#403 | Not For Me, or Anyone Else

42:41Colin Moriarty:It was a little shaky at first with its artifacting and trade-offs, but at this point, it's gotten very, very good. DLSS 5, honestly, in my opinion, maybe shouldn't even be called DLSS because what the output is is so different than any version before it. and I'm sure many people have seen the memes at this point, but basically DLSS 5 is using AI to really change the output of the image and it's really in the eye of the beholder is what I'm seeing on whether or not you think it looks good. I think the general consensus is that this, specifically the main image a lot of people are talking about, though there showed off a few examples are of grace from resident evil 5 it's awful it's awful where you have the normal version of her and then you have the dlss 5 that looks like in my opinion that you took an ai filter and you you know yassify her or whatever yeah and it has been a very very contentious on whether or not you think this looks good in my opinion it is in its current state of what they showed us very clearly changing the art direction of the game grace does not even look like grace at all anymore uh and there are other examples too they showed like hogwarts legacy where it showed the main character seemingly aging 25 years yeah completely getting much older now one positive thing i will say well maybe not even positive i just not completely negative it's not just character faces and characters themselves that are changed through this process through dlss5 it also changes the environment i'm still not necessarily sold that the environments look better but i'm not disgusted by the changes that they make.

44:54Colin Moriarty:Specifically in the Digital Foundry video, they were showing Oblivion Remastered and showing it with DLSS 5 on and off. And there certainly is a more realistic look to that. But again, that's going to be up to you if that's what you want. And there's a million other ethical concerns that we can get into as far as like, what does this mean for the artists and programmers that make these scenes but that's a general overview that uh we can kind of lead into the rest of the conversation about it yeah chris do you have anything you want to add here and then we'll get more into the listener inquiries and give us some direction but what were your initial thoughts yeah i mean i just i saw that video that everybody else i think we was it was it during a sacred screen stream that uh it was on monday uh i don't know man i i'm kind of echoing what dustin said where it's just like the changes that it makes to the environments are so negligible that i that i almost questioned if it's if anything's even being done at all like i i can see that there's something happening but like i don't necessarily i don't care what's being done to the image one way or another and that's in the cases where it's like not noticeable and when the changes are noticeable their ass so it's like i don't like these faces are so weird it kind of also brings in another thing where it's just like our developers kind of like will developers kind of be less incentivized now to even like if they can just make the the bare minimum baseline of a human face and then just i just throw the just throw the ai filter over it'll fix it you know what i mean it's like you can make a game look like starfield was one of the games that used it right and it's starfield's faces are terrible so of course it's going to be an improvement but if it's an improvement that you didn't do like why the fuck do i care that you did it like i'm playing resident evil 9 right now and we'll talk about that later and i'm like i'm consistently gobsmacked by how good that game looks it really is beautiful isn't it fucking insane like i found myself like walking like in the beginning like when you're going through the new york street or maybe not even new york i don't know but reminded me of like a bronx kind of rainy street and you go into the alcove or whatever the the back alley you're looking up and the rain is coming down on the fire escape so i'm like this looks like a fucking photograph better than a photograph like it looks better than real life to me and they did this you know they did this so like that's impressive to me if i know that you could just throw dlss on and i don't know throw an ai filter over to make it look real it's like oh cool i guess but like i don't i don't know if i give a shit it's all interpretive too which i think was is what the ai is assuming things about pictures that aren't in them right you know like with grace and just all these other things so it's like i don't know man i don't like it i've said before that i feel like the sun is out on this industry and we're just waiting for the light to catch up i think this is an i think this is an example of like you know three minutes three minutes to midnight you know what i mean like get get your game time in with the games that are out now because like in like in like five or six years like there's gonna be ai slop everywhere and i just i don't know i don't know i don't know how to handle that really look at your backlog because this feels like i don't know man maybe i'm just too doomerous about it but this is so depressing yeah it's it i i am again i am uh i always call myself a luddite that's really a misnomer it's really not what i mean or what it is but like I just don't understand technology very deeply.

48:36I don't, it's mostly, I think this is for a lot of people, but for me, for sure, if I don't care about something, I'm just not gonna, like, if I'm not interested and I'm not naturally inclined to it, where like, I can wrap my head around the humanities reading, you know, like a book or understanding a concept and things like that. But like, when you get into like the technologies, like it's like this much RAM and this, it's like, oh my God, like my, like I can't stay awake. it's really weird like i'm like like i i just start like going that's why i have a moore's law on every so often on sacred symbols plus so we can catch up on all this stuff and i can really like tune into it because i just don't give a fuck so i'm not i don't want people to interpret what i'm saying is anything because i i agree with you chris i said this to tom when we were recording i'm like i look he's like oh well ps6 for instance will be like do this and and the the frame rates will get here and the and the ray tracing will do this and i'm like i don't know that I even need much more than what we have right now like I feel like we're in a pretty good space if you start bastardizing things to like get 1 % more out of it then I would rather you just left it alone and that's like kind of maybe what we're getting to at this point yeah and like it's not a zero sum thing like it is affecting the product when you do that I couldn't believe grace it's like i thought it was satire when i first saw it like i didn't what and it is worth noting that our

50:03Colin Moriarty:exposure to ai is is primarily at this point 99 slop you know like we've all the ai shit that we see on a daily basis is crap and so when we see it in resident evil we're just kind of conditioned to recognize it immediately it's just like that's ai and it sucks or like see it in starfield it's like that's ai it's got the glossy kind of like the the weird glossy filter over it um so it could be just like if we had never like what i'm saying is like i wonder if like if we had never been exposed to the amount of ai slot that we had been up until now like if this was the first time we saw it would this be as off-putting or would or you know what i mean yeah like would it be like this that i'm open to that possibility even so that's just not grace yeah it's so i it's it sucks i mean like well that out that particular outcome sucks it's two different characters even if you didn't know anything as you said if you didn't know anything about grace if you came in blind but then you're like well these are two different these are two different people um yeah and the assumption that like she i don't even mean this is like a culture warrior at all because i guess i would come much more from like the uh the wokeness of it anyway.

51:20So I don't think people would expect me to feel that way. But it's like even the assumption that she needs makeup, she needs to be made prettier and younger. It's like we actually just want the features to be finer if that's like what you're trying to do. I do want to be fair. There are people out there that do like this technology. A lot of people wrote in about that, too. I do want to read one of their letters so we can at least get their point of view out there or a similar point of view to this gal Capone wrote in said, hey, CDC, I find it interesting that many have confidently stated their personal preferences about DLSS DLSS5 as if they're objective facts without understanding that the lighting, textures, and characters are objectively more accurate.

51:55Recently, in a kind of funny episode, Andy Cortez talked about how the lighting changed from one scene to the next, which made me think he didn't and doesn't understand how lighting and games work. You might think that base lighting looks better than RTX, but objectively, RTX is more accurate. I can see a lot of potential for games to look better with DLSS5, whatever form that takes in the style of the game. And yeah, Faces have this weird HDR photographic style, which can be fixed with simple tone mapping. That being said, why are people so quick to jump on the anti-AI train and completely lie when it could make games look better?

52:25Years pass what's possible with current hardware. I don't think people are necessarily lying, but this is what I've, I have read similar things of this, of this nature and Dustin, I don't know if you have more information about it. I'm pretty sure this is what the guy from NVIDIA himself, the CEO was saying in so many words, was like, they're wrong. Like this is, he said that I think literally that people are interpreting it wrong, quote unquote, and that it is this powerful thing that allows this deep level of customization. So I want to acknowledge that my main problem, though, is and again, this comes from just my my limited perspective on it.

53:03And I guess the thing that I have much more valuable perspective on than like the technology itself, which is. This didn't blindside anyone, everyone bought in on it. They thought this was good. that's the thing that I can't escape from. This isn't some fucking fly-by-night company. NVIDIA is like a complete juggernaut, even by the American perspective of big business. And they don't do anything by accident. It's all deliberate. It probably goes through fucking layers and layers of bureaucracy. There's so many people seeing this. All of the partners whose games are shown, from Bethesda to Capcom.

53:45Everyone bought in. That, to me, is the klaxon that's sounding more than the technology itself, which will get better and better, no doubt, and probably become finer and finer. And they don't want to be bad. Right. But the perspective, I don't know. So I don't know if you guys got like, you know, perceived that as well. It's like, well, you can't backtrack on this. This isn't something that just appeared out of nowhere. Someone didn't someone in the fucking bowels of NVIDIA than just make and publish. just are you kidding yeah you saw this resident capcom signed off probably on that resident evil grace side by side almost certainly they might have even done it you know like yeah so to me it's like that's that's the thing i can't escape from is the lack of taste and where this is all going you have to lead with a better foot if you want people to swallow this bullshit that you're trying to feed all of us about the simplification of game making as if we need easier and games to make thus giving us more games that sounds like a great idea

54:52Colin Moriarty:right i don't know this this whole i don't know i don't want to lay in too deeply but like i think this whole thing is like oh people have confidently stated their personal preferences about it as if they're objective facts i is that really what's happening because i've given my opinion a lot and people were like oh that's just your opinion man it's like yeah obviously yeah i mean it's it's implied i don't like i don't like what people yeah it's like there's there's an implication of an opinion anyway like i don't like this idea and then he then he goes goes on to say it's objectively more accurate which is very funny um yeah but that's the part that i was like come on man it's like come on you can't you can't write this all out and reread it again and not notice that you've done that but i don't know man like i feel like is accuracy

55:38Colin Moriarty:i don't know man like i i just think about like things that i love like like movies that i love like evil dead 2 or whatever with the weird stop motion zombies and shit it's just like is that accurate no it's cool that they did that and so like i don't know if i care if something's more accurate if if the people involved aren't doing it because i could just do that who gives a shit i could take a screenshot of you know i don't know resident evil and throw her through a snapchat i could take a screenshot of grace ashcroft and throw it through a snapchat filter and then make it the bigger look the damn near the same and what do i didn't do anything do i deserve praise for that like i don't know it just feels kind of weird i get that there's probably like granular details on the back end of like not even just characters but like like environments where like maybe lighting looks better sure i don't care about how good games look though to be honest like i care about art direction more than i care about like accuracy and like in like oh that does that's not exactly how a reflection would look it's like i don't i don't really care what i want out of uh power as far as like gaming hardware in the future or gaming software in the future even is like i want more like cpu flexibility like i want to be able to get more complex ai in there i want i want to get more um uh more capabilities of being able to keep track of like things in the game world like all the things like what bethesda does at the at the sacrifice of a lot of their visual fidelity like being able to like kill a dude and he's there that body is there the entire time and you go back and you find it like things like that like i like that stuff um and so that's what i want more i want more of that and less of like you can see the fucking peach fuzz on leon kennedy's nose you know like that the leon kennedy one in particular yeah from the nvidia one looks confusing to me because i actually think it looks worse it just looks like a messier image and it looks like less cohesive it looks less coherent it's i don't know man it is in the eye of the beholder there are some people out there who like it like whatever i don't this to me just kind of solidifies the idea that like i've got to start looking at my backlog more seriously and i have to rely less and less on what's going to come out in the future because i just i can't i don't know if i can really trust what where this place is going if todd howard and capcom and all these places are signing off on these things then like we're kind of i don't know man it's kind of that seems like a death warrant being signed in my in my opinion i know that that's like extreme i get it but that's what it feels like right now and maybe that maybe that feeling will fade over years or whatever maybe but like in this moment i feel like this is just really sad yeah yeah and i'm sympathetic with the idea that people in the studio in the trenches didn't know about this like the artists or the animators like people whose work is being affected but there's a zero percent chance that all this wasn't signed off on by the publishers and developers themselves and yeah yeah it shows todd howard on video talking about how he thinks it's great right exactly you have todd howard you have todd howard on camera being like look at how shit we look at our shit work yeah look at the shitty job we did look how much better it looks now that like now that you can't afford a ram look at how much better it looks we look at how shit our faces used to look man look at how much we botch these characters look at how much we suck like what are you doing it's really crazy it is weird and i don't know again i'm just of the mind I'm very consistent on this that all the technology will be good and thus railing against its quality isn't necessarily something worth doing for very long.

59:14Colin Moriarty:Right. This is an interpretive level of AI that I'm afraid if it's teaching and learning in this way, then it might be this. and it's so funny like the yassified grace it's like why does she look like the fucking tweets that people put send around me like I fixed this car it's like you did the meme it's not even a meme those people are serious and then you made the technology do it it to me I'm I'm uh perplexed but it is what it is I think there's an element there are people because I know some of them that want their games to look like they strive for photo realism in games. And so seeing this, despite art style, art direction changes, like the end result.

1:00:07Colin Moriarty:And I, you know, to each their own on that. To me, I look at some of this and I'm like, if you have, like, if we look at games as art, which I think the three of us can agree that games are art. there's like some level where I'm like okay if we took the Mona Lisa and then put a transparent photograph version in front of it and we're like well now it looks more realistic it's like I don't care I don't care if I don't want a painting to look like a photo I want it to look like how the artist painted it and wanted it to present itself and I've seen the counter argument that you guys were talking about where it's like well they the developers signed off on this and it's like well yeah maybe maybe some dude at the top signed off on this but i and there's already a bunch of articles coming out of people talking to the actual people in the trenches they're like what the fuck is this you know i think we're getting into really dangerous territory where we're just like oh we our art doesn't need to be as good anymore we'll let the computer do it for us that's the problem like and here's the thing too is that right now in these previews for dlss5 it was running on a computer with two 50 90s um and apparently when they plan to ship this they want to get it down so it runs on a single card is it only going to be the 50 90 i don't know maybe they'll get somehow get it to work on slightly lower cards as well but when dlss came out it wasn't as much like it was like a nice thing that you could do to get a little more performance and now moving into even on the console side with PlayStation 6 PSSR is going to be baked into these consoles where basically upscaling and I think this makes sense because we've heard Mark Cerny talk about it is that upscaling and AI rendering is the future of gaming and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing when we're taking what artists created and making it like keeping it the same but upscaling right like it's like a limit more limited use of the technology so what concerns me is it's like okay well upscaling used to be a nice to have and we are now as we speak in the throes of it's like no upscaling is something that's required in order to achieve the next level of graphics and that's fine but where does this when we're when we're already starting to walk down this road now as an option where it's like oh well you don't maybe you don't need these characters to look as nice because we'll just take care of that in dls s5 that's when I think it's like this is an affront to artistry and it really is discouraging in a lot of ways so I don't know it is an option right like it's that's what I'm saying it's an option right now yeah so but I'm saying you

1:03:19We've seen like, yeah, I was gonna say, like, I'm trying to articulate it. It's like, I just, it would be so ridiculous for what you're, I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying like, it would be such a fall from grace for it to go part of the pun, because we're talking about grace, but to, to really end up down that hole where it's like, yeah, like we are definitely sacrificing parts of the game now. Like that is a worst case scenario. You're right. I just, it's impossible for me to believe that studios would allow that, that like real studios will allow that to happen. Maybe, maybe, maybe they will.

1:03:48Colin Moriarty:I think there are, there will always be studios that adhere to some level of standard, but I guess just the way that I see the biggest corporations that are after the absolute most profit. And I don't know, maybe I'm, I'm, I'm too much of a doomer on this, but when you see the amount of cost cutting going on right now and then you see something like this that is like oh that's a little shortcut it's not going to happen now it's not going to happen in five years but we're Chris touched on this that it's like it's three minutes to midnight keep an eye out I just sent something I'm sure you've seen it but I just sent something to the staff discord that made me fucking I died when I saw I saw it's a DLSS monster from Resident Evil.

1:04:44Colin Moriarty:Oh, it was stupid. Oh my God. It was fucking ridiculous. It's what it feels like. Some of them. I like the one that Dustin put in here of the guy from Untold Dawn. I just saw that. I just saw this. It's pretty good. Pretty good. I love DLSS. DLSS 5. good stuff yeah it's great yeah i again i don't know i could be there might be stuff that i'm not seeing or my i might just not know i i'm not a fucking you know i'm not a scientist i'm not a game developer i'm not a genius i'm just a counterpoint to bring up that i think is worth bringing up and i don't know if this is just backpedaling but something that they've done and i think this was in bethesda's follow-up that and i think nvidia has maybe said this too that They're like, well, developers aren't losing their intent because they will be able to customize the, you know, the algorithm or the upscaling in order to like if they want to make it so the faces aren't as tuned up or whatever.

1:05:54and so maybe that is a possibility where when dlss5 actually comes out and has games implemented it's not quite as extreme maybe i i would like to think that i just feel like

1:06:11Colin Moriarty:it's just so crazy to me that nvidia has been working on this for years at least that's what digital foundry said i think maybe they said five years but they've been cooking this for a long time and they they made these examples and they're like yeah now's the time you know where we're going to homogenize all these faces and make everything look the same and people are going to be really impressed with this and then afterwards like oh no no actually uh don't worry they're going to be able to customize it so it actually doesn't do that it's like what is the message here yeah they have a they have a problem I don't know that it really matters but they do have a problem like a marketing problem they have a people are going to push back pretty hard highest spending most engaged players people that are willing to spend on this hardware but there are people into it too and I did want to read this inquiry because a lot of people wrote in about this and I did notice this angle to it as well I don't typically speak about you know we don't specifically focus in on other outlets it's not really what we do here but I did want to talk a little bit about this Kilwin wrote in and said sup fellas so I'm just catching up on the DLSS 5 stuff and I legit thought it was just a meme that started randomly but oh no it's real.

1:07:24Digital Foundry's coverage is especially getting a lot of heat. What gets me is how excited they were in their initial video but in their follow-up they're basically saying they wish they had waited to see how the internet was going to react before reacting themselves. Is Digital Foundry cooked? I eagerly await Dustin's 20-minute spoken essay on the matter. Kind regards. I haven't watched all of their coverage at all. I basically saw a clip that they themselves put out on their social media that's like two minutes of one of the guys talking and so for people that don't know like i guess they had some sort of did they have some sort of agreement to see it early or something and then do like you know digital

1:07:59Colin Moriarty:foundry is like a very i'm sorry yeah go ahead yeah they did they they were at the reveal of dlss5 they had a video ready they saw it at gdc right okay and so they were able to give their take on it immediately when it came out so you know the only reason i again i'm not a tech person and I don't care about any of this really, but like the, the reason that everyone knows digital foundry, they, they seem to have a better rep. They've always had a good reputation for years, but I feel like in the last five years or so, they feel like, I feel like they become like a mainstream component of how people feel about all these technologies and, and they do all these really great breakdowns and, and people really enjoy their content.

1:08:38So people look to them and I think I use them as a gold standard. This is why I think it's important to just discuss this briefly get your thoughts on it we don't have to linger on it but i was a when i watched the video of like that they put out themselves like the cut i guess from maybe their podcast um the guy was saying you know he said just basically what kilwin said in his letter you know it's in so many words i don't think it's verbatim but like we should have waited to see like how they said to be fair like other developers felt about it and how the audience felt about it before we like we talked about what we thought and it's like that's the the game of embargoes man i mean that's that's the whole thing and i've talked i've talked about that a million times right about like not knowing if you're fucking crazy when you pull the trigger on an embargo thought a review or a preview or whatever and then you go look at other people's coverage and see i've talked about that a million times about how scared i was when i gave the last of us a 10 at ign right so i was surprised that not only did they say that yeah but that they decided to cut it out and promote it on social media there's a weird meta if i might that parallels the weirdness of the dlss5 stuff in nvidia and begin with it's like no we're down with this and yeah now we're gonna like double down on it and it's like well the last thing that should matter to you when you're giving your opinion is what other people think.

1:10:08I'm off the reservation on you have to know that from my perspective, like I'm off the reservation on so many games with with like the random people that it's like a meme with our audience. So you damn well know I'm not trying to please anyone with my opinions, but it's always interesting to know what people think. It can be useful. And you could take that into account, but it shouldn't change what you think. I often talk about how the like just listening to and hearing from the audience it alerts me and enlightens me on a number of things but these are like facts that might have a different bearing on something but not a visual not something you've experienced that's either like it's it's you know people always make fun of immortals of avium and shit like that where i'm like i love this shit and like no one else seems to love it but i still love it i don't care that you don't love it you know so i don't know i i the reason that i think is this is relevant is because i feel like these guys deservedly or not and that's up to the audience that really ingest their stuff not for me to decide have kind of become gatekeepers or stops along the path to marketing something and this is not what i want to hear because they have a lot of power so I just thought that was super weird and again it's funny how it mirrors the whole thing of like oh you thought this was a good idea and then you thought it was a good idea to cut that part out of it and then promote that out of context which is what I saw so I don't know if you guys have any thoughts you want to share on it but I wanted to put that out there and kill when you're not the

1:11:39Colin Moriarty:only person to write in about this either yeah I have a lot of thoughts about this because I I mean the audience knows I've brought up digital foundry many times on their show I watch their videos all the time. I'm a huge fan of Digital Foundry's work. I think it's what they do is very important. I think that their work has caused potentially developers to have a higher standard on technical fidelity and frame rates and has in a lot of ways, I think mostly for good, had a good impact on the industry as far as a push for performance and has made people more aware which i think has been good unfortunately a lot of their work has been weaponized but i don't think that was ever their intent of it so i have a huge amount of respect for digital foundry um despite even some one of their members saying something negative about us at one point um so oh did they i don't even i didn't even know that yeah one of their guys gave gene a hard time when he was on our show so don't really like that very much like why do they care what do they care well i don't want to say they it was one of their guys speaking on his personal twitter that didn't like what a fucking loser like why did why would you why would you care like why do you care what other people do it's just so it's so string it'll life anyway go on so this digital foundry stuff was highly disappointing to me as a as a fan of theirs where initially their their video about it was you know super hot on it i think there was a point where he's like well when you look at the difference between these two clearly you'd want to play with this other one like from a matter of a taste perspective like specifically like that was totally tarnished for me and how they view uh like graphics technologies right but as you were saying colin the the follow-up that you very well pointed out the fact they were promoting i think I wrote it down where he said I think it would have been more prudent to wait and see the reaction from the audience and developers to the keynote.

1:13:51Colin Moriarty:Yeah, like what? What are you talking? Are you serious? I mean, I can't. I'm sorry to interrupt. I just can't. Like, holy shit. That's how you think. That's it's a wild thing to say out loud. You know what I mean? I should have waited to realize that you all thought it sucked before I said I liked it. Right, right. You'd think what's so confusing about it is that like it kind of portrays a level of it's weird because it portrays a level of innocence in some weird way. You know what I mean? Like, how are you so like, how are you so innocent not to understand that that's a crazy thing to say? You know what I mean?

1:14:29Colin Moriarty:Like to out loud, like it's weird. It's like it's almost like paradoxical where it's like you really should know better than to say something like that out loud because you're in the you're in. this space you're aware of how people react to things you're aware of how gamers react to things especially so like that you would go there and be like oh man sorry we should have waited to see what everybody else said before we said anything it's like what are you aware or aren't you you know what i mean and are you very weird are you a tastemaker or aren't you sometimes you miss yeah sometimes the audience that's what i'm saying the audience disagrees with me all the time.

1:15:04I don't care. It's like, it's not what I, it's no offense to the audience and they shouldn't care really what, if I think something that's shit, you know, I think something shitty that they love that happens all the time too. I just, it's, it's a, it's a strange one because I just knowing their power and prestige, I'm always going to kind of be a little skeptical of them now.

1:15:22Colin Moriarty:Yeah. And it's not even like a matter of like, oh, well the audience, let's the best faith interpretation right let's say like oh well the the the general public has brought up uh perspectives or arguments that i hadn't considered it's like how is that really possible you know what i mean like nothing that i've seen from the backlash is particularly new or you know deeply there's no reason why any of the conclusions that have come from the broader community shouldn't have been reached by people in your position who have a deep understanding of the industry and the clientele like it's not like this like unique perspective of like no this looks like it's so it's so clearly looks like yassified instagram filter ai slop like it does and if you've been on the internet at all for the last like i don't know two years you would i don't understand how you wouldn't wouldn't come to that conclusion right and by the way you can't even say that like you had your mind changed because like from what right exactly that's exactly right like I just think it's kind of feckless and it should be called as such and I don't know like I think you have to when you when you I've been doing this for a long time and I've had my ups and downs and I feel like you your opinions change and your exposure to things change and all of that and I totally get that and I think it is important to listen to people around you and like figure things out but at the end of the day i hundreds of times in my life like maybe literally a thousand times between reviews and previews and embargoed information all these things i've had to like write something in a vacuum or say something or record something totally in a vacuum with no fucking idea what anyone else thought no one has played this game yet and you know in our office no one is it's like i don't know that's you kind of got to do it with your whole fucking sack you know what i mean like you kind of just got to do it and sometimes like you come out and you're like way off base, but it doesn't mean that your opinion is necessarily wrong.

1:17:24Anyway, that's what I was saying. Like if they like it, it's okay. I mean, if that's what you're in, if you think it's then like it taste make, that's what you do. So even when people push back on me about some of the things that I like, whatever it's like, but I do like it and I'm sorry you don't, but it's never had any bearing on me. and yeah and so that is so i get it and i think it's only relevant like if it was 99 out of 100 outlets it's like who cares but these guys do have in in an era of like decentralization and no one really giving a fuck what institutions have to say about anything they're kind of an exception so i think it is worth noting that and like you said like it's so it's not their fault they're weaponized it's not fault that their fault that like they are the be all end all for a lot of people on technical stuff but we got to expect more out of those kinds of people or or that status should go to someone else or some other entity um so i i'm i'm like really like i i look at that totally sideways i'm sorry i'm just like whoa that's you don't know what you just said which means i think you really mean it yeah like right yeah it's worth pointing out colin just for

1:18:36Colin Moriarty:for maybe people that aren't fully following this. It's not that we're like taking a clip from their podcast and pulling it out of context. Maybe there is there certainly probably is a lot more context in that podcast. They put that clip out. So they put that clip out as the part of the statement. I don't want to say part of the statement, but in the tweet, that's like this is the clip that we're choosing to put out. Yeah, I watched it because it came up on my feet. I've never watched a single thing they've ever done. It's no offense to them. I don't care about that shit, so I'm not going to watch it now.

1:19:06but that's the thing that they put out there and so i was two and a half minutes or something like that i was like all right i'll watch this and i did that's what they said so anyway all right what is it dick lips super sucking five we salute you i'm sure we'll see much more of you in the future all right let's get into some other things now this comes from insider gaming i do have something to say and i don't think i even told did i tell you guys about this probably not I was kind of waiting until they came back up again because it felt otherwise like it was inside baseball bullshit. But as you guys remember, we had some beef with Insider Gaming.

1:19:41What was it last year? Like late last year? They reported they wrote a report that was I felt like unfair about things that I said about intergalactic. And it caused me like a lot of annoyance online. And they got people were really mad at them for it, too. And that stuff seems to be happening more often with them, with like other news articles and stuff like that. They're not as they didn't seem as from my perspective as tightly run as they were like it wasn't. I don't know what their whole plan is. They have a whole business model that I don't I should ask them and we can talk about on the show sometime, but I don't quite understand.

1:20:14But I will say that I guess I don't it wasn't a GDC. It was like something else. Maybe it was a dice or something. Cog had run into one of those guys over there. Mike Straw, I think his name is. and he asked Cog if he can like get in touch with me to talk about what happened and I appreciate it he reached out we talked back and forth he apologized for the story and I just didn't bring it up at the time because I just was like well it just seems like it's kind of like inside baseball stuff that doesn't really need to be closed with a loop but we did say when that happened to us that we wouldn't use them anymore and we haven't but they do have an exclusive and we did bury the hatchet so I wanted to note that everything's okay now so everyone can stand down.

1:20:59Like it says on my sweatshirt. Oh, they write over there, exclusive PlayStation is phasing out the PlayStation Network branding. They write, quote, PlayStation will be dropping PlayStation Network and PSN branding by September 2026. In an email sent to developers and seen by Insider Gaming, PlayStation will be dropping the PlayStation Network and PSN branding. It said that the change will be purely visual and as a means to, quote, properly capture the breadth of our evolving digital services. The full email reads, quote, We'd like to inform you that Sony Interactive Entertainment, SIE, has strategically decided to phase out the terms PlayStation Network and PSN across our platform in order to properly capture the breadth of our evolving digital services.

1:21:37What's changing? What's changing? And there's a typo here. What's changing in timeline? The upcoming changes are purely visual and will not introduce any technical alterations to our offerings. To simplify and unify branding, the terms PlayStation Network and PSN will be phased out across all SIE assets by September 2026. All features currently associated with PSN, including core network features such as friends, multiplayer, and trophies, will remain unaffected and available to players. You'll be notified ahead of changes coinciding with the Technical Requirements Checklist, or TRC, update in the fall of 2026.

1:22:08Note, PS5 DevNet access is required to view TRC documentation. At that time, you'll need to align with the updated TRC and branding guidelines to ensure the removal of PSN instances from all future releases, assets, and external services interfaces, end quote. and then they write at the end it's unclear what the new name of the network will be uh i don't know if this really matters but i'm i'm greatly distressed by this actually uh james dutton wrote in and said hello gents it has been reported that the terms playstation network and psn are going to be phased out later this year why do you think they are doing this and if you could choose a new name for the rebrand what would you choose thanks for all you do i think i know why they're doing it which is probably that they want to have a more unified subscription service that the I think I'm trying to think like didn't they try to buy or they were like early in talks to try to get paramount and shit like that right Sony at some point like do all sorts of things because they wanted to expand they own crunchyroll they have all the katakawa stuff they own a piece of or whatever like all you know um anaplex and all the publishing like they have all of this ip and like I think they want to try to unify all of it as much as they can so that's my feel on what they're trying to do i just think psn is a great brand name online functionality for playstation really began with playstation 2 as we know but it was like vastly decentralized there was no there was no centralized hub or anything like that and then psp came out before ps3 and that had online functionality too but it was really when PS3 launched that PSN became this thing.

1:23:47And so it's like 20, it's like, it's two thirds of the way. If you look at it, if you, if you look at PlayStation's history is 32 years, like for 20 of those years or about two thirds of it, PSN has existed and PlayStation network is good branding. So I was trying to think about how I felt about this and it's like, well, what are you trying to change? And like, what is the end goal? Do you guys remember send Sony entertainment network that they tried to do this thing where it was like, came out in 2012 and it was PSN and then this thing, Video Unlimited and Music Unlimited. Oh yeah, I do remember

1:24:18Colin Moriarty:Video Unlimited, yeah. And then PlayStation Video obviously existed in an umbrella that went away in 2021. It incorporated obviously PlayStation Store and PlayStation Plus and all the rest. PlayStation Plus coming out in 2010. I just, I think the branding's good. I don't know, I don't know why you'd want to fuck with established branding like that. But maybe they just want to unify all this stuff and so towards like what i think the name would be i don't know because i don't know if they're getting rid of the name playstation network you have to assume they're getting rid of the word playstation in it right or will it be something else i saw someone suggest playstation world it's like if you want to keep playstation in the name why change it at all so my assumption is is that it will be named something else i just i don't get it i don't know i don't know what to think about it but i'm distressed by it because i like that branding it's one of the few things Sony has done that I think like the PSN and that logo and it comes off as like we always say about UI and UX designers like this is like marketing people trying to like just keep their jobs like yeah let's rebrand the PlayStation Network it's like yeah why it seems like it's more trouble than it's even worth what and by the way another thing PSN began is a very robust like attempt to do what they're going to try to do now and I've talked about this a lot and you guys know this.

1:25:36It's like they had original programming and like live action shit and PlayStation Home and all of this stuff. If they're going to try to incorporate everything like Crunchyroll and all these things, why won't you just do it under the PlayStation Network and have the PlayStation Network be like the subscription? And that could draw people in because they want films and anime but it's like, oh, by the way, this is also a PlayStation Plus subscription. If you have a PlayStation, just unify your accounts and you have PlayStation Plus and all you don't have a PlayStation, well... this could be useful to you in these ways it just seems strange to me chris what do you think

1:26:10Colin Moriarty:well i don't know i mean i i went through this a while ago with xbox live when they retired that name right and i remember being like why like i don't i still kind of don't really understand it because they just went to they just called it i think xbox network which is very funny because it's way worse and um now it doesn't even matter so i don't know it's always sad when these things go because they're just like they're there's rich legacy and there's a lot of history to it and they're just good brand names in general like i don't really see a reason to do this maybe my mind and went immediately to maybe like they were just like maybe it doesn't need a name because everything's online anyway it's like kind of like uh like it's a little unnecessary like why not just leave it at ps plus and that's it like maybe even just fold it into ps plus in the same way that they kind of folded xbox live into game pass um you know i i understand that these are different things ultimately because one's a network and one's a different thing but i don't know i i this this strikes me as just like some dude in a suit being like you know it'd be cool you know get people talking let's uh get rid of this great brand that we have i don't know what the fuck's going on i don't every day i feel like i'm in hell because like i just feel like there are people making decisions who are just like you clearly don't know what the hell you're doing i don't know if you got like like nepo hired into this position or what but like who the who the fuck why why would you get rid of the psn it makes no sense it it reminds me like i remember when ps4 was coming out we we've talked about this in the past like there was some question on if they were going to call it ps4 there were some people reading into the idea that like four is what just dustin you know the uh japanese she is four but also death right yeah she um and so there was some idea that like maybe that would be unlucky but they stayed with it and like they've been very consistent it but then again it's why i was rushing when they were like so ps3 dual shock 3 playstation 4 dual shock 4 playstation 5 dual sense and now it's like ps3 playstation network playstation 4 playstation network playstation 5 playstation network playstation six, which is obviously what they're setting up for.

1:28:26PlayStation world, you know, it's like, it's like, why don't you, why just keep the branding? It's legacy branding. There's no reason to get rid of that. And I know it really doesn't matter, but it's going to be more frustrating for people passing certification and having to make sure that there's no reference to the PSN in like new patches for games. It's, I mean, that's annoying, but like that would probably be the most annoying part of it and i don't know if anyone else cares it seems i was surprised i was trying to read you know i was aghast by it and i was trying to read other people's opinions on like you know comments on video games chronicle or per square ign or whatever and it's like it's not like that big of a story so i don't know that it really matters but dustin what do you have any thoughts you want to share about the death of the psn i feel a little different than you guys

1:29:16Colin Moriarty:in that I don't think PlayStation Network as a brand name needs to even exist anymore. Because PlayStation Network was born before PlayStation Plus existed. So now, and now, you need PlayStation Plus in order to play online on the PlayStation Network. so I kind of am thinking they won't even have a replacement name that you will just now have a PlayStation account and if you want to play online then you buy PlayStation Plus to play online and so why is there there's not really a need to have the name PlayStation Network anymore you just have a PlayStation account if you want to play online PS Plus yeah that's what i was saying though they're just gonna fold it in yeah right the the this leaves only one network in town now the ritual network the ritual they're taking down plate they're taking down their competitors they're going in they're slitting their throats at night they're abducting them they're taking them to the island hillary clinton executed the playstation network she spat a green egg into a glass of water and then she killed the playstation network do you remember that tirade he went on about the fucking her spitting an alien into a glass dude he's fucking i fucking think he is so funny like i have for so many years at this point like he's so funny whether or not he's intentionally being funny or not i saw also a funny tucker carlson video going around of uh like a guy doing tucker carlson did you guys see this of likest Patrick's Day and it's like a guy pretending he's talking about leprechauns.

1:31:03Dude, it's so perfect. What is it like? He's like, he's like leprechaun. Like it's this whole leprechauns. He's like leprechauns take all of your money and he's like, they've thrown your gold and put it in a pot. Huh? Huh? You know, like that. Like it's saying what's going on? Yeah, I got it. I'll say you guys will think it's so funny. She's like, if you showed this to me, if you just let me listen to it, I thought it would have been him doing a joke. like that's how good it is and i'm like yeah it's funny as fuck so the irish little person steals our money huh yeah interesting what's going on what are we doing it's the best i love it ridiculous all right world psn we salute you we'll wait to hear more um you know obviously other developers this is probably going out to big developers first i would assume and um i'm sure we'll have more confirmation of it over do you think uh do you think they're uh

1:32:02Colin Moriarty:yeah because oh yeah because they also have the playstation store like psn isn't even like a it's not even like a thing on the on the ui um do you think they're gonna have a public execution for playstation network oh i hope so how will they do it i don't know maybe like that elephant oh man oh yeah they're gonna from 1916 jesus they hung the elephant from a crane hanged hanged um yeah they got like i was thinking like just something like a like burning it like a witch yeah like an effigy or something right yeah dude burning alive is like oh when you think about that I was like, oh, man, it's got to be really inconvenient.

1:32:45Oh, it's got to be a minimum. It's got to be fucking awful. Jeez Louise. All right. On that fun note, PSN will keep an eye out for your branding corrections in the future and we'll wish you the very best. This comes from Push Square. A lot of people have been reporting this, but since it's for we're a PlayStation podcast, I want to focus on this. It seems like this is actually happening across platforms, though. but um it seems like high guard if you spent money on high guard on psn sony is refunding your money automatically um this was on the high guard reddit is shown by push square and we got some letters about it as well megaman shurian candidate wrote in and said hey gents playstation is offering a full refund to any players who spent money on high guard microtransactions do you think this was a tactical decision to improve the likelihood of live service games succeeding if players are unsure of a game's future they will not spend money which then accelerates the failure of the game, which means people will spend even less money.

1:33:40At least with refunds, guaranteed people will put down more upfront, which can give studios time to turn the ship around. What do you think is the longest time Sony would allow a game to run and still give refunds a closure? I don't know that Sony has anything to do with this necessarily. They probably have to allow and facilitate it. And they might do that as a goodwill gesture because they probably made very little money anyway on it. but I assume this is like this is net ease or whoever the fuck owns this game their attempt of doing what Sony did with Concord which was like by forcing refunds we can just write the project down as if it never existed and that's that's basically saying like we'll get like a third of our money back by writing down taxable income and thus paying less taxes that will be more money than letting this exist forever which is why it's unpublished and that's why people I don't think people understand it's like the games have to go away like by virtue of it's not even the servers that's like kind of trivial it's like we can't do anything for tax purposes with this fucking game if it stays alive and we actually made some appreciable money on it so i think that they probably are doing them a solid and it seems like it's happening across platforms and there probably wasn't very much money made i don't want to speak out of out of turn but like you can imagine that this game made no more and i think this is very generous than like very low single millions of dollars.

1:35:01And that would probably be from curious people across all the platforms. And so it's like, yeah. So if Sony wouldn't make like$800 ,000, you know, take it back. That's fine. So that's my assumption. But did you guys see this? And do you hear this happening in other games? I wonder if this will happen more in the future. Games don't fail this catastrophically. And so there's really no because at some point, like you have to accept what it is. If your game goes six months or a year, you're really not going to be able to do that at that point. The game has existed for too long. But Dustin,

1:35:29Colin Moriarty:anything for you to say here yeah i think it's good that this is happening i'm i'm curious what that cutoff should be for something you're right that eventually like they can't they can't refund a game that's i don't know around for a year yeah a year especially like at max by that point you have to be done i would assume yeah so i think this is good and i think there is a point that But it's one of those things where they do. There should be some level of assurance that if you with live service games, since we've seen so many of them, not just close, but close relatively quickly, maybe not so many, but we're starting to get more examples.

1:36:11Colin Moriarty:It would make sense that the consumers maybe are a little bit skeptical when a game comes out that they want to, you know, whether or not they should spend money if it doesn't do well or something like that. So but at the same time, it's you don't want to come out and be like, listen, if if we if this doesn't work out, we'll give you your money back. So go ahead, spend the money. It's like, wow, that's confidence right there. So you can't really telegraph to people other than in situations like this. Make sure you do the right thing, which I think you're right. It's probably not, you know, it's not Sony doing it.

1:36:44Colin Moriarty:It's Tencent or whatever. Yeah, it's it's that's my assumption. I mean, I don't I don't know for sure because because all three of them are like all three platforms are doing it. it just seems like everyone's kind of doing a make good and realizing that they made very little money and I think you're right and he and and uh it's written about in the letter as well a little bit it's like yeah this might just be a thing of like we can't set a precedent like this is a self-fulfilling prophecy if a game's on the on the bubble no one will spend money on it if they don't at least feel it's possible that the game will go away and they'll get their money back so I it makes sense to me uh Chris what do you think well I'm sorry like I'm getting i don't know uh i feel like generally these i don't think this is going to be like a big like this write-in kind of says like oh do you think people are going to be more willing to spend money like ah ah i don't know about that i don't think that's even i don't think people are gonna i don't think enough people are going to see this yeah i think it'll make it'll certainly not make fewer people spend money which is good anyway i don't think it'll boost the numbers yes it's not going to be like oh well this live service game isn't like oh now i i can rely on like a refund if i put as much money down it's like yeah i think that's being a little bit too um a little bit too positive you know but i don't know this just strikes me as um it's just them they they just didn't make enough money on it for it to even matter you know what i mean it's just like yeah let's just refund like it's fine yeah i think that's probably the case too and i also think that there's a they knew very quickly it wasn't going to work so i think i think there wasn't even enough time for it to really linger and become more of a question um they must have they shut down very quickly they obviously had expectations of being able to sustain their team of whatever it was 70 or 80 people so um if you're not making enough money to keep anyone going and And they actually, it was reported, I don't think it's particularly interesting because I don't think it's surprising, but they're truly done now because I think that they did have like a skeleton team there.

1:38:51And I think they were trying to like keep, maybe find other work or, they obviously weren't going to get another game off the ground, but they might've been able to do contract work or something. But I think that that just likely failed. And so they're truly done now. What were they called? Wildlight? Wildlight. RIP and Peace. Or RIP Bozo. I mean, a lot of people would feel that way. I don't like people losing their jobs. It's not something I feel great about, but it certainly was an ill-conceived game. And that is what it is, I guess. All right. We've talked a lot about Starfield in the last few weeks because the rumors have been so good, and these rumors are right the fuck on, man.

1:39:31So whatever connection that French dude Deal Labs has to the PSN, he knew the date the game was coming out, the date the game was going to be available for pre-order and what the prices were. so someone's leaking but starfield is indeed coming to playstation 5 on april 7th and it comes alongside some special ps5 features as well as new updates that are going to go live across all the versions including on xbox and pc but they write here quote every firefight and dogfight in starfield hits harder with the playstation 5 dual sense controller adaptive triggers change from weapon to weapon including your starship loadout the light bar keeps tabs on your health and ship integrity and the touchpad lets you jump between first and third person POV or instantly access your map and hand scanner.

1:40:14On top of that, in-game audio logs and non-local ship intercoms will pour through the DualSense controller speaker. Please know. Immersing you deeper in the action. I always turn that off. I hate that. I remember Shadowfall was the first game that really did that and it was quaint and cool and then I was like, I can't do this. It's not fun anymore. Starfield has also been visually enhanced for the PlayStation 5 Pro with a visual mode that runs 4K resolution at 30 frames and a performance mode that features improved visuals at 60 frames. Hell yes. Because it's out. It's not 30 frames even on Series X, right?

1:40:46Colin Moriarty:There's something in my brain that told me they updated it with 60, but I'll I'll look it up. I don't remember. And then I think it was, though. So there's a new there's a new update that's going live across all the versions at the same time. So on April 7th called Free Lanes, the Free Lanes update is built around Starfield's core value rewarding exploration allowing deep meaningful customization and making the experience smoother than ever so you can get lost among the stars follow your curiosity and curiosity and crafting your story free lanes touches nearly every major element of the game expanded space travel options that allow you to freely fly between planets within a star system new space encounters have been added and encounter frequency has been increased a new resource has been added to give you even more control over your gear and ship customization new options for upgrading your starborn abilities and bringing your favorite gear with you into new game plus and so much more and then there is a new story dlc that will also be available called terran armada and then there is the trackers alliance creation bundle so starting at launch you'll be able to jump into the trackers alliance bounty arc available for purchase through the creations menu the bounty series is complete with seven unique high value targets to track down and deal with however you see fit each entry is self-contained story full of tough choices memorable marks and pursuits that will take you across the settled systems so all that comes either with or as part of the Starfield offering on April 7th on PSN.

1:42:06So I think there's a standard edition for$50. That's the game. So nice support. It's affordable. It's three years old. So that's a nice price point. And I think they probably learned something too based on what happened with the Outer Worlds too at 80. And then there's a$70 special edition that I think will come with all the expansions, including the new content. So this happens on April 7th. I've been talking about this for a while because it's been going on and I've been you know a lot of people have sent me their thoughts in various via various channels on what they think I should do with Starfield and I think I'm going to play it and maybe maybe I'll even play it you know it would be an interesting stream actually what day is April 7 let's see it's a Tuesday so I could push into Tuesday and just do a Tuesday stream instead of a Monday stream maybe I don't know we'll see what happens yeah so and no interest from you guys you guys both played in your own yeah i mean i i liked it

1:43:02Colin Moriarty:i don't know if i i spent like 100 hours on it i dug it i don't know like it's not it's definitely not like a generational game or whatever but like i really dug my time with it i i like nasa style like i like that more grounded sci-fi anyway like i'm kind of a mark for that the fact that you like go to the moon you know and just land on the moon even if there's nothing there like just and there's like a couple of caves and like a couple of like procedurally generated whatever i just think it's cool to vibe out in that game i really dug it and it hit me at a time right where i was like i would like a new bethesda game but i'm kind of i do kind of have open world fatigue like i don't like i don't i'm not really in the mood to walk for miles in one direction in like any given direction and find shit i just kind of want i wish i could i wish i had something that had both of that and it's kind of dead and a lot of people were disappointed with that which i get but I love I enjoyed my time with Starfield I think the progression is a little bit slow as far as like experience gain and like how how often you get a skill point I think is like a little bit too spread out I think that was kind of a pain point and I do think the first like 15 to 20 minutes of the game are particularly lame because you're kind of starting off doing like no man's sky shit for like 15 minutes or something and it's just like you got like a little mining laser and it's important that it teaches you that but like i remember being like i don't know i don't know about this but you get deeper in and it's it's kind of good it's unfortunate how understated it is it is very mundane in comparison to a lot of like other bethesda probably like fallout so over the top and skyrim is so self-serious this is just kind of like i don't know it's just it's it's more i don't even know how to put it like you know how like 2001 a space odyssey is kind of like it's a good movie but like it's a little vanilla it's a little vanilla it's kind of like not to compare this to 2001 but you know what i mean like that kind of thing where it's just kind of like this isn't as exciting as i feel like it could be but it's cool i think i think you might actually like it yeah i think at least you might like i'll put it this way i think the things that you that you would like about it will maybe overshadow the things that you might not like about it i think i um it's funny like I just remember so well when it was coming out and like how I was like yeah I'm gonna buy I'll buy it I'll just buy it on Xbox and whatever and just was it just people just obliterated it so badly that I was like it wasn't so badly it's just like I'm not gonna spend time with a 70 like the bed I'm not gonna send Bethesda time with a game that people don't like you know like it's like it can't be like surely someone out there would have something to say and I think I was just dissuaded yeah but that makes sense we'll get back into it but i again i don't know if i'm even gonna have the time like i think i'm talking a big game now because pragmata comes out right around then and then after pragmata is gonna be saros so i don't know i don't know if that's gonna how that's all gonna work we'll find out yeah one thing i will say is it is a very bethesda game in the sense that like the main quest is like kind of the least interesting part of it yeah that's i don't know why that is i don't know why that's the thing but you might actually like the main quest because there's like it's a lot about like just nasa shit like you go to things that are like historically relevant oh cool it's cool yeah that sounds cool and i also like boring shit so you know me too apparently yeah all right uh for playstation portal users out there playstation portal of course dustin you might have heard of it it's the finest playstation hardware that's been released in in some time it's really the only hardware that's been released sometime um People out there are enjoying it.

1:46:46I'm enjoying it, although I don't really use it when I don't need, you know, football season's over. I watch hockey at night, but I don't really need it right now, so I haven't been using it. But it is exceptional. And they over on PlayStation blog noted that on March 18th. So this is yesterday from when we're recording. There was going to be an update, a major update for the portal that will bring some new options for people. So if you haven't used your portal in a while, you might want to turn it on and download this update so that it will be available to you when you're ready to go. The big thing here is a 1080p high quality mode.

1:47:16They write, quote, players can now select a 1080p high quality mode during remote play and cloud streaming. This new mode enables players to enjoy games at a higher bit rate compared to a default 1080p standard mode, providing a smooth and high fidelity experience. And you have to go into your menus and turn that on manually. And obviously that will, I assume, require a better connection or at least a more enhanced connection reasonably enough. Refined cloud streaming experience. We've introduced several enhancements to improve usability and reduce friction during cloud streaming sessions. Improve product detail page, game invites, enhance trophy notifications.

1:47:50That was the thing people were really annoyed about is like the trophies are all bunked, like the way you interact with them on Portal. And so I think they're slowly fixing that and better search screen. And then for people that are new to Portal or if you're just formatting your unit, better onboarding will be available as well, which is cool. So those are available to download now if you want to check those out. There was other interesting stuff, though. and it's about, they released some statistics. I thought this was interesting. They write in part, quote, since our last update in November, so they updated the portal in November, we've seen strong momentum on PlayStation Portal.

1:48:24Cloud streaming monthly users grew by 162 % year over year in January, and over 50 % of PS Portal users are now PlayStation Plus premium subscribers, reflecting growing engagement with the cloud experience. That's pretty interesting. Again, I don't really understand cloud gaming. Jaffe and I talk about this all the time. I just don't get it. I don't know why you would want to do it. Like, I don't, I just don't quite, I don't know if this doesn't compute with me, pardon the pun. So, but that option's there. Dustin, what do you think about cloud gaming? I just, why wouldn't you, why would you want to put, I guess if that's your only option or if you're on like some sort of subscription maybe, but wouldn't you just want to have the game natively on your machine?

1:49:07Even if you have Game Pass, for instance, you just download the game to your console. It doesn't really make any sense to me. I don't know.

1:49:13Colin Moriarty:But yeah, I think for PlayStation specifically, the cloud gaming is nice because you can just hop into a game and try it before needing to download it or something like that. And if you're. I guess the portal you can access your you can remote access your PlayStation from anywhere, your specific PlayStation. I'm curious for portal users that use the cloud streaming. If you are away from your home network, do you get a better experience with PlayStation cloud streaming over streaming your console to your portal? That's kind of where I'm interested in it. As far as cloud gaming in general, I mean, I think Jaffe, his main thing is that he really likes GeForce Now, which for I think it's like$20 a month, that lets you rent a really nice high-end GPU and system.

1:50:09Colin Moriarty:So in theory, your access point to PC gaming, if you really want high-end graphics, is much lower. You don't own anything, but you're also not buying a 5080. So it's much, much more affordable. So I could see it being valuable for some people, but I need to download this update and give it a shot as someone who's been very critical of the portal, though my critique is more so in latency and stability. So this update would make things look nicer, but I'm just curious about how it would affect other parts. So I'll give it a shot before next week. Tim Chatton wrote in, said, hey there, Sacred Boys.

1:50:51On the last episode, you pondered why you even sign up for PlayStation Plus Premium. We were talking specifically about the Classics catalog. Well, I'm one of those weird PlayStation streaming gamers that has very limited TV time with a three-year-old and game on the portal mostly, and I've found the premium cloud streaming to be generally more reliable than my wired-up PS5 Pro and shockingly stream from the cloud more than I'm using my rather expensive console. I was even contemplating not purchasing MLB The Show 26 until they verified it is indeed streaming on PS Plus Premium. Prior to this, only MLB The Show 21 and 22 supported cloud streaming, and I was livid when the pre-orders went live and didn't include this.

1:51:24It wasn't until early access hit that we learned premium streaming would be supported. I guess I'm not alone, according to Sony. And he quotes the increase that we were just talking about in premium experience. Colin, you have said before that Sony loses money on us premium streamers and that they want us using our own hardware. Is there a future where this becomes a bigger business for them? And is the$13 a month they charge high enough to support the service? Is the true value for premium not in these classic games, but perhaps in Sony starting to see streaming as why you pay for premium? I mean, this is what we were saying, and it's possibly so.

1:51:53I am fascinated by the fact, though, that you are the most expensive form of PlayStation gamer. Even paying the$13 a month, you might be making them a small profit or whatever, but they want you to buy the hardware. Maybe they break even or make a small profit on that. They want you to use your electricity. They want you to use your internet connection, and they'll send you packets of files, and you'll deal with the PSN and you'll have a multiplayer and all the things that they have to facilitate as part of your subscription. But that's the biggest thing that I think people don't consider. And I've talked about this with Tom on on Sacred Symbols Plus in the past.

1:52:30We've done tech based things is I'm just fascinated by the cost of doing business. It is extremely fucking expensive. You know, you have to have an instance of the game running somewhere, you know, so I just don't get it. But I know I want to be fair that and we have Tim here saying so, but also just Jaffe is like a huge believer as well in cloud gaming. I just, for me, I just want to, I'm very old school. I'm never going to change. Don't you understand that? Like I'll be forced maybe one day to change and that's what will happen. I've said before, like there's a future where I become like a PC gamer in 20 years or 15 years or something where I'm like, well, this is like the only choice or, or like I said, if PlayStation dilutes itself to the degree where they have like multiple storefronts and just become this bullshit thing where it's like, I'm just going to fucking Nintendo.

1:53:24I'm back, baby. All right. I thought this was interesting. Guys, you remember the game Firewall Ultra? Yeah. This game came to PlayStation VR 2 in August of 2023. It was from the studio First Contact. I think they're in San Diego, but I could be making that up or where this was the sequel to Firewall Zero Hour from August 2018, which was a PSVR one game of quite quite a popular shooter that got them five years to make another game. But this game came out and bombed. And people just didn't like it. I don't know that it wasn't that it couldn't have found an audience. As I understand, like people just weren't feeling the game like they made changes and things that I wouldn't understand because I don't play this.

1:54:04But anyway, they discreetly announced and it was PlayStation Lifestyle, I think the website that discovered this initially. So we appreciate that. But that they discreetly updated a PlayStation blog post from August from their launch of in August 2023 with an update March 2026 it says online features for Firewall Ultra will be terminated and will no longer be available on September 17th this year as you must be online to play this game the game will no longer be playable starting September 17th they've also delisted it so if you don't have Firewall Ultra now you will never have Firewall Ultra I want was it in PlayStation Plus at some point it might have been so So just wanted to throw that out there.

1:54:43It's kind of. It's kind of a bummer because I remember I was talking about Sony made some sort of key strategic investments in VR games through second parties, and this one just didn't work out. There could be another world where they had like a powerful foot niche VR shooter that are fairly popular on PC. So people play all sorts of weird shit on there. So anyway, just wanted to acknowledge that. Teeth Mummy wrote in and said, how the fuck are you boys doing? News hit this week that Sony is shutting down another live service game permanently. RIP and peace to Firewall Ultra. I'm sure it's dozens of fans will be devastated.

1:55:19I'll ask the question on everyone's mind. What was Firewall Ultra? And on a more serious note, is PSVR 2 dead? What is the future of this platform? And is anyone using it? Thanks and keep fingering that foul. I mean, that's a little much. Goodness. Yeah, Firewall Ultra was not a game that was relevant to very many people. Dustin, you're much more connected to the people that are connected to PSVR too. Because you always remind me when I say, like, no one's playing this. It's like, well, there is this hardcore audience of people that do play it. And we have a, what is it, PSVR without parole? Yeah.

1:55:51Has the podcast. And so on and so forth. But it just was never going to, it does seem like it's in decline, right? And from a, not a very high high, but PSVR, they felt like it could support a successor. so there was something there that they were seeing i appreciate sony's commitment to the technology it's very old school sony in my opinion it's one of the few old school things that they've done in trying to just do something quirky and weird and be somewhere and be a dominant force in that new space but it just doesn't seem like people want to play games like this and i don't i don't think it's going to change i think it'll always be this niche thing and I think AR is much more likely to be a thing although I don't think people really

1:56:37Colin Moriarty:want that either yeah so Firewall Ultra it's actually a sequel to I believe it's Firewall Zero Hour which was on PSVR 1 and I might I have a vivid memory of this game because it was my my second psx but my first year there as a press member and i played this game with the firewall zero hour dev team and it was the first time i got the classic experience calling oh you're you guys are pretty good at this oh i'm like no no no i knew better but we had a good time playing it uh back then and that was the i think that game used that the aim controller yeah Remember they had like the big gun thing. So Firewall Ultra is the sequel to that.

1:57:26Colin Moriarty:And I've played this game and it's not very good. And I'm not surprised it didn't do well. There are other first person shooter multiplayer games, even on PSVR that are just way more popular. And from people that play them that are just simply much better. so it's unfortunate because I think that Zero Hour while it wasn't like some insanely huge hit I think it did have a dedicated audience behind it so they were not able to deliver on a follow-up but what is the future of PSVR 2? I think you're gonna for the rest of the PS5 generation is exactly what you're seeing right now zero support from first party and even now like was the last the last state of play nor over the over the years even when it seemed like Sony was done they would still throw you a little bone here and there and be like here's one thing that is going to have PSVR 2 support or here's this or they'll do like a week on the PlayStation blog and be like here are five new PSVR 2 games that's kind of done now too yeah I think so I think it's kind of over I honestly haven't looked to see like what new games i'm sure there are new games coming for psvr 2 but they're probably all very small and so that dedicated audience uh is still i it's funny you colin you mentioned like me being more connected what's interesting is that i feel like i've seen much less even in the last year or so so it seems pretty pretty dire so who knows though valve is dipping their toes back into vr which is that going to move the needle?

1:59:16Colin Moriarty:Probably not. Maybe you'll see some more games that come out for PC that make their way over to PSVR 2 but what's the point when there's not that many players on PSVR 2? I mean Beat Saber bowed out and they were the most popular game ever which may be a little bit of the meta interference wanting that to not really be a place where people play that. Shout out to Meta for canceling the Metaverse. 80 billion dollars they tried they sure did try they laid off 20 % of their staff I think right or they announced that they're going to and I think their stock went up 20 % interesting very cool very cool world we've set up that's wonderful Chris you're not messing around with VR these days are you?

2:00:07Colin Moriarty:no I mean I was pretty early into it well not early into it there were people who were there like really really early um but i i remember i got an htc vibe in like 2016 2017 something like that maybe later maybe 18 something i can't it was around that time uh when they were fucking expensive you know i think i paid like 1500 or something some absurd price because i was like i remember playing beat saber at someone's house and i was like Thank you. I have to I have to be able to I need access to this whenever I fucking want because it's it was so good. And Beat Saber is still, in my opinion, like a Beat Saber feels to me like like damn near a guitar hero kind of game where like it's left out of a lot of like top games of all time lists purely because it's so like hyper specific in the type of game it is.

2:00:57Colin Moriarty:but like I think if it were like if we were looking if we were to look at it holistically like Beat Sabers are really fucking immaculate very simple it's like Tetris in a weird way it's like there's not a lot to do in it but like what what it lets you do is like really it's just mega satisfying it's a damn good game but like outside of that there's a couple of games I've played like Boneworks kind of blew me away Half-Life Alyx was very good but really there's not much there and it is like i've said this ad nauseum at this point but like it really is just a matter of how cumbersome it is to even initiate your interaction with the space like just needing okay i need a i need i need space to to maneuver okay so i gotta move my furniture if i don't have the space or i gotta like dedicate a space to it oh if it's if it's um a meta quest then I have to make sure it's charged all the time if it's if it's wired then I got a wire dangling off the back of my head they're usually really heavy uh for me I have glasses so like I got to keep them like really tight and that like gives me headaches in addition to the fact that the screen's so fucking close I just get kind of sick anyway after like two hours it's not it's not as accessible as most other things are especially it's definitely not as accessible as a monitor or a tv and a couch so I really just think VR is ostensibly a dead gaming medium until they can reach this point where the barrier to participate is as convenient or even more so more convenient than just sitting on the couch, turning on a PlayStation, turning on a TV and just sitting there and enjoying the game.

2:02:40Colin Moriarty:They've got to be in like contact lenses or like glasses or something. You know what I mean? Like it's the weight and the time and it's just all the deliberate controllers that you need that always run out of fucking battery i don't know it's a it's a clunky medium it's very cool like it's dude like resident evil 4 and i'm not even talking about resident evil 4 remake which i i believe also has a vr mode right uh just base like the vr version of like original resident evil 4 on meta or on oculus or whatever the fuck they're calling it that game's awesome it feels fantastic just like reloading like with you like actually doing the tactical like tactile reloading in vr is so fun i can't even it's like it's like 50 of the fun it's like the promise of the way that's what we thought the we was going to be when it was project revolution and it was going to do all that cool shit it just didn't yeah that's what that's what boneworks did really well it's just like like unloading a pistol and like putting it in like reaching in your pouch putting it in like cocking it back and like actually aiming it's it It is it is probably some of the most fun I've ever had, but the barrier is too high.

2:03:49Colin Moriarty:I can't do it for too long, which is a bummer because if I'm playing a game, I want to be immersed. I want to sit there for hours. You know, at the very least, I don't want to be there after like 40 minutes and then be like, I got to take a break. It's just kind of. It's all these stop gaps, and I don't know, hopefully they can do it. Hopefully, eventually, like by by the time I'm old, there'll be there'll be a way to play and i'll be able to break my hit playing beat saber six but uh i feel like it's going to be a while especially with just the lack of investment going in because the technology is so rough to get into i feel like it's just going to be a there's going to be breakthroughs in other areas of technology that are going to eventually migrate their way into like a resurgence of vr maybe and i think that's probably the most likely scenario but who the fuck who the fuck knows i was totally crestfallen when you know last it was about a year ago a little more than a year ago when I like you know hooked the PSVR 2 back up and guys remember I downloaded Arizona Sunshine and I was like I'm going to play this and it just and I really liked it and I was like this is so cool and I can see getting into this and it just made me feel so ill and even thinking and I know it's just that game and that I was playing it with fast movement and all the rest but like there's something visceral about that machine now where I look at it and I'm like it just makes me feel ill like I'm like I don't yeah i fucked it up and it's too bad because i get the same thing it's it's i was so bummed bad i was like this is awesome like i was like this is all like when i figured out you can because first i had like snap movement where you like you move from place to place and that's obviously to stop you from getting sick but i was like oh you can just move around and i'm like oh this is so cool and it just didn't agree with me at all so dude i get it i get like a preemptive headache when i look at when i look at the the oculus and i think about setting it up it's it's weird it's like i will myself into a headache and i don't know how to stop that it's i wish i could yeah i gotta i gotta i gotta pre-game advil to play my to play my vr and it's like that's such a sad thing because again like you i i do like it a lot i think it's really fucking cool like and it's in the sensation you get i'm sure you got this with arizona sunshine trying to i'm sure there's like some reload mechanics in there that feel like really cool yeah and it's an old game satisfying it's an old game that's what it was the other thing was i was like it's probably so much better than this when you get to the sequel and you get to some of these other games but i could i can't do it i'm sure i can't do it yeah and i always think i want to think about firewall ultra or like some of these other online shooters what was another one pavlov right that's another pavlov yeah that was when i i remember seeing you could like rip the magazine out of somebody's gun.

2:06:29Colin Moriarty:You know, with your hand or like pull the or I think I think you could pull the pin on people's grenades like in their pouches and stuff. I'm just like this is this level of interactivity is really cool. Yeah, and I love I love a lot about it. But like those games have to be played with kinetic movement. And so it's like those games would make me want to die. That's that's too bad. Anyway. All right. I feel like we'll have a requiem for PSVR 2 in the couple of years to come. because at some point when ps6 is announced which will seems like it's going to be in the next year and then to come out in the next you know year and a half two years they're gonna there's gonna be talking like well there'll be a psvr2 dongle you know that for ps and they're gonna have to be like what's that meme of the guy putting his hand on the shoulder of the other guy you know i love that from some anime i think it's a great image it is it's awesome i love it it's a great it's like iconic all the time i wonder if the guy who drew that you know you always think about these people who draw these frames like big chungus or whatever like the 30s or whatever the fuck like the idea that he drew that and it's like it becomes this thing like a hundred years later where like everybody knows it it's fucking funny um guys it's time for our annual playstation three firmware update oh great playstation uh three has gotten firmware 4.93 and this is so 4.9 i think so i went back and looked there's like actually i'll show it to you guys so you can see it i'll put it in the chat there's a website that tracks all the ps3 firmware updates and the dates and like what they did and all the rest so as you start getting into the 4.8 4.8 is 2016 basically there's been one update every spring dustin the theory about this is that they're trying to do stuff for blu-ray functionality does that sound right that's that would make sense that it would need updated for stuff like that like new keys or whatever um i i would assume that the the playstation 3 has been hacked like long hacked yeah it's been broken you can mod it yeah so i don't know if they're patching out the ability once a year they're like oh we're gonna get them this time within three days it's probably hacked again i'm not sure i haven't looked much into ps3 hacking but we'll talk about that a little later in the um in the episode someone wrote in about it but uh get your ps3s updated a few million of you still apparently using it every month so it's time to move on wild it's time to move up ps3 is wonderful they're never going to release the numbers and they really don't we only understand the numbers because what they how they talk about like overall user numbers than the PS5 numbers and the PS4 numbers.

2:09:11So you assume the remainder are PS3 and I guess Vita. There's probably tens of thousands of people on there or whatever. But when they finally, and I say when confidently, when they finally bring PS3 games over to the new PlayStation ecosystem, I want to say PlayStation Network, but who knows what that's going to be called. I wonder if we would see a collapse in PS3 usage or if there's just people still using it. Didn't they just announce that they're discontinuing Netflix on it finally? so like people are still using it oh yeah I haven't been to Dagan's house my brother in a few years at this point but as of the early 2020s his wife was still using the PS3 in the living room to like watch Netflix so

2:09:54Colin Moriarty:there are people out there doing it using it oh this is I clicked on a random one version 2.00 November 8th 2007 there's one that says a vibration function has been added as an option under controller settings and the menu is displayed when you press the PSP on PS button on a DualShock 3 wireless controller. Nice. Available, available for purchase in early 2008. I didn't realize it was that late. I thought the vibrate, I thought the DualShock was earlier than that. No, it was six axis until like this. No, I knew it was six axis in the beginning. I just thought like by 2000, I didn't think I figured by 2007 it would have.

2:10:31Colin Moriarty:I think I figured they would have fixed that quickly. You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, I think they did the quick. I mean, that's what's so that is what's just so bootleg about the PS3 is like just the whole controller situation. It's like the very rare, almost unheard of, no, this is just the same controller. It's like, what? We took the wire out. It's wireless now. It's like, yeah, all right. But that's just, that goes to show you like the R &D struggle of getting this thing fixed and how bad of an idea. What I remember of the six assets controller was just how light it was so flimsy. I'm like, this thing sucks.

2:11:04I hated it. it was disturbingly light it's cool when you think about it and that's so sony like being too in their heads being like yeah our fucking controller doesn't weigh shit isn't that impressive it's like no you're like we wanted to weigh something yeah it's like it's like a like a somebody who doesn't play games made that decision you know

2:11:25Colin Moriarty:right like somebody who's just like what if we could make it like so light it's like it could blow away in the breeze like lighter than a feather the idea being like it'd make it easier to play games actually because it's not it's not as heavy you know so you'd be able to play more right like it's almost the almost the opposite is true it's ridiculous i'm trying to find it's somewhere that as well i'm trying to find the trophy update one but um because that was a big one too that was the summer of 2008 anyway um update your ps3s be good out there i wonder if everyone plugged in their ps3 right now what would be the most recent firmware on it for each individual person oh my god mine's easily like 2011 yeah i haven't i last used mine 21 maybe i think i played or maybe even 22 played mgs2 and mgs3 at some point the re-releases yeah anyway this was announced right before we started recording and I just wanted to throw this out there because it's sad I mean things are people are getting laid off left right and center I mean I don't know if you guys saw the Crystal Dynamics is having another series of layoffs it's like I don't even know how they're going to get their fucking games out I think it's four layoffs in a year there so they're obviously under great distress so there's all sorts of unfortunate job you know happenings closures cancellations going on it's too much to keep up with but I wanted to note this one because it's a bummer This is a historic studio.

2:12:59Games Industry App reports Ubisoft announces layoffs and the cease of game development at Red Storm Entertainment. And 105 people are being laid off. The North Carolina-based Red Storm Entertainment is notable because it was founded in 1996. And Tom Clancy himself was deeply involved with this studio. And this is basically where Tom Clancy games come from. There was a single Tom Clancy game before Red Storm existed, but it was the people that made that game and using funding, I think, from Tom Clancy and some other people that founded Red Storm and made... There would be no Tom Clancy anything in video games without Red Storm.

2:13:37And Ubisoft bought the studio outright after working with them on Rainbow Six and some other shit in 2000 or 2001. There's multiple reasons why this is a bummer. One of them is that, like I said, they're in North Carolina, which there are some studios in North Carolina, including a branch of Insomniac. Epic Games is there. and others this is the loss of a team where it's like these guys are gonna have a hard time i think finding a job i mean maybe some of them will go to epic or whatever but north carolina is just not a good place to lose your game development job so that's number one number two is uh these guys were fucked man i mean they were they were making that really dope looking rainbow um division free to play game they canceled the game oh heartland yeah and i don't know and they were doing a they were doing split yourself VR as well, which also got canceled.

2:14:24So their projects just kept getting canceled. Obviously, it's we bring this up constantly the ship of these. It's just it's a bummer because like out of all of Ubisoft's brands, it's the first studio Ubisoft ever acquired, which is interesting. That's number one, which is crazy when you think about it. They had a shit ton of studios at that time, but they founded them, especially in France and Canada. But yeah, I just wanted to acknowledge this. I just think it's a bummer red storm and red storm is a legendary studio um and it's a bummer to see that them close did you guys play any red storm games they kind of aren't they lost their prominence over time obviously but and i think they were working on like i think they worked on x defiant or something um oh well yeah well then i have yeah but they were like a support team sure yeah

2:15:12Colin Moriarty:yeah i'm looking through their list of games shout out to 1998's tom clancy's ruthless.com oh hell yeah never heard of that but kind of a cool name uh seems like the last so in 2016 and 2017 they did werewolves within for vr and they did that star trek bridge crew game which that's like insanely niche but i guess star trek and vr fans probably have a decent crossover that was a game that like man that actually sounds kind of cool where each person is a member of the the bridge crew and has different jobs to move the ship and fly around. I'm like, that sounds kind of cool, but I'd have no idea what I was doing, but their last, like, I don't want to say real game, but non VR was Tom Clancy's ghost recon future soldier in 2012.

2:16:06Colin Moriarty:Oh wow. I think I played that one too. And it was co-developed with Ubisoft Paris. So this feels, feels kind of bad. You know, they were taken off doing I mean maybe they wanted to go in a VR direction but with Ubisoft I doubt it I don't know if Future Soldier did it not do well was it like kind of a bad game so that was why they were taken off 78 percent on or 79 out on Metacritic so yeah not that bad at that time it's uh it still had a chance because there weren't that many games comparable to where we are today yeah but yeah it has been a while and like I said it's been a long time but they were just such an iconic presence like i wasn't a pc gamer um and a lot of their games came to console like uh you know um like rogue spear i think was on dreamcast and like other things but just that icon and like their games on the pc shelves at game stores or if you went to best buy or something they were just always there and pc games were so prominent because the boxes were so fucking huge so there's just there's some marketing thing about it where it's just like It feels they feel very like late 90s, early aughts to me.

2:17:11The dead era. I mean, no one plays PC games physically anymore. You don't see that kind of shit.

2:17:16Colin Moriarty:So they worked on an America's Army game. Oh, wow. You guys remember America's Army? I do. That was the official recruiting thing, right? Yeah. I played it at the Clearview Mall in Butler, PA. Oh, man. I was in elementary school. And my dad had no interest in joining the military. and they were like oh are you interested in recruiting he's like i'm i'm blind in one eye and they're like ah yeah you're not going to be able to do that and he's like good but i got a free game out and uh i didn't really like it very much but it's kind of a neat idea to do a video game that was free at the time not a free game at that time yeah it's unheard of government paying you paying you for your Xbox 360 propaganda.

2:18:02It's great. I mean, they knew where their target audience was. They weren't on PSN playing fucking folklore. I'll tell you that.

2:18:10Colin Moriarty:Well, the original America's Army, I think, was PC. What year did the original come out? Oh, I'm looking on Wikipedia 1.0. This was 2002. Oh, yeah. I would have been on PC. Dang. That's the one I remember playing America's Army. Well, they wanted to have your mouse and keyboard skills. Right. Yeah. All right. RIP and peace. Red storm. You'll be missed. Nathan Densley introduces our next topic. Blessing boys. He writes, I missed out on some of this year's podcast, so I was wondering if you three have spoken on the game Exodus written by Mass Effect's Drew Carpichon and the now departed other Bioware alum, James Olin, or maybe the subject of the game could use another look at after the snippet of gameplay was released on Wednesday.

2:18:56Do you gentlemen feel this game's call of another operatic space adventure and it's space bears in your balls as I do or do you feel it a little too similar to its wear on its sleeve inspiration thanks for all your work so they did release new Exodus gameplay and I was curious it's about two minutes long um I'm really excited about this game I love Mass Effect I've always loved the Mass Effect since it came out in 2007 um that trilogy is excellent this is a facsimile of Mass Effect and I have no problem with that because yeah they're not doing it and someone and drew car by the way drew carpersin is kind of sort of the major or one of the major strengths of mass effect by being the person who came up with the right wrote the whole thing so I'm I'm fucking I'm actually after seeing the gameplay though it is a facsimile of mass effect I'm like hell yeah dude I'm gonna fucking play the shit out of this so I'm all in early 2027 unfortunately which did I pick it in the game thing no I don't think okay good

2:19:56Colin Moriarty:good good good you might don't rely on me necessarily but like i i don't think you did yeah i probably didn't i'll look but um did you get the chance to look at the gameplay chris what did you think of it if you got a chance to check it out yeah man i'm i mean it's obviously pre it's early uh but i'm i'm into it man like uh this is exactly what i wanted it to be to be to be honest with you like i i don't mind i i wish there are certain games that i love that i wish would be copied more you know like uh shadow the colossus is one of them where like i wish there were other i wish i could go to other places and get like a different fix of that so the fact that this looks like mass effect is is fine i feel the same way that i feel about like you know although it's a bit of a different scenario obviously nothing's one-to-one uh that judas looks unquestionably like a bioshock game like i don't i don't care like that's kind of what i want out of the if if you're if your claim to fame is making a particular thing like why i i mean it's cool to branch out i guess that's it's always exciting and new and interesting but why would i complain about you doing the thing that you know right the thing that drew us to you to begin with the thing that you're the thing that we know you're good at i'm you're not gonna find me complaining i was actually a lot more skeptical about this game before i saw this because when i first saw it i was like it looks a little bit unreal engine which obviously it is i'm pretty sure right i'm pretty sure most games i feel like at this point i think um i'll say i'll say the trailer the trailer looked like unreal engine to me like it looked like the kind of like okay this doesn't look particularly stylized or whatever unreal 5 yeah it's very cutscene heavy like i don't really i don't know like maybe uh maybe this will be fine uh but i was skeptical about it this to me is is a little bit more reassuring uh the shooting in particular what i'm what i really like about it is the feedback on the feedback on dealing damage you'd be surprised that how like how subtle of a thing that is that a lot of games don't do that well i i'm actually like kind of like i think i might it's a i had an idea a long time ago to make a video about that where it's just like why why does it feel like when i'm attacking things in some video games it feels like i'm not doing anything to them marvel rivals actually is a really good example of one where like you could shoot somebody in my world rebels and it feels like like they don't react at all like there's there's no effect it's like it's it feels like completely it feels like everybody's a hologram or whatever and seeing like the sparks fly off their armor and them like twitching and reacting it's just like oh yes this looks cool i'm into it really early obviously so who the fuck knows what the end product will be but yeah not that early i mean it's a year i'm uh you know sure sure but like you know you know how these things go as far as I don't know what the overall quality of whatever we're seeing yeah I want to see uncut gameplay like for a longer period of time um right but I do think it looks exceptional like I think it looks fucking it looks like a mass effect I mean on a unapologetically like mass effect that's great um yeah Dustin are you when they brought up the the radial dial yeah I I was like, oh, yeah.

2:23:09Colin Moriarty:And then there's a part after like the zipline part of where he it shows the character jogging slightly like. That is the exact same jog, but I'm with you, Colin. I have no problem with that. And I think this, you know, little almost two minute clip looks very promising, but I'm with you that I want to see more. Yeah, but everything from this game so far has been very promising. All right. One more piece of news just to throw this out there. This comes from Games Industry.biz as well. Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia's electronics gaming development company acquires 5 % stake in Capcom. So they're simply reporting from a Japanese source named Game Biz that this organization, EGDC, has acquired 26.78 million shares of the Japanese company Capcom.

2:23:59This is an investment that is in addition to Saudi Arabia's 5 % buy of Capcom in 2022. I did a little bit of research because I wanted to make sure that people understood this. The Savvy Games Group is owned by the public investment fund in Saudi Arabia. They own pieces of like EA and Take-Two. They own 5 % of Nintendo, 8 % of Embracer. They bought Niantic and Scopely and all these different things. And that's a wealth fund for profit. The EGDC, as I understand, is under the MISC Foundation, which is the nonprofit that is run by Saudi Arabia that owns SNK. and it is through that arm that they are acquiring their own 5 % part of Capcom.

2:24:43So two different Saudi pieces now own 5 % each, though it's really run by the same person, which is Mohammed bin Salman. So just wanted to throw that out there. It's interesting, I guess. They did it on the market. It's not like they went and bought it straight from Capcom. Capcom doesn't have the shares to sell, I don't think, anyway. So that's that, and that's all we have for the news. All right, with the news behind us, we can get into what we're playing Chris I'm eager to go to you first you're playing Resident

2:25:07Colin Moriarty:Evil Requiem finally now that you're home yeah what do you think yeah man so like yeah so I'm about like I well I don't know I shouldn't say hours I'm at the I'm at a underground kind of basement boiler room kind of situation right now as grace and uh I have to say like I mentioned it a little bit earlier in the in the episode or in the show today but like man this game looks incredible yeah it does I'm really kind of consistently blown away by just like the detail in the environment and just like the lighting I particularly like it in third person like I don't know like I like my Resident Evil in third person I've always felt that way Resident Evil 7 I've tried many many times to get into it and I just kind of can't do it there's something about it that feels very outlast to me which by the way it's not a dig at outlast I just feel like I feel like resident evil is kind of better than this so like i don't know like a first person i'm not really feeling i am playing his first in first person as grace because that's what the game recommends so i'm going i'm doing it the way the game wants me to do it i still kind of i think these are my least favorite parts of it i love the leon stuff and i think i might like the gray stuff more in third person but like i know they do some weird shit there i think like where like if you sprint too much that she stumbles a lot and i was like that would be that'd infuriate the hell at me so i'm sticking it out in first person um but i really i yeah i really like it a lot i think it's paced very well i think i think the puzzles are kind of like in this really nice sweet spot for me where like normally with a lot of resident evil puzzles i don't have a tough time getting through them but if i if i'm stuck on one for a little bit too long i'm like i'm just gonna i'm gonna look this up i don't care enough about this like this isn't really what i'm what i'm I totally agree.

2:26:52Colin Moriarty:Totally. I've not been stuck on anything yet. Like, I feel like everything's like relatively intuitive. Everything like kind of flows in a meaningful way where like no information gets lost or confused or muddy. It's very, very well put together and it plays very well. um they're they're handling the balance between survival horror and action surprisingly well it was one of the main concerns i had going in was like it kind of feels like they're going in trying to do two separate things and in the end they may not please anybody that was my worry because i feel like with most studios that's what would happen um but for whatever reason the survival horror first person stuff with grace really works it's unnerving um the atmosphere is really good especially with headphones uh the sound design is sick it's it's really scary and then the leon stuff is fun and it doesn't neither of them detract from one another and they're like they they flow into one another very well i wish i had more time like I'm pretty early on in the game obviously but I do feel like I wish I had a little bit more time as Leon just because I feel so it feels so fun to be Leon I heard that changes later but I'm really liking it so far I don't know what the fuck's going on yeah like I don't know like maybe I don't remember Resident Evil 2 that well and to be fair like I I have not played 6 at all so like i do have a a pretty big gap with some of the characters that are in this um namely leon so maybe there's stuff that i just didn't see and and i'm just kind of i'm going in with that understanding of just like all right i don't have all the context here that's fine um but i am kind of like i don't necessarily know what's going on here but it's cool and i'm and i like it and it's fun and it's scary and the scary parts are scary the action parts are fun so like i'm having i'm having a really good time with it i'm still really early on though so like um uh you know i've still got plenty of game to go even even as far as this game goes which i understand is short for a lot of people i don't think it's that short dude i think you'll find that it's perfect length yeah i feel like oh just like something else it feels well paced for for me like i'm enjoying the pace of it and i like the care center is a really great location i think like i really like i love it i agree i agree i love that there's an east and west wing with two distinct threats i think that's kind of cool it feels it feels weirdly like this isn't literal and i hate saying this because like everybody everybody was it's nothing like this trying to it's the spirit of what i'm talking about right but it feels kind of like uh you know in far cry there's like different there's like the area where like this is the boss for this area and this is the boss for this area right it there's like a like a light sprinkling of that here which is not the same obviously it's not like far cry at all but like i thought it was interesting that there's like a chef and then there's like and then there's like a fucking giant thing and they're and they're and then they're and then they're separated i think that's kind of i don't know there's something novel about that that i was like i like this i like being able to choose like what i'm i i don't know there was there was something freeing about that that i really really liked and i like the overall aesthetic of the area i love the lobby and how like sterile like there's like a weird like antique sterile kind of like i don't know the white like the really really pale white glow of that that main lobby is really cool um yeah i'm really liking it a lot i think it looks beautiful i think it plays really well even the first person stuff with grace which i'm not like i'm not big on first person Resident Evil stuff like I think plays fairly well I wish the camera was a little bit zoomed out that is one thing I feel like the FOV is so like not that I'm trying to like you know sprint wave dash through through Resident Evil but it feels a little bit zoomed in and I get like sometimes I'm like ah get my eyes hurt but I'm really loving it so far I think it's fucking great you've avoided spoilers right so you don't know what yeah I have no idea what the fuck I'm very excited for you to continue playing i think it's gonna be i'll be very intrigued to see what you think yeah i yeah i beat it four times so i i really liked it a lot obviously um the hospital especially like i can see i i know my way around it it's so funny like i just know my way around the game so well now it's it's uh it's great i'm so i'm so glad you got got to it that you enjoyed it it's especially good on ps5 pro yeah it's it's really gorgeous something i i can't i kind of can't i kind of can't believe how good it looks like on many many many occasions there's like especially like when you when it cuts to third person you can really like uh you can uh really take in how well the character models are done like leon looks incredible like i was like staring at him for like a good like minute and i was like this is like this looks real to me like and i'm like an uncanny way like i understand that it's not real like i just like i know it but like it's like this looks fucking incredible and even like grace's hands when she's aiming i'm like dude that looks like this doesn't look like video games anymore to me it's amazing and this is part i was talking about this when i i was talking to you guys about the guy nate from sorcery gg that i'm having on sacred symbols plus in a couple weeks and during our interview i had brought that up that we were talking about the transference of game you know game power centers from the west to the east now and i was like yeah well you look at a game like resident evil requiem the level of quality in that game made by a japanese team being paid a third to a fourth as much as a naughty dog employee would be made so get used to it because this is the way things are going to be going especially in china and eastern europe so on so forth all right dustin you're playing marathon a game that's been on my mind as I've been saying as well and maybe I'll get into it at some point too I don't know though that's that's a big talk it's big talk right now what uh what do you think what's going on yeah so before our stream Monday I knew I wanted to put more time in mostly out of fear of looking like a fucking idiot in front of thousand plus people on stream so this past weekend I put a lot more time in and I am not right always but I was right in my assumption that it was either a week or two ago that I said like I I'm not hooked by a marathon but I see that something's there and that it's going to just require more out of me and that was 100 % right and I think that's actually a big I think that's going to be continue to be the uphill battle for marathon is that the onboarding is not great the tutorial is not great and even as you're playing still now which i'm let's see how many marathon hours do i have at this point i have 18 hours in marathon and i still have so so much to learn i feel like but I'm having a really good time in the process now.

2:34:21Colin Moriarty:Some of my time has been solo and playing this game solo versus in a team. I don't want to say it's two different games, but your play style is so vastly different between playing as a team and playing by yourself. By yourself is borderline. I'm not going to call it a horror game, but it is so scary sometimes because it's like when you're with a team and you're running around somewhere you hear your other team's footsteps and so you're maybe not quite listening in but when you're looting something and you think you're by yourself you get jumpy you're like oh shit did i just hear someone in the next room over sometimes you're in your head a little bit and sometimes you're right i have found too that i'm having more social interactions on solo not a lot more this game still is very very like as chris was saying either on a stream or a few weeks ago that this game is pvp focused purely it's not much of a social game and that's fine like the other day i saw a guy uh looting something and i you know i murdered him straight up and he was like oh shit you scared me uh and he's like good good work man he's like come come get my loot come come embrace me and so i i went up to him I'm like, I'm going to take you in my loving arms.

2:35:41Colin Moriarty:Oh, man. And then I finished him. In what way? I'll leave that to you to decide. Leave that to your imagination. So, but yeah, as a team, solo is fun. Because I feel like I can really explore and not feel like I'm letting my team down. Solo, I run free loadouts a lot because it just feels so much more dangerous. and I could see that like the solo experience isn't going to be for everybody because there were numerous times that I played solo and someone just saw me first and it was over and it's like I could see that not being a fun experience when you're playing as a team someone may find you first this happened actually with uh me Chris and Brad where I I was the unlucky one that just got fucking sniped right in the head and I'm like well good luck guys i cannot participate in this fight because i was the unlucky one that got shot first and uh i think i think uh brad brad and chris turned it around we were having a crazy night i think it was tuesday night where like yeah we were in multiple fights that ended up being like where you're on a 3v3 two team fight that ends up like another team comes in and you're like already on your back foot and now you need to fight another team in addition to that and so it was just pure chaos and night to night I find that the experience are so vastly different for better and for worse last night when I was playing I mentioned this earlier where I was like we were doing alright but I personally wasn't playing very well to the point where we had a very successful run I extracted I left with loot but I'm like dude I I suck like I I was the one that I was getting revived I was the one that was getting kills or that was getting killed and not really doing much of the killing so I felt I was a little I was a liability yeah I felt like a lot dude it's like you know Brad's like oh you're fine or our friend she's like yeah you're good you're good I'm like no it's not I want to do better not just for me but for you for the team so I I'm having a really, really fun time playing it.

2:38:00Colin Moriarty:I'm excited for more. Right before we just hit record again after our break, Chris was saying that the update of the new level is about to come out tomorrow on the Marathon ship. I think, Chris, you said it was like level 25. Yeah, I was reading. I had it up, so it's like a minimum level requirement of 25, a minimum loadout requirement of 5 ,000. So you have to go in with 5 ,000? 5 ,000. So you got to go in with like, you got to be kidded, dude. I saw a video about that. The guy saying like, we want you to risk like half the, half the risk it or whatever for the, that's kind of sick. I mean, that's either going to make you feel like a million bucks or, or rage.

2:38:43Colin Moriarty:I already, I'm already anticipating screaming in pure rage when I get in there. Cause I know, I know I'm not going to have successful runs every single time I go in there. in that but like i know i'm gonna lose a bunch of shit um but yeah 10 a.m on friday so the day after recording this when you when a lot of people are going to be listening to this i guess it'll be it'll be unlocked for everybody after a big arg that a lot of people went through by the way i'm also playing marathon it's going to be obvious i'm not going to say it every week because it's just obviously going to be true and i'll have more to say about it next week once i have some experience with this level but yeah man i'm i'm excited it gets its hooks in you man it's it's really good and it's like surprise the gameplay variety is startling like i just feel like night to night my experiences are completely different um solo and and teams are like completely different vibes like i i really i fuck with it yeah yeah it's it's a game that you learn so much i mean some of it's obvious like crossover from any extraction shooter or any kind of shooter like this where it's like i've been very conscious the last few nights like how much noise you make really matters and i learned that both from being killed and from killing other people and being like dude you guys were in here running around and so yeah we got the jump on you and so it makes you more conscious next time where it's like let's slow down a problem chris and i had tuesday night was we were trying to do some quest and so we were hanging out in the same spot trying to figure stuff out and it's like we've we've overstayed our welcome here because if it's not if another player doesn't roll up then we're fighting bots when we're fighting bots or clankers uh we end up drawing more attention to ourselves and it's just like you gotta you gotta stay on the move so yeah um so yeah i i absolutely love marathon i think it is fucking awesome and um i think there's a question later about like the status of the game that we can talk about yeah we'll get it we can get it all that right now you want to okay well it's it's here in the it's under oh it's right here yeah ramen numerals wrote in nice but hey guys i'm a lapsed destiny player and i have to say i was really disappointed seeing bungie making a game in a niche genre where they have been so poorly managed and just hemorrhaging money.

2:41:14Marathon is not a game for me, but much like a good fighting game, I've really been enjoying watching skilled players stream it. What do you think? Is this going to be sustainable or do you think they are going to wish they had made a game with broader appeal? I'll say that I think I doubt the game is doing as well as their most optimistic projections, but I don't understand from my perspective why people seem to be so focused on how the game is doing and assuming it's going to be disappeared from the market. it's not I don't know if it lasts more than a few years or something but it's not going away I just don't see how that's going to happen unless the player base really just erodes in a single thousand digits across all the platforms and I just don't think Sony's going to give up on it I think it's too much is riding on it in a way I also just think and I think I've said before when we were streaming it people were saying I had like are you winning son dad energy during it which was fun yeah but I was really impressed by it sometimes I think just exposure to the kind of game I was like this is cool I get the the visuals I get the the gameplay the structure of it that the level of deep design the idea of the robots and keeping you moving and not making you too comfortable and always giving you something to deal with and the deep level of management of your of your assets and all the rest I think it's a cool game so I just it's not only that people are so hyper focused on the disappearance of the game or the failure of the game but i just don't know that they're reading it right like it doesn't it seems like it's shedding people but where will it settle i think is the major question and what can they do to revive interest in it or get people going into it i just don't see it disappearing in the next quarter or two like people are talking about or even more imminently than that it just doesn't seem like that's the case it seems too grabby for i i would i would love to know what their stats show about new people playing and how they're finding the game and are they absorbing new people or they just have sales stalled and now they're shedding players i don't know but it just seems to me that people are um a little too focused on the demise of a game that i don't think is going

2:43:23Colin Moriarty:to die anytime soon yeah it's one of the what part of the question here do you do you wish they had made a game with broader appeal i think it is really interesting that it's do you like bungie spent millions of 10 100 million 200 million dollars who knows how much making this game yeah i mean i don't know was it a good idea for this for them to spend this much money on still i mean even with arc raider success still a a more niche genre of fps it probably wasn't a good idea but now that it's here and that i'm playing it and i'm you know seeing how awesome it is i'm certainly thrilled that they did it but it does it is concerning to some degree one of the things that's surprising me colin about our stream yeah and hearing chris you know seeing the comments to last few weeks of episodes with chris talking about it is how many people are and I don't think like Sacred Symbols is going to turn Marathon around.

2:44:32Colin Moriarty:No, Jesus. Not saying that. I'm just surprised how many people are commenting that was like, I wrote off Marathon because of the narrative around it, but after hearing Chris talk about it, seeing you guys stream it, actually seeing the game, I'm way more interested now or I'm going to pick it up or I decided to pick it up and I really love it now that I put the time into it. so it it telegraphs to me that there is something about this game that the i don't know if it's bungee's marketing and messaging around it if it's just the gaming culture choosing to hate live service games right now and maybe rightfully so into some degree and that's getting in marathons getting lumped in there but there's some kind of weird disconnect with this game.

2:45:24Colin Moriarty:And maybe it also has something to do with onboarding and when they had it free for everybody that some people got turned off because it wasn't really a good idea to let people taste only a few hours as opposed to just having them buy in and then have to dedicate time to it in order to feel like you justified your purchase. There's something weird about this game going on. And I don't know whether it's going to eventually just slow down because they can't get over the hump of the common consensus, or if it's just going to take time, and at some point there will be a gradual buildup when people are like, they're over their 10 minutes of hate towards Marathon.

2:46:06Colin Moriarty:I don't know. Christopher, do you think they can... It's so weird to me playing. I'm like, man, this game is clearly really good. And I'm just shocked by... not everybody, but the people that are like rooting for it to be like, we don't want this. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I think my opinion has always been that like, I think a game like this and particularly this game, I just think it's, it's highest, it's highest day of performing players is ahead of it. Like I just, I think this is a game that requires time to grow on people. It requires people to kind of like give it, it, like you said earlier, it demands a lot of you, but i think what's there is objectively not subjectively this is an exceptionally designed video game there's a lot and that's not even to say i don't know maybe this new map sucks but i think that like the sheer design of this thing is like is incredibly good it's got a bad onboarding process but so did destiny so like i don't i don't even know how necessarily that much matter how much that matters necessarily it might it matters for day one perception or whatever but um i don't know i think i think eventually i don't know i just think the narrative around this game is going to change if if we have an honest industry which is like that's a big that's a big if but i do think enough people are out there even just like the people online where you're starting to see streamers be like yeah i like it a lot but uh i don't like playing it because uh what is i don't like playing it on stream because people are like annoying about it it's like well they like it though like you can't like high guard that that didn't that's not that didn't that didn't happen you know that didn't and there's other games too where like uh what was it uh oh mind's eye you remember mind's eye when like they had all those like sponsored streams right right and then on the time like literally on the second that the uh was it the contract was up they just switched to some some other game right i don't know man this is a special game i think it's i think it's like genuinely fantastic and um we'll see where it goes i think i'm not really that worried about it to be honest i think it's it's it's got its hooks on the right people like dude i'm looking at people like there are people there are people on my on my uh friends list who's like they're on marathon right now and they've been on it for six hours and it's fucking 1 p.m you know like it's it's got people in uh and i think that word of mouth is just going to spread i don't know if it's going to spread like gargantuanly like really like quickly but i think slowly over time like even i had a friend of mine recently like in the last like day or two message me just like hey i've been hearing a lot about this marathon is you like it i'm like oh brother let me tell you something let me sit you down so i'm definitely going to get some people in and it's just it's got a stickiness to it and I think the stickiness comes from the the friction of it too it's just like not really knowing everything I just discovered like like during just before we went live today to to record a friend of mine said look what I found it's like it's like a it's like a an item of rarity that I've not seen before and didn't know about it's like this red rarity level like contraband I was like what the fuck is that so like I'm a hundred hours in and I'm like I still don't I still haven't seen everything.

2:49:31Colin Moriarty:You know, it's crazy, kind of. And it kind of makes sense. Like when I was playing the Alpha, I was like, it took them this long to make this. Like the first couple hours, it took them this long to do this. And now I'm like, I see. There's a fine level of design, I think, in the game. I can tell the interplay between things. I don't know that it's necessarily positioned towards me, but I was left more impressed by it. I am. Yeah, I mean, I'm into it. I'm I'm I have no real vested interest in doing well or not, apart from a lot of my friends like it. So I hope that it survives. And I think it will.

2:50:10I don't know. I agree with you. I think that there's a there's a potential for this game to find its way. But there's, of course, the other potential as well. Yeah. A 388 foot man wrote in and said, hey, CBC, mainly for Chris. But I anticipate a lot of you will have something to chime in with. how freaking awesome is the marathon ARG curious if you guys saw the dude who had Joe Ziegler on a call live and his mystery marathon box opened up with an invite to Bungie HQ on Thursday your today my tomorrow everyone listening to this is yesterday it's been fun to watch so uh yeah talk to us a little bit about this I have to go the dog's barking I don't know if you can hear it so

2:50:41Colin Moriarty:I gotta go take care of that yeah no worries yeah so the ARG it's like they've I mean Bungie's been doing ARGs for a long time like as early as the original Halo maybe even with the original marathon I don't know. But like, I know I remember specifically my earliest encounter with their stuff was for Halo two. It was called like, I love bees or something. It was like an, I love, I remember that. Yeah. And I just remember being very captivated by that. I was too young to really understand or participate, but like, I was like, this is so cool. So they've had a long history of doing ARGs to kind of engage the community and kind of like unlock certain things.

2:51:15Colin Moriarty:Like I think with, I love bees, I think enough people had to call certain pay phones and then a tray, then a trailer. would be released for Halo 2. I'm not really sure exactly the specifics of that. It's been a while. But as far as I understand it, yeah, this marathon ARG going on in the Discord, like it requires a lot of like, it started with, you know, a website going live with like different empty camera feeds. And then slowly people were like piecing together points of IP addresses to unlock different camera feeds. And there were camera feeds of Cryo of this new map. And then eventually enough of them unlocked.

2:51:47Colin Moriarty:And then a bunch of other stuff happened. I got to be honest. I'm not super clued into this stuff because I just know I'm not smart enough to do half the shit that a lot of these guys are doing. Like, it's a lot of math, which again is like, I think I mentioned on a previous episode where it's like it was bold of Bungie to make a game that required a level of literacy that is very clearly not dependably accessible for a game like this. but yeah they've been i think the most recent thing that was discovered through it was that there was a directive to kill like 500 million bots and uh that was the directive and then like once 500 million bots open then we'll get the information about cryo and then i think it was like your genocide yeah it was just like a call it was funny because i was playing last night and i was uh i was looting a building and there There were other people coming in and they were on Prox chat and they were like, if there's anybody in here, we're here to kill bots.

2:52:54Colin Moriarty:We're here to get cry open. Don't fire. And I was like, you know what? I respect that. I'll let you do it. I'll let you do that. I'm going to take everything in this building, but I'm leaving. You guys can figure you guys can kill the bots yourselves. But yeah. So I guess, I guess they hit the requirement. They killed 500 million bots. And now like tomorrow, 10 AM cry opens. I think it's a fun way to engage the community. I love that they do this stuff and that they have done this stuff forever. It's part of what endeared me to them as a developer in the first place of just the level of community engagement that they have is like really cool.

2:53:29Even just the level of transparency that they had with the Viadocs early back in the day and just kind of like giving people a peek behind the curtain and giving people a chance to like know the people there and engaging the community outside of the game to unlock stuff in the game.

2:53:44Colin Moriarty:I think it's cool. like sometimes they miss the mark with it like uh as far as you know the grimoires for the original destiny like so the lore entries being outside of the game like it's like it's not exactly the right balance or not exactly what we're looking for but they're always experimenting in that world and i think it's really cool and engaging and weird and eccentric and oh it's captivating but it's cool all right sorry yeah trouble was uh going off on the dog next door for some reason now you're good but uh that's all i have to say about it i'll have more to say about it i didn't write it this time because it's just more marathon but next week i'll i'll report back me and me and john pork are certainly going to be heading onto that ship excellent and see it seeing what's seeing what the vibe is i'm sure i anticipate some bad times ahead well i anticipate losing a lot of shit but i'm i'm okay with it i'm resigned and maybe it'll be good you know maybe i'll maybe i'll make out and never never go back again let me pitch an idea sure because people liked the marathon sacred streaming it's gonna be a while before i can do this though oh it's only open on the weekend it well ranked is i think ranked is only weekend i was trying to look through this let me look it up actually i don't know i think this just broke while we were recording so like we don't know the specific details of it i was gonna suggest that you and pork are gonna learn the ropes and then on stream it'll be we could do my first time going that could be fun yeah because that way i think that's kind of a neat angle for the audience as well to be like this is what it's like newcomer perspective that'd be cool but if it's only on the weekend I mean maybe we can do a special one for the weekend but I I think ranked mode is is on weekends but I think cryo is open always as I understand I haven't read through this thing exactly but I remember I remember ranked specifically was going to be weekends We'll see.

2:55:54Colin Moriarty:We'll feel it out. But that's not a bad idea for a stream. I like that idea. If we can do it. Cryo Archive is open on the weekends starting this Friday, March 20th. How interesting.

2:56:07Colin Moriarty:Interesting. I wonder what... We'll see. We'll see. So you better not have a fucking social life on the weekends. Boys, give it up. Yeah, give it up. No one playing marathon has a social life. well all right yeah let's be let's be honest all right uh i platinum mini shoot adventures i talked a lot about that game last week um platinum 204 really fun game i think melds twin stick shooters with old school zelda pretty well i think it's a little vague to play sometimes i wish it told you more the game basically doesn't speak to you at all so it becomes a little frustrating at the end and i had to look a few things up i'm like what am i supposed to be like where am i trying to go and what am I doing?

2:56:52But I think overall it's a very fun, very novel and unique game. I really enjoyed playing it. I started playing and I'm about five hours into the game Chronicles of the Wolf. This is a Metroidvania that came out last year actually and I had it on my wish list for a while so I was just looking at my wish list on PSN or whatever it's going to be called in the future and I was like, oh yeah, I'll check this out and play this. It was 15 bucks I want to say and it's a metroidvania in the castlevania spirit set in france and it's pretty good it's uh it feels a lot like a 16-bit action side-scrolling 2d game big sprites chunkiness uh stiff combat but because it's in 16.9 and not in 4.3 i just think that that can all be forgiven i think the chunky sprites and like the altered beast style dominance of the sprites on the screen and stuff is just doesn't look great but i think once you kind of spread things out a little bit more and really the game the gameplay in my opinion feels like the action parts of act razor so it's not like the finest action controls it's certainly not up to the level of castlevania but what i do love about it is um the ambience of the game is really striking actually and there are the game reads it's very unique I was trying to articulate it to Micah it's like because we were I was playing and she was looking at it I'm like it reads like a PC game like like an old PC adventure game almost every like that the pixels are just so the coloring is just so but it melds it with this SNES or Genesis style gameplay in a Metroid with Metroidvania trappings and I always bring this game up but it is obviously and deeply influenced by Castlevania 2 so that's always is a big seller for me as well.

2:58:46There's a day night cycle in it, which is kind of cool. A lot of voice acting, interesting characters. I like I like this game a lot. Like, I don't think it's it's inconsistent. I was saying I'm like it. First, I was like, some of it looks bootleg, but that's not really what it is. Some of it just looks a little amateur. Like the portrait art is pretty amateur. Like even the cover art, like the key art is not very good. But the pixel art is really well done. and yeah, so I'm really digging it. I wish the game had a quest log. Like I don't, I'm actually using like a spoiler free walkthrough. Like I like to use where it's like, just go do this and then you do this.

2:59:24And then because I'm like, I don't know where I'm supposed to go. And these maps are like fucking huge. That's not unlike Symphony of the Night, but the game doesn't read that well. So there are problems with it, I think. But I think it's a pretty charming game and I'm quite smitten with it. So I'll keep playing it. Interestingly, it doesn't have a platinum trophy. I don't it has it has enough trophies for a platinum trophy but just no platinum trophy I don't know why they did that but nonetheless it doesn't really matter so that's what I'm playing and we have a write in here from the demons won't let me sleep he says sup SS crew probably a better question for next week but any of you three play crimson desert yet it looks like an assassin's creed rpg from afar but curious on early thoughts that I'll forget for when I maybe play later this year well it was just released as of the time we're recording this was released today and the reviews are up.

3:00:09The embargo was at release. So not always a good sign. It's scoring more softly than I would have assumed. The stock for Pearl Abyss dropped 30 % when the game came out, which is I don't know if you guys saw that, which is pretty interesting. Concurrence on Steam are just one thing to note. I think it was at 30 ,000 or something like that. Well, I don't think the game's unlocked yet. Oh, okay. Until 5 p.m. oh so 30 ,000 people are playing what the early access version of it

3:00:40Colin Moriarty:I don't know they might just be in the launcher or something they might just yeah have the launcher open because I don't think anyone is playing until 5 p.m. oh anywhere on any on any uh on any um yeah like even on psn and xbox interesting so yeah we're recording this at so about an hour from when we're recording this okay so that's interesting because I was going to say that's different than on psn where it seems like it's selling really well it's on the charts and all the rest probably the same for them too i don't know that the reviews are really going to matter for crimson desert ultimately i think people were into it or not i wanted to see gameplay and i mean there were already gameplay gameplay released but i wanted to see like what people really thought about it and um just see is like worth my while like can i learn things about it kind of in a quick way and i think that what i learned about it is i'm like i don't know maybe later for me You know, I it feels like a very huge bloated open world, which is which speaks to me.

3:01:35Sometimes I like that. I like doing lots of things. I like the trivialities of questing and whatever. I just don't know that I want to do it in some world I don't particularly care about. And when people say like the story and the characters and stuff are kind of the weakest part, that seems to be like a universal thing. I'm like, well, then it comes off more like an MMO that you made into a single player game. And I know that that's literally what they did, but it, it, with the vastness and the depth of the game, the combat seems like it's pretty deep. So I just want to like, let it settle. I was talking to Micah yesterday when we were eating dinner and I was like, maybe, maybe like what it's 40 bucks or something.

3:02:07I'll pick it up. Like be tempted by a discount. Not unlike borderlands four for me. Yeah. But yeah, I was looking forward to it, to seeing more about it. I wasn't, I wouldn't say I was excited about it, but I was very interested in it, but yeah, it didn't just seeing what I've seen. I'm like, I'm not, I'm not clamoring right now to play it yet. so are you guys going to check out crimson desert yeah i'm gonna play it tonight so it's the reviews are interesting i mean it's like with any game there are a lot of outlets

3:02:38Colin Moriarty:and not just randos on metacritic that scored it very highly there are some sites like i think game spot i think maybe it was even ign gave it a six or something so it's not one of those games that is like consistently sevens, but it's like a broad mix of scores from everything I'm seeing. I think I'm going to be into it. So I'm going to check it out. I'll have more to talk about it next week, of course, because that's one of the playing over the weekend. Chris, are you going to check it up? I think it looks like a game that I would want to get to eventually. I still want to get through Resident Evil.

3:03:17Colin Moriarty:And obviously, I've got some more time with Marathon for cryo tomorrow so like i'll wait to see where it settles i am curious about it it has piqued my curiosity just because i think it like it looks like the visually i feel like that's the biggest draw for me because it's just like damn that looks really like visually kind of crazy especially for like a an open world game to look that good does it look that good well you know that's a kind of a big question i i guess we'll see but it strikes me as a game that's very deep it's got a lot of systems going for it and it strikes me as a game that's going to be very long it seems like it's going to be very very very for a particular kind of person i don't know if i'm that person but i'm willing to give it a shot i think i just want to wait a little bit see what people say about it make a more informed decision because there's shit there that i'm seeing where i'm just like yeah they're playing with physics a little bit with some of this movement and some of these combats if you fly a dragon and a mech also is like kind of like that's enticing as fuck i don't know i'm very curious about it i'm not clamoring i'll wait to see and then i'll figure it out one thing's for sure i'm not finishing that game yeah that i can that i can tell you immediately i was just like i i would i'll doubt no fucking shot uh if it's as long as people are saying it is whereas it's like i saw jake baldino say like i didn't like the first eight hours and i was like yeah and i get that because i i've played games where like i didn't like the first like two or three marathon was one of those where like i did i didn't i didn't like i didn't i didn't really understand the first like two three hours of that game and then like and then so i understand the concept of like yeah sticking something out and like discovering something really really rich under under the surface so like i if it's that kind of game then i'm more open to it now than i would have been like maybe like a year or two ago let's get into listener inquiries now and wrap this thing up six questions comments concerns thoughts and ideas from the audience over on patreon patreon.com slash last day media use the thread in the news feed each week for this show and all the other shows in our network to submit to the appropriate show of your choice the sacred symbols threads go live on wednesdays and are deleted thursdays so you have about 24 hours steven keenan wrote in and said hey boys long time patron first time writing in The creator of PSN Profiles recently announced that shovelware games will no longer count towards the leaderboards, essentially making those games worth zero points each.

3:05:42As an avid trophy hunter and a regular user of PSN Profiles, the leaderboards were never something I looked too closely at since shovelware had made those lists feel hollow. Could this change to you guys having a regular look at your position on the leaderboards? I don't think these guys will care, but I will talk to this. Did we discuss what's going on on PSN Profiles on the show the last few weeks?

3:06:00Colin Moriarty:I remember you saying that you've been in contact with them. this was months ago that they like removed there's like a filter oh yeah that's that's like an old thing yeah yeah so that that was yeah i definitely inspired their shovelware filter and i'm definitely i'm proud of that no doubt because we bitched constantly and how bad psm profiles was becoming because of that but they've gone a step further and this is what i appreciate about the peasants fighting back right like we are the peasants at the gate of this major corporation we are trying to clamor for some sort of like agitation to for some sort of change.

3:06:31Right. And these guys are kind of doing the work in a way where I'm like, this is more poignant than I think people realize. And I wonder if it will affect the, the economics of doing trophy games. So what PSN profiles, as Steven had noted is doing a PSN profiles is a wonderful website. I use it all the time. I talk about it all the time. It's great. Um, it's an opt in website. So people sometimes use it and say like, wow, for the only 4 ,000 people bought God of War Sons of Sparta. I'm like, Hassell, that's the 4 ,000 people that opted in that are playing it and then updated their trophies, which you have to do manually unless you are a premium member, which I am.

3:07:10And then it happens automatically. But I have someone gave me premium membership for life. So I think it's the people that own the site. So it's kind of cool, which I appreciate. And it's a great. The functionality is great. I highly recommend the website. But what they're doing is there's this leaderboard. So trophies behind the scenes, and I've discussed this from the development, you know, because I've created trophy lists for our games and all the rest is they work the same as achievements where there's a certain point valuation based on all the trophies. And this point valuation is drawn out as the kind of so-called experience points that you get on your little experience bar when you, you know, and so on and so forth.

3:07:44So it's the same thing. It's just got this, this facade over and the points don't quite add up. I think that the points come out to like 1200 per 1280 or something. There's like a whole range that you can have. So it's not quite a thousand like it would be on achievements. Plus you have the platinum trophy and all the rest. But these points come in and they and it makes some sort of behind the scenes metagame that's been going on for like, you know, 18 years now. And PSN profiles taps into that metagame. The trophy games are easily bastardized to beat the game, right, to beat the metagame and to and it ruins the leaderboards.

3:08:17And there are people that are obsessed with doing it and they spend enormous amounts of money doing it. When PSN Profiles announced this, there were people actually like kind of melting down because they've spent all this time and money doing all this bullshit for all these fake trophies, basically, that are no longer going to be reflected on their leaderboard. And without them being reflected on the leaderboard, it's like a tree falling in the forest if no one's there to hear it. Does it make any noise? And I wonder if PSN Profiles kind of fighting back against this is going to affect the sales of these games.

3:08:50because why would people that are on PSN profiles where people care about that shit? No one else cares about it. So no one's buying those games except for the people that care. And if the people that care can no longer display them on the leaderboards, I mean, it might actually have a deleterious and noticeable effect. So I appreciate what they're doing. And the arguments back and forth over this are amazing. And like that, they even had to shut down some threads over there and all the rest. And it's awesome. Yeah, it's cool. I appreciate it like that just getting rid of shovelware so you couldn't see it without specifically going and looking for it was a huge move.

3:09:27And I talked about that for a long time and they took the advice and they probably had their own ideas about it, too. This is like the next level of doing it. And I think it's awesome. And I appreciate someone's fighting for the sanctity of the trophy of the PlayStation trophy and the achievement and all the other things, too, because it's across all the platforms. So, Stephen, will it affect? I don't care about the leaderboards either. I don't do it for that reason. but I am curious where once the purge begins and I don't know if it's happened yet like where I'll be because I think I'm like in the four to five thousand range in the United States and in like the twenty thousand range in terms of worldwide let me see yeah I'm right now in the United States I'm I'm four thousand four hundred and thirty three and in the world I'm twenty one thousand thirty six so that's going to change once the leaderboards are purged of the cheaters and they're not really cheating they're just being corny and that's what i i said it on one of the threads over there i'm like this is good because this is corny yeah like it's corny to download a game i've said it a million times right like we would play megamind or but that was like a 15 hour commitment like it's still you still like by today's standards that's like a real platinum but by those standards that wasn't really a real platinum and now people are like no i can get it in literally 10 seconds.

3:10:47And that's just corny. So you should be penalized for any other reason than just being corny. Steven, thank you for writing in. Just Ice wrote in and said, hey, CDC, I know you guys are able to carve out a lot of time for gaming during the week, but since my second kid came along and having to get up for work at the same time that Colin goes to bed, I have a little time to game. At this point, I feel like I should give up on gaming as a hobby. It takes me forever to finish even short games like Resident Evil Requiem. I just can't keep up anymore. At what point should I turn in my resignation to the gamer battalion?

3:11:21Dustin, you're going to be, you know, you have a child on the way. Your time is going to be carved into. I want to see how much of a credible gamer. You're going to be able to remain and I'm going to be watching closely. Okay. About that. Yeah. What do you think? I feel bad, you know, because in my position, like work from home and I'm going to be playing

3:11:45Colin Moriarty:games throughout the day and i think it's going to change for me where it's like i'm it's like okay i know that i need to dedicate this amount of time to do to make sure i'm up to speed on things and i feel bad it's like dude if you work a a nine to five you've got kids and you know god forbid you have any other hobbies that you like then you know your gaming time certainly is very much diminished but I think with just ice his you know his his plight here is that it's like if it takes you forever to finish a game that's fine are you having fun when you when you do have the time to play the game are you enjoying it then who cares how many games you finish it's totally fine there's not a you know a lot of gamers will make this a dick measuring contest but it doesn't need to be.

3:12:39Colin Moriarty:You can just enjoy it at your own pace. So personally, I wouldn't worry about it. Just ice. Just play games when you can. I know it's frustrating. I'm sure you want to play more and eventually you will be able to, I think, as time goes on, as your kid grows up. But I wouldn't worry about it. Or maybe you'll get a life and get away from us weirdos. Go do something useful. um you know i i don't i was thinking like in our orbit so like all the people that work for us like no one has kids except for hoag right and i am shocked by how much he plays now his kids are nerds i know that they play a lot together and all the rest but like he figures it out i'm like i'm like shocked sometimes I'm like well how do you like in my mind I don't question about I'm just like how how do you even find the time for me I don't even like playing the games I don't even play games during the day ever pretty much ever and my trophies bear that out if you look at trophies by time and all the rest it's so interesting so I wait for the night time like after dinner that's that's my time that's Colin time I don't know man I don't know Chris should you give it up no man just like you don't i've over over the course of my life i've gone through ebbs and flow periods you know what i mean where there were times where i was like playing very little and then there were times where i was playing an exorbitant amount you know um and it just basically it just goes on how how much time you have really like i mean like you You don't have to hand in your resignation just because you have to you have a kid to pay attention to, because eventually that kid's going to be like relatively self-sustaining in comparison to what it is now.

3:14:33Colin Moriarty:And then you'll have a lot more of that time back in comparison. Like, I don't know. I just I get like when I assume that when people have newborn babies. Their schedules are fucked for like a good like I would imagine year, year and a half minimum. You know what I mean? that's but like at a certain point like you can play games with your kids so like i yeah i don't know i think you're overthinking it just play when you can and if you're just not if you still want to you know be involved in some way um i mean i did this when i wasn't playing a lot of games i would just like watch i would like watch people play it play stuff that i wanted to play and like whatever like it's it's like i'm kind of involved i don't have the time to really dedicate to this but like I care about it still.

3:15:21Colin Moriarty:You're robbing yourself a little bit maybe but like it depends on how much you value that. I value playing games. I don't really give a shit about watching people play it as far as like feeling like I've been robbed of something unless it's like a narrative that I really, really care about because to me like the play is the thing. That's what I want to do. It's not so much that I want to see the story. Like I do but it's like a very... I want to play the game. I want to be in the driver's seat. So like I never lost much from watching people play games. I did when I had no time. I think you got to just.

3:15:56I think you have to accept at some point that you can't play everything. I play games for a living. We all do. And I can't play nearly everything I want to play. So you you really need to learn to let go. It sucks. And it wasn't that way all the time, but that's kind of, you know, we're in a golden era. There's just options galore. just the most yeah micro focused bullshit that you can you can get involved in so it's not a not a bad place to be but i think you just have to learn to let go yeah and also you know what good news for you just ice because it's over ai is going to make everything very soon right so

3:16:32Colin Moriarty:now like it's it's hard cut off now you get to look back at everything and like it's not you're not going to get any more behind you got like maybe maybe like three more years you got gta coming out obviously judas hopefully eventually uh but uh in three years time you're gonna get you know yassified fucking kratos with nvidia dlss6 it'll be great and then it won't be worth through time no i uh i feel for you just ice but it's uh you're in a good position i mean it's just so funny like when i i'm just too selfish with my own time to like imagine having a child right now like it's it it would be so i wouldn't know what to do you know figure it out obviously but like my whole life obviously changes your whole life it's a uh it's a major sacrifice i appreciate people that are willing to do it because I'm too scared.

3:17:31Graham Batch wrote in, said, hello, fellow kids. I have two questions. The first is probably more a question for Dustin or Chris, but have you guys ever delved into any emulation for PlayStation 3? RPCS3 has really come a long way in the last couple of years. Recently, I played through Heavenly Sword and all the Activision era 007 games all at 4K60 and had a blast. Well, except for 007 Legends because it sucks. there were a couple of hiccups here and there but with sony mismanaging their premier remaster house it seems the best way to revisit the era the second question for all of you has there been a game that you have that has been remastered that you felt greatly improved and changed the way you feel about the title versus how you felt about it when you originally played it um let's leave that for a minute graham thank you for writing in do you guys mess with playstation or mess with ps3 emulators because i've i've never messed with any the only sony console i ever emulated why i had a p i had like nes and snm nes and sns emulators on psp everyone did but i've never otherwise emulated like a playstation environment actually ever um do you guys mess with ps1 ps2 ps3 emulators i guess ps4 emulators exist too yeah i the only time i've messed around

3:18:42Colin Moriarty:with playstation 3 emulation was when i did my metal gear solid series replay through had to have been like two or three years ago now at this point and I emulated Metal Gear Solid 4 and I it was a mixed bag at the time where it did run at a much higher resolution ran at a much higher frame rate but as the write-in mentions Graham that it had hiccups to it it wasn't a seamless experience and but yeah you're right that In certain instances, it's like that is going to be your best option. If you don't have a PS3 or if you want to play something that's like a remaster, you don't really have many other options from Sony, particularly with them getting rid of Bluepoint.

3:19:33Colin Moriarty:PS1 I've emulated before. PS1 emulation on Steam Deck is amazing. I played through the original Silent Hill that way, and you can do all kinds of stuff in terms of up-resing it, And depending on the game, you may be able to up the frame rate depending on if it's tied to the game's logic. But and I'm pretty sure PS2 emulation is very, very good at this point. So I haven't done that myself, though. But yeah, that's I always find funny with PS3 emulation is they're like, look, it's running on a PC. It's working. It's like it works really good. But not it's not like it's not going to pass a QA test level.

3:20:11Colin Moriarty:and so yeah maybe so sure sony should figure it out but i always found the pc comparison it's like well not everything right i've never really i don't know like i'm not in i think i would be more involved emulating stuff if i just had a higher drive to go back to these games like There's so much to play now that it's hard for me to really even think to set aside the time to emulate something from the PS3. Because in my mind, I'm like, if something's good from the PS3, it'll come back. Metal Gear Solid 4 is on its way, obviously, through the volume. It's insane that certain games aren't already available.

3:20:58Colin Moriarty:But the way that I feel about it is there's no rush. I'll wait for that to happen if it ever happens. If it never happens, I guess I'll just play it on PS3 if I really want to. The latest generation that I've emulated, I think, is PS2. And even that was kind of more of a test thing. I think I was trying to play Budokai, like the original Dragon Ball Z Budokai, because when they re-released them on PS3, it was only Budokai 1 and 3, and the soundtracks were like completely changed in three i think because there was like a whole plagiarism they there was like a whole like music plagiarism thing that went on so like when those games were port of the ps3 like you lost the original music which was just i don't give a shit if it was plagiarized it was way better it was really cool so i was like i want that plagiarized music i don't give a shit it works uh and i just couldn't get it to run as well that was a long time ago ps1 i've emulated a lot uh because it's just the easiest it's trivial it's like very like there's a really streamlined way to do it and also because i had the ps1 with the modded chip in it from uh one of my one of my parents friends a neighbor of ours who lived in our building modded my ps1 for me uh no charge so like i would just download roms onto cds burn them play a bunch of games that way um but i haven't really it's been what is it 2026 maybe 10 years about since i've even tried so like i'm i'm kind of beyond the emulation thing it's just been i'm fine there's a lot to play anyway like i don't i don't need it yeah i totally agree.

3:22:47It's funny. I feel like almost like a very quaint and nerd-like and like, oh, I've never really done it because I really haven't. I've emulated NES and SNES and I used to do that in the 90s. So it's not like... That's harder. I would imagine. Yeah. I brought up like Zophar's domain was like the big place that people used to like go and get shit. And I think they were eventually shut down. And then I used to, as I said, in the late 90s and into like 2000, I think we stopped. I used to copy like PS1 CDs. And there was like Bleemcast and stuff like that. I don't know if you saw recently that those guys had claimed that Sega was like cooperating with them kind of silently to try to get PS1 games running on Dreamcast, which is interesting, or that's their claim anyway, which is kind of funny, like a little piece of corporate history.

3:23:33But yeah, I guess I just never really felt the need after that. And by the time we were in like, yeah, the PS1 era and 64 and all that, I've never emulated any of that stuff and then anything after that. it's not like being a goody two-shoes or anything. I just don't really see the need. It's like you said, there's just plenty of things to play on native hardware all over the place. I don't need to go backwards and play old things. Things became so accessible. I also think that I probably would have emulated NES and SNES more recently, but Nintendo has done a really nice job of making everything accessible, not only with the NES Classic, but then just the robust Nintendo Online functionality and then all the collections coming out with all these old games is really kind of no need.

3:24:13I'm not judging anyone either. it's like i i judge people if you can easily buy the game and you're emulating like if you're if you're if you're downloading like switch games it's kind of like loser behavior in my opinion but if you're downloading like obscure no one even knows who owns this fucking random ss nes game or

3:24:31Colin Moriarty:ps1 game do you want i don't care yeah there are those original spider-man games for like the original xbox and even just the original ps1 like those are games that i feel like are never going to be ported so like i've emulated those because i'm just like i want those i would pay for them by the way i would totally if they did somehow like acquired the rights to that and like remastered them or whatever not even even just uprez them and just threw them in like a weird collection like a activision spider-man collection i don't give a shit i would pay for them but they don't they don't let me buy it what's your problem it'll sell a whole 100 copies they would probably i think a lot of people have nostalgia for those games so that reminds me a lot of the um the lord of the rings games on ps2 like there's a lot of people with a lot of nostalgia for those those games dude return to the king on on ps2 return to the king on ps2 and xbox super like unreasonably good game like i hate i hate how much i love that game pop quiz colin what uh engine does that game run on oh my god i know this is it like some primitive version of frostbite or something i i know it's it's the it's the pga tour oh really yeah that's so what is that what is that oh it's just like the pga engine that's so interesting i don't know they used the pga tour golf engine to make uh to run those lord of the rings games that's cool why the fuck do i know why why that was a hard one colin to to hit you with your first pop quiz oh i don't mind you can hit me with hard ones that's good well how do you know like was there something going around recently with that or something uh i saw it in probably some stupid youtube video okay because i don't know why i know that i don't remember when i when i learned that i think i know i i know i saw in a YouTube video, but I don't remember what the video was.

3:26:11Colin Moriarty:I don't even know if it was about that game. I'm being honest, but that's fine. That's great. All right. Let's see here. DMACC has our fourth question. He says, hi, boys. Will the pitchforks be out now because Bravely Default is on Xbox and not on PlayStation? Or does this only work when it's the other way around? I assume the people who bitched and moaned about Black Myth Wukong will keep that same energy. I wanted to bring this up just because I do think it's weird. Bravely Default is obviously an old. I didn't actually know this until I was researching this. I didn't know this part of it. And I don't wonder if you know this, Dustin.

3:26:42Did you know Bravely Default was originally like a Japan only game? And then they remade like they released like a special edition of it. That's our version of Bravely Default that came out in 2014. But that originally, yes, right? Yeah, 3DS, right. You know, Square Enix published a Silicon Studio developed game. So they made and that was called, quote unquote, for the sequel. But they made they released it as a regular Bravely Default in the West. so when switch 2 came out in june last year it was a launch game like a port of it a special edition and that port on march 12th came to pc and xbox series x and s but not playstation and listen i don't mind these exclusive games and the chicanery that goes on with it it is what it is but let's everyone stop talking out of both sides of their mouth about it especially square Enix.

3:27:36It's like you're going on and on and on and on and on about how you want to be like this multi-platform publisher and you don't want to rely on the PlayStation's audience anymore and it's not good enough for you, but then you just release games not on PlayStation at all. And I find that strange. I also find it strange that this is clearly a deal for Xbox, which they're facilitating at the same time that they're bitching about Sony's behavior. So I just feel like everyone needs to shut up because it seems like nothing's really changed. Just people's willingness to bitch about that reality of making moves like that changes.

3:28:14And I don't know, bravely default, how many thousands of copies did that sell on Xbox? It's not, I don't give a shit about it. It's not going to sell on PlayStation either, probably, but it's just weird. I wanted to throw that out there. I noticed. And it's a little disappointing. and it's not the first time either this was before all the bitching and whining do you remember octopath traveler just randomly came to xbox yeah and then like never came to playstation for years strange shit deliberate obviously but to what end wombat dances wrote in and said hey boys have you seen this flopathon website once a game the gaming industry is strangely representative of the national mood in the u.s an anonymous vigilante convinced big storied publishers are lying about what's working and feeling the need to present the truth to expose them it's populism for video games uh dustin just put it in the in the chat which yeah i appreciate it's flopathon f-l-o-p-a-t-h-o-n dot c-c and yeah it is some website that kind of puts together i guess some balance of steam numbers and reviews like user reviews and all the rest and has like games that are either on the rise or the decline i think this shit's kind of sad but it's also a little industrious i won't lie i mean that's the vibe you're commoditizing it it's just what i've been saying for so long what i said in the recent interview i did which is that like this negativity has always existed it's just been expertly commoditized and so it's in and of itself a product now and you know if a person's commoditizing or not um by a very simple rule which is can they or do they ever get away with their audience whatever audience they have with just talking about the games they like or just things generally or is the market for them only in negativity peddling which i think is a major problem so i think the negativity has always existed i know it has.

3:30:17I've been part of it. People can be negative about all sorts of things, but I think moving on with your life and not making a website around it is probably an important component of normalcy. It's a website that exists. I have no other thoughts on it, really.

3:30:30Colin Moriarty:Yeah. I like the main mission statement where it's like, the numbers don't lie. While publishers hide behind agendas and PR spin, we track what actually matters and then bold, the players. raw data real numbers no narrative palpatine reading this we don't care about your politics we don't care about your game don't try to brand us as haters because we call out a bad product oh man where's i gotta say where's roblox on this right where's uh where's uh it was roblox if roblox is ingested into this does it does it make everything else look like a joke is that what happens because like what's the metric for this yeah i don't i don't know it's uh it's so funny man like yeah they have they have some i'm sorry go ahead they're just scraping uh steam player charts yeah like they have like a meta score and a steam thing and then like some sort of algorithm that like gives it a percentage of like what the flop is or whatever i just think people have to understand that steam numbers are super interesting data really interesting some of the most interesting direct primary data we actually get in the entire industry, which is dope.

3:31:48But it is woefully incomplete. And people have to understand that that that is true even for PC games. Some of the most we've said all the time, and sometimes I make that error to it, where it's like there are just massive PC ecosystems that are not on Steam. People play when Horizon comes to PC, it's going to be on purple, which is like a whole nother launcher. you know that's and I'm not going to say it's going to do well or not but it's not going to count that and then marathon is a good example too we don't really know how marathon is doing on the other on the consoles because we don't have those numbers so when people focus on the steam numbers it's just incomplete so I I understand people's fixation with it I love data as much as the next person and we talk about data all the time on the show but you're seeing like very you're seeing a piece of the of mathematical information that you might not necessarily have all the context for and spending so much energy destroying or you're not really destroying them you're hoping for the game's destruction i just don't really get it there are things i don't like and are not for me and i'll bitch about them every once in a while but i don't really fixate on them star wars is a good example of that right like i'm a i'm a fly by star wars hater there's no doubt about it but i'm not gonna like fixate on it forever and make it my

3:33:00Colin Moriarty:personality yeah I don't know it's just a weird it's it just doesn't feel consistent in the sense that like um the implication seems to be that like because it said in in the what is it in the mission statement oh my god I love let me drag the I closed it let me open it up right here like We don't care about poly, we care about your game.

3:33:31Colin Moriarty:Don't try to brand us as haters because we call out a bad product. The implication being the player count is equivalent to quality. You know what I mean? That's kind of like the implicit underlying thesis there, which is a little bit like, I don't know, it's like Billboard. I've made this comparison before, but it's like the Billboard 100. Is Taylor Swift the best singer you've ever heard for real? is that the best artist that's ever walked the face of the are you sure like i don't know about that man like i don't know if this is how this works yeah i agree um but you know if you want to make a website that's fine yeah it's cool i mean do you gotta do it's very well designed yeah it's nice like it's actually really well designed it's very readable the information is yeah it's not noisy it's not noisy which is nice i'm trying to find like some contact information but I don't we should get in touch with them at some point.

3:34:27Well, yeah, anyway, I think it's sad personally, but it is what it is. Getting jiggy with it, wrote in. Final inquiry says, hey, fellas, did any of you see the recent Street Fighter 6 controversy? This week, Alex, a fan favorite character from Street Fighter 3, was added to Street Fighter 6. Through cut scenes from the arcade modding campaign, it was revealed that Alex married and impregnated his adoptive sister, Patricia, whom he known since she was an infant. to add to this combo it was revealed that they are second cousins for many alex fans including myself it was like 15 9 11s discovering this new piece of lore now that street fighter canonically has an incestuous groomer as a playable character i want to know if you guys have any favorite characters from any game or franchise that were done dirty like my boy alex thanks i'll hang up and listen to sweet home alabama we don't have to get into our own things i just wanted to see if you guys heard about this so i i pulled it up on push square and here i'll give it to you here Here's what they write on Push Square by our friend Sammy.

3:35:21He says, quote, Street Fighter 3 new generation protagonist Alex is available now in Street Fighter 6, but it's not necessarily his gameplay that's got tongues wagging. Some bizarre war changes have sent ripples through the Capcom community. As it turns out, our favorite face painted wrestler may be engaging in a spot of the old incest. Well, sort of. Look, the evidence mounting against Alex is somewhat comprehensive, but crucially not conclusive. But to cut a long story short, Alex's story in Street Fighter 3 is effectively one of revenge as he seeks payback for the injury to his adoptive father, Tom.

3:35:50Now, there's some debate here over whether Tom is actually Alex's father or just a mentor, but he does refer to him as a parental type figure in World Tour. The problem here is that Tom's daughter is Patricia, who throughout the past has been treated as a kind of younger sibling to Alex. But in Street Fighter 6's story, well, they're married and having a baby. It's also revealed that Tom is the cousin of Alex's mother, which would technically make him related to Patricia, although that doesn't necessarily have to be a blood relation, we suppose. Anyway, the bottom line is that this is all weird and unexpected.

3:36:18There's some artwork in Street Fighter VI which shows Alex holding Patricia as a baby, so even if you don't buy the incest stuff, it's still a bit odd. We genuinely think Capcom is going for a heartwarming plot here, but it all just reads a bit weird when you break down the details. So that's what's going on with Street Fighter VI right now. Just thought I'd bring that up.

3:36:36Colin Moriarty:What the hell, man? well oh well and on that note wasn't there a thing wasn't there wait hold on wasn't there like uh wasn't there that's it i think you might know where i'm going with this wasn't there like a a pokemon lore oh there was leaked there was something leaked about right one of the one of the i think it was uh it wasn't syndiquil but like uh it was syndiquil well syndiquil's the the first one it's one of his evolutions oh right right a sexual predator some kind that came out of leaked pokemon documents like some staffer wrote this uh i mean is it fanfic if it's written by a staffer yeah i don't know not released typhlosion typhlosion that's it i typed in the most insane the the what i had to type in to get this is insane uh but yeah the typhlosion with the story had a girl get lost in the woods and saved by typhlosion who then basically gaslit her to be his wife what is going on it says here the wikipedia says this document was machine translated in english where it appeared that a typhlosion kidnapped and married a human girl presumed by some to be some to be a child and had a child with her this led to typhlosion receiving negative reactions on social media dude he got canceled canceled typhlosion that's what i had to wait hold on that's so that's such an insane i love that that i know that that was like leaked uh and not real right but it is uh or not like official canon necessarily yeah this is what i googled to uh to find the story

3:38:24Colin Moriarty:maybe you can that's for us that's for us all right well with the street fighter stuff yeah i was looking woody woody allen's 90 years old maybe he's interested in making a film yeah well he has experience it's kind of like he's got a connection there sure sure very deep very deep that street fighter always makes me so nervous

3:38:51that's good that's a good impression oh god all right my friends let's get the hell out of here it's time to go that's all we have for this episode of sacred symbols let's go around the horn and say goodbye to everyone chris goodbye to you you seem pleased with yourself yeah just

3:39:05Colin Moriarty:no on that note i guess it's such a funny way to leave it's such a funny exit uh an exit story is good that's good it's a professional way to say well well well that's it for me yeah man uh yeah what's going on uh it's still early it's only it's not even two yet i'm gonna get myself some food probably i should go grocery shopping it's just so fucking i need some other things but it's so hot it's someone else do it for you yeah but i should be i should be more responsive I should just go do it but after that I'm gonna gear up for cryo tomorrow uh gets try to do some runs get some stuff that'll get me through the threshold of being able to afford to get entrance to this fucking thing uh that's gonna be the rest of the day and then once the sun sets more as an evil nice really I'm really I'm really eager to get back I'm I really like it man I don't know what it is about it either like it's not even particularly like i feel like as i play it i'm like i don't know if this is doing anything particularly different like on a moment to moment from like previous resident evil games or like any other video game necessarily but like i'm vibing with it i don't know it's great dude it's really well done it is i'm so glad that you're enjoying it and i think it just passed six million units sold too so pretty good hell yeah highest velocity of any resident evil game ever which is good news and sold best on ps5 apparently in the uh in the united states which is cool but think about how much more they could have sold if they had an ai uh filter over grace the whole right right yes queen all that money on the table dustin goodbye to you be well anything to say before we go well tonight i'm gonna check out crimson desert and also if i remember right the first episode of jojo's bizarre adventure part seven steel ball run is on netflix whoa and i'm very excited it's supposed to be from the manga readers which i don't trust manga readers but i'm going to choose to believe they say it's the best part of jojo so looking forward to that and no plans this weekend so it's going to be all marathon crimson desert so feels good feels good man cool it's good man i can do it that's the hopeful version feels good can do it can do it man yeah i'm gonna it's nice out right now it's like 60 degrees so i'm gonna go for a walk i think um it's 95 i know it's brutal dude it's awful it'll be there soon enough here all right my friends well it's good to see you and be with you this week nice light episode not too much going on nothing too crazy we'll be back next week for more you guys be well and everyone out there be well as well as well as well thank you for uh being here patreon.com slash last day media for early ad free access last day media dot uh last day media dot store for merch jesus christ i was gonna say last day media dot merch for store that's really it's time to go appreciate you guys we'll see you next time bye see ya take care guys sacred symbols a playstation podcast is a product and trademark of last stand media and colin's last stand llc and is proudly recorded in the usa the show is conceived by is written by and is directed by me colin moriarty my co-hosts are chris raygun maldonado and Dustin Furman.

3:42:24The show is produced by executive producer Dustin Furman. All of Last Stand's theme music is by my best friend Ramon Narvaez. As you know, all of Last Stand's shows, including Sacred Symbols, are fan-funded on Patreon at patreon.com slash laststandmedia. The following names are at the producer level on Patreon, our highest tier, and we're grateful for your thoughtful and kind contributions to our independent endeavor. Thank you. Aaron Betke, Aaron Temple, Adam Refriended, Albion, Alex Cabrera, Alex Gates, Alex LaPierre, Alex Monez, Alan Tiniak, Alan Tremblay, Alan Niner, Anthony Akire, Anthony Vazquez, Anton K., 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 Richie, Christopher Devayo, Christopher Moore, Christopher Morgan, Cody Benin, Conrad Pennyfarthing, Corey Beacom, Dan Nolan, Dan Root, Daniel D 'Amour, Daryl E.

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