social dialogue already strained for several years, the social gains such as remote work, which allowed the company to shine during the lockdowns.

2:01:36Chris Ansell:Management seems unable to stop mourning the pre-COVID era. The announced transformation claims to place games at the heart of its strategy, but without us, these games cannot exist. We are promised autonomy for creative houses, but what about the autonomy for employees? Five days of mandatory in-office work. We are cheated like children who need to be supervised while our management gets away with lies and breaking the law. We have been negotiating for over a year on remote work policy, sometimes under difficult conditions. An agreement has been in place in September in some studios, trampled underfoot.

2:02:04Chris Ansell:Our colleagues and entities without an agreement at the mercy of arbitrary decisions. We are told about responsibilities, but those who wield this word so easily do not take any responsibility for the consequences of their catastrophic management. The latest result being the elimination of 200 jobs at Ubisoft's headquarters. We are not fooled. rather than taking financial responsibility for layoffs, they prefer to push us out by making our working conditions unbearable. It's outrageous. Our colleagues carry on, hold fast, endure out of solidarity, out of love for the industry and out of passion, but enough is enough.

2:02:31Chris Ansell:It is because we love Ubisoft that this situation revolts us. Ubisoft unions are calling for a massive international strike by all Ubisoft employees on the 10th, 11th and 12th of February. No to their anti-work obsession. No to cost-cutting plans on employees' backs. No to top-down decisions. No to coercive control of our working conditions. Yes to our leaders truly taking their responsibilities. Yes to our management's duty of sincerity in the face of its failings. It is time for our management to understand that they cannot do whatever they want, whether with public money or the work of hundreds of people.

2:03:03Chris Ansell:Without us, Ubisoft would never have conquered and transformed video games that it has done. We are history. We are Ubisoft. Revolutionary verbiage. Chris, curious if you have any thoughts on this. first of all well i won't even poison the well with my own thoughts i'm curious do you have anything

2:03:22Colin Moriarty:you want to say well i mean i mean to be honest like i don't know much about how like france even operates under these like under these rules and like i'm this is kind of out of my wheelhouse but like i mean my the way that i feel about it is it was irresponsible of management to even get the company to the size that it is you know it's that's ultimately how i feel about it where it's It's actually disrespectful to your workers to bloat yourselves this way. And so while I understand that, you know, right sizing is kind of a natural course and in some ways it makes a lot of sense, obviously, the fact that they've put many people in the situation to be right sized is kind of a failure of management, you know.

2:04:05And so I don't know, I'm conflicted on it because I think they need to shrink. But it's also like, how did you even like, whose fault is it that they got this big in the first place?

2:04:19Colin Moriarty:And do those people stay? That's kind of my question.

2:04:26Chris Ansell:Yeah, new leadership. I think when you I do agree that and they say it that when you make bad decisions, you should also pay. It's it is unfair for. It's it's what that's what I say at nauseam about Xbox. It's like, God, you just get new people in there. Like, what are you doing?

2:04:47Colin Moriarty:And the thing about the thing about those people in those specific positions, too, is that like if they make a if they work for they work for three. for five six years and then in their sixth year they make a catastrophic decision that is obviously horrendous if they leave they don't really have much to worry about compared to the people that will be let go as a result of that catastrophic management they've got i know a lot of people were like oh well i don't have my 15 million dollars yeah but you got millions of like you're in a way better position than the people that you're putting actually in way worse positions than yourself and so it's just kind of like it strikes me as just i don't know bro just take the just gracefully leave at the very least i what do you have to worry about a lot of these people are kind of set so i just don't understand like i from my perspective it's just like how much is enough i guess like i just don't get it i don't get the need to stay in a place where you've that you fucked so tragically yeah for millions and millions more than the millions you already have it's the same thing with these um i mean you just mentioned the xbox management like why are they why even stay there like what are you preserving yeah like you could literally you could live on a beach for the rest of your fucking life mega comfortably by the way and you could have done that years ago so like i just i don't i don't know my brain doesn't operate

2:06:13Chris Ansell:this way yeah mine at some point doesn't either i understand like it's it's interesting you say this though because i agree that it's like you should i i always i'll put it this way i always hate the argument that it's like oh if this executive just if they just cut his wage they could have kept five of the employees i'm like that's such cop-out weird shit to say it's like there are systemic issues that will make it so that you know eating this cost is is necessary to getting rid of you know to making that you know streamlining and making things better in the long run and i totally understand that so you have to cut heads you have to cancel projects whatever it's like sure it's just that you should all go you know like that's my whole thing is like you certainly you should go down with your own ship like a captain would and uh yeah so i agree with you on that front uh dustin what are you thinking here about about ubisoft's uh or the workforce agitating for a company-wide international stoppage of work in february

2:07:12Colin Moriarty:this is a tough one and it's hard for me to speak on just because i'm going to be up front that I don't know a bunch about unions and how they operate. So what you're getting from me is a, I don't want to say an idiot's perspective. I have some perspective, but a layman perspective. To me, what's, what's feels weird is just that if Ubisoft is having a problem where there are too many people working there and they're having money problems, I just feel like striking or the people that choose to strike will make themselves a target. But I guess if they're protected by the union, then maybe not. I just see this and I'm like, ah, this whole situation is so fucked as you were got, as you guys were saying, like, man, a lot of people are going to lose their jobs.

2:08:09Colin Moriarty:Hopefully people that made decisions lose their jobs, But if they're made at the very top, then probably not. The only other thing that kind of stuck out to me about this that bothered me a little bit. But again, I'm only speaking from the perspective of someone who's reading this is that they say that five days of mandatory in office work. We are treated like children who need to be supervised. The number one thing I see online about people, which I am an at home worker. so maybe this comes off as extremely hypocritical but you see things all the time about people that are working from home that are like oh i my team's meeting started at nine and i woke up at 8 50 um so maybe that's the case for some maybe that doesn't happen at ubisoft at all but while i think that we do live in a new era where at-home work is totally possible for a lot of people it seems like to me that in a project like developing a video game it is so highly collaborative that in-person work I could see that being extremely beneficial should it be mandatory five days a week I don't know hard for me to say I've never worked in a in a developer before it seems like some in-person work is probably important particularly when you're talking about these big projects and of course there are teams that have figured it out moon studios one of the biggest operations that's totally remote but i think it's funny too later on the second one that it says uh in the second page here uh they prefer to push us out by making our working conditions unbearable like maybe that's just a statement about the whole thing and like the lack of communication, I get that, but I'm like, it seems a bit dramatic for being asked to come into the office.

2:10:10Chris Ansell:Yeah, again. Yeah, I agree. And I think, I think this is somewhat complicated. Like I have no, I've said many, many times over the years, like I have no problem with private unions and unions agitating for change is part of the, what they do. So I have no problem with that either. I just think that if anything, they have to be pretty careful because they are misreading this moment. There is no other job.

2:10:37Some of you will find work elsewhere, but like you agitate enough and you get crazy enough at this point in with your protections or not, you get crazy enough and you're going to find out,

2:10:50Chris Ansell:I think. And Ubisoft is teetering. It's in trouble. It has new investment. Things are going to change. It's going to survive, but there are going to be major changes and buy-in from your employees is going to be a big thing. They say some really interesting stuff that I agree with. And I remember thinking this when I was reading Ubisoft's press releases on the show. They talk about how they're going to need to do X, Y, and Z. And these games are canceled, but they don't say what games. These studios are shuttered, but they don't say what studios. Other things are going to be affected, but they don't say what.

2:11:23Chris Ansell:That sucks. it's unfair to do that I understand why they didn't tell them early I'm not saying that they should have done that either because it would have leaked what you probably would have done is like an all hands meeting and then publish the press release at the same time something like that that way you get ahead of it or maybe just have it ready to go because someone's going to leak it

2:11:46Chris Ansell:so I feel like I understand their aggravation and it's a tumultuous and scary situation to be in if you're an employee of that place. Because, you know, it's like, so is my project canceled? Is my studio getting closed? Like what? You're telling us all this stuff, but not get it. But it should have also been obvious what was going to happen. You can't employ this many people. And by the way, 17 ,000 people is down. I think they employed 20 or 22 ,000 at one point. When you think about Ubisoft, it's like, this is what I tweeted out. I was like, PlayStation, the whole thing. Employees like 10 ,000 people.

2:12:19Chris Ansell:Like the hardware. Everything going into the PlayStation network, all of the studios, the market, all of it, 10 ,000. EA even has 15 ,000. They sell three of the five best-selling games every year. Right. They have Battlefield right now and Apex and all these different things. It's like Ubisoft. Like, what are you even doing? So obviously something's got to give. And that's where I think that they're playing with fire

2:12:49Chris Ansell:because they'll get what they want, which is like a solidified everyone stays at the status quo, you're going to need to raise billions of dollars. And I just don't think that's going to happen. The money's already been raised from Tencent for the games that they cared about. If you want to go try to find investment for fucking steep two or something, you're more than welcome to do that. But it's not to say that these people did anything wrong necessarily, although I want to be clear, some of them probably did in the sense that the games are made by people. Not everyone at Ubisoft is the top talent that needs to be preserved at all costs.

2:13:26Chris Ansell:This is, again, a problem with union agitation. It doesn't look at anyone as an individual. There are no doubt people on those teams that are completely essential. And there are no doubt people on those teams that do shit, that either don't do anything or do horrible work. There's no doubt because they're a huge organization. That's just the way it goes. Sure. I've been in organizations of hundreds of people where that was obvious. There's no doubt that that's obvious, too. So I don't want to give them a get out of jail free card. But at the same time, they're not the decision makers and they're about to be victimized on mass.

2:13:57I just don't know, again, that you have the cards.

2:14:01Chris Ansell:And so my whole thing was that I would think you would want to be more you want to you want, again, agitate for change, but you want to be amenable to the reality of the situation because no amount of like ignoring the situation is going to make it better.

2:14:17Chris Ansell:Going out for a week and saying like, well, we're not going to work for a week. It's like, that's cool. But like your problems are still going to be there when you get back. It's like getting drunk after you get broken up with or whatever. Then you wake up the next morning and you're still broken up with and now you're hung over. And so I just think. And again, it's not this is not a healthy industry. The industry makes more money than ever, but it's doing it in really weird ways. like arc raiders right now, a team of hundreds or whatever, they're going to churn money for years. They're going to churn enough money for thousands, but the thousands wouldn't have made that money.

2:14:52Chris Ansell:If that makes any sense. And so you look at like, if they agitate and they lose their jobs and all the rest, it's like, I don't know you have anywhere to go. That's the thing that I would be most worried about. So that's the, that's where I'm like, yeah, I got it. You got it. I don't want to say you want to take more, a more conciliatory stance. you're a union you should have some sort of adversarial relationship with the company totally but right your situation's bad and i just don't think that ever comes up that's why i tweeted what i tweeted because i was like it never comes up that this company is fucking huge and you would be like oh what do they what do they make and it's like basically assassin's creed and some tom clancy stuff yeah 17 assassin's creed and siege it's the big the big their biggest things right right and it's true now also i want to say this and this is also true ubisoft has spread the field i think more than almost anyone in terms of working in really low income countries obviously the per capita income of france is substantially lower than it is in the united states but when you jump from somewhere like the united states or france to to India or somewhere like that, then costs are going to go down.

2:16:07Chris Ansell:So they can employ many more people because they're working in a lot of these, you know, lower cost countries. I was saying to Micah when we were talking, I was talking about it with her last night and I'm like, a game like Skull and Bones would, if that was made in California, would have been canceled. Like no problem, but it's because they were in what, Indonesia or Singapore. Singapore and they were working on like government. And this is what Ubisoft does really well. France does this. This is again why you want to be in Canada and Quebec. A lot of tax rebates and all sorts of things. It allows them to be bigger than their britches as it were.

2:16:42Chris Ansell:And now it's time to right size. And I honest to Christ, I look at that. I look at those five creative houses. I look at their IP. It's actually wildly inefficient for them to do what they're doing in terms of like everyone publishes their own games. Everyone does their own marketing. Like you don't share teams or whatever. So it's actually even more inefficient. But even under those, even under that guise and the way that they want to do things, you're looking at it between five and 7 ,000 people, I think. So I was saying that to Mike, I don't like that means they have to lay off like. In my opinion, who knows what's going to happen?

2:17:15Chris Ansell:Eight to 10 ,000 people.

2:17:19I mean, I don't think

2:17:21Chris Ansell:I don't think they've seen anything yet. So that's the thing that I'm a little nervous about for them.

2:17:27Colin Moriarty:Yeah, it's not. it's not a particularly, um, how would you even say? You're not, not many people are rich with leverage right now in general. Yeah, totally. And it's going to get worse. And that's, that's a shame. I mean,

2:17:49Chris Ansell:since, since it's a soup to nuts operation, like vantage studios is a soup to nuts operation. Pre-production. Like the only things that the Ubisoft studios apparently are going to share like analytics, QA, cert, that kind of stuff. So like your advantage to those, Assassin's Creed, Far Cry and Siege, right?

2:18:12Maybe that's.

2:18:14Chris Ansell:Fifteen hundred people. Something like that. And then you look at all the other studios and they have to be substantially smaller. I mean, like massive working on the division is going to be a couple hundred people, probably like you're going to have a hard time cobbling together or even 10 ,000 that in any sensible way. I don't get it. I would love to know more. And you were saying, you were talking earlier about Moon Studios. Thomas Mallard, did you see his tweet? To me where he's like, what the fuck are they? Like he had basically said, like, I think he said, what is it? How many people does it take at Ubisoft or screw in a light bulb?

2:18:46Chris Ansell:675. That's what he, that's what he tweeted. Cause it was, it is crazy. Like you can't even, people that know how to make games are like puzzled by it.

2:18:56Colin Moriarty:Yeah. um it's too it's it's too big so but then i wish everyone the best that's the thing man that's the thing that people decided to make it that big right yeah you're right it didn't have to be that way you're right what's the choice what's the logic what'd you get out of it also not much

2:19:15Chris Ansell:so we'll see it's we'll i i believe that they'll turn it around i just think they're going to be a very different publisher. And yeah, they're going to learn to a lesser extent when Embracer had to learn, which is that you there simply isn't a market for many games. You have to just put if you want to be a publisher of size, you need to make fewer, more substantial games. And I don't mean that's substantial in that they have to be longer and more high production. They just have to be the games you believe in and care about and get behind because there's just no market for more. So even from that perspective, you look at it and say like, yeah we don't need i was actually surprised by how many ip they were keeping and by the way another important thing is that they said that they are open to divestiture right so this shit's for sale someone might go in and say like we will do something with the division or we'll take your avatar license or whatever we'll take just dance yeah just dance was huge at one point and they were saying that even in the write-up i think saying like we have to reclaim like what we did with Just Dance.

2:20:20Chris Ansell:Just Dance, I think, was like the last games to be released on Wii.

2:20:24Colin Moriarty:Oh, yeah.

2:20:26Chris Ansell:Where they were like huge. Those games would quietly sell millions of copies. So they have a few things that could work, but Rayman, Prince of Persia, these are smaller things, but we'll see. I don't think their Star Wars stuff worked out very well. The Avatar stuff was good, but apparently didn't work out very well. So the licensed stuff. Tom Clancy only works again because they don't license it all right few a couple more quick things here uh mlb the show 26 we're not big baseball fans here i i love the game of baseball but i'm not a huge mlb fan but mlb the show obviously is arguably sony's biggest product um it's a regular in the united states a top 10 cumulative best-selling game in on the market across all consoles and created annually by Sony owned San Diego studio.

2:21:18Chris Ansell:So obviously the release date and the cover athlete are going to be substantial and important here. The cover athlete is the New York Yankees own Aaron judge who is returning as the cover athlete. I believe this is the first time that there's been a repeat cover athlete on the show. I think that was the thing that I read. I don't know if that's entirely true. So that's lame. What do you say?

2:21:39Colin Moriarty:It seems lame. like there are so many players like that are probably great you could put on the cover I guess it's a marketing thing

2:21:50Chris Ansell:it is a marketing thing because they so what I think the cover athletes and a select few other people every year have like a licensing thing or I like a contractual thing with Sony where they like go and promote the game and show like that so you have to find takers are there MLB the show cover players what is this yeah so he oh yeah so Aaron Judge was on 2000 the show 18 interestingly this only yeah it's stupid I was looking for like a cumulative like what were since it was not even the show before when it was just MLB like the 989 studios game which is what San Diego studio absorbed I was like it would be cool to see a like a montage of all the covers the other big news here is the game has a release date March 17th 2026 early access begins March 13th so just in time for opening day pre-orders for the standard edition and digital deluxe editions open on PSN on February 3rd and you can go to the show.com as well I think for physical versions purchasing the digital deluxe edition gives you four days of early access beginning March 13th and then starting March 17th again the show 26 will be available for all that will be on PlayStation 5, PlayStation...

2:23:08Chris Ansell:Oh, no, there's no PlayStation 4 version anymore, right? As of last year? I forgot about that. They are doing a Switch version, but no Switch 2 version. It seems that even maybe Sony didn't get Switch dev kits in time for this game, and there'll, of course, be an Xbox Series version as well. That's basically it. We should play this show at some point. Start like a league. Play on streaming or something i haven't played the show in many years so yeah i think the last time i remember playing it at all was when they i went to san diego and they did a playstation move functionality for like home run like for swinging and i remember and i remember playing and it's almost a ps3 version of the game and i remember playing that i i i did want to play on vita but i never did like i never got to it but i was like and it didn't they only did it for three years on vita and then they stopped.

2:24:01Chris Ansell:But that always kind of was tantalizing. It was like the the travel version of a game because it's so much baseball. You know, it's like 162 games. It would be great for going to work or something on a train, just playing a season.

2:24:14Colin Moriarty:Yeah. All right.

2:24:16Chris Ansell:So there's that MLB The Show 26. Look forward to it, please. And then finally, PlayStation Plus games for February have been revealed. These are the monthly games available to everyone on PS Plus. So whether you're on the premium extra or essential tiers. These games will be available on February 3rd, and there are four selections this month. The first is the PS5 boxing game Undisputed, which I don't know anything about. But that's not really for me, but I'm sure someone will like it. Subnautica Below Zero is coming for PS5 and PS4. Ultros for PS5 and PS4. I've been meaning to check this game out, and I don't think I ever bought it, so I guess I'll add it to my list as well.

2:24:56Chris Ansell:And then Ace Combat 7, Skies Unknown for PS4. Max Lazos wrote in and said, hey guys, Ace Combat 7 will be one of the games on PS Plus Essential for February. Campaign supposedly only takes about 14 hours only. I know you all have mentioned wanting to understand it. So why not give it a try? Maybe on stream even since you've abandoned Elden Ring. Cheers. I haven't abandoned Elden Ring. Stop being dramatic. I don't like it. We need to get Brad back in the loop and that requires him to record. Someone sign on a different day.

2:25:28um no not gonna play ace combat i don't think no i thought about it though see i thought you saw me think about it for about two seconds yeah it's true i witnessed it yeah anything for you

2:25:39Colin Moriarty:here dustin uh yeah so undisputed no subnautica i played a little bit of the original subnautica it's not my thing this altros game the art style is awesome yeah i feel like maybe i played a demo of it at some point but that might be worth checking out and ace combat 7 this is great because i was thinking about checking this out i was trying to look to see if i could get it cheaper on playstation or pc but now i don't need to think about it at all because i'll just play it on playstation thanks to ps plus so i'll give this a shot uh because i've always been curious about it it's totally possible that i'll boot it up and play the first mission and be like nope like I'm just not into a aerial combat game but I'll give it a shot by the way

2:26:31Chris Ansell:the game undisputed came out in 2024 it's an embracer game from publisher deep silver it has mixed reviews on steam with 13 ,000 reviews Chris anything here for you

2:26:44Colin Moriarty:really just ultras like I don't know like I dabbled a little bit with ace combat 6 and I thought it was cool but like it's not I just don't. I don't have enough of a fascination with planes to really get sucked into a game like this. You want to be a fighter pilot? No, I just. I can count maybe literally Ace Combat 6 and Star Wars Jedi Starfighter are probably the only games that I've ever played that are just like, you're in a spacecraft and that's the whole thing. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know. It's too specific for me. But I'm sure it'll, I mean, this is a great thing to be there considering, what is it, Ace Combat?

2:27:27Colin Moriarty:The next Ace Combat was revealed. Yeah, it was announced.

2:27:30Chris Ansell:Right. So that's smart of them. Yeah, Ultros, I think I'll get into at some point. Well, at least add it to my list. I don't know if I'll actually play it anytime soon. By the way, you have until February 2nd to get, so that's Monday, the day this goes live for all, this show goes live for all viewers and listeners outside of Patreon. You'll have until February 2nd to download January's games and add them to your list. So make sure to do that. That's Need for Speed Unbound. Epic Mickey Remastered. Or is it Rebrushed? And Core Keeper are the games you'll want to add from last month if you haven't done so already.

2:28:01Chris Ansell:Please look forward to it. All right, my boys, let's get into what we're playing. Now, we usually take our pee break here, but Chris had to go pee earlier. He was going to piss his own pants. So are we going to keep moving or should we take another break? I'm good to go. Okay. Yeah, I'm good to go. So let's get into what we're playing. I'll go first and then Dustin, I want you to go. and then we get into what Chris is playing because he's playing High Guard and a lot of people definitely want to talk about that I have some things I want to say about it too I'm sure Dustin does as well so we'll get to that all right so I'm playing uh I was playing Front Mission first remake I platinumed it I really I liked it more the second time around so I played it there are I explained all this last week but Front Mission was like a Super Famicom game that didn't come to the west until the ds the ds version was basically this publish this republishing of a ps1 port of front mission that added a second campaign to it so it's a very robust strategy role-playing game where you play as mechs and uh i really i liked it but i felt like it was easy to manipulate it wasn't too challenging but i did it and the story gets a little crazy but i did like the geopolitical part of the story and it's about these factions so the original game you play as one faction and then in the in the remake you play as both factions if you want and the second faction you play uh it's like a harder difficulty and i felt like this was better but still easy to manipulate ultimately and if people don't recall what i was saying it's that you have all these options like endless amount of options but it just funnels you like it almost makes no sense to make any option but a few or make any choice but a few choices like put like the most powerful rocket launchers on you and just destroy things from afar.

2:29:43Chris Ansell:And that's what I did. And that ended up working fine in this in the other campaign, too. But it was cool to see the story from the other end. And I like that it's a it's a quite a sophisticated game for the time in terms of just its story and its intrigue. And I don't know that I highly recommend it. Again, I think it has a 69 on Metacritic or something like that. But it's if you're in the strategy role playing games like grid based, turn based role playing games, you should look and look into it. You might enjoy it and I'll move on to Front Mission second or Front Mission 2 remake but that was my 199th Platinum for Front Mission first and so I'm on the Platinum 200 and I was trying to think about what I wanted to play and I was talking about Last of Us might be an option but then I was like you know what I never Platinum Castlevania Requiem which came out back in 2018 right after we started Sacred Symbols that October and Castlevania Requiem was a Sony funded port from Konami of Symphony of the Night and Rondo of Blood Symphony of the Night, of course, is the PS1 sequel from 1997 of the 1993 Japanese only release Rondo of Blood that came to TurboGrafx-16 PC Engine, they called it in Japan.

2:30:49Chris Ansell:And we got a somewhat port of Rondo of Blood in form of a game I had on SNES called Dracula X, which came out in 1995. But it wasn't really quite the same. So these two games blend into each other. we didn't quite understand how much symphony of the night depended on rondo of blood until we finally got access to rondo of blood which in the west in that form i think didn't happen until the psp port um dracula x psp port which which came out in 2007 so i wanted to get back to this because when the game when when requiem came out in october of 2018 i played through all and got all the trophies for symphony of the night except for one which i'll talk about and then rondo of Blood I just messed with a little bit but I never got the trophies there so over the last few days I played through Rondo of Blood played through with Richter played through with Maria rescued all the maidens got 100 % completion got all the trophies there and then I went back and I was like alright I'm going to wrap up this platinum because the last remaining trophy I have is to beat Symphony of the Night as Richter and as I recalled you just put your name in as Richter and you play as Richter but that's not what it is and I was like ah fuck because I overwrote my old save with the, with the completed symphony of the night save because I started a fresh safe around to a blood.

2:32:07Chris Ansell:I never beat symphony that I don't have the save and you have to beat symphony of the night with at least 180 % of the map. And by the way, it's because you play as an inverted castle. You play it like there's a whole second half of symphony of the night that you're not supposed to really know about, but you, but you play it and you can get the map completion up to 200%. So you have to beat it with 180 % completion. And I'm like, God, and then you can put your name in his Richter. and then you play through the game as Richter and beat it. So I was like, Oh, that's a whole nother step. So I kind of, I was like, I was thinking I might've had it already, but as of the time we're talking, I'm just playing symphony of the night.

2:32:41Chris Ansell:I'm in the inverted castle. I've just been playing for a couple of days. I'm like six or seven hours in collecting Dracula's body parts as one does. And, and then I'll, I'll complete that. And then I'll go through as Richter and platinum that. And so that will, I think be my 200th platinum. And we'll talk about that next week. So that's what I've been playing so far. But of course, as I'm sure I did when we recorded, it was probably episode 20 or something when Requiem came out of Sacred Symbols. Highly recommend it. Symphony of the Knights of Masterpiece. If you haven't played it yet, I don't know what you're waiting for.

2:33:11Chris Ansell:Front mission first. A little bit different. Dustin says here you're playing Code Vein 2. I was surprised to see this.

2:33:20Colin Moriarty:Yeah, I was playing Code Vein 2 for a video for my channel. So there's a video available, but I will spoil the whole video for you now. So if you want to go watch it, you can, but you don't have to. I've been playing Code Vein 2. Are you suggesting that people click off this to go watch your video? No, I'm saying you don't need to go watch it. You don't need to watch it at all. Fuck me. Yeah, fuck you. That's right. Yeah, fuck me. Fuck the channel. But yeah, Code Vein 2. I was playing this and it's okay. it's not great but it's not like a horrible game either I was surprised when I saw the reviews they are all over the place there was like one site that gave it a 10 which is absolutely insane and then some sites giving it a 4 and a 5 which I think is also way too far so the reviews are all over the place but basically the original Code Vein was an anime Dark Souls game to put it as simple as possible and so this is more of that but they are trying to follow in the footsteps of elden ring by making it open world and unfortunately the open world is just simply not very interesting and it's not very fun to move around in they give you a motorcycle in it which is cool in concept but when you actually drive it around feels really floaty and gets stuck on things and just not very good it looks visually kind of weird too they have a dynamic lighting system in it but it often makes things look either too blown out and kind of like glowing and there's texture pop in all over the place but the most offensive thing is being that this is to my understanding an unreal 5 game it runs like shit on playstation just completely um it has like weird stutters and frame rate drops and I cannot recommend playing this on PlayStation at all.

2:35:28Colin Moriarty:To my understanding, too, the PC version, better depending on your hardware, but you're still going to run into Unreal Engine 5 stuttering in it and weird hitches and loading. But the redeeming parts of this game are the combat is pretty good. there's a lot of customization to it where you can customize all of your special abilities depending on your weapon and so there's a lot of freedom in how you want to play the game the customization it's cool there's like a partner system where you can choose to have an ai uh like npc fight alongside you or you can absorb it's basically like you're absorbing them and then you get this buff so you can choose whether you want them to like be a distraction or fight other enemies or if you want to fly solo you get a little buff for that which is nice uh but yeah it's i've played probably 15 or so hours of it and i think i have seen enough of it to where it's like I think I'm I think I'm good on Code Vein 2 so yeah it's that's about it for Code Vein I don't recommend it on PlayStation right now maybe they'll patch it and make it better but for the time being it's it's kind of scuffed I will say this because I was looking at Code

2:36:53Chris Ansell:Vein on Metacritic because I wanted to find who gave it a 10 it's a site called digitally downloaded which I don't know but they didn't give it a 10 if you read the review they gave

2:37:02Colin Moriarty:it four out of five stars so that it's listed as a 10 on metacritic yeah i'm looking at right now

2:37:07Chris Ansell:it's four out of five stars that's insane here look i saw it was a 10 out of 10 on someone someone

2:37:13Colin Moriarty:did like a tweet yeah it might have been ganky who rounded up all the scores and i saw there was a 10

2:37:18Chris Ansell:so that's maybe they had a typo originally and or like i or it was i don't know also i love this this is a really great intro to this review this is very useful having not played the original code Vane I have no idea whether Code Vane 2 is effective in building on it or whether the two games are related at all what I do know is that Code Vane 2 is an excellent souls like one that starts quite slowly but has an odd way of getting its hooks deep into you why wouldn't you find someone that played the original one to review the sequel yeah that doesn't make any sense that's a perspective at least he says it at the top says it right at the top right yeah I loved scrolling through these we've made fun of this before but one of the websites that reviewed um reviewed code vain too but why thoughth o question mark they gave it a 90 the games machine this is game giga what like god what it's like so many what are these this is what i'm saying about the Metacritic score like who the fuck it's so strange man the whole Metacritic thing when you really sit and think about it very weird and yet we all cite it nonetheless Chris it's finally time to move on to you you're playing high guard which we'll talk about uh it's also as you're playing the exit eight and splinter cell Pandora tomorrow so start with those yeah yeah and then kick it back to me when you're ready to get into high guard so I'll read an inquiry sure yeah so uh I was kind of like

2:38:51Colin Moriarty:bumbling around the playstation store trying to figure out like what is i don't know i'm kind of in the mode now where like my brain i'm really excited i'm really looking forward to getting my hands on marathon and it's so close where it's kind of hard for me to it's hard for me to get into anything right now so i was i was looking for i was looking for something um that i haven't played before that i had available to me and the exit 8 was just sitting there i guess it's like part of a premium or like a playstation plus thing or something like i'm not really sure but i could just download it no problem um i don't know it's probably an extra yeah i mean i did upgrade my thing but i uh i just don't remember whatever it's available to me in one of the ps plus tiers and so i was like you know what i think i remember dustin talking about this um but i don't remember what i don't remember the core conceit of what that game was i did i kind of forgot the conversation So I was like, you know what, I'll go into this kind of blind and it looks kind of weird and off kilter.

2:39:50Colin Moriarty:And I played it for about two hours. I am planning to play it more because it is it is it's weird. It's weird in a way that I do kind of enjoy. Like the premise of it is like you're kind of like in this like infinite looping subway station and you kind of have to. There's only really two ways to progress. It's, you know, in one direction and then in the opposite direction because it's just basically a series of hallways. But it's the same hallway every time and it's a loop. And you kind of, the only way to progress through each of these stations, and you have to get all the way up to eight, I think.

2:40:31Colin Moriarty:And you go up each level every time you make progress. But the only way to make progress is to make it through one hallway. And then if you notice anything weird or anything off about what you've grown to understand about that hallway, you've got to go in the other direction. And if you think you saw something that was off and you go into the other direction, then it resets your it resets your progress. So you're kind of like it's interesting. You're going in because there are times where you're like you're at level you're at station six or whatever. And you're like, oh, I'm only a couple away.

2:41:06Colin Moriarty:And then you think you saw something and you're like. was that poster always there or was that shadow always there or does, does the guy walking down the hallway like usually look like that? Is that the same shirt? You kind of get it. It's, it's really, it makes you neurotic kind of. And like, at first I kind of wasn't into it. I just didn't really get it. And then like, after like a good, like 20 minutes, I was like, I think, I think I think I'm into it, whatever, whatever it is. It's weird. Some of the, some of the changes, like some of the anomalies, that's what they're called. And in, in the context of the game like some of the anomalies are like really funny or like and some of them are really subtle and then some of them are like really really overt some kind of freaky yeah some of them are fucking crazy and um i don't know i think it's it's cool like i think it's a i think it's a fun way to spend time especially because it just gets you really in your own head because you start really over analyzing things and you start being like are the tiles usually like this and you're completely wrong it's like oh yeah they are like that like i'm just psyching myself out but it's it's interesting to get into that headspace and so i think it's actually pretty cool if you if you've got the tier that lets you if you're if you're at the ps plus tier where you can try this out um i would highly recommend it i think it's i think it's really weird and eerie and kind of cool um but that's the exit eight i plan on i i got all the way up to six and then i fucked it up late last night and then i was like ah I'll try again tomorrow or something but so I'm playing that and then I'm also playing Splinter Cell Pandora tomorrow I kind of I have this tendency of like jumping between a lot of things and like waiting for something to just kind of hook me and sometimes things hook me and sometimes they don't I've never actually beaten Pandora tomorrow it's like the one Splinter Cell game from that era that I haven't beaten I remember it was just like I was just too shit at it when I was a kid and so I just kind of gave up but I'm way further in it now than I ever have been and i don't even know why it kind of got its fucks in i think it's because it's so dissimilar to everything else that i could have chosen to play and it's so dissimilar to anything that i'm looking forward to that it kind of sits in this realm of like yeah i'm i can get into this but uh it's a splendor splendor pandora tomorrow is awesome like yeah those those original splendor cell games are really great the the espionage angle like the tone of it i love that Sam Fisher has these like one-liners but it doesn't come across that way it comes across as like he's just old and tired I really like it some wild there are some mission objectives in this game that make me think like it reminds me of like no Russian not exactly like from Modern Warfare 2 but I'm just like they really just had me shoot this civilian woman in the face at Israel it's just like no big deal it's kind of crazy but uh i'm like i don't know how deep into pandora tomorrow i am actually i i'm in i'm in jerusalem right now doing some crazy sneaking shit into an armenian church and i think it's fucking awesome like i just love the lighting in the old splinter cell games is such a character that i'm so it's like it's so visually striking even with how dated it is and you know with the the thermal lens and like the the night vision it's just all very cool it's very satisfying it's a little clunky as to be expected from a stealth game from that era.

2:44:29Colin Moriarty:But I don't know, man. I think that the tone of those old Splinter Cell games hold up really well. I think they're just very, very interesting, very odd stealth games that are a lot more grounded than Metal Gear, but more over the top in ways that you wouldn't necessarily expect. And so it's been a real treat going back and finally making my way through Pandora tomorrow after all this time. because I've really only played the first mission of it. But I would always default to the original Splinter Cell or Chaos Theory. But those are the only other things that I'm playing. I am also playing High Guard and I'll just kick it over to you for the inquiry.

2:45:12Chris Ansell:Everyone wants to talk about this game and I'm curious to know what you think about it and there's obviously a lot to say. But Judah Bailey wrote in with something positive. He says, hello CCD Pounder. I want to just throw my two cents in on on High Guard and let people know that this game rules. While it's nowhere near perfect and will probably get quickly replaced in my rotation by a marathon next month, High Guard offers a genuinely fresh gameplay loop in the first-person shooter space that has my heart pounding like some of my most intense moments in the Battle Royale genre. If you're listening to this and have only heard terrible things from absolute losers online, I urge you to check it out with an open mind.

2:45:46Chris Ansell:I'm about halfway through the trophy list and will probably end my time with the game after obtaining the Platinum, but I'm truly enjoying 99 % of my time with the game and hope more people decide to give it a go. Have a great day and keep violating that poultry. Judah, thank you for writing in. All right. So we have a positive comment here on Highguard. Doesn't seem to be too positive out there. I am very curious to hear what you think.

2:46:05Colin Moriarty:Yeah, man. So I'm a big multiplayer guy. I love these strange multiplayer projects. And I've played a fair amount of them at this point to have a somewhat of a contextual understanding of like how these things operate and why these things work and why they don't. I want to be clear, like I've only put in about like five and a half hours into High Guard, which I think is like, you know, it's it's it's more than a lot of people are putting in despite having a lot to say about it. Yeah, for sure. And I do. And I do have to say, like, I I'm not on board with the comment necessarily, but I don't necessarily disagree.

2:46:43Colin Moriarty:This is kind of when I first saw this show up at the Game Awards, like irrespective of, you know, the placement and the disappointing nature of like, you know, this being the one more thing, like just on on on the basis of like what I understood about the game. My expectation was just kind of an Overwatch kind of imitation. That was my guess, especially because that's what ultimately what Concord was. That's what Concord was. It was fundamentally just Overwatch, except they had Team Deathmatch. That was kind of the only differentiating factor. But I've put about five hours into this, and it's surprisingly not anything like I thought it would be.

2:47:28Colin Moriarty:I think there's like an interesting – there's a very different style of game happening here that I did not necessarily see. And just to iron this out for the people who are listening who haven't tried it. so it's a 3v3 base assault tower defense game that is loot driven but is not a looter shooter which is very confusing it's very odd and it's also a hero shooter on top of that so it's like there's a lot going on in this it's almost arguably i think probably too much but it is interesting and very strange it reminds me a little bit of like um i feel like you have the big dogs you have like you call duty battlefield even overwatch within that category you have like the the severe misses like like lawbreakers in battleborn and then you have like these weird kind of like knockout city or like um section eight or uh oh my god monday night combat or or shadow run for the for the xbox 360 it reminds me a lot of like something like shadow run where i'm kind of having a good time with this but like it's off in some very odd way and so like the structure of each match goes like this it's very it's gonna get really weird so i'm asking you to bear with me it's very strange the way this is structured so the first you pick your guy you pick and they each have like their abilities they each have like you know some ultimate they each have a passive they each have like a an lb or like an l1 grenade or whatever you want to call it and you pick your guy and you pick a load out and it's a bunch of generic weapons and there and this is like it's just you know assault rifle shotgun kind of these types of things and the first minute and a half is spent fortifying your base so there's like a minute of you kind of just wandering around and there's generators that like that's where the bombs are going to be planted so you want to fortify around those places and it's okay it's like okay we're fortifying or whatever and then stage two happens and that's where the game lets you out of the base and now you you're into this big map where you're kind of mining for resources or like looting chests for better versions of armor or better versions of weapons that you already have and this is like a good like two minute it feels like two minute section where you're just like mining and the stuff you're mining for is like currency that you go to a vendor to buy what you could also find in chests but like it's just i don't know it's very odd and then at the end of that stage where you're not fighting anybody you're just running around looting chests and mining a flag it's it turns into capture the flag and so something spawns in the middle of the map and both teams rush for it and it's basically like a a sword and you've got to rush that sword to the enemy base and if you get it then there's a second preparation stage that happens for the people like getting raided and then the shield busts open and then you go and you plant your bombs and then you either win by getting both of them or you only get one of them or you don't get both of them and then the game resets to the very beginning fortify scavenge find the sword take it to the base assault So there's a lot going on here, and it's arguably kind of over...

2:50:55Colin Moriarty:I don't know what to... It feels like a very over-designed game with under-designed components. Because you would imagine that in a game that has an entire minute and a half in the beginning fortifying a base, there would be more to do than just reinforce a wall. But that's kind of it. Like, you don't, like... You can't, like, arm cannons. You can't, like... set up traps or anything it's just the wall and you're like huh and then when you're out scavenging for equipment in this like big fucking map where you're not seeing any adversaries at all you'd think that like oh like shouldn't there be like ai here to like fight or something like to or just more than one type of crystal to mine and one type or two types of boxes to like it's very odd and then you get to the combat part and it's like that part's really fucking cool like it does feel really good to like fight other people but the fighting other people happens in like for like maybe 30 of the match and now that probably doesn't sound like a big deal especially like in this environment now where like extraction shooters are the big thing where like you could go an entire match without fighting you or like even a battle royale where like it takes you a while to find something but the difference in those games is that there's always tension as far as like will a fight happen or won't a fight happen whereas in this game there's like entire pre-designated sloths like swaths of time where there's pretty much guaranteed no combat going on and that's kind of awkward because it feels like there should be and by the way considering there's no combat happening in those long swaths of time you're kind of only left with the art style it's the only thing that you can focus on really because you're not doing anything else you're not engaging with any of the core combat which is which is by the way fun feels like titanfall feels like apex it's very very well done you know headshots feel snappy it feels good the time to kill is a little long but i kind of like that i'm a i like arena shooter style things like that but like dude you're just running through this map and you're you're on your spectral horse which is cool by the way but you're just kind of looking around and it's not ugly like concord was but it is like bland you know and a little forgettable and it kind of sticks in your mind as you're going through these like long long segments of just no action um and again it would be different if there was some kind of tension in there where it's like you weren't sure if there was going to be action or not like that's what extraction shooters thrive on that's what battle royale thrives on to some extent but like there's just no tension in those in the setup phase there's no tension in the gear up phase and it's just a little awkward because i feel like the game would be a lot stronger if that was there like i think there's a really good game here but it's like it's it's only halfway committing to certain parts where i think like if if those parts were kind of removed you'd have you'd probably have a stronger game you might have a more generic game that's also true but i do think it's like it's a lot to demand of players to kind of sit through what is essentially five guaranteed minutes at the beginning of every single multiplayer round where there's just no action happening like that's kind of a lot and it makes it difficult to approach because you don't know if you're going to get that win immediately and destroy both generators and you're going to have like maybe like a seven minute ten minute match or if it's going to reset and you're going to be sitting there for like 35 40 minutes you know so it's just kind of it's a very strange game um i don't think it's nearly as bad as people are saying it is i think it is kind of like the combat the combat feels good but it's just kind of it's overwrought and underwrought at the same time.

2:54:57Colin Moriarty:And I don't really know how they, I don't really know how they address that without ultimately like really going to the drawing board with certain things. I get, they could probably add enemy AI into that gear up phase, but also like, I don't even know if that's even remotely in the pipeline. And it would also fundamentally change the, it would make it ultimately a first person MOBA, which is what it feels like it wants to be, but it just never commits to it. It's very odd, but uh that's that's my like over under after five hours of high guard um i think it's kind of good but it's a bad time for a game like this also because like there's you know marathons right on the horizon a lot of people are like there's there's a there's more hype around that now than there has been um you know it's been an uncharacteristically good year for battlefield just this previous so like there's kind of a lot of competition in the multiplayer space and they made a good call going free to play um but i just i just don't know if there's room for this game right now um ironically there probably would have been if they shadow dropped it um after the after the announcement but yeah i don't know i don't know if it's got the sauce it is interesting and it is weird and it is more unique than people are saying it is but there's some weird also the loot tier system is very odd like i don't know man it's it's it's odd a lot of weird energy around this game in my opinion yeah yeah dustin uh you haven't played yet ice are you gonna check this out is this something in your i installed it last night but just wasn't feeling up to playing it really i'm interested because i want to know like i just need an hour or two checking it out i don't think it's going to resonate with me particularly as soon as i saw clips of people pulling out a pickaxe and mining like yeah come on man come on it's weird it's weird and then that's in this that's in the phase where there's no action at all i mean i guess you could you could make you could force yourself to the other side of the map but it would it'd be a stupid waste of your time yeah and you don't have to do that to be fair like you could just go and get shit out of boxes but like it's just i don't know i would recommend people try it it is free you know so form your own opinion of it and you might actually enjoy it but like i don't know man it's a bummer because 30 of the time i was having a great time 70 i'm like all right it is um there is a weird energy around this game it's not for me i'm not

2:57:31Chris Ansell:gonna play it i'm not gonna judge it um if i played it i wouldn't even really know what it was drawing from you know uh But... I don't know how I wrote a bunch of notes because I want there's a few things I want to touch on. I also want to get to people's inquiries as well. I guess let's take them one at a time. Bobby T wrote in and said, hey, fats, could we please discuss the following concerning high guard? What really happened between this game and Jeff? Jeff Keely, he means. And why did he invite such a pile on the tweet about apologizing to him in 48 hours? Dr. Disrespect lying about attending the event.

2:58:02Chris Ansell:The content creators claim they weren't paid, but got flown out, fed and jorked off before being tucked into their hotel bed for the night. Stay gorgeous. um the fact of disrespect thing was so weird i don't know anything about that guy really i know who he is uh because he has a very distinct look and i know he has like a lot of controversy around but he apparently like made up a thing about going to play it and yeah and now he's selling something about it i don't know yeah i don't know each their own um the jeff thing is interesting I'm of two minds with this the first thing is is that I don't I don't know who really cares how it was revealed or whatever it's interesting it's an interesting side piece to this entire conversation but it's not really central to whether the game's any good or not and I don't know what Jeff was really thinking in that the word I think this is directly from them in interviews is like they were going to just shadow drop it right they weren't going to announce it at the game awards they were just going to release it like now and there was this old GDC talk that we used to cite all the time was really fascinating it was from a company called EDAR I don't know if they exist anymore but they're like an industry and they weren't like an analyst firm EEDAR and they came up with this interesting finding, which was that, and this was when games were, this was in the late PS3 era probably, when there was a lot of games, but not as many games as there are right now, but they were saying what actually benefits a game is just being reviewed.

2:59:47Chris Ansell:If a game gets bad reviews, it's actually better for it than if it got no reviews in terms of its permeance and its sales. And part of me looks at this for Highgarden is like that might still have been the best outcome for you is to be on the game awards to be some sort of trivia about it and everyone being upset because at least they know who you are and then they get in the door and maybe you capture more people that way I've been watching the I've been going on steam and just looking at the reviews and right now it's mostly negative it was overwhelmingly negative at one point it was I think when I first looked 31 % positive now it's 39 % positive.

3:00:29Chris Ansell:So it's creeping up. I think to get, I think mixed is 45 or 50, something like that. And that's when it turns like that kind of beige color instead of that, like haunting orange or red that you see when you're like, it's like, Oh no. Um, I feel like, so I, so I think that that's true. I think in some way, Jeff did it a favor nonetheless, but it didn't, but it removed its ability to be shadow dropped. and then perhaps find a way more organically. And we'll never know now. But what I will say is that I feel, and this is what you were saying, Chris, you were touching on is like you've played it a lot and you have a place to now say something, is that I think people are just too willing and eager to say things about games that they've not played or have played insufficiently.

3:01:21Chris Ansell:And that's part of what I think bothers me about the way reviews work on Steam. Tim Weckworth wrote in and said, gentlemen, with the discourse around high guard and review bombing, is it time for us to realize that most of this is done to troll by kids 25 plus years younger than us? Everyone needs to hang on to this thought before overreacting online. From what I can tell, the mediocrity is there for all to see. This is what you were saying, Chris, is that like the game is what it is. It's not great. it's serviceable and there might be something there mostly negative reviews 39 positive reviews in my opinion doesn't reflect a more objective reality about the game and therefore indicates that the system's broken on psn if you go and try to rate something without having downloaded it it won't let you right with a free to play game the barrier to entry is much lower and I know that because you just download it and you can just play it and then you can just rate it right on any platform Steam is really great it's a double-edged sword because it's cool I want everyone to have their opinions and I want people to be able to say what they want to say but I think there needs to be more done on the side of being like you just haven't played it sufficiently and i know that the reviews and people always say this like well it says played for 1.1 hour or whatever and i'm like but nonetheless you should simply not be allowed to say anything having played the game for 1.1 hours sorry it's not enough you might know if something's good or bad even before that but you expect critics to go the extra mile then you should probably go the extra mile knowing that you're you have some sort of heft i'm not saying you have to beat it.

3:03:15Chris Ansell:I'm not saying anything like that, but show some care because cumulatively, when you look at it, English reviews, mostly negative in parentheses, 22 ,266. There's nothing there that says, oh, this guy played it for an hour and people have broken down the numbers saying like people have played for more than five hours. It's actually positive. You know, that kind of thing. And it's like, yeah, but you have to go in and break that stuff down. It's just, it seems, it doesn't seem it is disingenuous and it seems strange and pile on ish and i'm not really entirely sure where the schadenfreude comes from the only thing i can really think of yeah is that it's a sort of and i wrote this in my notes to make sure i i i remember this verbiage a reverse antagonism but aimed in any direction and what i mean is like developers were kind of acting strange for a while.

3:04:08Chris Ansell:I think we all know this. Talking back to the audience, not everyone, right? But believing things that weren't true, being too bullish, alienating people, whatever. That has, I think, been internalized and reversed and just shot out like a cannon. Like a light going through a prism. Right. You know? And everyone gets it. So this game just gets caught up in whatever dramas out there. It's not really responsible for any of it. And I think it injures it. So would it be a positive reaction to the game? Maybe not, but I don't think it would be mostly negative. And I just think again, the libertarian slant of steam is really cool.

3:04:56I think

3:04:57Chris Ansell:something should be like that. There should be a place like that, but I just it's too weaponized and I don't think there's any recovering for this game because of it ultimately I went on I was on PSN late last night you know there was a couple hundred people on my friends list out of 2000 and I looked like went through one by one one person was playing high guard that's just anecdotal it could be doing better on console it shed basically all of its audience on PC

3:05:28Chris Ansell:what do you think of this Dustin the review bombing I mean we've talked about this in different contexts before. I don't know that I understand because it's like one way that people can quote unquote fight back, but it doesn't seem like it's appropriately directional at the actual products that maybe should be fought against.

3:05:44Colin Moriarty:Right. I think that the reason why they allow someone to submit a review without much time played is because there are situations, particularly on PC where a game can be sold that just doesn't work or runs really poorly or has some kind of game breaking issue early on. And so in those situations, I could see why you would want you could make a very negative review an hour into the game. It's like this game's fucking broken. Doesn't work. Don't buy it. That's why I'm putting a negative review, right? so maybe there needs to be a more more nuance into the system where you can leave specific reviews for bug related issues but at the same time people would probably just use that to their advantage as well like be like oh high guard's a broken game and leave a negative review with no consequence even though it's clearly not broken you may not like it but i do think that there is a high degree of performative hating for sure we talked about that last week with like there needs to be a there always needs to be something to hate online it's mega it's mega

3:07:09Chris Ansell:get corny like i i cringe thinking about it i just never spent i'm not trying to be holier than now i was like this when i was a fucking child where i was like i don't like this thing okay i i hated sega when i was a kid but i didn't like spend all my time shitting on it just a little bit of my time you know and i just so it's like just grow up i i just i don't know i'm not saying that you can't be mean about the game you can't dislike it all that it just seems so it's inauthentic on the pale

3:07:44Colin Moriarty:it's inauthentic I don't even think they really feel that I think a lot of it is just like it's cool it's cool to hate this I want to be cool because I am insecure so let me let me hate it that's what it reads like even if it's not true that's kind of how it that's how it's kind of how it comes across and again it's not even to say that like again the game's got some interesting things about it it's very flawed I even think um I didn't have any performance issues personally I'm on a 3080 I played on PC but um people were having some performance issues there's some like key things missing from uh the options menu and things like that like it deserves some criticism right like and I think um if someone played it for five hours ten hours and hated it I would I'd be like that's a hundred percent valid I just um I think the thing that bums me out about it is that like i'm like i already uninstalled it you know what i mean like i'm marathon brained you know like i don't i'm not in i there's no room marathon maxing i'm marathon maxing i got no room for this in my life right now right but what does bum me out about like the kind of knee-jerk um uninformed criticism of it is this consistent insistence that oh we just want games to do new weird things right and then here's this game where it's like look it looks it looks generic i'll give you that man like i'm no one's gonna like i think it looks like it

3:09:07Chris Ansell:looks like a mortals of avium yeah it does and which which looked like what was that what was that gearbox shooter battleborn um no after that that that um oh you know i'm talking about duffin what the fuck battleborn yeah that is the gearbox shooter yeah but there was one after that that like was a ps5 exclusive no that's that's i'll find it before i don't know what the yeah i'm sorry um no it's okay it's like it's like no one with no one we were when i come up with the name of this game you're gonna be like we were the first person to talk about this game in five years

3:09:42Colin Moriarty:but look i like it's a game that's like it's demanding quite a fair bit of you it's like it's it's starting off with like a very slow period it's like it's it's got this weird kind tiered loot system godfall godfall no that was like a there wasn't that a it was counterplay but gearbox published it so that was a gear block so yeah so that was a looter looter sorter or something right yeah it just i was just saying the look of it it reminds me a lot of that like it looks yeah it's it's it's a very generic looking game but like as far as like it's it is one of the more uniquely structured multiplayer games i've played in in quite a while like now Now that's going to rub a lot of people the wrong way.

3:10:21Colin Moriarty:And it rubbed me the wrong way in certain areas. But I mean, this is interesting. This is weird. This is kind of offbeat. This is not Concord. And so I don't know. You want new things, but then you kind of don't. And it's not me saying that every element of this game is unique. I think it borrows from a lot of places like every game really should and really does. but the combination here is unique and interesting and very strange. And I don't know. I want to give props to studios who do that or games that do that is even if they do look kind of deceivingly kind of generic again, this isn't going to win awards.

3:11:06Colin Moriarty:This isn't going to enter my rotation, but there is an effort here to do something weird and off and strange. And I do appreciate that. And it's a bummer that I can see the bandwagoning hate. If you hate something, hate it. Engage with it. And really have that disdain come from a place of informed experience. As opposed to this kind of like, I don't know, the inauthentic bandwagoning. I'm so, I don't know. I'm not about it.

3:11:45Chris Ansell:Urethra Franklin wrote in. I said, hey crew, call me Heartless, but I find I'm struggling to feel bad for High Guard and its devs. The game launched with every intention to be the next soul-sucking live service title, complete with six kinds of microtransactions available on day one. It tried using the names of Apex Legends and Titanfall before removing it, which is a thing that they did do. To try and gain early goodwill, it's a ripoff of nearly every successful mechanic and other live service games mixed together without any comprehensive testing to see if that would even work. The team soon came out with a year one roadmap with the lore dumps and plans for a single player campaign in two years before ensuring that their title was optimized on launch date.

3:12:19Chris Ansell:They only have their insane hubris to blame for their failure. Am I alone in this feeling? I don't think you're alone in that. I think the one fundamental mistake that they made, and it's not even a mistake, it's a choice you make if you want to shadow drop or even shadow announce something or announce something with an imminent release date, is they never had a chance to crowdsource reactions which may have sunk the game before it even got out and could have been a reason why they decided to do that although a lot of these people worked on apex legends and famously apex legends came out you know out of nowhere so i think they wanted to redo that but this game probably could based on the way you talked about it and others are talking about it chris it's like it seems like a game that could have used a lot of people playing it and being like this needs to be

3:13:05Colin Moriarty:refined i keep seeing things about how testing yeah yeah 3v3 is a lot of people are saying like

3:13:10Chris Ansell:it's got to be 4v4 5v5 even 3v3v3 or something but like that the map is too it's the maps are too big like things that they could have figured out because i'm sure they focus tested it but and they had as was being made fun of earlier they had they flew people in and wine and dine people i guess and had them put them up not unusual to play the game under embargo but i think that's probably the big thing that they missed out on but that's a choice i mean because if you do that then you're revealing the game and you're letting people play it and then there, there's a sort of boldness in doing it because you're baking in a lot as opposed to just releasing it.

3:13:45Chris Ansell:And so maybe I don't, again, I think that this is probably the best outcome in terms of player base, but in terms of reaction and sustainability, shadow dropping, it might have actually been the best move people. And again, I think that people are just putting too much blame on the reveal of it. Like who, like ultimately it doesn't matter, you know, like it's about the actual gameplay experience. That's interesting. We're always going to remember that and talk about that with High Guard. High Guard is going to become nomenclature like Concord. It's going to be. It's nowhere near as devastating as Concord was in terms of.

3:14:20Chris Ansell:No. Concord might have been just as good of a game actually, but it was missing out on just a whole bunch of different shit and people hated it. And you had to pay for it. I mean, if High Guard was$40.

3:14:28Colin Moriarty:Yeah, it would be. High Guard$40 would be over. um i actually think it's way i think it's significantly better than concord actually okay yeah you would know better than well it's just more interesting like it's it's more unique and more interesting and and it's it's it's concord was overwatch just straight up it was just a you know a a hero shooter and you you know you you do an objective and you kill the other team and it's you know that's it really was not doing anything i think the most interesting thing wasn't like their whole mechanic i could i could be misremembering this but i feel like they're the whole lean that they were doing was that they were going to have you know story content they were going to have story content and cut scenes that was the big thing and beyond that the the metagame was like oh it's not like overwatch because uh in overwatch you can pick one one hero and like play them the whole match in this game if you swap to a different hero after you die it it leads it gives your team a buff and it's like who the fuck cares that's like meta meta of metagame shit like that's nobody gives a shit about that yeah agree but um you have to earn that kind of uh yeah that kind of cachet with people you do and it it plays like apex legends like it feels it feels snappy and good but like yeah it's i don't know man it's uh they really should have tested this a lot more thoroughly because it's just like i i feel like any sane person would have been like maybe not that the map's too small because i understand why it needs to be the size it is but like there's nothing going on in it dude like you need put in like a like enemy ai even if they're not even if they don't attack even if it's just something to kill for like some of the stuff that you would normally spend mining for right that would do something it would add some dynamism to that world but it's so vast and not interactive until you know the fights happen which i don't know man i think i think it's that pre that predetermined downtime that you know you're in for no matter what no matter what you're doing it's just like i wonder what

3:16:35Chris Ansell:they're gonna do um yeah i wonder i mean morale must be in the fucking gutter um it must have been in the gutter since the game was revealed and it's probably i would imagine there was some hope that we like we're gonna turn it around we can turn around let's get the game out that that hope's now gone in terms of like well you're not going to do that with no work i i if i were them i'd keep looking at that number that that digit creeping up towards mixed um right i think they can i've been kind of looking at it i want them to i want them to like at least solve the problem in some way but i just don't know that there's enough runway for them to do it because a free to play game they're not getting any money up front and who even knows who's interacting with the microtransactions and how much money they're making i mean you could imagine a situation where they're literally making in the hundreds of thousands of dollars or something like something abysmal you know so yeah um yeah we'll see i don't know like what who their investors are and what their expectations are to to uh urethra writing in should we feel bad for them no no you don't i don't think you should feel bad for them i just think i mean i feel bad for everyone that i i i'm a i'm a soft person like i i feel bad for people that are in rough spots or whatever and i I don't want anyone to like lose except for people that have, you know, that I personally don't like, but I don't know anyone on this team.

3:17:57And so it's not that it's, it's like just,

3:18:02Chris Ansell:I just encourage everyone to be kind of normal if you can, yeah,

3:18:06Colin Moriarty:if you can help it. Yeah. I don't feel bad for the devs so much as I just feel bad for the state of just how, how we've been trained to interact with media that we have no experience with. Like that's kind of like, That's what makes me bummed out, really. It's just like that so many people think it's like. That it makes you cool to dislike something that you don't have experience with. And by the way, like not even like something that's obviously like, oh, it's not like, oh, because I know somebody's going to be like, oh, man, you don't have to eat shit to know that it tastes bad. It's like, yes, this is not eating feces.

3:18:46Chris Ansell:It's not even about your opinion. It's not even about flash or snap opinions. it's about your need to share them endlessly and act like they matter yeah yeah think about whatever i have flash snap opinions on everything i just don't tell you i make a joke to holly i'll watch

3:19:03Colin Moriarty:a youtube video i'm like hmm that video wasn't very good i'm going to go leave a comment post on twitter and make a reddit thread yeah about how this video was very normal very normal behavior and the fact that people get like uh they garner respect from that is crazy to me like i just don't like that you can build a career having opinions that aren't based in experiences is fucking that's a depressing thing too but so again i don't care like feel however you want

3:19:31Chris Ansell:do whatever you want i mean ultimately you're your own person but it's i just think that we need to it's what you said chris it's like the direction of this is go like just the way people already talk about intergalactic is so funny it's it's right people be like i think i saw a tweet someone saying like i can't and it was like retweeted a bunch of times like i can't wait for intergalactic come out and destroyed Neil Druckmann and Naughty Dog or whatever and I'm like first of all you're absolutely delusional if you think that's going to happen second of all why yeah it's very odd like what happened to you like what was it that like and dislike things but I don't again just get a life you know ultimately like Jesus Christ I'm saying that

3:20:15Chris Ansell:me

3:20:16Colin Moriarty:yeah we'll see man we'll see we'll see how it shakes up i i wish i wish them the best i do think they have an interesting thing that could be made into something that is a little bit more um uh outwardly appealing i really think a simple fix would just get some ai in that in that open space and that would that would do a lot but whether they have the flexibility to meet that challenge because like it doesn't even seem like they're even remotely focused on ai at all it's a pvp multiplayer game they don't even i don't even think they thought about it so we'll see but i i wish them the best but i'll be i'll be elsewhere all right my boys that's high guard

3:20:57Chris Ansell:that's what we're playing guess i'll be should we do like i guess is anyone else in the family playing it what what do you mean like a spoiler cast for high guard yeah like well yeah like is there some conversation to be had about it uh with someone else or do you know dustin is maddie

3:21:13Colin Moriarty:want to play this no i don't know i know like my friends uh brandon and ben played it i don't think brad's played it brad so gene's not gonna be playing that for a while i mean i'll be talking

3:21:30Chris Ansell:more about it on summon sign also but okay oh great okay yeah so maybe that's what we'll do um i just it's not even high guard specifically it's like i just feel like we haven't talked about a game in a while like a new release and uh but there's really there's nothing resident evil is probably the next one that will that will do oh oh 100 um and speak i forgot to say anything about gene gene is uh in surgery today that they were recording um people have been seeing like he's gonna be gone for a while maybe maybe he never comes back to our shows i don't know if he doesn't want to but because there's a um I saw that he tweeted out that he's like just not going to be podcasting and not doing anything for you know while he recovers or whatever um just want everyone to know Gene I told Gene personally I mean I've talked to him several times um recently you know including yesterday but I just think he got bigger fish to fry like don't even worry about it you know yeah like you'll if you want to come back when you're feeling up to it because he's having long issues specifically and so he doesn't know what is breath and his air is going to be like and his ability to to do that kind of thing and i also know that he says he like suffers with social media addiction and all these kinds of things so i think he just wants to get away and i think once he's in a like when he once he's through chemo and on the mend he'll be in a better headspace and then he can figure out what he wants to do you know but i don't want anyone to worry about that in the interim he's more than welcome to come back whenever he wants but that's in the air so because he'd be he'd probably be someone that would fuck around with High Guard in a different situation.

3:23:04All right.

3:23:05Chris Ansell:Let's get into listener inquiries. Six questions, comments, concerns, thoughts, and ideas from the audience over on Patreon, patreon.com slash laststandmedia. As you know, you can submit your inquiries to this show and all the other shows in the threads on the newsfeed on Patreon each and every week if you're at the$2 and up subscriber level on Patreon. Sacred Symbols threads go live Wednesday afternoon Eastern time and are deleted Thursdays around noon Eastern time. So you have like 21 to 24 hours to get your inquiry in. And you've heard a bunch of them throughout the show. Let's get to six more.

3:23:32Chris Ansell:And Nauman43 wrote in and said, Hey, sacred gentleman. I was curious what your guys' thoughts are on mini maps in games. I'm replaying The Witcher 3, and I noticed that I tend to be staring at the mini map a lot and not looking at the world. I love the system in Bioshock Infinite where you would press R3 and an arrow would show on the ground which way you were supposed to be going. And I think it'd be awesome if more games implemented it. What say you? Dead Space does the same thing. I was just thinking that. it's funny because I do real I do become aware that I do that in games that maybe mini maps where you're really just staring at the mini map trying to like get to where you're going and it is a little distracting yet when a mini maps not in a game I have to admit I miss it and I get annoyed when what was the game that oh didn't Claire obscure right yeah it's like and they still haven't added it where I'm like what are you doing it's not part of the vision man you having any idea where you're going not part of it man you know like it's hell is us or something um right so i do like a good map i do like a good mini map i get annoyed when they're not there games with a lot of it's the way that the maps read too what was a game that i was playing recently might have been death stranding or something where like there's a lot of geographic altitude and it's not really shown and so like you try oh it's ghost of yote and like you're and they're like you're trying to like get down a tunnel or like a pathway but the map doesn't really show you and it's all fucked up that stuff needs to be better refined but generally speaking i like to know where i'm going especially in open world games bioshock because you're comparing witcher 3 and bioshock and infinite those are two different games bioshock infinite is totally linear um so there's really no reason to have one which are three is open world and i think a minimap makes a lot of sense there chris where are you on the minimap in video games i yeah i mean i

3:25:26Colin Moriarty:catch myself doing this too um i catch myself doing it in cyberpunk a lot for whatever reason which is a bummer because like the the world of cyberpunk is so cool but like i feel like i have to look at the minimap because like well especially when it shows you enemy locations right as red dots or whatever like you'd be foolish not to look yeah yeah I don't know man like I think um I like a good mini map I dig I dig like a mini map radar hybrid whatever whatever you want to call it like I think it's um I think it's necessary but I I really do think that's like an individual discipline kind of thing like because I noticed my I catch myself doing it and then I'm like all right I I gotta stop like this is I'll check it for good measure but like you just gotta learn how to self-correct I think I don't want a game like that to come out and not have a mini-map because it is mega useful and it's good it's a good system, I'm glad we have it it can just be a little addicting sometimes maybe that's not the right word because it doesn't feel good to stare at the mini-map it feels more efficient sometimes than staring at the world which is something that they should iron out

3:26:35Chris Ansell:it's an efficient way of playing because even playing Symphony of the Night as I'm playing now, which I played many times, of course, like you have to press. It used to be select to press the touchpad to bring up the map, but the map like overlays the screen and it's very active. And even that is OK as its own form of mini map. But I generally like them. Dustin, where are you on the mini map and the mini map distraction?

3:26:57Colin Moriarty:Yeah, I understand the tendency to look at it too much. I like it when games have dynamic HUDs where they can kind of disappear when you don't need them. it's nice. I do notice the place where the mini map is most annoying to me is a shooter games, like particularly call of duty where I remember playing at some point and I think it was Brandon was like, dude, you're not, you gotta, you really gotta watch the mini map. Like you're not watching. Cause that's how you're going to get all your info about where enemies are. Right. That's the,

3:27:32Chris Ansell:that's what I was saying. Like just the, that kind of stuff that you have to see it, you know? Yeah.

3:27:36Colin Moriarty:So I've always thought like, i kind of hate that like i don't want to be constantly staring at this little box in the corner of my screen in order to play uh which is one of the draws of playing hardcore hardcore mode where you don't have a mini map no one does um but yeah so i i think they're i don't want to call them a necessary evil because i do think they are good and i enjoy a good mini map but um i it's like chris was saying you got to kind of self-correct to make sure you're not watching it too much there is an argument too i guess that in the games where you're watching the mini-map a ton because you can't figure out how to get around without it could be a level design issue in certain instances but i think it's also just because we're stupid and it's like oh i'm looking at the mini-map to get around when really i don't need to i'm just used to doing it you know what has kind of a bad i don't know i wonder if you would agree with this con borderlands like the way the way the minimap functions in borderlands is so weird because like i think it's like i can't remember exactly what it is but like i don't know if it like maybe the perspective isn't locked down yeah i think it might show out like your altitude or something or like like like bent up or down i yeah i don't i just i just remember playing through like one of the borderlands games recently i think it might have been either two or four maybe although i think two is more likely where I'm just like brother I can't this is this this might as well not tell me anything I'm so confused looking at this but yeah good old mini-map um yeah like I guess I

3:29:21Chris Ansell:would just say that I guess I am relying on them just that I know I noticed when they're missing And so obviously that's something. And yeah, some games really, really need them. So, and I think, you know what it reminds me a lot of guys is like, it reminds me of third person view. The thing, the thing about first person view is that it's supposed to be immersive, but actually third person view is totally unimmersive. You're getting views and, and sight lines and stuff that you shouldn't have. And the mini map falls into the same game convenience. There's no reason you should know any of this.

3:29:54right like it doesn't make any sense at all but it's part of game it's part of it it's part of it

3:30:00Colin Moriarty:i think it's yeah i'm yeah that's true i i always looked at that as like anything like that i look as like kind of like a a way to give the player information that the character would have i guess in some way like you like in red dead right like you you figure like you know they live here you know they kind of should know like how many buildings are in this town probably but you as a player might not know that and so the map is there to kind of fill in the gaps of your from a role play perspective but like i see what you're saying like i definitely feel that way about third person like in multiplayer stuff i'm like brother like you're peeking around a wall this sucks yeah like spinning the camera yeah it's awful the one one wrote in said hi cdc final fantasy 7 remake

3:30:50Chris Ansell:Integrate just had a recent update. This is called Streamlined Progression, which is basically a god mode for the game. Max HP and MP always do 9 ,999 damage, all weapons upgraded, etc. This was added because of the release of the Switch 2 and Xbox version of Final Fantasy 7 Remake. But this resulted in the PS5 Platinum of Final Fantasy 7 Remake dropping from a 7 of 10 difficulty to a 3 of 10 difficulty. I'm surprised it's even that. Which caused some disagreements within the trophy community. Some say it hurts the value of the Platinum, while others embraced it, as the system help get past past those VR challenges.

3:31:21Chris Ansell:I don't mind this because the game is over five years old. I mean, Resident Evil does this already with its unlock everything DLC months after the game is released. What do you guys think of the updates in DLC making a platinum trophy easier? Dustin, glad you made it home safely and congrats on 10 ,000 subscribers. You got 10 ,000 subscribers on your YouTube channel. Thank you. Congratulations to you. We haven't probably grown 10 ,000 subscribers like at all in like years. Dude, if we could just get where are we at? We need like 4 ,000 something I think to get to 100 ,000. Dude I want the 100k because I want the plaque.

3:31:54Chris Ansell:I want the plaque too but I don't want to I just want it to happen. I don't want to ask people to subscribe and stuff if they're not watching. I assume they just are. I just subscribe to YouTube channels when I'm watching them. I don't want ghost subscribers. You look fucking stupid when you put out videos. We've said this a million times. You have a million subscribers and you get 40 ,000 views. You look dumb in my opinion that's usually because the channel had a major problem at some point but so or do

3:32:22Colin Moriarty:not subscribe unless you want to the last stand wink wink yeah all right so this situation is

3:32:32Chris Ansell:interesting i didn't even know this existed when i got this letter i i have reason i included it i went read about it like i didn't know this happened you'll find this interesting one which is the original Final Fantasy 7 port, which came out in 2017, has a very similar functionality where you can, I think, click the right stick at any time to be in Limit Break, and you can click the left stick, I think, at any time to be immune or something like that. And it makes the game comically easy if you want to do it that way. That was available at launch, and I didn't use it at all. There's also ways to speed up the game substantially, which I think is awesome.

3:33:06Chris Ansell:The Final Fantasy Pixel remasters have that, too, where the game just moves quick.

3:33:13Chris Ansell:I used that I think I used the limit break thing to beat one of the weapons because I was like I can't I can't do this like I can't I don't want to do this anymore it's very similar to how I felt when I played the God of War games and I fight the Valkyrie Queen and I'm like I'm playing this on easy this is fucking insane yeah like this is insane I'm not doing this so is it cheating? sure but like like you said the game is older people still have to go through the game and as i understand this option is not available unless you've beaten it that to me is okay it's like whatever who cares there's a new game plus it's annoying like there's a bunch of annoying it makes me i look at it and i'm like maybe i'll go and platinum it because i never did but i think what i'll end up doing and this is what makes me really happy and makes me hope that they put this into the uh into rebirth as well is for the so i when Rebirth came out, I replayed Final Fantasy VII Remake.

3:34:10Chris Ansell:And then when the third one comes out, I want to replay the first two again, and I can just basically blast through them. And experience the story. That's all I really care about. I remember what they are to play. I want to like know the beats of the story again. And it's kind of tantalizing. And it's an option. Again, I want to reiterate this. These days, you should just go for trophies for yourself. Yeah. There's no, the comparisons have long been broken. things are remember Nier Automata was a really controversial game with trophies because you can buy them you can buy them with real money you can buy you can buy the trophies right so like literally it's not even like literally buying something it's like you literally go to a store and buy the trophies right and they pop so even in premium yeah like games it's broken and right um so that again that's why i was making remember when uh that we were making fun of that studio for all their games getting taken off of psn and i was like really the corn balls are the people that are buying this shit like who cares if you have a thousand platinum trophies and you look at your list and it's gar it's garbage that's not that's fucking depressing this is what you're choosing to do i go through those people's lists sometimes on psn profiles the people like the top of the leaderboard and i'm like this is so corny dude it's like the jumping taco australian the jumping taco japanese the jumping taco america the jumping taco europe the jumping taco 2 north of it's like what and then you'll see like the times it's like platinum in 30 seconds usually it says like platinum in two months or whatever it's like this these are the people you're competing with so ultimately you have to just do it for yourself and i didn't know that resident evil games released that sort of thing because the Resident Evil Platinums are hard, mostly because you have to do things outside of the games.

3:36:04Chris Ansell:Like the, what is it? The rebellion mode or something?

3:36:08Colin Moriarty:Yeah, there's like a mercenary. Is it mercenary? Maybe that's what it is.

3:36:13Chris Ansell:I was talking about that with Brad, I think, at some point where I'm like, yeah, that's what stops you from platinuming. These games is that there's often these other bullshit things you have to do that I don't want to do. If it's all about the game, Dead Space's Platinum was perfect. So was Kronos's. Where it's just like Kronos is like just beat the game on new game plus all right al pacchino wrote in we've heard from you before hi cdc quick dilemma if you are a fan of the traditional single player playstation games and want to see more of them releasing at a higher pace what should your attitude be towards their live service games like marathon share for them to fail so that ps understands the message and goes back to investing the entire pie on single player games or share for them to be a massive success so that ps quickly finds their golden goose and slows down their relentless pursuit of live service endeavors.

3:36:58Chris Ansell:I personally lean towards the second option. They won't stop until they find success in the space and will probably keep going even after a couple of successes. But I do hope they get to a point where they slow down investment in live service after a couple of games hit and are consistent revenue streams. What say you? Thank you for all that you do. Dustin, what should Al Pacacino be rooting for?

3:37:18Colin Moriarty:I think you should support the games you like and are interested in. and you shouldn't be like, oh, well, I'm going to buy Marathon because I want to support Sony or cheer for it to fail because you want single player games. I think the market is just going to act and respond because no matter what, regardless of how anything happens, for the time being, Sony is going to pursue live service. as long as games like fortnight are incredibly successful and making millions and millions tens of millions of dollars sony is going to want a piece of that regardless of anything else so i would say just continue doing and playing what you want to play it's not it just feels like it's not that deep bro you know yeah unfortunately there's not much you can do as a single individual to change the course of a company to bend them to your will.

3:38:22Colin Moriarty:So just give up along with a lot of other things in life is my suggestion. Fair enough. What do you think, Chris? Yeah, I mean, I largely agree. I do. I don't know, man, like because. I mean, Fortnite exists, right? And Epic doesn't do anything else. you know they they they're kind of focused on sustaining i mean i guess they have like the you know the epic game store or whatever but like that's not that's not yeah they bought a few things

3:38:52Chris Ansell:but they all integrated it like harmonics and psionics and all that into right the game yeah

3:38:58Colin Moriarty:and so like i do think it's probably more beneficial for them to find their thing and then focus on you know having that studio that makes it sustain it um that probably frees up some level of pressure. But I guess my question is would they try again to get a separate thing? Because it's technically wise to do that. Because are you going to put all your eggs in one basket? So I don't really know if it would pan out in the way that you think where like, oh, they'll find a success and then they'll focus on single player. I think we're always going to get these types of games, whether we want them or not really like i think you're going to get more single player games the pace is never going to go up again i'm sorry like like we're well into um i mean i would be astonished i would be i would be so i would i would be ecstatic if we managed to get back to the three-year minimum dev cycle for for like really solid single player games but i just i don't uh it's not looking like that's in the cards really um so that's not gonna happen but we're gonna keep getting single player games and we're gonna keep getting multiplayer games and i think like dustin said i just think you the only thing that you should be doing is supporting the games that you want to play.

3:40:17Colin Moriarty:Let's leave it at that. I really, it's not that deep bro is kind of, it's kind of accurate.

3:40:22Chris Ansell:Yeah. I agree with both your sentiments that as an individual, you're not going to do much to change the course anyway. And that's kind of seem makes it seem like hopeless, but it, it truly is what it is. You were saying that they're going to go after, continue to go after these success, success stories. And it's like, they, they are, they already have a meteoric success and they have two of them really. if you count grant turismo three but they have hell divers and mlb those are two massive live service games they're gonna keep squeezing as much as they can i think what i'm the advantage sony has is i've as i've noted many times in the past is that they have access to really they have access to data that they shouldn't have access to per se because they are the how do i put this it's like they're the the facilitator of play so the stats about how people play fortnight or whatever and any other game running on their consoles they know it's not like a thing where they just don't know and so i bring this up because i wonder if they see stats at some point where they're like there's such a level of impenetrable domination by a certain number of games eating up all of these hours as we've discussed the 10 games that make half of the revenue on psn right if they look at that and say like there really is no penetrating this reasonably like we've thrown at this point whatever at the point they say 20 things at the wall three of them have stuck somewhat and there's just nothing to do maybe they reach that point but even if they do and this is what jaffe and i were saying on sacred plus recently is like that gets into the really scary conversation for us where it's like they have the conversation of like maybe we just don't need to make games you know like yeah if yeah maybe now again i don't i don't think that they would do that.

3:42:04Chris Ansell:That leaves them incredibly vulnerable and they want to control IP, as we've said. But like, that's more likely than them giving up on games as a service because single player games are just not moneymakers. Even a game like Spider-Man 2 or when Wolverine comes out, there's going to be heavy licensing fees for that. They'll make a lot of money on it, but it's a lot for a little. And I was spending a lot to make a little. And I just, Al Pacachino just we got to get into the acceptance phase at some point that it's not really operating towards us anymore whether or not we like it or not and really the only way to change it is for us to just abandon the console but I feel sated because I just I'm just overwhelmed with shit to play I don't I people made fun of me for years for saying it but it's like I just don't care where the games come from really I like it's interesting that Sony has its own.

3:42:58Chris Ansell:Look at Saros. Like Saros at its most optimistic might sell two or three million copies. That's like ultimately like lifetime. Maybe if you're like really bullishly optimistic, it's like that's not a that that's there's no money to be made doing that period. Doesn't even matter what you're charging for the game or what it costs to spend or what it costs to make it at that point. Because at that point, you're still looking at what $200 million in gross revenue. And it's like, yeah, that's nice. Now back to the trenches for another five years, you know, for like, it sucks. And making games, this is what we were saying about AI is like making games quicker and cheaper.

3:43:41Chris Ansell:It's like, that's just gonna make the problem worse. It's not gonna make it better.

3:43:47Chris Ansell:So let's start to get to the acceptance phase. colin k mar wrote in said hello sacred gents i apologize in advance for this longer question over the past several years we have repeatedly seen games with enormous budgets fueling an unsustainable trend we've been told games are expensive to make and so dev teams require hundreds or thousands of people with five plus years to make something that will likely be poorly received i want to pose a perspective that i don't hear others discussing is the scope of most games just too big to be sustainable i think most gamers are growing tired of the 100 plus hour open world game.

3:44:20Chris Ansell:During the SNES or NES and SNES days, they were pound for pound many more high quality games with much smaller scopes. Perhaps we don't need bigger, more expensive games. I argue that the overall quality of games has decreased due to an unnecessary increase in scope. I find myself growing concerned with discussions regarding the release of PS6, as this will inevitably lead to devs increasing the scope and budget of their games once again. What say you? Let's focus on the here and now with this one. it is true that nes and snes games there were by the time you got to the snes there were 40 50 hour role-playing games 60 hour role-playing games but and dragon warrior 4 and dragon warrior 3 were long on nes 2 but generally speaking it's true you could beat a game you'd be contra in like 20 minutes if you knew what you're doing castlevania in 20 minutes megaman in 25 minutes these were short games and people paid a lot of money for them i don't know that there's going to be a high tolerance for that.

3:45:15Chris Ansell:And I know that that's not necessarily what you're saying, but let's say you're saying like five hours, 10 hours. I don't know. Are you willing to pay$40 for a five-hour game? Like straight up a five-hour game? Maybe if it's like the best thing you've ever played, but I don't know, man. There's no going back to those days. I think the customers are different. The consumers are different. Think about, I mean, there were adults playing NES and SNES, obviously, But think about it. It's like these games were short and limited. Purchased primarily by parents. For children that had nothing better to do.

3:45:56Chris Ansell:As we all grew up with the medium, I think there are obviously kids filling in the gaps now and coming in behind us. But our expectations have changed. And because those expectations have changed that have trickled down to everyone where they want more immersive and complete experiences. I don't know that there's any getting away from that. the only thing is is that that takes so much time and money from the pie and so it makes the competition really risky like a game like crimson desert or later uh dawn of the blood blood walker or blood of the dawn walker one of those um those are games that are expensive and robust and they'll do well critically and commercially i assume but are also taking away from others taking out of the mouths of other developers that's just it's just about ratcheted up competition so it's not about like trying to reframe the competition to make something else that no one wants it's like embracing the fact that like this is the new reality and that games aren't made like they were on the genesis or the snes anymore i love those kinds of games and they still exist on the fringes but not to any not to any meaningful extent.

3:47:05Chris Ansell:Dustin, is scope a problem?

3:47:08Colin Moriarty:I think there is some issue with scope. It's tough because games now, like consumers in general, are already trending so much towards free to play games and aren't as interested in, we'll say, standard AAA games. And so the solution for maybe not solution, but I think as a symptom of that, AAA games are getting bigger and crazier because that's what is needed in order for people to necessarily go out and make the purchase. it's a weird time though too because we look at like a lot of if we want to take some degree of standardization with the game awards not that they're the end all be all but if you look at the game of the year nominees three of them were we'll say smaller budget games with hades 2 silksong clear obscure to some degree um but while those games may be big in the hardcore gaming circle they're not necessarily games that like uh sustain the industry as a whole uh they're not like the games that necessarily that norm i mean some normies will play clear obscure maybe but so i think that it would be cool to get back to this is something that sony was doing towards the end of the ps4 generation and something i think sean probably sean laid an initiative because he talked about this was i really loved the 40 interstitial games where games like spider-man miles morales uncharted lost legacy where it's like okay we have we did all the really expensive main work for this game could we do like a really nice expansion for it and get more leverage out of it and then you get another title i think that was a really interesting idea that's kind of been abandoned at this point where it's like okay well on to the next one i do think that also as much as i love naughty dog and their craziness i think that them setting a standard of like their level of hyper detail and realism in games i guess rock rockstar also with like red dead redemption 2 and things with that uh have created unrealistic expectations for some people and also not just unrealistic unnecessary expectations i think it's awesome that in the last of us part two, there's a hyper realistic, uh, rope animation and you can see Ellie, um, you know, putting the rope together and how, how much details there.

3:50:05Colin Moriarty:I think that's great. I do not need every game to do that. Uh, and I don't, I don't need games to get anywhere close to that actually, but I think there is been this creep where it's like, oh, well we got, there's like the standard that we got to keep reaching for. And it's like, no, you don't need to do that. make the game really fun you know and you can make it beautiful and you can add details but

3:50:29Chris Ansell:it doesn't need to be insane um oh i'm sorry chris no yeah i mean i i i think it's it's hard

3:50:39Colin Moriarty:because i think there's like a lot of there's a lot of mixed messaging coming from consumers really like uh and and the audience because on one hand you have fortnight which you know commands a lot of attention and a lot of time and it's pub g with but you can build a a condo you know it's just like it's a very it's a very standard game like they've added a lot to it but even when it was even when it was just a very simple thing it was free to play and it demanded a lot of people's time and attention but then you also had people paying 60 bucks for for overwatch which had no single player functionality at all and then people disappointed that overwatch 2 didn't have it it's like like i get that it was promised but like it is funny in retrospect and so like i don't know but then you have like rockstar and grand theft auto where like the biggest budgets and the most time is going to result in a massive payout and you know that and so you're kind of caught in this weird space where it's like do we do we lean into like this kind of lower scope free-to-play thing where that's dominating or do we lean into this direction of like massive like unheard of budgets for massive untold success that will absolutely happen as is proven by like you know rockstar and what they what they're doing so it's like i don't really know what you do because both of those are successful like obscenely so so much so to the point where like the next grand theft auto is undoubtedly going to be probably what i think it's fair to say the biggest game probably ever yeah no there's no doubt i don't know yeah so you look at a game like crimson desert and like i look at it and i'm like that's 100 hours dude i don't i me personally i'm not into that but like how could i possibly how could i possibly blame somebody or a studio for chasing this type of like audience that's so clearly there an audience that wants to sink their teeth into something really really deep and really detailed and really you know hype i don't know about hype maybe hyper real is not the best way to describe it but like i guess um production per square inch focused and then you also have people making high guard because yeah of course of course they're going to make high guard the the biggest sad thing for me is that like there seems to be a lack of i guess middle market interest because i love the middle market i think the weird shit you get out of that is is really cool and really eclectic and really interesting and and also timely in comparison um and so that's that's my sad sadness is that like that part that part of games is kind of gone yep it had a bit of a resurgent with ps4 a little bit um you had like weird shit like man eater and then you know yeah man eater was bio mutant was another one like i didn't i didn't play bio immune but like it looked interesting and odd and weird but like that's that's what i fear is going away um cart wrote in said sacred boys this one is for colin we can all answer though

3:53:59Chris Ansell:curious if your opinion on kataku or games media in general perhaps has evolved over the years I find myself to this day using my phone to bruise a few of the top five to seven gaming sites like IGN, VGC, Push Square, and yes, even Kotaku on a daily basis. While I agree gaming sites aren't what they once used to be, I still pick up on a lot of interesting tidbits, and Kotaku, as wildly outrageous as they have been driven by a political agenda, do describe gaming from a different perspective. With them opening up their comments section again, I don't go to Kotaku so I didn't even notice that. It's certainly interesting what this fan base prioritizes.

3:54:27Chris Ansell:I realize you have a unique view given your history with them, but I wonder if your thoughts have changed over time. There are some new writers at Kotaku, but there are definitely still some old guard types hanging around. I ask because you have seen your share of drama at Last Day Media. The whole Maddie thing from the fall of 2024. What was the Maddie thing from the fall of 2024? Was that the leak? Oh, right. He didn't do anything at all. And then the Chris thing from last summer. Not to mention having to defend normalcy from the likes of Smash JT or whatever he calls himself. Sorry for the ramblings, but definitely interested in hearing your take on the state of gaming news landscape in 2026.

3:54:57Chris Ansell:I think it's worse than ever, personally. there i do want to say this though there are good gaming websites i just believe that people don't use the internet the same way anymore so websites are back in the 90s and into the 2000s going on the internet meant going on websites that was all you did that was it right unless you're using like internet relay chat or icq or aim or whatever like you were opening a browser or aol or whatever and going to websites. And that's where websites came from. And that's why websites became this, this common thing, like a part of the, the way we interacted with the world.

3:55:38Chris Ansell:But as the phone came in and then phone became and tablets to a degree, and then it became about apps and messaging and social media and circumventing the web. And so there's just very, it's not to say that you can find valuable things in the deepest darkest recesses of the internet no doubt but it's just not the way people work or not the way people utilize this work anymore and then so there's no money in it and then there becomes less of it and then it becomes search engine optimized and ai written and all the rest and so you are where you are like the web the the worldwide web is a disaster um yeah so but i don't want to make it seem like it's everything i don't read ign anymore because they don't really do original reporting or content.

3:56:24Chris Ansell:Like they do criticism and stuff. I don't care about that. VGC is great. I read them. Push Square is excellent. For PlayStation fans, it doesn't get any better than Push Square. They update all the time. They have everything you need there. I really like that website a lot. They're owned by IGN now. Kotaku, I don't read. I don't read Kotaku. I don't read Polygon. I'll go there if something points me towards it because they broke a story. I want to make sure to cite them properly. But as I've said in preparation for the show over the years, I basically go to a gauntlet of websites. And I go, I start with PlayStation blog and then I go to Video Games Chronicle, Push Square, Gamatsu, which is a great website just for game announcements and stuff.

3:57:09Chris Ansell:And gamesindustry.biz. And then I go to the Gaming Leaks and Rumors subreddit because that's a place where they post a lot. like a lot of these websites want to protect their relationships and so they don't print a lot of things that they probably shouldn't be but those guys will say anything and so like you definitely want to go check that out too to see what's going on but no i mean i'm glad you're enjoying it i don't know how they're how these places are hanging on like that's my honest i don't know yeah who's paying these people where the ad money is coming from they don't really have audiences IGN is pretty permanent at this point it's like built into the web but everybody else I don't know are you guys do you guys uh Chris do you go to any gaming websites anymore no man it's been a

3:57:53Colin Moriarty:long time it's been a very very long time since I've even really dabbled in that space um every now and again you know there'll be an article that I'm curious about and then I'll click through and i'll read it but it's not it's not a it's not a thing that i do so regularly that like it's i can't i don't even really know the last time i did it you know i used to go on them all the time i used to go on ign a lot um but even that was like for like maybe like a year or two i was like really into it and i was like yeah i get this i'll figure this out somehow yeah

3:58:28Chris Ansell:it used to be it's just so funny because like being on the web used to be everything i loved it Thank you. Everything. Even if you're on a forum or something, you're on the web. Then the web got out. The web got out. Everything got web 2.0 really began. You know, web 1.0 was so beautiful. So perfect. Dustin. Yeah. What websites are you reading these days?

3:58:50Colin Moriarty:I only read a gaming site if I'm linked to an article on Twitter or someone on discord or whatever uh i just don't yeah i i find that the news that interests me i will find like i don't need to go and seek it out it will be presented to me because i follow the relevant channels that would tell me about it on social media so i don't really have a big need to go to a gaming site i was going to gaming sites when i was in your position colin when i was writing show notes for punching up and I would do a very similar process. But for the most part, I'm just reading stuff as it becomes relevant. So I haven't specifically gone to Kotaku in many, many years.

3:59:39Chris Ansell:The thing about I know that we've we've expounded on this prior, but there was a time when Kotaku was a really great website. Hmm. We're talking more than 10 years ago at this point. Like, I mean, 15 years ago, something like that, 12 years ago, 13 years ago. But they were great. Like, when it was like Brian Crescente and those guys, like, they were really, they burned, they would do anything for the story. And I loved that. That was the old Gawker ethos that ended up blowing up in their face because they were a Gawker site, obviously. And they were on top of the world, kind of. They had a small staff.

4:00:23Chris Ansell:They made a lot of money. they had a lot of respect that's what's so funny is like everyone always hated ign right i remember that i remember when i got hired at ign that people on the forums at game facts would make fun of me because even i used to make fun of ign and they're like now you're going to ign i'm like well yeah now i'm on the team so um and i came to obviously love the brand but everyone always had a problem with ign everyone always had a problem with game spot and all the rest but it was like the smaller sites that people at a moment in time really loved one up is one of those sites um euro gamer was one of those sites and kataku was definitely one of those sites polygon kind of tried to make itself into a site like that by design and that's not the way it works that's why it worked only for a minute and then it went away like it still exists but no one gives a shit about polygon it's because they were remember do you guys remember the videos they released when like when they announced the site and they got like this huge sponsorship from Microsoft and it was like such like a blowing smoke up your you know up your own ass I think I vaguely remember this yeah yeah it was it was it was like oh but that was when the web was still vibrant it's it's not anymore the internet is vibrant the internet is vibrant but the web not so much.

4:01:43Chris Ansell:JP wrote in with a final inquiry says, hey guys, is replaying games unk coded? I had to look up what this meant. Unk

4:01:51Colin Moriarty:unk coded is crazy.

4:01:53Chris Ansell:I guess I'm kind of like an unk, an older guy.

4:01:56Colin Moriarty:Yeah, an older fella.

4:01:59Chris Ansell:I'm not talking about replaying a game that you haven't played in 10 years or roguelites where replaying while trying to get further is the entire conceit. No, I'm referring to the idea of playing a game to the end credits and then instantly starting a new game or new game plus to replay the game. Some people lament newer games for being too long that the idea of replaying it would be daunting, but that mid 2000 games like Bioshock and Dead Space have great replay value and that they enjoy doing that. However, I believe the stats would likely show that most gamers today don't replay games. Could it be that those that enjoy the replay value of a game are primarily older Unc gamers that grew up with fewer games when released, games were shorter, and live service content wasn't available and therefore are more conditioned to look for or enjoy similar replay experiences?

4:02:40Chris Ansell:Should studios contemplate the replay value of a game during its design? Or do you think that it has diminishing returns as the demographic of gamers shift towards people that didn't grow up in that older era? Thanks for all you do. I'll disrespect Dr. Disrespect through text and listen. You don't have to do that. I mean, do you want to, yes. I mean, he is Dr. Disrespect, so he's almost asking for it in a way.

4:03:04Colin Moriarty:Right.

4:03:05Chris Ansell:This is very well said. this is why I wanted to use this was it's very well said there is some sort of connection between the the first new game plus like titled new game plus that I personally remember was chrono trigger um like that terminology there were games that would subtly begin again if you beat them and maybe be harder and you can go flip the score and do kind of shit like that but man Bioshock and Dead Space are two of those great examples of games that are somewhat linear somewhat non-linear 15 to 20 hours at most highly replayable in the moment different than asking you to play a new game plus run of the witcher i mean that's just obvious and again that's why i said earlier chronos and new and dead space very much kin both have great new game pluses and so resident evil i don't think calls it new game plus but they have cool functionality too where you can like bring things in make the game easier and so on and so forth so but is it us that looks for it That's a great point.

4:04:04Chris Ansell:I mean, why do you need new game plus anymore? Unless you really love a game when you can just go play endless rounds of Fortnite and they'll be different every time, like a game of chess. Very interesting. What do you think of this, Chris?

4:04:17Colin Moriarty:Yeah, I mean, it's definitely, I would imagine, probably an older thing. I, dude, I don't even need new game plus, really. Like, I just, if a game's good as fuck, I'll replay it. I don't even need a reason, you know? But that did originate in a time where, it was conceivable that you could do such a thing without spending an inordinate amount of time doing it i dead space i think of pretty regularly as like a perfect length because it really i think i beat dead space remake i i could be misremembering the exact time but i think no longer than 13 hours yeah that sounds about right you know and it was just like god it's perfect it's just the right amount where i'm just like the second i finished i was like you know what i want to go through again it's like getting back on a ride it's like you know it's going to take so little time you know to get through the ride again why not have it again and um yeah it is probably an older thing because i would imagine a lot of younger gamers are playing either really really long games that a new game plus of would be fucking insane to even consider or they're playing multiplayer games that don't really end per se and i was in that space too i played a fuck ton of multi i probably played i probably made more destiny 2 and more halo 3 than anything else but like i really do think it's a matter of the length of games back when we were doing that like and some people kept going and kept it like they didn't even care how long a game was they would still replay it i just i i have a cap i learned that about myself really really early where it's like I love I love myself a good eight to 15 hour 20 hour maximum experience I think that's like the sweet spot in the same way that like you know two hours is about the sweet spot for like a movie in my opinion it's actually more like an hour and 40 minutes is a sweet spot but like you know generally speaking you get like a two and a half hour movie you're just like oh good lord even if it's great would I go sit there and watch it again immediately after like I don't know about that but i've definitely re-watched movie i've i've put evil dead 2 twice on in a twice in a row once and it was not it was not laborious at all and so yeah i think there's

4:06:29Chris Ansell:validity to the theory i went and looked uh chrono trigger was the first game that used the term new game plus so that's interesting and it's so funny that i so distinctly remember that and how weird i was like what is that when i had the game on snes it's like uh it was unheard of mysterious yeah definitely dustin uncle dustin uncle dustin i guess i'm i agree with the theory

4:06:55Colin Moriarty:but it does not apply to me because i i don't know i've never been this way that i want to replay a game directly after i've played it i feel like particularly now with there being so many options i want to move on to something new and even when i was a kid i remember playing a game and being like okay well i gotta put this down and i would i'm down to replay something else that i haven't played in a while that's how i am now for example last night i booted up resident evil 8 and i'm gonna replay it before resident 9 i didn't bring it up on what we've been playing because it was maybe 40 minutes so i don't have much to say on it uh so i'm just fully satiated with a game I beat it and then I'm done for now it's very rare that I would replay a game back to back in fact I think the only time I've ever done that is Bloodborne maybe where I did the new game plus and did all that but it's just not my thing but I think it makes sense though that people that are used to doing that from an older era still want that for sure fair enough good question jp thank you for writing in and with that inquiry that wraps us up that's

4:08:14Chris Ansell:a wrap nice that's it for chris reagan that's it i'm out i love that the end of it all right let's go around the horn say goodbye to everyone see what you're doing chris goodbye to you

4:08:28Colin Moriarty:be well any plans to share no probably i mean uh that that raimi movie later that's right still got to figure out still got to figure out when the time when the time is i don't want to go too late i feel like maybe like a well it depends on what's available i guess but like ideally like a 6 30 movie seems pretty good but uh yeah i mean outside of that nothing really dawson plans goodbye to you be well goodbye zero plans for tonight so i'm gonna take it easy tomorrow you and i are recording uh in the evening for sacred symbols plus i have that but no plans this weekend either which is nice because i've been traveling busy so i can just kind of chill out relax as i mentioned just a few minutes ago i'm going to play resident evil 8 again looks really nice on ps5 pro nice so hopefully not getting any snow up here it doesn't sound like it but it's going to continue surviving yeah what's the accu weather forecast

4:09:31Chris Ansell:right now they break it down oops that's not what i want i don't want an accuweather fucking you think i'm gonna sign up for accuweather come on man give me a break four to eight inches is the uh is the consensus but then it says less than two inches 21 percent greater than a foot 10 percent i don't know eight to twelve inches 17 percent we'll see 8 to 12 inches a little out of your wheelhouse. Oh boy. Oh boy. I'm going to tell you what.

4:10:03Colin Moriarty:The four though that you mentioned earlier.

4:10:06Chris Ansell:Like a foot. Maybe. More than a foot. No, I said four inches. Oh, you meant more than a foot though.

4:10:14Colin Moriarty:No.

4:10:15Chris Ansell:Four inches. More than a foot, goodness.

4:10:17Colin Moriarty:What the hell's going on? Lord have mercy. Time to go.

4:10:20Chris Ansell:Thank you for being here. Patreon.com slash Last Day Media. Last Day Media. Store for merch. We'll see you next time. Until then. Goodbye. See ya. Take care, guys. Sacred Symbols, a PlayStation podcast, is a product and trademark of Last Stand Media and Colin's Last Stand LLC and is proudly recorded in the USA. The show was conceived by, is written by, and is directed by me, Colin Moriarty. My co-hosts are Chris Raygun Maldonado and Dustin Furman. The show is produced by executive producer Dustin Furman. All of Last Stand's theme music is by my best friend, Ramon Narvaez. As you know, all of Last Stand's shows, including Sacred Symbols, are fan-funded on Patreon at patreon.com slash laststandmedia.

4:11:01Chris Ansell:The following names are at the producer level on Patreon, our highest tier, and we're grateful for your thoughtful and kind contributions to our independent endeavor. Thank you.

4:11:24Chris Ansell:Antonio C. Asak Paredes. Austin Riley. Betty Ann Moriarty. Bjorn Campbell. Blackjack. Boots. Brad Cooley. Brad Lohman. Brandon Runniger. Brian Williamson. Cannonball Jones. Captain Verde. Carlos Algaret. Chad Lewis. Chris Galvin. Chris Morton. Chris Ritchie. Christopher Devayo. Christopher Moore. Christopher Morgan. Cody Benin. Conrad Pennyfarthing. Corey Beacom. Dan Nolan. Dan Root. Daniel D 'Amour. Daryl E. Naaman. Dave Alvarez. Dennis Usel. Denny Woodnever. Don Lee. Donald Difford, Donald John Vaders, Double Duty Dirk, WTF, Eddie Smith, Electric MD, Ellis, Emmanuel Perez, Enrique Perez, Entishas, Frail Cabbage St.

4:12:05Chris Ansell:Matthews of the Diocese of Brig, Gabe's New Gabe Cube, Gary Cavallo, Gavin, Ghoststorm 672, Gio Corsi, Grayson Maxwell, Gregory Slavinsky, Gus, Hush, Jad Rita, Jake C, Jamie Fraley, Jason Arzon, Jay Getter, John Francois Forzi, Jeff Mercado, Jerome Ferreira, Jimmy Rodriguez, Joe McPartland, Joey Gondaliger, John Schultz, John Zile, Johnny Waffles, John Cordero, Jonathan Coates, Jonathan Cortez, Joosh, Jorge Pal, Joseph Baker, Joseph Lopez, Josh Godfrey, Josh Gravelick, Josh McKinney, Josh Schullinger, Joshua Smallwood, J.P. Lynch, Justin Payne, Justin Wagaman, Cam Wallace, Keith Richards, Kendrick Caius, Kyle Hagel, Kyle Martin, Lizard King, Logan Little George, Madmoc Media, Miranda Grubba, Martin Beck, Mason Bouchard, Matt Flowers, Matt 20, Matthew Ash, Matt MGS24, Michael Buffel, Michael Gates, Michael Mash Potato, Michael Vecchio, Mr.

4:13:05Chris Ansell:Tom, Morgan Ashley, Mr. Finkler, Mr. Molf, My Name is Mayo, Nate Izod, Nathan R, Neil Amon, Nick Amato, Norse Nuts, Ali Fritz, Omar, Omar Rosa, Orchard, Organic Produce, Out of Focus Bigfoot, Patrick Leslie, Paul Joyce, Peyton Stone, Phil Crone, Qualia Freak, Randall Holsey, Rallo, Relentless Rex, Remington James, Ray Ligia, Robert Byers, Robert Schultz, Roto24, Ross Marenka, Ryan T. Mandel, Sakiba Lam, Saul Balcazar, Sean Mason, Shane Brecky, Shane Miller, Shane Rayoum, silent but deadly simon conception jr sketch mcgetch spencer f steven glazen steven innerfield stewie 108 sunny sides up sweaty magic sweet jones terry tip the fandom traveler the shady mailman throw seven toby rylan tony zaniga treylon trench goat trey woodward tyler tremel uncharted shinobi vance cody vega the late vitra who is stephen day will williams william holbert Worry-san, Whiskey-sin, Zach Cohen, Zachary Wood, Zenred, Z-Man 8601, and Zainal Yuichi.

4:14:39Colin Moriarty:Because we want you to live your best life and be your best you all year round. Please visit mentallyhealthynation.org to learn more.

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