#38: Long Division

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Without you, Sacred Symbols and all things Collins Last Stand would not exist. But enough of that, on to the show. Greetings and citations. Welcome back to Sacred Symbols PlayStation Podcast.

This is episode 38. My name is Colin Moriarty. As always, I'm joined by the Pizza Delivery Man, Chris Ragon. Chris, you look like a Pizza Delivery Man today.

I am kind of dressed like that now. It's not an insult. That's a totally honorable job. I don't know where I'd be without Pizza Delivery Man to be completely honest.

My life would be totally different. It'd be hell. Do you remember? I mean, it's not like an old man, like we don't remember this, of course we remember.

The days before Postmates and Ubrids and stuff, when you had to actually call specific restaurants, and then they would send specific people out to the other food, I always found that a little awkward. Like, that's becoming more awkward for me as time goes on. I need to not interface with anyone. What do you do with the Postmates, people?

You just tell them to leave it at the door? Oh, I wish I could do that. It's kind of like the pizza guy in CMNT, right? Like, you know, we leave it near the grate and we're going to pull into the sewer.

I can't do that. I'm actually, I have to be honest with you. Now, I order Ubrids or something Postmates almost every day, sometimes twice a day. And I go out there and I wait for them.

And when they pull up, I grab the food, and often, multiple times a week, they thank me. And I'm having no idea where the people ordering the food. Are they paying attention to what's going on? There's legions of these people stranded on the streets waiting to deliver their goods.

I do the exact same thing. I wait outside my building and then I grab it and then I run away. Yeah, sprint into the darkness. My whole Chris is always that they do not call my phone.

That's the thing I don't like. Don't call me. In fact, in one of them, I think Dordash literally says in my notes, like, do not call me. Do not, you don't you dare.

Now, what we, oh, yeah, you are a pizza delivery man. Yeah, so you're wearing a red shirt, black, green, no, they're dark blue at TV. And then you have a red spider-man shot, but you have a red hat on. So you look like a pizza hot delivery man.

Yeah, that's cool. That's a cool job. I wasn't intended. There's probably some pizza delivery people listening to this right now.

We appreciate your hard work and you're endeavoring to make some money. Yeah, just don't call Colin. Do not deliver him. Do not call me.

Now, Chris, I just wanted to throw out. Now, last week's episode of Sacred Symbols had a really controversial conversation about gum. I don't want to get too much further into this, but I did want to acknowledge that this had a lot of feedback. A lot of people had a lot to say about this.

I don't know if you saw it on Twitter. I don't know. Some people were really supportive of me and my anti-gum stance. Some people were astonished and thought that it was evidence that I was perhaps from another planet.

So I still think it's beyond bizarre. It is a little weird. It is a little weird. I want to acknowledge that we're going to let that die down, that argument die down.

Good. But I did want to acknowledge that. Now, Chris, I do want to talk about something serious before we get into anything else. There was a shooting tragedy in New Zealand.

I want to acknowledge this just because we have Kiwi listeners, first of all, we're thinking of you. We also have Muslim listeners, a lot of Muslim listeners from around the world. We have a lot of Middle Eastern listeners. If you're asking how I know this, by the way, I can see where everything's downloaded.

Not on YouTube, about a quarter of the audience listens to this on YouTube, but everyone that downloads pockets, I can see where you are and where you're downloading from. So I know we have a lot of Kiwi listeners. I know we have a lot of Muslim listeners. I'm sure we have Muslim Kiwi listeners and stuff like that.

I just wanted to, I don't know if you want anything to say about it, but I just want to throw out there just, you know, that we're thinking of you, that secret symbols is an inherently apolitical shell we get in the politics sometimes, and we get into religion and whatever when it makes sense, but everyone's welcome here. And this is a place for you to be regardless, and which one, you know, we're thinking of you. So I just want to throw that out there. Very terrible tragedy.

You know? Yeah, no, it's insane, especially that it happened in New Zealand. Yeah, a place not known for its violence, not known for its gun violence specifically. So I just want to let you guys know we're thinking of it down there, and we hope that you are doing well, all things considered.

However, a lot going to be running the past on Patreon. Remember, you guys can write it on Patreon. Patreon.com slash.com slash. And if you support the show, he said, Hey, see, swear it.

And he used a little super script too. Oh, good, which is pretty cool. That's an effort. Kind of a topical question.

And one I wouldn't normally ask, but felt somewhat compelled in light of recent events and the proximity I had to the incident in New Zealand living in Sydney, Australia. Have you ever felt weird about killing representations of actual people in games? I find as I get older that I struggle to play games like Modern Warfare, and in particular, after the horrendous attack, FPS games in general, to a degree. I am by no means advocating for these games not to be made.

But one of you guys had any similar experience to me in your respective careers playing games. Thanks again for your great work and insight across the CLX catalog. I look forward to listening to you guys every week. Thank you, Walken, for your question.

I just want to throw this out there since it did happen, and we should have conversations about topical events when they occur. How do you feel about not in-game violence, Chris, but in-game shooting and kind of... It is becoming... I shoot guns sometimes, and it's fun, and I don't know what it's like to shoot a man, I don't know what it's like to kill a man.

You know, like, I do know a lot of people that have in the military, and they talk about... Actually, we've talked about on Fire Side Chat a few times with different people about the different feelings they have about it. Now, I can't imagine that, and I'm a pretty passive person and a non-violent person, but I've been thinking about that in games that I've been playing recently. I was playing Far Cry, I think it was.

Far Cry New Dawn. And I was just popping these guys' heads like melons, right? And it was very satisfying. But I was thinking of my mind, like, Jesus Christ.

Like, this is pretty violent stuff. You ever become self-aware of that when you're playing? I think I'm aware of it, but I did kind of a video about this exact thing almost, where I kind of view these kinds of games more as, like, I would view paintball or dodgeball. In a sense, it's not necessarily a simulation of that kind of act.

It's more so just outsmarting and outplaying other people within the parameters of a game or within the parameters of a rule set. I am aware that from the perspective of somebody not playing a violent video game, it looks far worse than it is for the person playing it. Like, when I'm playing a Gears of War game or when I'm playing like Grand Theft Auto or any kind of FPS, I'm thinking more strategically, I'm thinking how, oh, where's this guy coming from? How am I going to get a point?

How am I going to, like, use the environment to my advantage? Whereas the person watching is just saying, oh, he's just gunning people down. And I understand that's a perspective I've never felt particularly weird about it, but I've also been playing these kinds of games for a very, very long time, probably before I was even aware of the kind of crazy stuff that was happening in the real world. So there's not really that big of a connection for me.

Yeah, it's an interesting point you make, actually, Chris, because when we play Monopoly, which I know you don't play, when we play the game on Monopoly, it's fake money, it's fake real estate, you're not really going bankrupt. You're playing out a fantasy and it is the same thing. And at the end of the day, playing Call of Duty is the same thing as you're playing out of fantasy. Like you said, yeah, but I think a lot of people think it's like you're playing out a murder fantasy, whereas I think it's more of just a competitive kind of, it's just more of a competitive nature than it is on a slot of violence from my perspective.

I'm sure there's some psychopaths who probably get off to playing prototype. Right. No, no, definitely. And you have to be really psychotic to think of playing a prototype, that game's terrible.

I think you're like, it's interesting though, because there are certain games that I've played where I've actually felt uncomfortable. It didn't stop me from playing the game, but you know, notoriously, the no Russian mission in, I think, the original Modern Warfare, which is the one where you walk through the airport, you can kill like all these civilians in the airport. I remember that being really controversial and I think rightfully so, not in the way where it should have been a race from the game, but that was actually a thing where you could, I believe when you start the game, you could choose not to play that mission, if I remember correctly. I think it was an option to like remove that mission completely, because I remember that being the first time where I'm like, wow, this is pretty intense.

And what is the boundary? And I actually speck off the line, which is the game we talked about not too long ago, was a game that always stuck with me because you're fighting, from our perspective as Americans, it's interesting, you're fighting American soldiers speaking American English, talking to each other, like normally you're like ambushing them and like popping their heads. And it definitely makes you think about what you're doing in the game. And as long as I think we know that it's fake, which we do, then I don't really see a big deal with it.

But I do become aware of it every once in a while, and I am disappointed, and I continue to be disappointed, although I like these games, that we always default the violence as a way of playing a game, because it's just the easiest way to represent what we understand is playing games. Whether you're jumping on a mushroom, you know, a toenstool, or you're not killing a toenstool, or you're jumping on a little mushrooms in the turtles in Mario, that's killing them. Well, that's more abstract, I think. There'll be a lot of violence in video games, actually, is kind of an alley-based sport, where it's like you see football and you're tackling each other, and even something as room-measure is like basketball, you're just stealing the ball from other people.

There's an inherent like, kind of, I don't know what it is, a feeling or like something that we enjoy as people, of just competing with each other and just kind of making things kind of harder for somebody else. In the context of a game, I think that's why those video games tend to be the most wide appeal and most broadly made, is because you don't need to think too much about what you're supposed to do. It lets you kind of think more about different avenues of the game, like strategy, and like those kinds of things, as opposed to just thinking about like, oh, how am I going to fit a puzzle into this specific thing? It's interesting, though, to think about games over time, not only video games, but just how they always default to some sort of violence.

It's always abstract. I'm a huge chess player, and chess is an abstractly violent game, right? We're moving pieces to where we're attacking each other. And it's interesting that even with like the games that really are prototypical, role-blings, D&D, and all of that, in wargaming, in the 19th and 20th century, all these things defaulted to fighting.

Yeah, you're slightly brilliant. That's why I brought Mario, because it's still at the false to fighting. That's an interesting thing to me that I think is very philosophical and very high level in terms of, you don't have to play games like that. There are games like everybody's gone to the rapsh and talk.

I pretty much write the entire show, and then Chris chimes in and makes sure everything's in order, and then we share the document and so on and so forth. The point is, is that the statistics for this are not in a document. I'm holding them on a post-it note, so Chris has actually never seen the results. Now, 1,296 people took the time for some reason to answer a poll.

Good. About this. 74% or 959 people want us to keep it. 26% or 337 people want us to lose it.

So we will continue doing the game readings. Some people are asking what you replace it with something else where they're like, no, not really. I want the show to be in that 80-90 minute segment, typically, at the most, and looking at the statistics of the show. I don't really feel like the show needs to be any longer than that.

Sometimes the show is going to be longer than that, but that's kind of where I'm aiming for. So I'm not looking to replace it, but we don't have to. We're going to continue to read the games. So I want to know what's happening.

Address, Avalo's running west, and said, hey, Kyle, what are you guys ever going to finish Resident Evil 2? It's literally less than a 10-hour game. I guess this man is stalking our trophy. I'm not finished yet.

That's true. I've moved. I haven't finished either, but I'm also playing on like three different platforms. Like one of them is a Twitch game, one of them is just like for my own personal, and the other one is just like I have it.

And there's also just a lot of games. I like the idea of having Resident Evil 2 there is just like a reliable, fantastic game that I know is going to finish at some point. I'm like, okay, I'm done with Sekiro. I'll jump back into Resident Evil.

See what I was doing. It's not even so complex that I forget what I'm doing. It's not like a Skyrim where I come back to it a couple months later. I'm like, oh my god, what the hell is I doing?

I don't remember the story. It's very concise. It's very straightforward. So I'm just treating it as this little savory snack.

Yeah, it's a little morsel. I'm the same way. I'll get back to it when the time comes, but I'm trying to hard to skip up with things. It's a busy month.

It is. And so we'll get to it. But stop stalking me. Stop stalking my trophies.

And finally Alex Balleron was saying, hey Kyleon, because I was wondering if you believed any of the speculation about Sony being in high-level border meetings to acquire take two with a mostly cash deal. That would mean all of 2K and rockstar would belong to Sony, GTA Red Dead, BioShock, Borderlands, 2K Sports games, etc. How awesome would it be a take two with a Sony first party? So I wanted to bring this up just because this rumor was blazing for a couple of days.

Last week it was completely unbelievable from the gekko because of the amount of capital that would be required for Sony to even spend to buy take two. And I didn't believe it from the beginning. Sony has to spell that rumor. I just wanted to bring it up because some people are going to wonder where it is.

It's not true. So we're not going to talk about it. I thought it was pretty obvious. I made a video actually that went up on sidequest today about the studio Sony should buy.

You guys can go check that out. And one of the things I noted it was this reminded me of the rumor from a couple years ago. The ridiculous rumor that EA or Microsoft is going to buy EA and I'm like no they're not. That's not going to happen.

It's an extraordinarily expensive purchase. That's not going to happen. The amount of money they grind. I thought it makes you imagine.

And also why would they want to limit that gross amount of money to one platform when they're on every plane. It makes no sense to me. Well the answer to that is that the shareholders make out bandits and so they would sell to anyone. But I would too if I were a shareholder.

Yeah, well cash deal. That's fine. But the point is that Sony I don't think even has the capital to do that and it doesn't make any sense. And so we're not going to talk about it anymore.

But I didn't want to acknowledge that. Chris, let's talk about what we're playing. We're both playing the Division 2. You're playing on PC which isn't it.

I'm playing on the Epic Store for free. Did you get on the Epic Store for free because of the account? I got an offer from Epic a few months ago that I can get a basically account on the Epic Game Store that can be everything for free. This is not something that's uncommon.

Steam does this as well and has done it for a long time. In PlayStation I assume we'll start doing this next generation where they're going to give you accounts that will basically let you play anything on the store. This is usually for media types. So I gave my media account to Chris.

So that's awesome. So you got the Division 2 for free. So how are you enjoying the game so far? It's more division.

I certainly like it more than I did the original one. I think it looks pretty great. Like graphically it looks great. The gunplay feels a little bit better.

Moving around doesn't feel as stiff. It's not like a developer mindset thing. But I don't know what it is about the division specifically. The Division 1 had a weird UI but I could get around it.

This one I just it's a disaster for me. I don't know how you feel about that. So what where the menu is? Just like the menus and the way everything shows up and just the sheer amount of tutorials that pop up.

There's so much reading. I don't want to read any of this. I remember this one when I was trying to find the Quartermaster which is like some character that you have to speak to in the hub world in the White House to get a new perk. And the Stanley Parable Adventure line, the thing that was taking me where I needed to go, just took me straight up to the wrong place.

I thought it was going to be an empty room that had a vague shape in it. And it was definitely not the right place. I was like, why is it telling me to go here? And it turns out it was taking me to the room above the Quartermaster and giving me a vague looking arrow pointing down.

It's just like little things like that where it feels kind of clunky in the UI and just the map and the gameplay is fine. It's just a UI that needs a tremendous amount of work. It's kind of for me a tale of two games from that perspective because there are parts of the UI in the hub that I really like. The upper right hand corner radar when you're fighting is really useful.

It starts showing you red bars and red bars and get thicker and stuff. It's actually really intuitive and it works. I almost stare at that half the time that I'm fighting. I'm looking at the screen.

And so there is that. But then there is discovering things on the map. And the arrows that point if you're above the altitude or below the altitude is something really vague and really small, especially in the TV. The text is really small.

Now you can make the text bigger if you want something to complain about that. But yeah, you're right. There are some weird issues with it. The thing about the White House that's funny, the White House in the game is your hub world.

It's not a spoiler. You find yourself immediately in the White House. Very anticlimactic design choice from my perspective. This was the thing that I had been thinking about only in the last day or two where I'm like, when it makes sense for us to end up here and have the ultimate fight at the White House?

Why am I starting at the White House? Because everywhere else I go now is like, no, it's interesting. I'm going to the National Museum. I'm going to the Air and Space Museum, whatever.

And the Washington Monument stuff. That's cool. But the White House, because in Fallout 3, remember, getting the downtown Washington DC was a really big deal. You had to really work hard to get there.

I feel that design choice is a little weird. I would have started the corner of the map and worked my way towards the White House. As opposed to starting the middle of the map. I know that's a little bit of a strange.

It's a strange complaint. Would that have been seen as too political or something? I don't know. That's the funny thing is that these guys are trying so hard to be apolitical, but it's inherently political.

And that's fine. I like it, though. It's a lot of shit that I can play alone, which is nice. I actually feel like more with this one than I did with the last one.

The last one I did feel was, I felt like I needed to play with other people, whereas this one, I am kind of enjoying the base gameplay loop enough to go on by myself and not need other people there. So that's pretty solid. I haven't spent too much time with it, in fairness. I got it, like, I think, a day or two ago.

And I've only put around two hours in. But I'm enjoying it so far. I don't know how the end game is going to look or what it's going to be like. I've skipped every story because I hate it.

I can't do it. I honestly stop listening to the stories. It's interesting because that's a story that would be on my alley. Maybe it is on my alley, but I'm just listening to podcasts while I'm playing it.

It's the perfect game for that, just to shut your mind off. I will say that. Maybe it's my waning skill of games. I don't know.

But I find this way harder than the original division. I'm dying a lot in this game. It's nice because it really does punish you. It seems more punishing in some way than the original division, although the original division is not fresh in my mind, where if you peek out of cover at the wrong time, you're done.

So it is nice. It's a methodical game. There's lots of different tools. The Gunplay feels good.

I'm using a submachine gun. Like, Uzi basically is my primary weapon. It's awesome. You have to let them get close to you.

But it's good. You shoot out of cover and stuff like that. It feels great. I think it's a really interesting game with a long road map.

I think that's what's really exciting about it more than anything. It's very anecdotal, but I have 2000 friends. I have my PSN friends on my PSN. I go and look at what people are playing all the time.

People are playing all sorts of shit. Last night, there was 27 or 28 people playing the division, too. There were two people playing Anthem. I was wondering, what is going on in Anthem world now that the division is not?

It seems like the division is being very well received. It doesn't seem like people have really cataclysmic issues with it. I feel like the main issues with the division is just to stem back to what it is. People who don't like looters or people who didn't like the original division are still probably not going to like it.

But the people who did, it seems like a fairly well put together game as far as I can see. I'm enjoying it. I definitely recommend it. I was a guest on another podcast last week and I said it.

A lot of gamers are cost conscious. You only buy a few games a year. You look paycheck to paycheck, whatever the case might be. If you're one of those people, I think this game is maybe a wise investment.

Yeah, you get free DLC for this thing. Yeah, you get free DLC for a whole year. There's a lot of game in the core game for $60 investment. It's one of those games where if you like Chris was saying, if you like this kind of game, if you like lootershooters, I hate that term.

If you like these kinds of games, then this is a really good investment for you because you won't have to really spend more. I'm not sure if you like that. Presumably dozens of scores of hours out of it. The other game that I've been playing Chris and I want to talk about quick before we go is, we're moving on to the news I should say, is Stardew Valley.

Now, Stardew Valley is interesting because I've deleted it and downloaded it and played it many times on my beat several times. And I just get it now. And I've played it for about 15 hours. I look like I think about it.

When I get to bed at night, and I get to bed at like a ridiculous hour, 4 or 5. In the morning after watching Game of Thrones or playing a game or reading or whatever, I crawl on the bed and I play for like an hour or two before I go to bed. It's like a farming? Yeah, it's kind of like Harvest Moon.

It's a farming simulator. But it's more than that. You can mine and you can develop relationships and farm and fish. It's cool about it.

I was reading about it because it was made by one guy, which is super bad. He was like, yeah, there's some weird story about how he was trying to get into the industry and he couldn't. And so he started making this game to show people that he could make a game and that just got ballooned into this project. And he's a multi-millionaire now.

The game is sold like 4 or 5 million copies I think as of like two years ago. So good for him. But I was reading a little bit about it. And the thing he was saying was that what he was talking about with the Harvest Moon and I think Animal Crossing and stuff was this arbitrary timeline on everything or just a timeline.

Like you have to get everything done. And the time moves in Stardew Valley, but it's infinite. Like it just goes from season to season to season, season to season, year to year to year. And so there's no rush.

Like you can just play the game however you want. And I really like that. It takes all the pressure off and makes me want to play it because you want to maximize like your crop yield and stuff. But this game is just like experiment.

If you don't want to do anything for an entire student, it doesn't really matter. Like go walk around. I highly recommend it. I know I'm very late on this.

I know a lot of you already know that. But if you're a skeptical player like I am or try it in the past, maybe try it again. It's really great on Vida. It runs great on Vida.

Looks great on Vida. And I really like it there. So we'll see how much more time I put into it. But I suspect that I'm going to put more time into it.

That's great. I did forget this to go back to the division. I didn't want to read this question. Nathan Sir Mac wrote into us.

And this is a good one for us to talk about briefly before we get into the news. I didn't want to ignore this. Hi guys. I would like your opinion about the division 2.

My brother and I have two kids each, all five and under. So we both have limited gaming time right now. I'm sorry. Neither of us are really into the multiplayer PvP experience.

But we do love playing co-op together against the NPCs in AI. It basically acts like a phone call. Keep it's a touch with the bonus of gaming at the same time. We love games like Borderlands 2, Ghost Recon Wildlands.

Ghost Recon Wildlands is interesting. That was one of the Ubisoft games that just came and went. Yeah, I liked it though. I remember.

Yeah, but just didn't have that stickiness, that's saying power. Far Cry 4, Rainbow Six, Vegas, Taras, etc. We are always looking for our next one co-op experience. My question, would the division 2 be fun for us?

We really try to avoid PvP as it isn't enjoyable for either of us right now. And you understand that it's part of the game blah blah blah. This is a great game for what your situation is, Nathan. Yeah, you and your brother like to just talk and fight enemies at the same time.

This is exactly it. This is it. So yeah, I would say this is a good one. It's probably the best one out currently.

Because like these kind of literature games, they really are kind of like these weird chat rooms really where you can just kind of kill aliens or like just grind for gear. And I think this is like a perfect one because it's narrative is kind of so do enough that it doesn't get in your way and it's not like this blaring things. It really takes a back scene and just lets you kind of roam around. So yeah, absolutely.

It's a game that definitely encourages and results in lots of encounters and stuff like just even coming from point A to point B. The quick travel system is a little limited in a sense that you're still going to have to run around a lot. So you're just going to be fighting lots. It's a good game for you to jump into I think.

Yeah. Enjoy Nathan. You and your brother. Chris, let's get into the news.

It's going to get into nothing major, but quite a few items. Number one, it appears a Borderlands related announcement is imminent and it's happening in PAX East and Boston later this month. Chris will be at PAX East. I will.

Gearbox software, the team most famously behind Borderlands, but also behind the Brothers in Arms franchise as well as Battleborn. Tweeted out clearly, Borderlands inspired an image of a highway sign indicating that all will be revealed on March 28th in Massachusetts. Word is that Gearbox may also be revealing a second game during the festivities that remains to be seen with that game might be. The original Borderlands recently leaked via a games classification ratings board indicating that the 2009 original is likely coming to PlayStation 4 immediately and maybe the other game Gearbox plans on showing off.

So basically big Gearbox presence at PAX East, Borderlands 3 will probably be revealed so we'll talk about it when it is. The other game they're teasing I think is Borderlands for PS4, the original Borderlands, which leaked? Are you excited about this? I'm looking forward to this.

Although this game is being announced in a climate that is surrounded by games like Borderlands now as opposed to 2009 or 2012. I think they lost their window to be honest. Maybe. I think they could get a good audience if they have a good narrative because I think that's really the problem with a lot of these games.

Like the narrative really does take a backseat. I don't know what the hell is going on in the division. Anthem is a convoluted mess. Destiny is probably the most coherent so far, but even that one I still don't really understand.

Borderlands 2 had a really solid cast of characters that you actually gave a shit about. A villain that was actually compelling and interesting. Even if the story wasn't all that interesting, it still had characters interacting in interesting ways. So they could keep that kind of appeal and just kind of modify it for a modern loot-based shooting genre that's way more online focused.

I think they could absolutely secure a decent chunk of that pie. I hope so. I feel like this was again the game that they should have done immediately after Borderlands 2. I understand that studios want to flex and be out of the system and try different things, but I think that was a huge mistake for them not to just make Borderlands 3.

I know that they had the pre-sequel. Again, that wasn't Gearbox though. That was 2K Australia I think. I'll be interested to see what the reception is.

Also, what's interesting too, a lot has happened since Borderlands 2 launched with Gearbox. People don't respect Gearbox as much anymore. People don't respect Randy Pitchford as much anymore. The aliens colonial marines should happen.

Battleport is a really bad idea. He has some weird issues going on with an old partner or business partner of his. I'm not saying he's guilty of anything, but people just don't respect Gearbox the way they used it as well. I wonder if that is relevant at all.

Especially because they become more of a publisher. They have a lot of money. Oh, for sure. But people are still really excited about this.

Borderlands has never been one of my favorite things. I enjoyed Borderlands 2 before it was. Interestingly enough, I always felt the shooting in Borderlands was really weird and didn't quite feel correct, which is something they probably should work on, considering a lot of FPS's since Borderlands 2 and Borderlands 1 have come out and done a really good job finding their own identity. I'm interested.

I can't say I'm all that interested in playing Borderlands 1 again. That was definitely a co-op oriented game. I could not enjoy Borderlands 1 without friends. I'm interested too.

Borderlands 1, as I recall, was a little more linear in a sense. It wasn't linear, but I remember printing out at IGN. There was just a list of missions. Like, all the missions in the game.

You could just particularly go from one to the next. It wasn't in my mind. It was 10 years ago. In my mind, it wasn't as open.

So we'll see how it all plays out. I'm excited to see the original Borderlands 2. It holds up. Again, I don't understand why it wasn't in the Handsome Collection.

That came out a few years ago, which was Borderlands 2 and the Pre-SQL on PS4. Really? It wasn't in there. Like, the original Borderlands has never been released.

I always was a little puzzled by that because that probably should have just been in there from the beginning. Or you think that they would have re-released the original Borderlands before Borderlands 2, but alas, that's the situation we find ourselves in. So more on that after PAX East. And remember again, Chris will be there so you can harass him if you see him.

Number 2. Turtle Rock, the studio once heavily aligned with the Steam and most famous for its Left 4 Dead franchise has revealed its new game. It's called Back 4 Blood, and that's what the number 4. It's being published by one of brothers in its coming to PlayStation 4 as well as other platforms.

While the team confirmed that the game returns to the roots, it's not associated with Left 4 Dead as a franchise, and it will be a full-page AAA game. There is no release date or even a year or window for the game as of yet. Turtle Rock was founded in California back in 2002 and was best known for its early work, Porting and Crafting Counter-Strike games. Valve jumped into Bed with Turtle Rock for a string of Left 4 Dead related releases stretching from 2008 until 2010, at which point the team partnered with 2-game to develop and released its ill-fated asymmetric multiplayer game, Evolve, in 2015.

It's funny, man, because this Turtle Rock announcement has gone way under the radar. Way under the radar. I didn't know about it until you put it in the news. It's interesting because they're huge.

That's a big studio, but they are coming off of something that wasn't big for them. And so why do I dial this? I'll run it to some Patreon. Remember, you can sort us on Patreon and write in what's there as well.

So Turtle Rock's studio announced their new game Back 4 Blood, which is essentially a direct Left 4 Dead spiritual successor. I'm absolutely stoked about it and can't wait to see more about it. The whole situation reminds me of a question I continuously have about this entire industry. Why do some game developers just not listen to their fans and make the games they want to see?

We wouldn't need a spiritual Left 4 Dead successor if Valve listened to fans at all and invested in a proper sequel. The same goes for something like Half-Life 3. Why would they not want to make something that the entire internet wants? Another example is with EA.

Go to their Instagram and look at any of their posts in the last few years. It's literally hundreds of comments saying skate forward no matter what the post is about. And yet they'll never say a word about another skate game. Why the hell do some of these companies just not seem to listen?

It's interesting. I think Valve specifically or Steam Valve is the company that owns them. I don't think they care about game development that much anymore. They have certain games, but that's not where they make their money.

And I think they were just looking out and being like, well, what's the point? We don't need to do anything. The expectations for Half-Life 3 are so exceptionally high that I really don't think they could make anything that could possibly live up to it. I think anything that they make that's called Half-Life 3 is going to suck in comparison to the thing that everybody's building their heads.

There's this idea of there's a silent majority out there and there's a vocal minority, and that has a negative context, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's inherently negative. Where you have a lot of people clamoring for skate forward, but let's say they make skate forward and who's going to buy it. It's going to be those people, but maybe not a lot of people other than those. Think about how often you hear about how awful Anthem is and how terrible Destiny is and how terrible these shared world shooters are and how often they're at the top of these best-seller lists.

Yeah, Fallout 76 was the 20th best-selling game in the medical life. Yeah, Fallout 76 was the 20th best-selling game in the medical life. Nobody from what I could see like that game, but it sold a bunch. I feel like people think they know what they want, but they kind of don't really, and that's not necessarily true all the time, but I think publishers have to think about that too.

It's like, how many people really want this? And I think that's just like kind of a risk reward kind of thing. It's like, okay, maybe we'll take a risk on this thing and maybe it'll pay off and maybe it won't, but I feel like most people are just kind of like, okay, I'm not really interested in taking risks. I want to make money.

And I think that's ultimately what it is. Yeah, definitely. I think that's certainly true from Valve's perspective and from ProROS perspective, I want to see Valve own them for a little while, and they don't anymore obviously, but from their perspective, they probably want to do something else. We don't want to make Left 4 Dead games forever.

We like the space. We want to do something asymmetric and something fun, and so they try it. So I understand that as well, a lot of game developers don't want to make sequel after sequel after sequel, some do, but I think you have to look at it from that perspective to the creativity perspective, but you always go back to the well when what you do doesn't work, and that seems to be happening over and over again. You're going to see that, I think, with BioWare as well.

It's starting to double down on other things because Anthem's clearly not working for them. By the way, I'm pumped for whatever the hell this is because I love Love 4 Dead, I love that studio. Even Valve, I appreciate, even though it wasn't really particularly well received, just the ideas behind it, I really enjoy. And the fact that they were willing to even try that in the first place is pretty cool.

I think of Valve, man, even if Valve's second season or whatever it was, it's 2.0 when they made it free. I kind of feel like it was still a little ahead of its time. I feel like if they released the Valve in this environment, I bet you would be received very differently. That's why it's so tantalizing to think about the franchises that can now come back that are dormant.

I keep saying over and over again, so calm is absolutely, absolutely a series that can live again now in this environment. So if Valve, I feel like it would have been another interesting game that maybe was a little bit ahead of its time in some way. The people that played it liked it as far as I know of it. I do it.

Number 3, it looks like EA Access may be coming to PlayStation 4. For those unaware, EA Access is an EA-driven monthly subscription service on Xbox One NPC that gives players unlimited access to a number of electronic arts titles for one low price. Sony has long been resistant to letting EA Access on its console, and that seems to be changing after the service was briefly spotted on the Brazilian PSN. A Reddit user posted an image of the PlayStation Store with EA Access logo in one of the clickable boxes, with available now written underneath it in Portuguese.

While neither EA or Sony has yet commented, it seems safe to assume that EA Access is coming to PS4, and it's coming soon. So if anyone's interested in that, just another subscription service you have to pay for, I'm not especially tantalized by it, but a lot of people do like that on Xbox One, so that might be if this is true. And option for you very soon. Keep an eye on that.

Number 4, I have terrible news for you. A new Sonic the Hedgehog game is in development. Word comes by way of websites like a mod-tube which reports on a panel from South by Southwest. And a Sonic Central panel at the yearly event in Texas team Sonic confirmed that something new was worth coming, or remaining largely focused on team Sonic Racing, launching on PlayStation 4 and elsewhere in mid-May.

The last two Sonic games at Sonic Mania and Sonic Forces were released in 2017, and both are available on PlayStation 4. Oh man. New Sonic game coming up. Why was there a Sonic panel at South by Southwest?

What is going on? What do you mean, people are pumped, especially with that new movie? People are excited about Sonic. I don't want to admit it.

Are they really excited about Sonic? I mean, I'm excited. I really want to see what Sonic looks like. One of the mans trash is another man's more trash.

Yeah, that's true. You almost got it. Number 5, remember the PlayStation 4 exclusive game Wild that was revealed all the way back in games coming 2014? The game is being led by Michelle Ansel, the creative force behind the Rayman franchise and Beyond Good and Evil working both with Ubisoft and on the latter sequel, while cultivating his own team called Wild Sheep.

However, ever since the game was revealed nearly five years ago, we've learned absolutely nothing about it, save for a second trailer in 2015 during Power's games week. Indeed, it's long and speculated that the game is no more, but that doesn't seem to be the case. In Trep and Internet users have discovered that Sony has filed a new Wild based trademark in the US, indicating that the game isn't only in development, but might also be nearing a rearview of perhaps even release. So Wild was this game that was revealed at the last game's comment I went to.

That was how long ago this was. That was there. And it's like this game where you basically encapsulate an animal. Like you can go into an animal and be the bear and you can be the eagle and you can be whatever.

It's just animal. Exactly. And it was a game that was announced right after PlayStation 4 came out and at Gamescom, and it was a big deal because Michelle Ansel, like I said, is really well known for Rayman, really well known for Beyond Good and Evil. He seems to be splitting his time between Ubisoft and his own studio.

And this game was assumed to be vaporware, and it seems like that's not the case anymore. So maybe we'll have more information on that soon as well. Maybe it's an X-Gen game? Maybe it is.

Number six. No Man's Sky's Long Tail Post release support continues unabated this time with a multiplayer experience called Beyond. As you may recall, No Man's Sky came out in 2016 and while I found an audience and sold well, it was a critical dud and has been widely panned since launch. Last year, after a prolonged period of silence, Hello Games, No Man's Sky's developer revealed and released an expansion called Next, which revitalized the game for some, and Beyond hopes to continue that trend.

According to Hello Games, lead Sean Murray, there are three key components to Beyond the details of which will be rolled out in the weeks and months ahead, but for now, all we know is Beyond is Coming. So No Man's Sky marches on. That's such a good story, honestly. Just the story of that entire game is interesting.

I wonder, they're small team. I think they're a dozen stronger so. No Man's Sky sold well. They probably made an enormous amount of money, but I do really respect that they stuck with the game and didn't just move on to something else or make something else and try to forget.

Let's forget about this. I think their name really, like their reputations relied on them doing this. So I think it's cool too. For people that are into it.

And I remember when they announced the last expansion, which I forget the name of that Sean Murray released a video or an audio of their, I guess, audio chat room on what's that service called? Discord. And how excited? And there are people that really love that game.

And so I think that this is for them. I don't know how many of those people listen to this show, but it will be coming to PlayStation 4. Number seven, the somewhat innocuous actions of a famous Japanese voice actor has placed the western release of one game in jeopardy and forced a major publisher to replace his voice acting in another game. For starters, on the last week's show, we told you that Yakuza's spinoff game Judgment was coming to Western PS4's likely this summer.

However, that release has already been put in jeopardy. Multiple sources note that Pierre Takai, or Takai, who gives voice a character at Kiohei, Hamura, in the game was arrested in Japan on suspicion of cocaine's consumption and possession. Drug possession in Japan is an exceptionally serious charge. As a result, Sega, which has already been released judgment in Japan, has pulled the game and it can only be purchased at either retail or digitally in the country.

Reports indicate that Square Enix's following Sega's lead kind of. Mr. Takai also voiced his frozen Olaf in both the Disney film and more recently in Kingdom Hearts 3 in Japan. The publisher revealed that it will be replacing his voice in the game via patch.

It's crazy. It's an extreme... It's an adapt to that, Regis. So here's the story.

Apparently this guy, as far as I know, pretty well-known voice actor in Japan apparently had cocaine in his system when tested but had no cocaine been possession in his possession. Now, I know someone that I used to work with that accidentally went to Japan with marijuana in their bag. Like during one of the trips that he was in with him during this particular ship, but went there. He just had in his bag and then he got through costumes and he had marijuana.

If they caught him with that marijuana in Japan, he wouldn't want to prison. That's how serious it is there. So I asked him, I'm like, so I would have been more than to flush it and he's like, oh, I smoked it. And I'm like, you brought the weed to Japan and then you smoked it.

Dude, I smoked weed every day. I wouldn't smoke weed within a 5,000 mile radius of Japan. No, absolutely not. No, it's terrifying the hell out of me.

People can go read about the drug laws there. They're really fucking serious. Really, really, really serious. It's crazy that they just replace them like that in a patch.

It's so wild. Yeah, so apparently this is a big deal and I was reading this morning, although it's not super relevant to this audience. Maybe it is because maybe this game will never come to the west. I doubt that this is really interrupt anything for us.

But the game, apparently, because it was pulled off stores, is already being spiked in prices. You can buy Japanese versions of it for an enormous amount of money now. Well, yeah. So the market speaks.

Number 8. Website Push Square reports that Joe O'Carnahan, who is at one time attached to the Uncharted movie, as the screenwriter, completely went off on Neil Druckman during an interview on a show called Disgusting Film. Did you see this or anything about this? This is really weird.

No. As you know, Neil Druckman is VP of Sony-owned developer Nadia Dogg who cut his teeth on the Uncharted games before writing and leading the development of Last Bus in the Last Bus in the last part, too. However, he also stepped in as co-lead on Uncharted 4's reboot once Amy had the part of the studio. In the interview, Carnahan notes that he was really only concerned about hening's opinion on what he wrote and that he doesn't much care for Druckman.

Quote, ultimately, I want to make Amy happy. It was her creation. I think what's his face. I'm not a fan.

The guy that kind of stole credit for it. Now, at this point, the person says Neil Druckman and he says, yeah, that jerk off. Whatever. There was a bit of sabottering there going on with Nadia Dogg.

Amy created that world and she was the one that I really wanted to please. The other guy, whatever the hell is his name is, he's a hitchhiker. The Uncharted movie has gone through many stars and stops over the last decade and then was attached to a new director. It's unlikely to ever see the light of day.

That was pretty wild. I should say that Neil Druckman is a personal friend of mine. I know Neil. This is not a representation of him at all.

He's actually a really nice guy. But there's some beef here that we don't know about. It's so weird. It's so candid, too.

It's like an actual conversation that's not happening on camera. Yeah, definitely. What's interesting about this? I guess this Joe Carnahan guy who was a writer in the film and she wasn't really going to hurt him with these people.

Apparently, according to him, he's a jerk off. That's not the Neil Druckman that I know. That movie also is not happening. No, no, no.

Number nine is finally time for Battlefield V's Battle Royale mode Firestorm. Oh, boy. You may recall that Firestorm was originally supposed to be in Battlefield V from the get go, but was unceremoniously delayed leaving just the core Battlefield V's single player end multiplayer experience upon the game's launch in November of last year. However, we now know that Dyson's Battle Royale experiment is due out on March 25th and will be obviously free for all that on the game.

This particular Battle Royale experience will support 64-concar players that will take place on a map called Halvoi, which is apparently the biggest Battlefield map ever concocted. Cool. I still haven't played the Battlefield V campaign, which is still on my cross-media bar. I mean, the campaign is fine.

It's entirely forgettable. Battle of the once campaign, I thought was great. Yeah, yeah, it was a nice, it was an interesting way of doing it. This time it just kind of felt flat.

The multiplayer I couldn't stand because I don't know if I went over this when we first talked about it. Every time you got downed, you'd be stuck waiting for someone to save you. And you couldn't do anything. You couldn't change your loadout.

You couldn't do anything. You had to just sit there and wait like a baby, like an infant, waiting for somebody to pick you up from the throes of death. It was awful. I stopped playing it just because of that.

But the gameplay is actually fine. So I'd imagine just because I own Battlefield V, I'll probably check this out because I probably won't have this stupid infant wait-to-save-me mode going on because Battle Royale is typically one life. I'll check it out. I think it's late.

It's a bit late, especially with their own game. We often talk about Sony and how maybe they should release more games and they're not releasing very many games. But they look at EA just competing with its own games. Maybe it's just a cautionary tale that Sony actually has the right idea.

You want to have a good balance? Yeah, I think. You don't want to go too long without doing anything, but you also don't want to throw your own products under the buzz. It seems to be their specialty.

They just do it over and over again. It's very weird. They do. 2016 was tight and small too.

It was very weird in Battlefield 1. They just killed Titanfall 2. It was the best FPS that they've made, by the way. Very strange.

Number 10. Developer Rebellion revealed a bunch of Sniper Elite related news this past week according to IGN. For starter Sniper Elite 5 was revealed to be in development, a fifth mainline game in the franchise that Rebellion began way back in 2005. A release window or target platform has yet to be revealed.

However, we do know that in addition to the new game Sniper Elite V2 Remastered, a remaster of V2.0 from PlayStation 3 and elsewhere. The last Sniper Elite game, Sniper Elite 4 came to PS4 in 2017. Have you ever played these games? That's a game where you can Mortal Kombat X-Ray people's testicles, right?

Yeah, I think that's the one. I played Sniper Elite 4. That was the first one I really jumped into when it came out. And I want to like it more than I do.

I like it. It's a serious person shooter. It's very serious. The bullets have arcs and you have to time everything.

It's really wild. I wanted to like it much more than it was. I like the idea of it a lot. These massive maps with troops that are independently doing things and you just have to sling around and get your targets.

You can get in and out without killing it. It's like a finer made hitman. And Rebellion's good. I saw them at E3 a few years ago.