#142: Phantom Bust

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Creating some citations, welcome back to Sacred Symbols, a PlayStation podcast. This is episode 142. My name is Kyle Moriarty. I'm joined as always.

Not always, always, cause he wasn't here last week, but typically almost always Chris Rake on Chris. How are you today? I'm well. It's raining quite a bit.

Yes. I don't like it. I forgot. Yeah, you forgot about speaking in California.

Definitely. I love the rain, personally. I've always hated it. I don't know what it is.

I'm not like, I think usually it's just, I've always had a lot of gadgets and shit. And I always think like, oh man, I can't, I'm not as free as I normally would be because the second I walk outside, everything I have is going to electrocute me and I will die. Right. Yeah.

Exactly. You know what, electric? Yeah, okay. Well, it's interesting to anticipate that that was what you were going to have a problem.

I've had a lot of things get ruined in the rain. That's what I'm getting at. Interesting. I once washed my flip phone in the washing machine and I was really upset about it in high school.

And then I just put it next to the wood burning stove and the next day it turned on and it was fine. Oh, that's crazy. Yeah. I always thought that was weird, but it did happen.

All right, we're joined this week by budding star, Dustin Furman, a good producer of Conlon's, I was going to say Conlon's last day on last day media. Welcome Dustin. How are you? Thank you.

I'm good. It's been one of those weird modes where I woke up this morning and I had severe migraine, like couldn't get out of bed. Eventually I got up at like 10.30 and since then it's been all uphill to the point that feeling normal right now feels good. It's like I feel amazed that I've recovered.

That's awesome. That's good to hear. Well we'll ruin your mood by the end of the show I'm sure. Certainly.

Yeah. So for the uninitiated, of course, this is our weekly PlayStation podcast sacred symbols. You can listen to it on podcast feeds, you can listen to it and watch it on YouTube. And of course you can support it on patreon, patreon.com slash last stand media where about 10,000 of you support us each month and get early ad free access to the show.

You can also get exclusive and early access to sacred symbols plus our supplemental podcast. Last week was actually interesting was the first time that Mr. Maddy plays an eye. I sat down and done a podcast together.

I was talking at the beginning of that show that I've been trying to be overly deliberate about staying far away from that show. The show they do defining to our Xbox show just because I want them to have their own identity totally apart like we're just an umbrella. I want them to do their own thing. So we had Matt on, we talked about the Bethesda deal from his perspective, what it means for PlayStation fans.

We went pretty deep into the nerdy weeds as he and I like to do so go check that out if you want next week. We're gonna keep the interviews rolling. I actually have a few opportunities. I don't know which one I'm gonna line up next, but I'll let you guys know.

I'm gonna go check it out if you want. And speaking of things that we want to pimp, we have some merch over at laststammedia.shop. If you're watching it on YouTube, Dustin's wearing the sacred symbol sweatshirt, which people are, I want to say critically and commercially acclaimed. That's sweatshirt.

The nice part is Colin is that people no longer have to take our word for it. They can go to your Twitter account and see what the fans are saying. Yeah. One of them, I can't remember his name.

He said he thought that it was the nicest t-shirt he's ever bought as far as quality. So there's that, you know, and many people have said that. It's interesting though because that particular man was one of those Japanese soldiers who's been on the gloss on a Filipino island for the last 70 years and he's never actually bought a picture. He was just reintroduced.

So for him, you know, it's pretty nice. Yeah, go check out the laststammedia.shop. We really appreciate it. Stickers, which I'm really excited about.

Dustin has some exciting new plans for some products that we might be introducing and all the rest. So thank you for your support. Appreciate you. Oh, and by the way, I did want to read this real quick to the point of quality.

Adam Karutberg said, Hey, CDC just got my sacred symbol shirt yesterday and you weren't kidding. If quality was a tangible material, I'm sure that's what it's made of. I just wanted to know if there are plans for other types of merchandise, perhaps sex toys molded after yourselves. Just curious.

Hold up. I got a question. Yeah. Is this molded?

Like, are you getting a dildo of like Chris's head or something like, you know, after a hard year, you would be erect. They would make a mold, like some sort of clay mold. And I think this is pretty common. Like I actually think people do do this.

I don't want to say it's calm, but it's something that people do. I don't think it's like everybody's doing it, but it's something that I know happens. Sure. And it's not something that I know happens for reasons.

I never did it. I would tell you if I did, but I never have done it. By the way, I'm moving the screen over here. So I stopped looking to the side like fucking crazy.

Yeah, that's probably wise. All right. What else we have here? Oh, I want to give a shout out to some Chad that wrote into us William outlaws his name.

Hey guys, I think you all will appreciate the story. Last week, when I got home from work, I received an alert that PS5s were in stock at Best Buy. My wife was home early, so I asked if she would try and help me get one. She pulls out her phone and iPad to help and within minutes gets one in her cart, but I've been there before, so I wasn't too hopeful.

And yet she proceeds to check out without a hitch. After months of trying, my wife gets a PS5 in about 10 minutes. It gets even crazier though. While she's in check out, I also get a digital PS5 in my cart and I figure why not try to check out and see what happens, lo and behold.

I just went and pick up my two PS5s, but if you're not, I'm letting a friend buy one from me at cost. What do you think of that amazing story? That's pretty good. That's exactly that encapsulates kind of like if you really don't give a shit about something, then it chances are you're going to come across it like with no hassle whatsoever.

Like if you care immensely about getting your hands on a PS5, it's probably not going to happen for years at this point because that's how the universe works. It's just like, hey, you care? Good. Keep that care going for as long as humanly possible.

You're absolutely right. It was a total of what just an amazing stud of a man that is. They pulled off such a maneuver with the help of his doting and faithful life. Wow.

Appreciate that. That man just going to last. I think so. All right.

Connor Bright wrote it in once. This is a continual point of contention. We must have received, I don't know, half dozen to 10 maybe letters just about this subject this week. You said, hey, see, all the talk of five guys in the rightful shaming of the plain hamburger either gave me a hankering for a five guys burger, specifically a bacon cheeseburger with ketchup, mayo, and most importantly grilled onions.

I can't help but agree with you there. The consuming said burger I must admit, I sympathize more with the plain burger eating lunatic. The five guys beef patty was exceptionally juicy and flavorful on its own. The notion that the shameful human must forego the delicious five guys burger in favor of a simple fast food burger despite not taking advantage of the free toppings to be inherently flawed.

Feel free to ban me if you like, but I must say Colin was wrong. What do you think of this, Chris, this proclamation from Connor who went into the wild, he was credit, he did the work. And he changed his mind. I find this peculiar, but I'm curious what you think because I know you're so passionate about five guys like I am.

Yeah. Well, I mean, look, I like five guys plain burgers. More often than not usually the burger that I will get is just like give me like a bacon cheeseburger plain. Right.

You know, because the bird just the patty is delicious. Like it's not like a dry bird. This isn't like a whopper, you know, where you just like you need as much help as you can possibly get. Right.

It's not a Popeyes biscuit. You know, you can you can you can clearly there's a lot of there's a lot of flavor in that patty and I really don't think you need much of anything else. Sometimes I'll get like the grilled onions and like the, you know, the other accrucements, but I like the plain five guys burger. I think it's good.

That's so only reasonable. I respect it. I mean, when we've eaten burgers, I have studied you and we have talked about it at great length when I still live in California and I don't know. I don't want to disparage the gentleman, but I still feel like you might as well just go get the hamburger from McDonald's.

You know, man, it's different. White rapper might as well get a small fry and a coffee like a small coffee, like a fucking old person and leave all of the flavor to me, you know, in my type. There's just a limited amount of flavor that five guys can dispatch per day. Yeah.

And I don't want them wasting it. How do you feel about this issue? So it's funny. We brought up the McDonald's burger.

I actually last night I went out to get my final shamrock shake of the season, a large. So I was sitting there with like a half gallon of milk in my tummy and I was eating just a plain McDouble, just cheese. And I thought, you know, this is pretty good. But I'm almost willing to go and try the science here and get a plain burger at five guys.

I just don't know. I don't know if I can do that for me. Five guys, a very limited resource. You know, I got to drive 45 minutes.

Yeah, that's, you know, I cannot take the risk. I just can't get a four to the risk. That's different. Yeah, I think that's different.

Like where I lived in Burbank, even where I live now, like the five guys in Burbank was like a couple blocks away, the five guys that I live around here is maybe 10 minutes away. So like it's not a big deal. If I'm feeling like I want that flavor, then I'll go around and get it. But if I had to drive 45 minutes, 45 minutes is basically an hour, you know, like that's at that point.

That's true. There's no, I've done it though. You've done it though. Just for five guys, like maybe like once every three months, I'll be like, yeah, honestly, I'd probably be a five guys.

I mean, I'd be obese, but it would be like once a week if there's one in my town, I'm probably blessed to not have this luxury. Yeah, I like it. I don't know if I would drive particularly far for five guys. Like I like it, but like, I don't know if it's journey worthy, you know, depends on where you are.

I think in your life too. I remember when I lived in San Francisco my long time ago, girlfriend, ex-girlfriend, I was Cheryl and I used to once a month or so drive to San Jose to get Chick-fil-A because it was like brand new in California. I was like, but now it's like almost, this was probably like, let's say eight years ago. Yeah.

So today, I'm like, I don't really, it's so funny. Now that I live in Virginia and I'm like swimming in Chick-fil-A, I don't really give a shit anymore about Chick-fil-A. Now I want whatever I can have, you know, now I have Shake Shack fever or whatever. Yeah.

I'm not sure if you're in a place now though, because that's where we always go and we're together. That's true. You know, that's true. You have the app.

That's right. Right? Yeah. Which I appreciate the app.

It's a yep. You know, Chick-fil-A app? You order from it. You just pull in and then you just bring it to you.

Dude, Colin and I saw some fucking nonsense going on in the Chick-fil-A drive through. Like there's people cutting in line. There's, it's madness. He got it.

It's anarchy. Over there. Every Chick-fil-A I've ever seen is just this weird, it's like Kanye is there. It's like he had every single one of them.

I don't understand. You got to just like get in and out. What was the name? They have the Christian front, like, you know, their Christian run business, but with that kind of sales and that level of deliciousness, there's surely a deal made with Satan or some kind of higher up demon, really.

Yeah, that's what I'm arch demon. Yeah, I still have never had it, should I? It's really good. I mean, I just, you know, what I'm craving now, I have to be honest with you, and I'm not quite there yet.

I'm not inoculated and stuff. And even if I could still go, if I wanted to, I just don't want to risk it yet, is I'm feeling waffle house. Like I want waffle house so bad, and they're all over the place down here. I'm not gonna risk it.

That's dangerous enough without COVID. Something I missed for a while is a umami. Because I only used to have it when I would go to Santa Monica to record the show with you. And we stopped doing that a while ago.

So like, but I've been thinking about this, man, those fries are so good. Oh, they are, that place is great. Umami burger is awesome. Yeah.

Oh, well. All right, let's talk about video games. Yes. The first thing I wanted to bring up is, I was very pleased about this Sony kind of quietly published a new return trailer, the upcoming housemark game.

And this trailer is fucking awesome. I'm curious what you guys thought of it. I'm more compelled, I mean, I know I'm gonna be inherently compelled by what they do because I love housemark and everyone knows that. But I think the game looks legitimately compelling.

Not only from a story point of view, which we'll talk about in a minute, but from a gameplay point of view, they showed quite a bit of gameplay. And it looks, you can start to identify exactly how it's a housemark game. It's a 3D arcade game in some way. You can see the way the objects are coming at you and the way you're dodging and bobbing and weaving, almost like bullet hellish, but in a 3D space.

I'm stoked about it. Chris, are you, how are you feeling? What's your temperature on Returnal as we approach? This is definitely the best trailer that I've seen for it.

I feel like I showed more of the variety of it, whereas I feel like a lot of previous trailers have been aesthetically samey and kind of, even the bullet hell aspects that I think were pretty clear in previous trailers didn't feel as clear as they did in this one. Like you can actually, I think it's because it's edited well. They linger on clips long enough to show you how you would bob and weave in between these bullets, whereas previously it used to be just really quick clips of light. And I was just like, I don't get it.

But I think it looks cool. I think I'm still a little skeptical of it, but I think I'm definitely, this is the trailer that was like, all right, I'll check this out. I'm actually interested to check it out. I wanna give it a shot.

But I do think it took a weirdly long time to get to a trailer like this, because it's weird that we didn't get a more comprehensive look at it sooner than this, but at least we finally got it. And I think it looks cool. That's what I want to say you about this new Returnal trailer. Yeah, so far, I really feel like the most interesting aspect to me is the story.

And I think I said on a previous podcast, I got a very strong, almost annihilation vibe. If you guys have seen that movie, it's excellent film that you guys check out. But I like this cosmic horror field we got. That's very intriguing to me.

So as I said before, I'm a little still, I'm hesitant, but I'm gonna buy it on day one still. It's hard just because now even when games were 60, it was a little hard for me to take a risk on a day one game. And now that it's 70, which not arguing for against the price, but it does add like that little bit of extra of like, do you really do want to take that risk on day one? But you know, it's only in a house mark, I'm willing to take the plunge.

Yeah, they haven't really, they haven't collaborated on anything less than a good game yet. So we'll see, Michael Kasberg did write in about something that was interesting about this trailer to me though. He wrote it on Patreon of course, like you kind of by supporting us over there. It says, hi boys, a question for Colin specifically, how do you feel about Sony and house mark focusing so much on returnals narrative?

I agree with you that house mark games are special because of their gameplay loops and score chasing yet. The marketing for this game is all about the story and protagonist thoughts. So I'm interested in this. I wanted to look a little bit more into this because I wanted to be sure, as far as I can tell, house mark has never had a creative narrative director until now, you actually see him in the video.

And I was like, well, that's interesting because of course there is no narrative in any of the other games except for Dead Nation and Alien Nation. I don't think you need much more than an in-house writer to take care of that. So to have someone really directing the narrative of the game I think is super fascinating. But I also feel like they might be playing up the story aspects of the game more than they appear in the game because I feel like it does go back to what Dustin was saying, which was it is a $70 game.

And you're basically releasing a roguelite into the world, like a very high and triple A style game. But it needs more, I think, to sell it. And so I wonder if they're even overplaying the narrative a little bit in order to make that connection yet having someone on the staff that is narrative directed is indicative that they might actually have a robust story here. So I'm wondering what your expectations are in terms of the balance between what we typically get from house market and then what it seems like they might be getting us here.

I think you're conscious, right? I think people are probably looking at it like, listen, this is a Sony first-party game. People expect, at this point, a pretty strong narrative focus in a Sony first party. But it's a PS5 exclusive game.

Yeah, it's a second party game. Yeah, it's a second party game. But it's a PS5 exclusive, the first real one, like aside from like, you know, Demon's Souls, which is obviously the launch title, but, you know. Indeed.

I think the marketing team is like, listen, man, this has got to appeal to people who put money down for PS5, people like their story-driven games. I even think just based on how much of the narrative that we've seen, we've seen that house like a million times and we've seen that like, you know, you walk through the door and it's, you know, like we've seen that a couple times already. So it makes me, I feel like they are overplaying certain aspects of the story and how important it will be in the end game because I really think this is going to be a game like Focus Experience in the end. But the presence of a narrative director is interesting.

I think it might just be because this is just kind of a new direction for them and maybe this is just like the way they've felt most equipped to handle it. But I don't think it's going to be as story heavy as the marketing is implying. Yeah, I hope it is in a sense, because it would be weird to see something like that, or at least have it be optional. I don't want anything that gets in the way of the game, the gameplay loop.

So it needs to be all skippable. But I do like the focus on this female astronaut. I really like her voice acting. Like I really dig it.

It reminds me a little bit of, I don't know if it is actually the woman that plays Breanna Tarth, but the voice reminds me of her a little bit from Game of Thrones. Maybe I'm just comparing and contrasting it weird in my head, but I kind of hear it. And I really dig that picture we keep seeing of her in front of the American flag holding the helmet or whatever. I love that.

And I think that would be like a cool piece of art actually to get. Because it would look like a real astronaut if you saw him passing you, or just think it was like some picture or something. But it's from this video game. Dustin, what are your expectations in terms of the balance here presented by Sony and Housemark?

And this, I'm kind of wondering if the over emphasis on story again is to sell the game, but also maybe they don't have, the gameplay might start looking samey if you show too much of it, which can also injure it. What do you think? Last year I was very surprised by a roguelike game that had a pretty intriguing story told in a very unique way. And it kind of changed my view on roguelike games.

And that would be Hades. So while Hades is very different from other roguelike games, it did change my perspective. And so now that I've played that, it almost makes me wonder maybe there is a tie that could be changing with roguelike games where we can get these more in depth stories, more, I don't wanna say character driven, because it seems like when we say character, we literally mean potentially one character in Returnal. But with that, I don't know, maybe there's a lot more that can be done in roguelikes that we haven't seen yet.

And in fact, the fact that they're pushing this as a triple A, maybe they really do have this new formula. I don't know exactly what the call it that they can do. So I think you could be right about the fact that they're really pushing that, and then it would be light. I just, I feel like that would backfire pretty hard if it was clear that their marketing was not deceptive, but focused on the wrong aspect of the game.

I think that would piss people off. Yeah, I don't know. I feel like if you kind of hook people in with like something that kind of looks like it's going to be like a particularly native experience, but the gameplay itself is fun enough to kind of be like, oh, this is fun. It's not the story that I wanted, but this is like something that I could go back to and like replay and like really like get addicted to.

I feel like any kind of marketing that is, I mean, we were talking about deceptive marketing. It's pretty low on the scale of just like if you're just showing a cinematic trailer for a game that's not really all that cinematic, I don't think that's particularly deceptive, it's just showing the parts of the game that are cinematic. As long as the game justifies itself, that's really all that's going to matter. And as long as people feel like a $7 price tag is worth it, I think they'll be happy.

But yeah, I don't know. I just want to play it. I wish they had like a demo or something. You know, like Outriders did when they were just like, hey, here's an old school, like give it a shot.

You know, that would have been. That would have been. That would be awesome, especially if they did one of the cool things where you can use your save. Yeah.

I wonder, the game first comes out April 30th, so from when we're recording this about six weeks. And I do wonder if I wonder what their internal numbers are showing, if there is excitement, people are pre-ordering. I wonder, I'm really hopeful for this game, but I also have an obvious bias as well. So we'll see.

I just wanted to shout out that new trailer. People should go check it out and make your own decisions. Just a couple of other things together real quick before we get to what we're playing. I want to let everyone know that there is interesting news about the UFIDLC for Final Fantasy 7 Remake, specifically our conjecture about what they might do.

Are they going to do more DLC and whatever we now know, that they're not going to do more. And this comes from Tetsuya Nomura, who's the director. I just thought the quote was interesting. He said this to Femitsu.

He said, quote, do the integrated upgrade, it became necessary to separate episode UFIDLC. However, the original purpose was to make the PS5 version of Final Fantasy 7 Remake, not to make DLC. Therefore, there are no additional plans for DLC at this time. End quote.

And I feel like people aren't really talking about this quote. It seems again, like no more doesn't even know what was going on or what the plan was. And it seems like they have some sort of contractual obligation to Sony to make DLC exclusive, because he says like we were originally more than trying to make DLC. We were just trying to bring the game over.

So some weird shit going on with Square Enix and Sony that's worth keeping an eye on, in case anyone's curious. I also want to let everyone know that Gamecom apparently is coming back. I don't know if you guys saw this. They released website, or I'm sorry, a statement on their website, if you just go to Gamescom.com, you can check it out.

It's actually Gamescom.global, I think is the website. And it says Gamescom 2021 planned as a hybrid event. And people can go read about it, but it seems like they're going to try to get this thing going again later this summer in a smaller way. I think this is hysterical because I've been to Gamescom twice and it's a fucking human mass.

That's all it is. And I can't imagine the point of even having it if it's not that because the colon mess that way it takes place. I remember walking around it before hours one day, just to see it's massive. It's as if it never ends.

So I'm really curious to see what happens here. But Chris, I was curious to kind of pitch this off of you because I know you're, we talk about E3 and we talk about the need for shows and stuff. Well, it seems like Gamescom might be the one that's trying to kind of seize the day. What do you think about them taking the kind of sucking all the oxygen up, especially because we know based on leaks from LA that E3 isn't happening this year.

Yeah. Look, I just, I still think it's too early to be making plans like this. I think ideally what you want is a situation where things are normal again before you even start talking about this shit. Because I really don't see the point in planning ahead for something that is ultimately pretty unpredictable.

I mean, I want to get too down and too political necessarily. But just because we got a vaccine doesn't mean things are going to get like automatically better. There are still strains of this thing that are mutating. People need to get their hands on two doses of this vaccine.

It's the rollout has been kind of wildly inconsistent based on like country and even state and county. So ideally what you'd want is for you to reliably be able to sit down and get a meal at an establishment without any hint that anything is wrong before you even start thinking about having like conventions, especially Gamescom, which is like probably like the biggest, I think the size wise, right? And probably personal wise, it's the biggest of these shows. I think it's like half a million people or something insane.

Like, it's insane. Which is wild to me because it's always felt to me like the like just the knockoff E3 to me. Like whenever I was like looking for news, I'd be like, oh, the Gamescom trailer. Like I don't really remember the Gamescom trailer for any like big game, but I remember a lot of the E3 ones.

So I don't know. I still, I think this is probably going to end up being canceled. At least the hybrid nature of it. I think what you're going to see is something akin to the summer games fest or whatever the hell that thing was that Jeff Keel did around the summer of 2020.

Probably going to see that again. And I think maybe next year is going to be the year when things start to, you know, you'll start to see packs open up. You'll start to see, you know, E3 maybe come back potentially. I think this year's a watch though.

Like it's already March, you know, which doesn't sound like too late, but you know, we know how quickly time can pass. Sorry for the year of this. So. I agree.

I also, I don't think it's political to say. I think it's important. It's relevant that Gamescom is in Germany. And I'm surprised by the kind of bullishness of it because in the United States, we obviously got a catastrophic body count comparable to pretty much the rest of the world.

Yeah. But what's interesting to watch everything as it's evolved over time with COVID is that the United States is also at the forefront of inoculating its citizenry far better than most other countries, far in excess of most other countries, which is interesting. I have no idea exactly how or where that came from, but it's true. If you look at the numbers, I was actually looking at it just yesterday.

We are like, we really are on a path to have everyone inoculated by like the end of May or June. And yet Norway just went back on the lockdown because it's spreading there again. And Germany has an inoculation problem. And the AstraZeneca vaccine, which apparently is safe, is still causing massive problems there and giving people blood clots apparently and all that.

And there's a lot of fear, which we don't have because we don't use that in the United States. We have the others. So there's a weird, I bring it up on because it's a weird confluence of things to say. Like you would almost imagine E3 coming back would be much more realistic than Game Scomp.

Not only because of the massive bodies and I looked it up, it's 373,000 people in 2019 went E3 is under 50 now, 1000. But you're right, Game Scomp used to be like the redheaded stuff. I remember even going the first time and not really wanting to be there and not really appreciating exactly what it was until I saw it with my own eyes, which is this is 5% press show and 95% consumer show. So I'm interested to see how it all evolves.

But the only other piece of news of note is there's new Dying Light 2 kind of video up. I'm curious about what you thought of this video because this video is kind of controversial in Game Scomp, I mean, not surprisingly because there was a talk article that I thought was interesting about how this video kind of kind of supports the toxic elements of gaming. If people haven't seen the Dying Light 2 video that they released, it's basically the devs reading like, hey, tweets. Not unlike you would see on one of the late night shows that I think Jimmy Fallon or someone does that.

Yeah, someone. And then it's just them saying that we're going to have more to say and show a little bit of the game, which I thought was great. That's the one you think of that video because I really actually liked the way Techland did it. And I thought it was kind of self-deprecating and nice.

Right. I saw, I watched it and I did think I thought it was kind of cute initially, but I did, I instantly thought like, some people are not going to be down with this trailer. So I didn't know about the Kotaku article. So I'm not, I'm not surprised in the least bit about that, but I'm of two minds about it.

In one way, I'm like, yeah, trolls are trolls and they become bigger trolls when you give them attention. But on the other hand, I feel like this video is so clearly mocking them that, you know, whatever, it doesn't bother me. So there's always a weird line. And I think Colin, you understand this especially with either YouTube comments or Twitter replies that it's like, which ones are the ones that are actually worth responding to and which ones are not even worth giving any time to just because of how stupid they are.

So I don't know. I don't think it's a problem. I think the way they handled it was cute. Yeah, me too.

Of course, did you watch that video? Yeah, I would echo pretty much everything you guys said. I thought it was totally fine. Was it all funny?

Yeah, it was. I'm sorry. The only thing I'm just like, you've been so silent for so long. It's kind of like a weird way to come back into the spotlight, but you know, it's their prerogative.

The only way that the only other way they could have done it, I think would, I think would have done it in any number of ways you can see in any number of ways. But I really think that the only other better way they could have done it is to just come out with like a gameplay trailer. But they did show gameplay at the end. And by the way, the game looks dope.

I mean, when I saw some of the game, I was like, wow, this looks awesome. I love, I really loved Dying Light, the original Dying Light. I think that's one of the best games on PlayStation 4, period, like from any developer. And I was surprised at the time, because Techland wasn't a very good studio.

I mean, they, they, but they were, they made Dead Island and they were smart enough to identify that they didn't need Deep Silver. And they went off on their own. But this is kind of the cautionary tale that I was talking about, why you might need a publisher sometimes and why you might need a little bit of direction because we're seeing this happen with CD Projek and others where I think they bite off too much. And it's tough to deal with all the semantics.

I mean, even at Lilimote, the studio that I own a part of, we just hired an associate producer because, and we're just only two other of us in the studio because we can't deal with all this shit, like the emails and the dealing with the publishers and the pro. So I can't imagine like, you know, a game like Dead Island, or I'm sorry, Dying Light II, where it's like, what do you need to do to get this game to market other than making it seems like they are, you might be failing. So I'm excited to see more of the game. Shout out to Techland.

I like them a lot. All right. Let's get to what we're playing. Dustin, I want to start with you because you are our special boy guest.

Sure. You can still like a dragon. It says here. Yeah.

I'm going to be playing this and a quick PSA to everybody. I was looking at this because they just released the PlayStation 5 version of this, which if you have the PS4 version, you get a free upgrade. Great. So I was going to buy the PS5 version on Amazon because I have no intention of playing the PS4 version.

And the PS5 version on Amazon, $59.99, but if you buy the PS4 version, you can get the steelbook day one edition that includes all of the extra bullshit or whatever for $40 and it comes with a free upgrade. It makes no sense. Yeah, that's interesting. That's interesting.

So I don't know if they just have like excess amount of these day one editions with the steelbook. I would assume so. I'm going to play the game by the PS4 version and either play that or get the free upgrade. But yeah, this game is cool.

It's very much still Yakuza. It's different because the old Yakuza games were like brawler open world brawler games where you'll be walking around city and then you'll get in a fight and pick up like bikes and stuff that uses weapons. But this one's an RPG, which is pretty different. And so I'm still very early on.

I actually just started chapter two, but I can say that I'm much more invested right off the bat in this game than Yakuza zero, which is the other game that I played in the series. And so from my understanding, if you have not played any of the other Yakuza games, you're totally fine. I haven't from what I know about the other games. I have not noticed any references to them.

I'm sure there are, but it's been great and it's cool. This series has always had a neat duality of like really serious character driven crime drama and then just completely wacky weird stuff going on. Like I haven't ran into too much with like a dragon. I know it's there.

But I'm not in the front of this box of the steelbook. Sorry for audio listeners. There's like a man that's like in a suit with a goat head. And when you boot up the disc, you can see him on the steelbook, he has a lobster on his shoulder and an electrified bat.

So it's really weird because it's this really serious story about this young man in the Yakuza and how he won't spoil anything because I really enjoyed learning about the beginning of this game. But some of the trials and tribulations he goes through and apparently at some point there's a lobster and a goat man involved. It's very neat. So that's what I'm checking out.

I really like it so far. Cool. Yes, it's interesting. All right, Chris, what are you playing?

So I decided to jump back into the pathless only because I was looking for new things. I was looking for, you know what, let me look for a new game on PS5 that I can play. And boy, golly is there so little that I just, I was like, I don't feel like I just don't want to play anything that's available and stuff that I either played before and didn't care for or just have, there's no way that I'm going to play it. So I'm just like, all right, let me dig into some of the backlog that I might have picked up and put down.

I feel like the pathless is one of those things that I really enjoyed but I just kept getting like ripped away from because like something else would come out or maybe I would just get too busy or whatever the hell. And I remember it just didn't get a lot of attention when it came out and that kind of bugged me because I was like, this is like pretty good, I think. Because it's this very like shadow of the colossacy kind of journey-esque, almost momentum somewhat rhythm game with the way that you move around and you know, the bow and arrow is like triggering your momentum through this like really wide distinct, open looking area. It's really good.

Like I really like it. I liked it before. I don't really have that much else to say about it. I just wanted to get myself back into it because it's just one of those games that I feel was like, I feel like people, if the PS5 generation ever ends, you know, if they ever do like a PlayStation 6, I don't know if they will, they'll probably like keep this generation going forever.

It seems likely. But who knows? Yeah, who the hell knows? It's completely unpredictable.

But I think genuinely, this is going to be looked back on pretty fondly as something that's like genuinely artistically strong and competent and really well made and really fun and really gorgeous. It's like it's visually just really striking and pleasing experience. I felt that way when I first played and I still feel that way about it, it's just really enjoyable. It's like serene and deeply intense at the same time, depending on like, you know, certain situations that arise in Momentumama gameplay.

And it's just really good. It's my exact kind of, my exact kind of wandering experience. I mimic what you say about being surprised at the games and get a little bit more love. Because I was surprised by that too.

I bought it and played it and I barely got anywhere because I like you. I got the Shrathia and haven't gotten back to it. But I was impressed by it too. And I was a little surprised based on the small, you know, smorgasporter games that we had at launch that it didn't get more attention.

I don't know why it didn't get more attention. Yeah, it's cool. It's a good game. And I'd like to go back and check it out as well.

I jumped back into Ratchet and Clank on PS4, the 2016 iteration. I had beaten it when it came out, but I never got the platinum trophy and I just wanted to play it again. I really love Ratchet and Clank. I like the original game, especially even on PS3 and PS2, where obviously originally came from.

It's also on Vita. And so I beat it almost last night. I actually got to the last boss and then just went to bed and just doing all the little trophies I need to do and then I'm going to play Challenge Mode, which is just kind of new game plus. But it's so good.

I mean, I just have to reiterate again and we'll talk a little bit about some free games coming later, but this is still free at the time of recording this and you don't have to have a PS Plus account to get it. And there's no reason for you not to play this game. It is so good. It's great for children.

It's great for adults. It's funny. It makes me laugh at the different weapons and the work that goes into it. I was remarking to Mike when she was watching play it.

I'm like, there's a weapon famously in Ratchet and Clank called the Grootatron, which is a disco ball that you throw out and it makes the enemies dance. It strikes enemies and they'll dance for a while and you can kill them or whatever. It's terrible. What's really cool about it is that each enemy has their own animations.

It's not like every enemy is doing a same kind of dance move. Each of them is doing something really unique and interesting and funny. When you use it on them, I'm like, this is a lot of work. This is totally an unnecessary amount of work that went into this.

If you thought you'd see things on the cutting room before, you'd think that would be a weapon where the thing needs to go because we don't fucking time for this thing. And yet they went through the times and not only make it work, but I like using it on the different enemies because I just watch them because they do all sorts of different moves and it's different and it's so cute. So there's just a lot of thought into this game and it makes me, it really ramps up my excitement even more for Rift Apart, which I just have a really great feeling about that game. And I really think Sony is very confident in it, which is why I think they're making this game free, not only as an advertising tool, but because they're literally saying, like, we think this game is great and wait until you see the next game.

So got to give a shout out to that game. And I started playing Stardew Valley again on Vida and I'm intimidated by this game. I've been reading, and I remember reading back in the day too, but I've been reading like starter guides and beginners guides and tips and there's just so many different ways to approach the game. I was actually reading the Reddit, like there's an official Reddit for Stardew Valley, which is heavily populated and there's kind of like a starters guide that I just found there.

And then people arguing about how to play the game in the comments of the starter guide because some people are like, this is such a mathematical and formula like, who wants to play like this? This game is all about extracting them, you know, extracting crops and doing whatever you're like, I don't know, man. So I just kind of started playing it on my own and I'm just trying to, again, figure out what I'm supposed to really do. So I think that's the way to do it.

Yeah. I think so too. I know that there's a time cycle, but it never stops, right? Like you can just go over as long as you want.

So there's nothing to miss. And see, that's a big thing for me. Even if I didn't plant the right crop or meet the right person in the season, knowing that I can get them again is the, let's call that the solving the persona conundrum. You know, so, all right, I want to read a couple of other things here before we go into the news.

You sit on Sacred Simples Plus that you would be willing to turn on other consoles if the right title drew you there yet. You still haven't played Octopath Traveler. I find it odd because it seems like something right up your alley. And if not Project Triangle Strategy definitely does considering its obvious influence from Final Fantasy Tactics.

Do you plan on dusting off the switch for it? Thanks for the weekly pods. I look forward to them every week. So I will say this the Square Enix event that happened right before we started recording.

We're going to talk about the news from there, but I thought that they were going to announce Octopath Traveler for PS4 during the event, because it is coming to Xbox One in a few days. And Square never said anything about it, so the assumption was that it was coming to everything or to both consoles, it's already on PC, and that there would just be an announcement of some sort, but it didn't happen. So Octopath Traveler is leaving Switch, so my want to play it on Switch is lower than it's ever been at this point, because it will obviously come to PS4. And so now we know that that's happening, Triangle Strategy is going to move, but we're just going to have to be patient.

So the answer is no, I'm only going to play my Switch. I heard that they're going to finally stop selling those Mario games soon, so I got to go buy those. But yeah, but otherwise I really don't, see here's the thing guys, there are so many games to play. I'm only going to tend towards playing games on PlayStation, because that's where I want to be.

And only if I'm really craving something, let's say when Civilization comes out, although that's not a problem anymore either, because I was on PlayStation now. But back in the day when Civilization 5 came out, for instance, I played that on PC for months, because that was my only choice. Or when Gears 3 came out back in the day, I played that on Xbox 6, because I had no choice. But I just generally speaking, most of what I want is going to be coming.

I just need to be patient. So William, the fuck out here. Danny Garcia, he says, hey guys, why don't you give a shout out to Colin this week? I started off Spec Ops the line last week and was surprised by how enjoyable it is all these years later.

Here in Colin Rave about it being a hidden gem and finally took him up on it, it's a short 5-6 hour campaign, 15 for your Platinum Hunters. The gunplay is good enough, but the story is what keeps you in it. Moral of the story is that we should all listen to your boy Colin more often. Definitely go play this one guys.

Please. I'm surprised this one hasn't been re-released, by the way. Spec Ops? I'm surprised that it hasn't gotten like a non-Nation remaster, but some sort of native, they never got a native PS4 release.

They could bring it to PS5 even and do something like that. I think that, I just think 2K doesn't care about that game. It is really weird, because it is culturally a really important game in the conversation. If people are really, really knowledgeable about the industry or really interviewing games, chances are they know and respect Spec Ops the line.

But outside of that, nobody seems to address it. It's never brought up by the publisher. It's just kind of lost to time. I remember when the multiplayer beta or whatever the hell launched and I was like, oh, what's this?

And everything had sucked. So it took me a while to actually, because the gameplay is not really what's special about Spec Ops at all. It's functional. I liked it to play it.

It works. It's not gears. No, it's not. It's fine.

It's really good. It is kind of shocking that it hasn't seen any kind of re-release like that. It's very bizarre. Interesting little tidbit for you guys out there.

That game was written by a guy named Walt Williams. He's a buddy of mine. Walt Williams also worked on BioShock. He also wrote Star Wars Battlefront II, which a lot of people didn't like to be fair, but I don't think the story was wrong.

He was just hired by Insomniac as a writer, and there's word that he might be working on other than resistance. So wouldn't that be interesting? How about that? He could be working on Spider-Man as well, but it doesn't seem to fit into what he usually does.

So he does have, see, here's the other interesting connection though. He has Disney's kind of blessing through working at Motive, and so he also probably has Disney's blessing if they want to bring him to Insomniac. That's probably one hurdle they don't have to cross because this guy's already been kind of vetted to write canon, if that makes any sense. But shout out to him.

I love that guy. He's great. And when I was writing my book, I'll talk one day about the book I was writing for a major publisher that we ended up not doing about game stories and game narratives, but I actually wrote the sample chapter partially about his game. And it was based on an awesome interview I did with him when we went to a southern food place in San Francisco called Hard Knocks, and we just put a recorder on the table and I just talked to him for a couple hours and it was great.

So we go into that. Chris, before we move on though, I did want to ask real quick, I was going to ask you this last week, but you were under the weather. So we did the show without you, but the PSVR that I gave you back in 2018, right? I wrapped it down in paper towels and all that for you.

I made it really nice. Never use it. I was wondering we're in 2021 now. We're recording this in March, 2021.

I wonder is it possible that I gave you the PlayStation VR in the past in order that you might give it back to me in the future because to catch you up, well, you know this because we talked about privately, but to catch the audience up that might have missed it. My PSVR, I was already in Rayor and ago. I was actually going to play it. And then I couldn't get it to work.

And so something's broken with it. And then I was like, Chris, can you send me yours now? Yours is getting delivered from California, imminently. Do you think it's possible that I traveled some sort?

Did I affect the timeline in some way to give this to you so you can send it back to me when I needed it most? In other words, I already bought myself a second PSVR. Yeah, maybe. Maybe that's how things were always supposed to play out, you know, because I never got that damn camera.

Yeah, you totally screwed up. It reminds me. I always talk about Sam Harris, the academic who I really love. He did a podcast recently about pre-will, which I thought was really interesting, and specifically his argument is that we don't have free will, which I thought was super interesting.

So maybe, like you said, maybe it was supposed to be this way. Maybe it was as if we could have never done anything about it, even if we wanted to. Even if I was like, I don't want to buy him that PSVR. That wasn't even an option, even if I thought it was.

Yeah, maybe that was the plan on long, quite frankly, because it's suspicious that you got me everything but the camera. Right, and I don't need that. Right, yeah, I'm good on the camera. So.

Welcome back to The Answer Is BeMo! I'm on. The board is yours. I'll take BeMo for 300.

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Is it BeMo.com slash cash? Good night, everyone. BeMo. All right, let's go to the news.

There's some big pieces of news here. This week, a couple of pretty big ones, actually, for PlayStation fans. This first one, though, frustates me to no end. And I want to talk about it at the top.

Number one, a new second party studio has been formed with PlayStation's Blessing and Money, and they're working on an all-new IP for PlayStation 5. The studio is called Haven. It's being led by well-known games producer Jade Raymond, and it's located in Canada. A place Sony has never had a first party presence and has lacked a robust second party presence outside of occasional partnerships with the likes of the now-defunct team United Front Games.

The announcement made on the official PlayStation blog is sparse. The studio doesn't even have a logo or a functioning website. The post says very little of use, and there's reason for that. It's leader, the aforementioned Jade Raymond, was at Google until six weeks ago, when it was announced that she, along with most of their internal state-of-the-line development resources, would be Leco.

Thus, this is being compared with most notably, I'm sorry, to Kojima's fire sale deal with Sony in 2015 right after he released Metal Gear Solid 5 on behalf of Konami, and the two sides finally split up. Kojima turned around and released Death Stranding on PS4 four years later in 2019, running on a proprietary Sony engine using PlayStation's Money with a game and IP owned by PlayStation. However, while Kojima has been known to take his time, he's released a lot of games. Raymond in recent years has not.

She made her name as the producer of 2007's Assassin's Creed, as well as the executive producer of 2009's Assassin's Creed 2. She acted in a managing directorial and executive production capacity on Ubisoft IP like Splinter Cell and Watchdog, but it's truly been more than a decade since she's played out a game. You'll recall that she joined EA in 2015, helped form their Motive Team that still exists, then left in 2018 to go to Google, where she didn't put out anything either. Alright, so this news garnered some excitement, and recently so, I think at first glance, because PlayStation fans are kind of reeling from the Bethesda deal, I think people are looking for something exciting, and they found it for a glimmer of time, but Chris, I'm curious what your take is on this, because to me, I'm not trying to be mean, I'm like, who cares?

This isn't as big of an announcement as people are making it out to be, and I'm a little concerned as I will go into it in a minute the way it was made, but I do not understand the excitement about this particular announcement. What do you think? Yeah, I don't think this is like an Amy Hennig. Jade Raymond's obviously done some good work, and in fairness to her, I don't even necessarily think her lack of productivity, I guess, is necessarily all her fault.

I mean, Google was, there was some recent news about how poorly managed Google's entire operation was, regarding Sadia, so I'd imagine it would be hard for anybody, even I don't even imagine Kojima could have done anything under Google's current games initiative, but it's something, it's definitely not nothing. It's something that I think is worth talking about, it's something that, okay, you'll keep an eye on this, this could be something cool, I wouldn't say Jade Raymond is a nobody. No, no. So I would definitely say it's like it's reason to be excited, but don't fool yourself, this is not like, this is not a Bethesda tier, this is not Elder Scrolls coming exclusively to your service, this is going to be whatever the hell it's going to be.

But even I think it's also just kind of like, the name is a bit, it's not the most important thing to focus on, I guess, but it is kind of, I don't know. It's not, well, it's generic. It's generic, yeah. Even it's somehow more generic than Sony's Santa Monica, you know what I mean?

Yeah, Sony just names its teams after cities and they're usually, yeah, I don't know why it's more generic, but somehow it is. Dustin, I'm curious what your take is on this, specifically through the lens of excitement about Jade Raymond's inclusion in this, I think one thing that Sony has shown a propensity to do over time, which I think they should be applauded for is they've really done a really nice job of heightening females, not just in development teams, but rising to the top. People will know that the executive producer of Gorilla and Dix-Mats has been there for a very long time. Shannen Stutt still rose to the top of Sony Santa Monica.

We, Chris brought up Andy Henig, who of course wrote Uncharted and became creative director of Naughty Dog. They do this and obviously there's Connie Booth and Deb Mars and there's a lot of people that have been in the place of ecosystem for a long time. So I think it's really cool that they're giving some second party resources to a female led studio. I also think it's really important that it's Canadian because Sony has never really been able to, and this is important, Sony has not been able to tap into that market of developers in which there are lots of people in the especially Quebec Montreal kind of development scene there.

They've never tapped into it. They've never been able to hire anyone there. They've never had a studio there. And this isn't a studio they own, but they're at least going to be able to tap into those resources, which I think is really cool.

So there's a lot of excitement about where they are and what they could do, but I just, I'm still kind of hung up on the Jade Raymond aspect because the Chris's point, it's not all her fault that she has really something certainly not. I don't believe that at all, but she is in a managerial position. She just left EA Motive in the middle of their project and then she made the poor decision to go to Google, which was not smart. And she was amongst the managers there that were enough.

So I don't know how much of a victim she was, as opposed to maybe one of the people that contributed to that culture. We don't really know. So what do you think about this whole mixture of things? The biggest question I have, and I'm glad that you brought up, and I believe we have a right in that relates this as well, about how this relates to it kind of has a Cojima productions feel.

And I'm just curious about how this deal goes down. She obviously just got off of Google. And so is Sony coming in and basically paying for not only the production of this new IP, but are they also paying for her to set up this studio like they paid for Cojima? I guess I'm just curious.

It just seems like a big investment for a studio that you're not even going to own. But I don't know. I'm not as familiar with the business dealings as far as that aspect of it. Well, my assumption is that there could be two things.

They might have independent investors. We don't really know. The full story, these things happen quickly sometimes. But the other thing is that Sony might just be like, here's X amount of money and then milestone money and then sales money at the end.

I think that's what happened. And the mixture is probably exactly what Cojima did, which is like, we have money to establish ourselves independently, you get the IP in the game, and then we like move on from there or we continue to work together. I just, I don't know. I feel like the difference between a lot of the people we're talking about, whether they're male or female, is that producers and the soci producers and executive producers, they're important.

They're really important that they're making a video games. They're the organizational tool that helps bring all the disparate aspects of a video game together and keeps them on track and is the liaison between all the different teams. It's important. But they're not the creative force behind games.

They're not. And I don't know why in, like think about film. You might get excited about an executive producer being attached because of their pedigree, but that term is thrown around wildly and loosely in movies. In games, you don't really hear it mentioned very often because it's not really important to the creative aspects of what makes video games interesting.

It's a part of what makes video games happen. But from the end users point of view, it's like, Jade Raymond, it's like, well, she, she did produce Assassin's Creed. She executive producer Assassin's Creed II in Brotherhood. She knows what she's doing, but she didn't make them.

She didn't write them or create Assassin's Creed. She didn't, you know what I mean? So it's like, to me, I'm like, I don't know. It's not Amy Hennick coming in.