#106: Epic Moves

Sacred Symbols, a PlayStation podcast, is brought to you by, well, you. If you want to learn how to support our show, go to CollinsLastStand.com. Greetings and salutations. Welcome back to Sacred Symbols, a PlayStation podcast.

This is episode 106. My name is Colin Moriarty. I'm joined as always by Chris Raygun. And Chris, I want to apologize because it might be a little noisy for the audience.

I don't know what Dustin can do, but I live in basically a construction zone right now. So it's, I don't know, there's like a buzzsaw going on out there, and all sorts of shit. People are laying down concrete. Yeah.

You're in like a developing neighborhood, basically, right? It's like it's not even on the map yet? Yeah, it's not even on Google Maps yet or anything. So it might as well not even exist.

When I get delivery for, I usually get groceries delivered. I actually haven't yet to get Uber Eats or Postmates here, although they're the same company now. Uber Eats just, or Uber just bought Postmates. But yeah, I give them like these really detailed instructions.

It's very old school, and half of them can't find the place very quickly. So anyway, I just want to apologize about that because it's annoying as hell. I'd like to record earlier in the day. But for the time being, we have to let these people do their work.

And so if any of that's coming through, I apologize. Chris, how are you? How's the new apartment? How's everything going in your life?

Doing good. I've got a lot of videos I'm trying to get done. I've got a minute of video time written down for every video I'm working on. It's like, that seems like a lot.

It feels like a lot, but it's also like, ah, none of them are done. Yeah, I feel like the pandemic and the situation, the kind of isolated situation we all find ourselves in has been dramatic in terms of, well, for dramatic for many reasons, obviously, but very dramatic in our perception of time and completion and effort and all that because I find myself kind of falling into this level as well. I consider myself a little bit of a workaholic. I know you're the same, and I've kind of just eased up.

And in some way, I think the silver lining, if you want to say, of COVID was, that just reminded me, like, I can't just live like this always working. But I'm always, I just feel like in the new house, I'm always doing something. We just had a sun shower, like a torrential downpour before. And I was walking around my, in the rain, I was walking around my property, like making sure all the water was, you know, coming down the pipes and out of the drains properly and all that.

I mean, that's what my life has been reduced to at this point. Just maintaining. Yeah, just like looking at the weird things, like obsessing over my irrigation system. And I don't know, I don't know what's happened to me.

I've always been old. I've always been an old soul, as everyone likes to remind me. But now I'm really old. And God only knows where that's going to be to us on the show and in my life generally.

But we do appreciate everyone tuning in. This is Sacred Symbols, a PlayStation podcast, our weekly PlayStation podcast. You can get it early and ad-free, three days early, by going to patreon.com slash Colin's last stand and supporting us. And in fact, Henry Maxwell wrote in and said, hello, Carbon Copies, ever since I started listening to the show day one.

I've monitored the number of patrons for Colin's last stand. I've noticed what seems to be a strong uptick in patrons in just the last 30 days. First off, congratulations, of course, but as someone who consumes most of the CLS's content as it comes out, including the Twitch channel, I don't understand what's driving so many new faces here so quickly. Just wanted to be with Austin to see if Colin could elaborate.

So Chris, we're around, I mean, I can look right now, but we're around 99,760 something patrons right now. Showing us that support because obviously the show is free if you cannot afford it or are not inclined to pay for it, I totally understand. But I really feel like there are, the major driving force I think is that people are realizing that on the internet, as I've realized over time, and maybe people disagree, is that paid for content and having these more intimate relationships with creators and these smaller environments in which content goes out, I think it's becoming really appealing to a lot of people. And they realize even in economically trying times like this, that one or two dollars a month or five dollars a month if you want to get crazy, depending on the content level you want, is not really that big of a deal for supporting something that you really like.

So I think that more and more people are coming around to it. And I also think that just the last of us who came out in Ghost of Tsushima is about to come out, so there's a lot of interest in PlayStation right now. So I think that has to do with both of those things, but I'm perfectly pleased. Is the Patreon for Snark Tank, your podcast, is that doing well?

Yeah, that's doing well too. I love it's slower because we missed the week we were moving because one of the recordings got completely botched. We actually recorded two episodes in like a day, just specifically so we wouldn't miss one. It didn't matter anyway, because that's just my luck.

But that's us. Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's pretty great. But like yes, it's been going pretty well.

As far as like, I really feel like a lot of, it helps a ton that the PS5 is like right around the corner and it's probably like, probably the biggest thing that's going to happen and it's probably like the most relevant thing to us. I don't know really, another show that you would listen to that's PlayStation related that you would care that much about such a big event happening. Sure, sure. You know, like it's pretty good.

We have competitors like Podcast Beyond and PS I Love You both of the shows I was on and I found it PS I Love You, but I just, I don't know, I don't listen to other shows so I can't speak to it, but I'm confident that our show is just better. And I think that people are, I think people like honesty and candor and humor and all those kinds of things. We don't blow smoke up your ass. I think we give you a lot of great value to Secret Simples Plus of course this is only for patrons at the dollar level or higher.

We put that up each and every week. It's another hour, 90 minutes, 120 minutes of content only for our patrons. Obviously at Patreon, you can submit your questions, comments, concerns, all the ideas of the show. You get early access, add free access, your name and the credits, all the rest.

So there's a lot of perks there, but I do want to acknowledge that it is exploding. I don't anticipate that it's going to keep growing like this, but it's been awesome and we really appreciate that. So thank you very much. And speaking of Secret Simples Plus, last week I actually opted to do a mailbag episode and it was kind of serendipitous because Chris had a little bit of an event with an Uber that day, so it would have precluded him from recording with us anyway.

So it actually kind of worked out. What ended up happening with your Uber that day? This isn't even like the first time this has happened, by the way, which is like the saddest thing. But like I was, so basically a friend of mine's like moving soon and he has a bunch of like my old equipment, like a bunch of like lenses and like stuff that I genuinely like completely forgot about, like lighting kits and like little C-sands or whatever you call them, like the mic C, that's what we call it, the stands with mics.

Yeah, I think so. Stuff like that. And I was like a bunch of like scissor arms and XLR cables. He was like, hey, I don't really need all this stuff.

I don't really want to pack it either. And you only really let me borrow it. So it's like, you want to take it before I leave? And I was like, yeah, yeah, I'll just do that.

I'll get that out of the way quickly. And I went to pick it up. And then on my way back, I'm carrying this like big, like kind of duffel bag looking thing. And it's like a bunch of crates.

And I'm Ubering back. And I guess the Uber driver like, like very lightly, like bumped into the fender, or not the fender, the bumper of the car in front of him. And then they proceeded to pull over and just sort of argue for a long time until like I assume police showed up. I was sitting there for like seven, 10 minutes.

Cause I was like, I don't know how to handle this. Really? Like, is it okay to cancel? Like when you're in the middle of a, like, I don't know.

I feel like it's fine. But I was like, hey, listen, I'm gonna go. So I just walked in like a blazing hot sun with like this big duffel bag for the last, you know, mile or two. So that was a lot of fun.

Well, I'm glad that you made it out, right? Yeah. So that would have, that would have stopped us from being able to do the show together anyway. And I wanted to give a little bit of space for The Last of Us Part 2's second part for a spoiler cast.

We did part one of it already. I was a little surprised. I don't know if you saw any of the feedback, but we got a lot of really mixed feedback about that episode of the spoiler cast. And I don't know, I don't quite understand what everyone's problem with it was.

Cause I went back and listened to some of it and I don't know, I just think it's an evisive game. I just think it's driving a, I think the feedback's valid, but I think that people thought I didn't speak enough, people thought you were too negative and all that. So anyway, you have part two to look forward to, which we'll be recording next week. And I'll try to talk more.

I can't keep it balanced cause I drive the shows and then I sometimes feel like I talk too much. So then I try to lay off and present things and then let you kind of take it from there. And it's hard to strike the proper balance. But I promise the audience that we'll, I mean, let me back up.

The one thing that bothered me when people were like, it was rushed and you didn't put any thought into it. I'm like, that's nonsense. Like we beat the game. I took some notes.

I thought about it for a couple of days and I was prepared and I went through all the listener questions. There's nothing rushed about anything we do on the show. So that kind of feedback, I do take a lot of issue with. Because we put a lot, I don't know how you can't see that.

We put a lot of effort into the show. We don't just turn the microphones on and start talking about whatever we want. I write this massive document every week and it's different every week. It's not like it's just a skeleton of these things I plug and play.

Like a lot of the stuff is just written from scratch. And I want to include as much of the audience as possible in their feedback. And I thought that you guys gave a lot of great feedback for The Last of Us Part 2. So we're going to reconvene in a few days and we will put up Part 2 of the spoiler cast and talk more about the various issues.

And Chris, I want to give you the option. I mean, do you want to do the show with me? Because I don't know how you felt about doing it the first time for a game you didn't really like. But obviously, we'd love to have you along.

But I want to give you that option in real time to not do it if anyone wants to. No, I think I wouldn't mind doing it again. Like we said, we didn't mention everything. No, exactly.

There's a bunch of stuff we can get into. And I'm going to start... I already started my new game plus play through but over the next few days I'm going to really dig through it again because then next... Is it next Friday?

Ghost of Tsushima comes out. And so we're going to be busy with that as well. So I need to get this game off of my plate permanently and we will do that with the spoiler cast and then you can look forward to Ghost of Tsushima spoiler cast later on down the road. Just to reiterate, Twin Breaker is out.

Go buy it. That is our video game. And now let's get into some corrections and notes. First of all, did you see the PS5 box art?

They revealed it the day we're recording this episode. PlayStation revealed what the PS5 box art is going to look like. They showed the Miles Morales box art. What do you think of the aesthetic?

It's just kind of... I feel like it just exists. Kind of like I looked at it and I was like, oh, okay. Like I wasn't like impressed or disappointed.

It was just sort of like, okay, yeah. Yeah, I'm not crazy about the... Yeah, I hear you. I'm not crazy about the overemphasis of the white on it.

I know that's more in line with the white aesthetic of the console but I liked the blue aesthetic that they were going with... Well, first with Vita, as you might recall. Yeah, then later I think started doing it with PS3 and then they did it with PS4 and so you saw that blue Blu-ray case but then where the blue is on the label is white and it says PS5. See, what I would have preferred is for the case to be just a different dimension but the same color and then it would have all flown together so it would have still been that blue color and it would have set PS5 on the side and maybe it would have been a little thinner to kind of differentiate it from the PS4 cases which are obviously differentiated from the Vita cases.

But what bothered me about the Miles Morales cover is that if you look at the spine of it on PlayStation block, it just doesn't look right. Like, it's obviously a mock-up. It's not real and it just doesn't look very good. Like, it just...

It looks all fucked up like they couldn't get it quite right to sit like the text. I mean, it's going to look great when it's out but I'm saying that the mock-up is a little strange. Maybe. Yeah, maybe.

I don't know. I think it's fine. I feel like it would have looked better if the case itself was white. If it was like a white Blu-ray case because I've seen some like...

I've seen some Photoshop mock-ups of that and it looks like way cooler and I'm not talking about like Wii, like, you know... Like Wii kind of eggshell. Sure, sure. But just like the same white as the PS5 logo is up top I feel like it would look a little bit more silo.

The blue just kind of feels like it's thrown in there because it's PlayStation and it doesn't really feel like it belongs. But it doesn't really even matter anyway because like nobody's getting boxes. Yeah, this is going to be a common thing. I think that was the top comment on their tweet about it actually.

It was like, who even buys games physically more? Well, we find out on this show that many people do. But yeah, I like that idea because obviously the Wii case is iconic and I understand what you're saying about having kind of a white trim and then maybe the white where the label is would be blue. That would actually look much more aesthetically pleasing but the cool thing here on this Miles Morales box art is the really notable PlayStation Studios logo and the Insomniac logo.

You don't always see that on the cover of a game even for first party depending on the studio. So it's cool to give them a little love. We're seeing the PlayStation Studios iconography come out and obviously rating pending. Rating pending.

Ubisoft Showcase is happening in between when this will go live on Patreon and go live on repeat so obviously we're going to need a little while to talk about that later on. Is there anything you're anticipating? I know a lot of people are looking forward to maybe some sort of Splinter Cell game. I personally want to see Far Cry 6 which I think is a slam dunk but is there anything you want to see at this Ubisoft Showcase?

I would like to see Splinter Cell but the part of my brain that lives in reality understands that it's just not going to happen. So I can't... The last time I saw Stan Fisher was in this weird mobile game or this weird team-based Ubisoft All-Stars Battle Royale MOBA thing that they did. You remember that?

When they had Splinter Cell and an agent from the division. I don't know. I don't have faith that I'm going to see Splinter Cell. I would like to and I would scream like a little girl if that were the case but I just doubt it so much.

Yeah, I guess we'll see what happens. I don't know who would even make it because Ubisoft Toronto I think they made the last Splinter Cell and they are making Watch Dogs so I don't know if it's going to happen but we've willed things into existence on the show in the past so we'll see what happens. We'll keep a close eye out on that. We'll report on it on the next episode of Sacred Symbols but there are a few other important tasks and items let's say we have to get to before we move into the news.

Kato Brian wrote in so we know where this is going. He says, Hello gentlemen, here's for some clarification on my writing from last week. No, I do not put deodorant behind my knees so I was wrong about the assumption of what the leg crevice was. That would be pointless.

My leg crevice is I did mean my groin area so that's what we were thinking about so the groin area between where the pelvis meets the thigh is what he's talking about. He says, However, it's not like I'm lathering my balls in deodorant just a quick swipe on the left and a quick one on the right side and yes, I have tried baby powder. I don't want powdered balls. I want the freshness of Old Spice.

All I'm saying is it's worth a shot. My girlfriend seems to appreciate it. All right. By the way, a lot of people have written in about this topic.

We've gotten plenty of writings including from CJ Hines who wrote in and said, Hello gentlemen, listening to the butt crack deodorant saga the last two weeks has got me thinking of the weird shit that I do in terms of hygiene so I've decided to come clean and want to know what you think about brushing your teeth in the shower. I've practiced this for over a decade and find it extremely freeing without the confines of punching over a sink preceded by cupping water in your mouth to rinse out. Instead, I can be as messy as I need to be before blasting my girl with a high-pressure shower to rinse. I've never met another person that has done this and select people that know I do this have reacted in a disgusting way like I'm some kind of monster.

Anyway, I hope you all have a great rest of your week. Chris, what do you think about brushing one's teeth in the shower? I think that's totally fine. I think it makes perfect sense.

I've done it a couple times. I don't make a habit of doing it just because my toothbrush and toothpaste are next to the sink so typically if I go in the shower and I remember to bring it then yeah, I'll do it but there's no good way to store a toothbrush in the showers is the big problem. I guess you get one of those sarcophaguses that you encase your toothbrush in. You know what I'm talking about like a plastic seal?

Yeah, definitely. I know what you're talking about. Yeah, I guess you guys won't get one of those I just haven't bothered to do it but I think that's totally fine. Who would be disgusted from brushing your teeth in the shower?

You're literally cleaning. Yeah, I've always been confused about this as well because I actually am a huge advocate of this and I do do it. Now, I picked it up from my father. I don't know where he got it from.

He might have gotten it in the Air Force or at the firehouse. I don't really know where but then my sister Allie picked it up and then I picked it up and I've been doing it for probably 20 years or so. Now, I brush my teeth well, I'm not taking a shower obviously so I do that. I brush my teeth two to three times a day I think a lot of people do but when I'm in the shower I don't feel I start my entire routine with brushing my teeth and I'll go a step further and say so when I was at North Eastern I was reading something random and I came across this Amazon review for some mouthwash or something like that and there was this guy that was reporting to be a dentist who knows if he was in the comments and he was saying what he does and he suggested his patients is he suggested he use mouthwash and then brush with the mouthwash in for a little while for like a few seconds so like you switch for 30 seconds and brush and loosen the plaque and all that kind of stuff in and then spit it out so I've also been doing that so that precedes every brushing event in my life and I also floss so I highly recommend you use mouthwash brush with the mouthwash in and then let it kind of fly your mouth into the sink or in the shower and then you brush with toothpaste but I have to say as a cautionary tale here for what is this guy named CJ I don't like the whole cupping of the water and rinsing out and letting the high pressure shower hit your mouth and all that to rinse you want to let the as I understand it you want to let the toothpaste sit a little bit like once you're done because it has its fluoride and it does its kind of magic so you don't want to be too quick to rinse as I understand it you don't want to be too quick to rinse it's like shampoo you can't just put it on your head and immediately rinse it off because you've done essentially nothing Alright, let's see what's next from the audience.

Oh, Dean wrote in and said, hey, Colin, tried your hot shower and a cold beer idea from the last episode. Tasted so disgusting, given the odd place I was drinking and I almost threw up. Tried to place the can of beer on the counter of the bathroom sink, which then fell onto the bathroom floor. Now my bathroom floor is sticky and smells like the floor of a college bar with a rank odor of hops and wheat.

Thanks a lot, Colin. Would not recommend. Listen, Dean, that's the sloppiest job. How could you, okay, first of all, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.

Your shower floor, your bathtub floor, your bathroom floor is sticky? What were you saying? He's drinking outside of the shower? No, I think he was drinking in the shower and then he found it, quote unquote, disgusting, so disgusting in quotes, that he then placed it outside of the shower on his sink and then it fell over.

Now, there's two things I have to say about this. Did you just leave it? I mean, I spill things and what you do, Dean, is you fucking clean it up like an adult. So I'm sure it does smell like a college bar because no one ever cleans up a beer spilled in college bars, but if you spill them before in your bathroom, just clean it up, Dean.

Get a fucking paper towel and some Windex and clean it up. And also, I want to say, because I'm really incensed by this now, when I was putting this together, I then took a shower and I brought a beer with me just to double check just right before we started recording. It still works, Dean. I think you're crazy.

I'm not responsible for this happenstance. And I understand if you don't like the taste of beer in the shower, that's fine. I think you're wrong. But come on, man.

Clean up. Clean your bathroom. I just don't see how that affects the taste of it at all. It just makes it more refreshing to me.

Yeah, I agree. Because the second, first of all, cold beverage in and of itself is delicious. And then you have it in a glass bottle, which is typically the coldest that something can be. It's obviously the perfect container for a perfect drink.

And then you're in a shower that makes the rest of you so typically hot. I take really salding, really hot showers. So then in comparison, the drink is extra cold. It's the most refreshing thing you could possibly do.

I just can't imagine having a negative experience with that. Yeah, I don't get it, Dean. I'm just going to sit here and tell you I just don't get it. All right?

Moving on. Gina Batari wrote in and said, what's up, CNC? I wanted a follow-up on the ketchup on eggs inquiry. You wrote ketchup on eggs in all caps.

I know what you want. With a similar question that Chris might be able to help me with being a fellow Latino, as this might be a Hispanic oddity. My cousins like to drink milk with their steak. I find this egregious and I don't feel like this is a normal human thing to do.

Have you guys ever heard of this and should I kill my cousins? Well, it's got a little dark there at the end. Okay, well, you certainly shouldn't kill your cousins. That's murder, manslaughter, and all sorts of other things that you probably don't want to have on your, you know, permanent record.

I was just thinking about that the other day. Is that even real? But I wouldn't do this personally, but I don't think it's that weird because typically what I think of when I think of like, and this is like, I'm aware this is like stretching the concept a little bit. But when you go to like a Five Guys or like a burger place, typically like what do they have?

They have burgers. They have sodas too, but they also have milkshakes. So people have milkshakes with beef patties. So I don't necessarily think it's all that weird that people would have milk with steak.

I wouldn't do it. Again, I don't really see the benefit of that combination of things, but I don't find it like egregious. Yeah, I don't eat. So I don't drink milk very often, but I growing up, my close friends and his family, when I would eat there, they drank milk with their dinner, which was totally preposterous to me because I was like, why are you doing this?

And it was one of those places where you had to like eat all the food on the plate and eat all the milk and shit, or like it was a big deal. And I just, I mean, I appreciate that sentiment, but I didn't grow up like that. But I go through these ebbs and flows with milk where sometimes I'm really in the mood for it. I think the last time I was really like super in a milk mode was in college.

So that was a long time ago. So I don't find it that weird. I'm just more upset that so many people found ketchup on eggs weird because, and even I even got some increase, Chris, and we got some inquiries about like who puts ketchup on egg sandwiches. Are you fucking kidding me?

You're going to talk to me? I'm from Long Island. We invented the egg sandwich. You're going to tell me.

Did they really? Yeah. First of all, we invented almost every great New York delicatessen oddity, especially in Nashville County because of the confluence of Italian people. And ketchup is actually pretty Irish to put ketchup on eggs and obviously Jewish people with bagels.

And you know, you got to come to us. We're going to talk about this a little bit more a little later about all the great foods we invented because this is a PlayStation podcast. But no, I don't find the Chino too weird. I don't know if it's a Latino thing.

No, yeah. I don't think it is. I don't know anybody in my family who doesn't. No, but you guys don't even speak Spanish.

I've just met normal white people who do it. And it's just like, all right, well, I guess that's a thing people do. It is kind of boring being white sometimes, you know? Like we're looked at as having no culture, like it's a homogenous white culture of cultural lessness.

But I don't really consider myself fully white because I'm Sicilian. I'm half Sicilian. And we are kind of a dark-skinned people with our own unique cuisine, our own unique ulterior Italian way of life, let's say. A Mediterranean way of life.

Italian is its own thing. Like why is it such a weird concept in general? Because there's so many different people who could qualify as that that don't. I've definitely been to households where it's like, well, here's dinner.

It's an egg with no salt. And it's just like one of the most confusing. Like there's a stereotype that white people don't season their food. And I've seen that in practice.

Yeah, that's definitely why. Several times. But like I wouldn't consider Italian. If I'm eating at like one of my Italian friends' houses and their parents are cooking, I'm excited.

I'm never going to be like, oh, here's another pork chop with maybe like a little bit of pepper, maybe. And it's dry. A grain of salt is overcooked. Yeah.

If the grain of salt is overcooked. The grain of salt is also overcooked. They fry a single grain of salt. Yeah.

So I'm happy that I grew up, I'm half Italian, half Irish, but we didn't really have anything to do with the Irish side of my family, even though my name is so Irish. So I grew up eating well. And I don't know that it was necessarily a white experience, but we weren't eating like shepherd's pie or whatever the case is. Not that there's anything wrong with shepherd's pie.

I actually quite enjoy shepherd's pie, but I've never had it. It's good. It's a good English fare. But the electric hobo wrote in to us and said, guys, guys, guys, is a sloppy Joe a burger?

Asking for a friend. I happen to be a huge sloppy Joe fan, but I don't consider them burgers. Chris, what is a sloppy Joe? Encouraging that I just kind of put a filter on it where it's like, if I see this thing, I'm just going to ignore it.

So I couldn't, I couldn't draw a sloppy Joe. I couldn't describe one to you. I don't know anything about what it is. Is it like, you haven't, so you don't even know like the nature of the sloppy Joe?

No, I don't know if it's meat or if it's, is it just like meatloaf kind of, or meatballs? No, no. So it can be, it's either beef or turkey, like round beef or ground turkey meat. And then it's just cooked in this like sauce.

That's like this brown sauce that is like ketchup-y and sugary and spicy. It's pretty good. And then you just put it on a hamburger bun. So it's kind of like this almost runny meat.

Something that I have to eat that will, that I have to, that I absolutely have to wash my hands afterwards is something that I'm probably not, I'm going to avoid. Interesting. So you don't eat like chicken wings. You don't like wings.

That's the one exception. That's the only thing I think because they're so objectively delicious. They are. But for most things, I would be like, you know, I gotta, I gotta get the hell out of here.

I don't got time to like go to the stop over at the bathroom and do this. And you're never going to get all of it off. It's just, I don't know. It's too much.

Time is of the essence for Chris Reagan. We know time is indeed of the essence for you. Well, I like sloppy Joe's. I haven't had one in years, but that was a staple of school lunch.

So that's where I was introduced to it. And I'm one of those weirdos that really likes school lunch. Over the years, like you get like the ribicues and chicken nuggets and chicken patties and the square pizza and all that. I like, I like school lunch just fine.

Gotta be honest with you, I like it just fine. Dylan Nevis has a final inquiry for us before we get into what we're playing. Now, here's where we're going to get into Long Island lore. One of my favorite places to dwell.

He says, hey, see you, patron, long time follower of Colin since 2013. Welcome, Dylan. Simple question. Thoughts on grandma cut pizza and how does it compare to the more standard affair?

I know Colin's bound to have some strong opinions on this Long Island concoction. Thanks guys, keep on rocking in the not so free world. So Chris, do you know what grandma's pie is? I have no fucking clue what this is.

So grandma's pizza is definitively a Long Island invention. It's something we all grew up with on the island. It's basically a Sicilian pizza that is a little, it's got a little bit of a different consistency. So it's usually coated in olive oil and then you put the sauce on and, or I'm sorry, you put the cheese on first and then the sauce on top of it.

And basically the whole design was that it was supposed to be able to be cooked by like Italian housewives in an oven that's not like a brick oven or a pizza oven. And it became this sort of, this Long Island kind of like sensation. People love grandma's pie. You can go get grandma's pie at almost any pizza place.

So you basically get a regular pie, a Sicilian pie, and grandma's pie. And so that's what it is. I happen to really enjoy it. But you know what the greatest Long Island pizza invention is?

Of course we invent so many wonderful things on Long Island, like me. And is, if there's, so it started on Huntington on Long Island, but it's spread around the island and it's all other places. I don't know if you've heard of this, Chris, is a cold cheese pizza. Have you ever heard of this before?

Cold? Yeah. So let me, let me break it down for you so you understand. You make a, the people make a regular pie.

You usually get this by the slice. You can get it as a whole pizza too. And so you go into a place, you're drunk after being at the bar, where you go and get a cold slice. And what that means is, it's a regular piece of pizza that they put in the oven, they cook it as normal.

And then before they give it to you, they put a bunch of cold mozzarella cheese on top of it. Then they give it to you. So you eat the pizza, it's like a hot and cold thing, you've got a lot of cheese on it. It's a regular slice of pizza, but you've got a lot of cold sliced or shredded mozzarella on top of it.

It's wonderful. What do you think of that? I don't hate that. I don't hate that idea.

I don't, I will say the thought of sauce being on top of cheese is borderline heresy to me. That doesn't, that sounds like completely wrong. So I don't know if I would really be done for a grandmother's pie. Also like, that's a terrible name really.

It is. Cause it sounds a little, I hate to say it, it sounds a little sexual. Yeah. That's why I don't like sloppy joe either.

Oh yeah. I don't know where that's, I mean, that's such a, that name is so old probably that that was before the word sloppy was just entirely conducted in the realm of sexuality. I hope so. Look at how sloppy that is.

Yeah. I mean, it was maybe, it was maybe a compliment at the time, but I highly recommend grandma's pie and I highly recommend a cold slice. If you're on Long Island, you probably get them elsewhere. I think that putting the cheese under the sauce, I think the idea is that it helps melt the cheese because otherwise you don't get that consistency in a regular convection oven.

I think that that's the whole idea, but I don't know for sure. Yeah, sure. There's a lot of ideas. Yeah.

We don't really know for sure. But yeah, you're on the island, go check that out. All right. Let's get into what we're playing since this is a video game podcast, I think.

Chris says here you're still playing Horizon Zero Dawn, so talk to me a little bit about it. Yeah. I'm a little bit further in. I like it.

It's good. It's very Ubisoft-y, which is kind of something that I'm not necessarily all that keen on. I kind of got over a lot of the Far Cry and the Assassin's Creed kind of design philosophy of open maps and all these little insignias and the legend on the maps and stuff. It just kind of overpopulates a little bit.

One thing that I will say that I'm having a lot, like a tougher time than I expected to have with it is the UI is really noisy and clunky and really kind of just loud. And I don't remember it being that way when I started playing it the first time so many years ago. I don't know if you share this thought at all. I don't remember.

It's been so long. There's a lot. The mission lists are kind of always on screen. I think there's an option to put on a dynamic HUD so it only shows up when you need it, which is probably what I'm going to do from here on out.

Like anytime something pops up, it's this big like ancient looking slab and I don't know if the font is kind of, I don't know, like something about the UI that's like really like loud. Yeah, I'm looking at it here. You're right. There are a lot of components to it.

So there's your like compass on top and then underneath it if you can be seen or heard and then there's your health on the left and then your quest tracker underneath that and then on the right is like an experience tracker and then the bottom right is your weapon and the bottom left is the d-pad toggle. It's a very noisy like UI. Yeah, you're right. I never even noticed this.

Yeah, I remember just being like confused because like so much of it seems like it could have been consolidated. Like the compass could go above the health and you know what I mean? Like you could compile a lot of this like pretty easily I feel like but it's just spread out. I feel like I'm always like looking at like every corner of my screen.

Yeah, you're right. I never noticed this. But apparently like I was talking about this on I think a stream or I think just on clear and somebody was like oh this is like a dynamic hot option. So like I'm probably going to toggle that on.

This is exactly like when I was playing Witcher 3 and I was like why does the Witcher 3 control like ass? And then people were like oh you gotta turn on the good controls from the menu. They hide those in the menu. Yeah.

That's always my favorite thing where it's like you're not playing it right. You know like oh shut up. So what's interesting, I actually never realized that but it has been a very long time since I played it. So I'm going to go back and play it soon actually like I said last week because I got to play it from knockback.

So I am looking forward to that but it has been yeah three plus years since I've even seen that game. But I'm glad you're still enjoying it ostensibly. Yeah. I've been playing Felseal Arbiter's Mark.

I needed a little bit of a break from The Last of Us Part 2's new game plus. I was going to play that game Moonlighter which I still want to play which is about the roguelike about the RPG store manager who goes out to dungeons and gets his wares to sell at night. I do want to play that game. Apparently it's on sale again so I might pick it up but Felseal Arbiter's Mark just to reiterate it came out last year in 2019.

It was my game of the year last year. The DLC isn't that impressive but what's really weird about it to me is that I never buy DLC. And so this is like one of the very rare examples of me going and buying something because I love the game so much and just what it adds. It has a few character classes like the Samurai and the Beastmaster and some new missions and hunts and all that kind of stuff.

And just doing some of the postgame stuff and cleaning up the trophies has been a lot of fun. It's just a game I know I recommended it ad nauseum but if you're a Final Fantasy Tactics fan like I am or you're a Tactics Ogre fan like I am. If you're even like Fire Emblem or Disgaea or Valkyria Chronicles and games like that Front Mission you really got to check this game out. It's really special.

It's really, really good. I was actually really disappointed because I was reading the Steam forums for the games that's really active and they did an AMA or something at some point that someone linked out to on Reddit and they're apparently not planning on doing another one next. They're going to do something else. I'm like that fucking sucks dude.

Like I almost want to go to them and be like can I fund this so that we can, can I somehow like fund this game so we can do a sequel because it's that good. I really, really love it. I think they had something special there with that. So go check it out.

And actually Jose Garcia wrote in to us and said what's up guys? Not a question. Just a message for Colin. Colin, you got me all right?

I'll buy Felseal. Keep up the great work. All of the CLS gets me through the days of work. Oh, very good Jose.

I'm glad that I sold another copy of Felseal. Very well worth it. And by the way, I think this was supposed to be in the, the random shit that we do in the beginning, but it's here. So I'll read it now.

Niall Harrison wrote in to us and said, you two boys are fucking crazy. Swans will kick your arse any day of the week. They are so badass in the UK. They are protected by the queen.

True story. Rant's over. We got a lot of feedback about that too. About swans and geese and all manner of bird and fighting birds and how we, I'm telling you right now, I'd kick a goose's ass and I would kick a swan's ass.

If you think that a swan is going to fight me and win, I don't think so. I can't, I can't even conceptualize reality where a goose would be a, like, are there lively videos of, of aftermaths of goose fights? Like, I just really doubt that these, these flailing, like these flailing birds just have the capacity to really eviscerate anybody. Like, I really feel like you just kick them in the head.

Yeah. Why not just, why like the point you made where it's like, they have such a long, I would even say tantalizing death. Why wouldn't, why wouldn't you just fucking strangle them to death? Just strangle it.

If it's coming out, you strangle the swan and kill it. Yeah, no, I really don't see. Also, he said, uh, kick your arse and then he said badass. So I don't know what, uh, I don't know what, what type of ass you're supposed to be saying or like what the, what arse even means if not ass.

The queen's ass. They have, they're protected by the queen? I didn't know that. Yeah, I don't know.

I don't care. I'll still fucking, I'll swan up. I'll fucking queen up too, dude. Oh my God.

She got the news, huh? Oh my God. We're getting, yeah, let's get, we're getting a little, we're not, we're getting a little carried away. I'm getting a little carried away here.

I'm not going to kick the queen's ass. Don't worry. Don't you worry yourself about that. All right.

Lots of news to get through this week. Lots of interesting news too, including one that just broke, probably a piece of news here. So I'm glad I didn't listen to everyone when they didn't want to change recording days and just did it anyway. Number one, when Epic Games revealed Unreal Engine 5 running on PlayStation 5 and went well out of its way to show its support for the new console, which is strange for a typically agnostic game engine, it seemed weird, but now we understand why.

Sony now officially owns a piece of Epic Games. Word comes by way of website VentureBeat, which reports that Sony has made a $250 million investment into Epic in exchange for a minority stake in the company. The money actually gets Sony very little, a 1.4% stake, valuing Epic at an astounding $18 billion. This also shows just how much Epic's value has skyrocketed over the last decade.

Chinese conglomerate Tencent purchased 40% of the company in 2012 for $330 million. $80 million and more than Sony paid for 38.8% more of the company. So just to stop there, that's nuts. Epic's value has exploded.

Tencent owns almost half of the company for a $330 million investment. Sony owns 1.4% for $250 million. Holy moly, that's fucking awful. Great for Tencent though.

The deal doesn't affect Epic's agnostic slant and it will still publish to all platforms. Sony and Epic merely want to leverage what the other does well to help their respective businesses and it's worth noting that Epic is still seeking to raise $750 million more to pursue what appears to be rapid expansion. The studio's founder, Tim Sweeney, still controls more than half of the company himself and is the current CEO, so he stands to make hundreds of millions of dollars under this and future deals. Epic was founded in 1991 and is still running out of North Carolina, an unusual place for a game studio.

It has a number of subsidiaries under it, including Shadow Complex developer Share, Rocket League developer Psyonix, and nearly two dozen others. And it made its name in the 90s with games like Jazz, Jackrabbit, and Unreal, both from Cliffy B, and Unreal Tournament, and later in the Xbox 360 era with Gears of War, also from Cliffy, which it later sold outright to Microsoft. It also very wisely got into the engine business early, creating five iterative so-called Unreal engines that will make millions upon millions of dollars in latent royalties from every year. More recently, however, it's known for arguably the most popular game in the world, Fortnite, as well as its fledgling Epic Game Store, all of which now Sony owns a small sliver of.

So Chris, what do you make of this deal? This is interesting. Yeah, this is kind of huge. I can't recall the last time something this substantial has happened, at least as far as Sony goes.

Sony doesn't typically just pour that much money into shit like this. So that's actually kind of wild. It's kind of wild to think that they own a part of the Epic Game Store, also. Yeah, every dollar, they'll own, I guess, 1.4 cents of every dollar made now, in crude terms.

Yeah. But yeah, this is the biggest Sony investment since they bought Insomniac. And I love Insomniac, as everyone knows. The purchase price for Insomniac was $229 million.

That got them both Insomniac and Insomniac in North Carolina, the one in Burbank, where you are. They got all this IP owned by them, including Sunset Overdrive and all that for $229 million, the whole studio. For $250 million, Sony gets 1.4% of Epic. It's pretty crazy.

And I don't know. See, here's the thing about this is that I would have expected Sony to make a bigger investment to get at least more of the pie, because at 1.4%, I don't know if what they're planning on doing is sitting on it, accruing value, and then selling it again. I assume most of these shares are coming from Tim Sweeney himself, so I'm sure he's fucking thrilled. But I don't know.

To me, it makes a lot of sense because you want to be in bed with Epic right now. It makes a little bit more sense why they're talking about PlayStation 5 so much with Unreal 5. But 1.4%, I don't know. That just doesn't seem like 1.4% is the kind of value a private entity would own in a company like Epic, not Sony.

So I was a little surprised by that. When I saw the money that they were spying, I was like, oh, they must have bought at least 5% of the company or more, but 1.4%. But we'll see how it all shakes out. Kendrick Lukenbach wrote in the US, said, hey, Colin, Chris, with Sony investing $250 million in Epic, could we see more first-party titles like Days Gone 2 using Unreal Engine 5?

Seems like a perfect opportunity for Sony to have access to those tools at a discount. I know most PlayStation Studios titles use their own engines, but for those that don't Unreal 5 on PS5 would be a great choice. This was where my mind was at, too, Chris. I'm wondering if Sony's investment, we can find out, as Epic is still privately held, but I think they have to make their financials more transparent when sales like this happen.

We can find out that Sony might actually have dibs on Unreal Engine 5 as if it's a first-party engine and maybe royalty-free in exchange for the investment. That's the only thing that would make sense for me, and if that's the case, then I expect that a lot of Sony games are going to be running on Unreal 5. Do you think that that's a possibility? Yeah, no, I think that makes a decent amount of sense.

I still feel similarly to how you feel about, I feel like 1.4% is a bit low for the percentage, so it makes sense that there must have been some perk there that we're not necessarily all that privy to. And I think that's probably a valuable perk to have, not having to pay whatever the percentage is of that royalty to Epic. That's probably pretty good. I'll also say this.

Sony now owns a little piece of Epic's deal with Remedy, their deal with Playdead, and others that they obviously penned months ago. So this creates a tantalizing possibility that those games might come to PS5 first. These are the kinds of things that we have to, because they'll come to Epic Games obviously first on PC, but it seems like this is the kind of stuff we might be dealing with now. That Sony might be doing some backdoor, let's say, exclusivity or time-exclusivity deals with the engine, getting royalty-free access to it.

Because if you have the option, so Kendrick brings up Days Gone, too, because Days Gone was built on Unreal 4, which was really weird, because Sony is pretty obsessive about using its proprietary engines. In fact, there's a whole body at Naughty Dog called Ice, or the initiative for the common engine, to build an engine, so they don't have to do that. Naughty Dog has its own engine. Obviously, Gorilla made its own engine, Decima, that is now used by others, including It was made until Dawn, was using Decima, obviously.

Death Stranding was built on Decima. So it would be tantalizing to use Unreal 5, not only because it's powerful, but because it's so well-regulated. They don't have to worry about it anymore. They have a whole tool set and a whole pipeline to help support it that isn't at Sony.

So it's possible, Kendrick, that we might be seeing Unreal Engine 5 more with Sony first and second-party products. The royalty deals might be different or totally eliminated, which would make it really enticing, because for people that don't know, Unreal's and Epic's deal with their engine is usually money on the back end for free use of the engine. So they get something like 5% of gross sales on a game that uses Unreal Engine, that's a lot of money. So, and that's how they started making so much money.

Obviously, they're making even more from Fortnite, but I don't know. It creates all sorts of interesting possibilities. I really want to know more about the deal, and I don't know if we're going to, but we will certainly find out. But Yasuke Yosha wrote in to us, said, Yo, Chris and Colin, long time, first time, with the news of Sony investing into Epic Games, a deal that's possibly been in the months in the game, I'm sure it was.

Is it fair to take what Tim Sweeney has been saying about the PS5 with a grain of salt now? Tim's also the man that praised how easy the PS3 was to develop for him. We all know how hard that was the first couple of years. It's like an interesting point, Chris, from Yasuke.

Yeah. Because Epic has been really high on PS5. Obviously, when Unreal Engine 5 was shown, it was shown running on PS5, and it was talked about its PS5 game, and I think it was even on PlayStation's YouTube channel, if I remember correctly. Should we take a little bit more of this with a grain of salt, now knowing that Tim was basically negotiating to sell 1.4% of a share to Sony?

Oh, well, yeah. I think it's pretty cut and dry. If you're making a deal like that, yeah, you're going to want to sweeten the deal a little bit. You're going to want to be like, okay, yeah, here's this platform.

It's very, very unique. I would imagine that this definitely played a part in it. It's almost inconceivable that it didn't. Because I remember even when that...

Because it's not common for an engine reveal to do that, really. It's not common for an engine reveal to be like PlayStation 5 or Xbox 360. Typically, it's just like, hey, here's Unreal Engine 4 or Unreal Engine 5, and that's it. And typically, there's not really this much of a hyping up of what a specific platform can do.

And I think, as far as we know about the specs of both of the machines, we know just on a technical standpoint alone that, like, I think, like, the Series X is, like, slightly stronger. So, like, it wouldn't have even necessarily made a ton of sense to hype up, like, the SSD if that was true. Because now, everything just sort of makes a lot of sense now. Where it's like, okay, yeah, yeah, that makes a ton of sense.

Yeah, I agree. I think that there's no way that's a coincidence. But I'm tantalized by the possibility. Because what I think...

People are losing sight of the fact that Sony... They don't own as many studios now as Microsoft. They have a comparable amount of studios as Microsoft does. We're going to talk a little bit later about Microsoft's apparent interest in WB games, WB Interactive, and what that can mean for Sony.

But I don't think the investment in new talent, like, new game-making talent, is necessarily the top priority for Sony. I don't think it should be. Because you can only release so many first-party games a year anyway. You don't want to flood the market like they did in the PS3 era, especially with second-party games where some of them don't sell.

This is obviously what happened in 2011 and 2012, to a great extent with PS3, where a lot of good games came out. But, you know, Starhawk and PlayStation All-Stars and whatever, they came to Twisted Metal. But these games weren't really purchased at a high rate because there were just too many games competing with themselves for your dollar and for your attention. I think what Sony needs is support.

And this is why I floated this on Twitter last week and some people were confused where I was saying Sony should buy the likes of, like, I've been saying obviously Bluepoint, I won't reiterate that, but I was saying even someone like Sumo Digital, the British studio, and people were like, why would they want Sumo Digital? And my answer to that was because Sumo Digital is a support team. Like, they have experience working with other studios. That's mostly what they do.

They do make their own games like LittleBigPlanet 3 and they make Crackdown 3 and others. But they're just a team that can work with other teams to take loads and stress off of others, whether that's art assets, whether that's engine support, anything like that. And so that's why being embedded with Epic is so interesting because if you think about DICE with EA, and I mean DICE the studio in, you know, Scandinavia, they've had to run so much support for other studios using Frostbite, their engine, that it's created a huge bottleneck and EA's admitted that. And so that's why I was so tantalized by the idea of Sony buying the likes of Bluepoint or buying Sumo Digital or something, because it would be awesome for them to buy Supermassive or other studios, but I think that they need some studios that could just streamline things because I think it'll allow games to be better and I think they'll be released more quickly.

And this is why I was such a big proponent of THQ Nordic buying Saber Interactive, which was such a glamorous sale and no one really paid attention to it, but I'm like, this is huge, dude, because Saber Interactive is a port studio. Now others don't have to do this anymore. So I think that Sony is wisely investing, perhaps, in places where they have a weakness, and frankly, they don't have a weakness in content. They have a weakness in rapidity.

They have a weakness in repeatability. And these are the things that can be helped by being in bed with the likes of Epic. No, I totally agree. It's a lot like military strategy in a lot of ways where it's like, oh, you know, there's the old way of like, oh, you just run into a new country or continent and start conquering it, but there's like a lot more sly and a lot more effective ways to do it.

It's like, hey, you know, let's buy like a lot of companies in this region. And now suddenly the people are like dependent on you, even though you don't necessarily own the land. It's like, it's very like under, underhanded has like a negative context, but I think it's like a very clever way to go about it in like a not negative context. No, I hear what you're saying.

It doesn't imply brute force. Instead, what they're saying is like, we own Sucker Punch, we own Sony Ben, we own Naughty Dog, we own Santa Monica Studio, we own Media Molecule, Studio Japan, and Polyphony, we own Insomniac. How many games do you think we're going to release? You know, like if we bought five more studios, like what are they going to give us?

And I'm not opposed to them buying studios that I think they're going to. They're apparently interested in some Hong Kong, as we said last week, some Hong Kong entity that owns some studios and they might get more in line with that. And maybe they will buy Blue Point, maybe they will go in on WB and Racket and others, although I think that's a mistake. Well, it seems stupid as shit, but they ended up getting a great deal on Gaikai and it ended up being the infrastructure for PS Now, which is a huge part of their platform.

So these things sometimes materialize later on and you'll understand why. And if I were Gaikai and I sold, I think they sold for $500 million, I'd be like, man, we got fucking hosed on that because we could have just, we could have just stuck it out and so we would have probably paid a lot more for that. But I'm not going to, I'm not going to stick my nose up for $500 million personally. Oh yeah.

All right, Chris, let's get to the next piece of news. Number two, a notable tension is developing between forces that want to raise game prices and forces that want to keep them right where they are. As we reported last week, Publisher 2K was the first to break down the price barrier by revealing that while the PlayStation 4 version of NBA 2K21 will cost $59.99 USD, the PlayStation 5 version will cost $69.99, fulfilling a long-held belief that game prices must simply go up, not only from an inflationary point of view, but from a value proposition and to look after the increasing cost of game dev. But the path to higher game prices won't be as linear as we may have thought.

According to website Video Game Chronicle, Microsoft, a major games publisher and one of the three primary hardware manufacturers, is instructing developers and publishers working on Xbox Series X that games that are available on Xbox One are, I'm sorry, I'm reading this wrong, working on Xbox Series X games are also available on Xbox One that they want the pricing flat. That is to say, they should cost the same on either platform. So games like Assassin's Creed, Bahamas, from Ubisoft, FIFA 21, from EA, and others that are going to be released across both platforms would conceivably cost the consumer the same, in line with its promised smart delivery service. However, Microsoft is apparently flexible, and with this flexibility comes the understanding that pricing is likely to remain flat far past the launch of the new consoles.

On the other side of the coin, according to website Games Industry International, is that publishers are eagerly looking to raise game prices sourced by industry consulting firm IDG. The article notes that what we said last week, AAA game prices haven't gone up in 15 years, which is shocking. In that time, production costs have skyrocketed between 200 and 300%. While movie tickets have gone up 39%, Netflix subscriptions are up 100%, and cable TV packages are up more than 100% in that time frame.

But game prices remain the same. And as we prognosticated last week, a $10 price increase isn't going to do much. A 17% bump, which is what that represents, would barely make a dent in increased game dev costs. There is a war brewing here, Chris.

This is interesting, because I didn't think about this until I was writing this today. Microsoft's smart delivery service is already in peril, because, and it's not even really a thing yet, because it suggests that there's going to be seamless, costless upgrading of games across platforms, but it seems like the only one that wants to do that is Microsoft itself. And if the others aren't on board, then smart delivery becomes exactly what I said it was, which is it's a marketing ploy about patching games. And I just don't think that people are going to go differently on Microsoft and on PlayStation, for instance, unless Microsoft is willing to literally subsidize the cost of those games on their platform, which they might, in which case Xbox has a massive advantage.

But I just don't think that's going to happen. So what do you make about all this about this tension that's brewing? I don't know. This is all very confusing, because I relate a lot to the PC space, because it's, I think, the most analogous.

Where if you have a PC, right, that costs, like, I don't know, let's say your computer is like $200. It's like a piece of crap with like a graphics card from 2007, you know? And I have like a PC that's like very modern. It's like a $3,000 computer that has like all the best, all the bells and whistles, has an SSD, ray tracing, all this insane shit, like 400 gigabytes of RAM, something insane.

If I buy a game, right, on PC, the price doesn't increase based on like how strong my hardware is. And I think that's kind of the philosophy that they're going with, because they're looking so heavily into the PC space. I do think that if their first party can maintain that, meaning that like their first party games are still, you know, $59.99, and they remain that way for a while, or at least like for like a year or so after the launch window, and obviously for cross-generation games, I don't know if I really see that big of a deal here. Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, it's making me start the question of the wisdom in this move, because maybe Sony being quiet and letting things play out and obviously having intimate connections, just as Microsoft does to all the publishers, and everyone kind of knowing what the other is doing. It just seems like it's not going to be possible to use smart delivery without paying for it in the long run. And maybe this is why it's wise that Sony just never named it, because you're just going to be upgrading. Now, this is a little different in the sense that they're not talking about native game sales.

They're talking about updates. So if you bought the Xbox One version of Assassin's Creed Odyssey and then you wanted to play on Xbox Series X, what they're suggesting is like that shouldn't be paid for. Sony might do the same thing, but it's not going to stop, I don't think, from selling Assassin's Creed Odyssey for $70 on PS5 and Xbox Series X and $60 on PS4 and PS5. You're just going to get a nice free upgrade, and that's going to be the cost of doing business only for one cycle until we get away from PS4 and Xbox One altogether in a year or two, and then all you're left with is $70 PS5 and Xbox Series X games.