#46: All the Rage

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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 salutations. Welcome back to Sacred Symbols, a PlayStation podcast.

This is episode 46. My name is Colin Moriarty. I'm joined by Bob Sledding and Dusius, Chris Reagan. Hey!

How are you? I'm doing okay. You're wearing a shirt today that's like kind of magenta, but kind of purple. I don't know what it is.

I like it. It's nice. It's red-ish. It's more of a lot.

I don't know what it is. Crimson? Don't deny me my redness. Yeah, I guess okay.

Fair enough. It's kind of like Crimson. It is Crimson. I would say that's accurate.

It's a nice shirt. It's red, by the way. That is not true. Yeah, so I learned the color of Crimson when I was a kid because G.I.

Joe, which was before your time, but the bad guys had these soldiers called Crimson Guards and they wore these red outfits. And that's how I... I went from the Fairly Outparents who had a character named the Crimson Chin. It was a superhero and he was by Jay Leno for some reason.

Oh, I did not have some reason. It makes a lot of sense. Yeah, because of the chin thing. The chin thing.

Well, Chris, appreciate you being here today. Of course. Hope everyone out there is doing well. I just got back from Boston last night.

I was at a wedding. I was like, I'm really uncomfortable. I'm socially uncomfortable. I don't know.

Especially when I know anyone has some. I didn't really know anyone at this wedding, but just generally speaking, it's like a fusion of everything I don't really like. Yeah, an obligation. Right.

A ceremony. Dressing up. Dressing up. Yeah.

But then there's dancing and you're sitting with people you don't know and everyone's making still the conversation with each other. It's like a wedding if it was all people you knew. Yeah, those weddings are better. I do like those weddings.

It was very nice ceremony. Very nice people. Nothing. No offense.

It's getting anywhere where they don't know anybody. Right, exactly. It's like being a funeral where you don't have the person's like, I guess it's sad. Yeah.

I've never gotten a funeral for a person I didn't know. So I've been at play. Really? Now, plenty of funerals.

I'm a funeral. I'm a funeral. Crash or con. I got a funeral tonight.

I'm like the one with the Westboro. You're one of the people with the Westboro best part of this church that holds the signs. That's why you're going to all these things. You fucking bastard.

Chris, you watch Lola. I did. I was going to go now. I wanted to know what I'm doing about your journey together.

I was curious about how it all went. It was entirely fine. She was nice. She didn't.

She barked every time somebody opened the door. Yeah. She think she owns everywhere she is. Yeah.

She got very, I went to a friend of mine's house with her and they were Don's present. And she got very jealous and very growly. Really? Protective.

Yeah. She pushed a dog off me. Really? Yeah.

That's cool. But she loves you. She loves you, man. I think that she was happy to see me like really excited because you dropped her off here last night and then I came home like an hour later.

Yeah. And she was excited. But I felt that the prescient inside of her, you know? I felt that the prescient inside of her and she was so excited when she saw you today.

So thank you for taking good care of her. Of course. We appreciate that. How was your sex party?

So that you went to a little bit of an all. OK. So here's what happened. I was invited to go out to a place called Bar Sinister, which is like, I guess like a goth bar?

It's really cool. But I guess at the same time they were doing in the venue next door, they were doing the Alt Porne Awards, which I still don't know what that means. I wasn't out there for it because I was drinking free drinks. And that was all that's it.

That's all I remember. I was a crowd of people and I was like, I don't know. I was looking at your stories on Instagram and all porn, I guess to me would be like what? Suicide girls and kind of like all that shit.

That's my stuff. It's like tattoos. It was pretty good. It was pretty wild.

Yeah. I like not that kind of one. It wasn't a sex party by the way. It was just, I don't know.

Well, you could make that case, but it wasn't like, we'll just say it was a sex party because it's interesting. But I must say that the Instagram story made it seem quite intriguing. I've never heard that term either, but I think I understood what it was because there is something really sexy about those kinds of girls and the tattoos and the piercings and stuff that I really enjoy as well. But I also like your classic traditional porn.

Yes, standard. Your standards, hot, blonde, hopper, whatever the case might be, without the whole thing. So it's good that we have options. Yeah, we live in a free market.

We do with them. Some might say it's a little too free. I wouldn't say that though. Speaking of free markets, Chris, just want to remind everyone that our merchandise is available.

It's in the form of t-shirts. You can go to tinyurl.com slash sacred shirts. A lot of people have been buying the shirts. We really appreciate it.

Actually, you guys have gone above and beyond in that regard. Remember, you can customize the colors of your shirt, obviously the sizing, even the logos that you want because my other logos, the other shows that I do are available there. And remember, if you don't have the money, you simply don't have the desire to buy the merch. It's too much.

I know some of you live in other countries that may or may not exist where there's a lot of fees and all this kind of stuff. Yeah. I think it should be. So the logos are also available free of charge on patreon.com slash hollens.

And you do not need to be a member to access the post over there. Download the logos to your heart and heart's content. Make your own stickers. Make your own shirts.

Do whatever you want. I just ask that you don't make a profit or I'll come for you. Chris, Danny Atkinson wrote in the US on patreon.com slash hollens. And remember, everyone can support us on patreon.com slash hollens.

And for early ad free access to every episode of the show, the ability to submit your questions, comments, concerns, all some ideas exclusive podcasts and more. He wrote in all capital letters and no punctuation. Play Persona 5 or I will burn your house down. That's what he wrote in the book.

Jokes on you. What's your name? Danny Atkins. Jokes on you Danny, Ackermann.

Or whatever the hell. I don't have a house. I have an apartment. I do too.

So you're going to hurt a lot of other people. And you will likely be sued if not arrested. Yeah. You let's see.

You used to assume this is not a moniker. I'm sorry Danny Atkinson is your real name. I'm going to burn my own apartment down in the blame. And blame Danny.

That's fucking sinister. Right? Yeah. Good for you.

Danny D'Arcy wrote in the US. It's a greeting since the one of my favorite podcasting duels out there. One of my. Yeah.

What other podcast do others anywhere near as good as us? I thought we only won. I dare you to fucking. I dare you to name a better podcasting duel.

Colin, last week you said you could easily put 50 hours into a game. And I just like to put this out there. I got the Kingdom Hearts 3 platinum 50 hours or so. I think you're delayed to Let's Play.

I can turn into a whole video series, the Platinum Kingdom Hearts 3. What's say you do that, my good sir? I say you're pushing your fucking luck, Danny. That's what I'll say.

You don't want to learn all the ins and outs of anime Disney? No. I certainly don't. But I did want to bring that up because we do.

Oh, Kingdom Hearts Let's Play. We also want to over-click Let's Play. So the last plays are going to start. We're going to record them I think next week or the week after.

And we'll get all those out. I hope in the next 30 days or so. I promise. That should be fine.

This should be good. I think we'll be good. Yeah. The reason that we're a little delayed is because I'm kind of fucking around with SideQuest, which is my YouTube channel.

I actually hired a writer and this person's going to start writing the scripts and all this kind of stuff. So we're going to have a regular kind of cadence or a more regular cadence hoping on YouTube just to see if we can find more success there. And so the last plays will fit into that whole scheme. But I think most imminently I like to review the Castlevania Anniversary collection and then we'll have a SideQuest episode next week.

And then the last plays will be enrolling out. So thank you for your patience. But no, we will not be playing All King of Hearts 3. That's not a long, long game.

It's definitely long for people who don't know what the hell it is. It's 50 hours too long, it sounds like. So we're going to get into that in a little while. William Emory, I should say, wrote in what's called.

He said, hey, CMs. I actually didn't realize we actually share the same initial game. Do you have a middle name? Ray.

Ray, that's right. Oh, yeah. Ray, I didn't even think of that. Well, no, I knew that.

But I guess I just didn't think of it. I don't have a middle name. So now imagine if you are middle name was Ulysses, then your initials would become. You've always thought this.

I've always thought you've decided to say that. It's a weird tradition in my opinion. Like not a long running one, but my brother doesn't have a middle name either. The males in my family don't have middle names.

Weird. Don't know why. Yeah. But William Emory wrote in what's said, hey, CMs, while the two state of play presentations haven't lived up to the hype, we expect from a first party announcement standpoint.

The idea has great potential. I'd love to see Sony release state of play videos on the first Tuesday of each month, highlighting the best that PSN has to offer for that coming month. As a way to help solve the stories of visibility problems for smaller titles. What are your thoughts?

PS, if Chris can put up two whole videos in a month, surely, Sony can put up one. It's a good point. So I wanted to bring that up because while I was gone, there was a second state of play presentation. We're going to go over all the news in a little while from that.

But what did you think overall? Don't get into the announcements. But I took kind of Umbrage with William's thing that it didn't live up to the hype. I feel like people are hyping these things up for no reason.

I watched it. I thought it was fine. Yeah, it was entirely OK. It was exactly what I figured it would be.

I was surprised by some stuff and not particularly excited. It was fine. It was supposed to do, I think. I don't know if making it like a PSN showcase would really be anything really more exciting.

You know? Yeah, I don't think so either. I just wanted to throw that out there because I feel like people are. Got to calm down.

Yeah, I don't know. It's not going to be in E3. No. It's the reason why this is happening is because there won't be one.

Right, exactly. It's just all these really small kind of. And it's good for those titles that wouldn't receive, you know, a big fanfare of a showcase at E3. But yeah, the downside of that is it's not particularly mind-numbingly interesting.

You know, it's not a fucking huge deal. No. And I actually think what's really cool about it is that if they keep doing these once a month or so, and then they keep this cadence of, you know, smaller games, second party games, some exclusive, et cetera, then they randomly grow something huge in there one day. Then you're kind of sitting in for the sixth edition of State of Play.

And you're like, all right, now we're going to get some VR games, and then suddenly it's like, boom, here's like a fucking massive game out of nowhere. I think that that's how you kind of keep people engaged in guessing too. It's not only like expect that we're never going to get the triple A shit, but to just throw it in there once in a blue moon. So that everyone keeps everyone guessing.

That's what makes me excited about it personally. But I think they did a nice job. I like it. It's nice and short and truncated.

It reminds me of Square Enix's E3 presentation last year. No waste of time. Don't waste my fucking time. Do you like that?

You know, I don't like hype. I don't like it. I don't like hype. I really don't like almost anything.

Now Chris, what are you playing? I'm playing Rage 2. We can talk about it a little bit. I would play a little.

Yeah. I don't have to play a super huge amount. I think I played like maybe I put like three and a half hours. Well, that's enough to give them initial impressions.

I think we can go more into it next week of course as well. But what are your initial impressions of the game? I like it. It feels a little bit janky as far as like, you know, the world design.

Because it definitely feels like the shooting is on point. Like shooting things feels really, really good. But it's also got this really weird kind of just cause style story, where it's like kind of like over the top and kind of B-movie tier writing and one liners that sound really cringy. I don't know.

It feels kind of unbalanced to you because when I'm having, when I'm in a gunfight, it feels really great. And it's like, ah, this is enjoyable. I like this. But then you're done with the gunfight.

And then because it's an open world, you have to drive to the next encounter. And it's that point where it just feels a little bit like, it doesn't have quite the same masterful pacing that Doom had. Because Doom obviously was a linear structured, very methodically built. FPS where this feels more like, here's an open world with a great FPS framework.

But you have to get to the fights for it to be really engaging. What do you make of kind of the open world nature of it versus a moral linear thing? Do you think this game could work more linearly? Because I agree with you.

When I started playing it last night, again, I only played it for a little while. I was like, holy shit, this feels great. Like, this actually is a really fun Doom-like shooter. That they really made something really fine, kinetic, arcadian fast.

But I found that it just, it did feel still. There was actually a moment where I was having a really great time, like in the beginning shooting guys in this base that you're in, whatever the game starts. And I'm running for it to any time. And then it was very fucking days gone.

Like, and then it just kind of seems, just came and I'm like, what the fuck? Yeah, I had the right thing. It pulls you out of it very often. And it does that quite a lot.

I think if you ever played Doom before, there's like one or maybe two moments in Doom where you're stuck in a room and you can't do anything and you're just listening to dialogue. That happens in the beginning of this game and it's a very long, I think you're in there for like seven minutes listening to dialogue. It's like, oh my god, no, this is not what I, it feels like it wants to be like an open world exploratory like scavenging kind of game. It's like, you got fine bullets.

No, yeah, it feels like it wants to be like this open world kind of game where it's like, oh, scavenge for your bullets, you got to manage your health resources, but then it also wants you to play like it's Doom. Which is kind of the same problem I had with Wolfenstein where it's like, hey, play like it's Doom, but also you're really weak. You know, it's got one of those kind of disjointed kind of points to it where it's like, but the actual firefights are great and their abilities are really fun. So the one thing that I was really surprised by, again, not having seen much of the game is that the enemies in the game, and I don't know if people are going to feel this, but aesthetically, like visually they present like the Chimera from Resistance.

They have these like things on their backs, like, you know, in resistance, you're aiming at their back to make them overheat. So like they're not aliens from another planet or whatever, but they aren't in resistance either, technically not. But if you want to get really, really good, but the point is when I was playing with them, I was playing again, I'm like, holy shit, they look like Chimera kind of that. You know, so there was that whole thing of it, but I like that you brought the B-movie thing, because what I actually was reminded by was I was like, holy shit, this is kind of like we brought up early with Crimson Guard.

It's kind of like G.I. Jell, like, that is the thing. I was like, oh man, this would be so cool if this was just re-skinned as a G.I. Jell game, and you're playing as Flinter, Snake, guys, and Rock and Roll, and this guy's like, that's your own Cobra Commander.

They also have these character introductions where like, pause is the game and like highlights, like the Borderlands bosses, but it lasts for a little bit too long and it's like this weird like, over the top dialogue of like, general, whatever, the strongest guy in the game. It's like, okay, all right, maybe stop. It's like, I'm not on this big mech and you're like, what is it? It's very weird.

It's very kooky. So like, armor flies off the people when you hit them too. It's the action is great. It's just getting to that action that kind of like, maybe it's okay.

I have a lot of studios. It's funny, right? They're two teams. So there's one in New York City and there's one in Sweden, but like they make, just cause, which we brought up earlier, but then they make this game, then they make Generation Zero, which is fucking terrible.

And like, it's just so weird how these different things just come out of nowhere. And I wonder, I forget who even published Generation Zero is like, five or five, whatever. I wonder if you know, if you're still there, or something like that, I wonder if they look at Rage 2 and like, what the fuck? Why did you give us?

Yeah, like, I didn't have looked at Rage 2's reviews. I did see a few things where I don't think it's being like super well received. I don't know that I have anything super bad to say about it in the very preliminary way I played it yet, except for this. The games, again, the games menus are fucking terrible.

Yeah, the menus are... I don't understand why people can't make these. These are worse now than they've been ever. I don't really understand why that is.

I guess it's cause we try to make them like super stylized. Like, look at all this. Look at all the real estate that we can take advantage of by making it all pretty and cool. And it's like, I would just give me a menu.

Yeah, I just wanted many that can read it. So there's one pet peeve of mine. I like going into like codices and like reading about things, whatever, but you know how there's always like a marker telling you that you've read it or not. In this game, you have to like, you can read everything by just going over it in a list.

But that little icon up here, let's go into it and then back out of it. Like weird things like that where I'm like, come on guys, this is... I say it over and over again. I know I hit this beat over and over again, but it's the little things.

Why is this so hard? This is due right. The tutorialization is a little weird too, because it stops the game. It's not like Doom where it'll pop up at the bottom and wait for you to do it.

Also, every time you get a new upgrade or whatever, it teleports you to this tutorial room. And it's like, you could just let me use it in the world. I don't know. There's a lot of weird things like that.

I think the game is fun. I think from what I've seen, it's being relatively well received. I see a lot of people really like it. Some people have a problem with the way it portrays just figure people.

I don't know. I saw that. I'm probably gone, of course. But I like it.

I think it's pretty solid. I don't think it quite has the finesse of Doom just yet. Honestly, this game is just making me really excited for Doom again. But I think it's solid.

It's a nice, solid single player FPS and I'm glad it exists. Oh great. From the antigoldial, I saw it wasn't being that well received. I'm glad to hear that because I want it as to be encouraged to make or they didn't make as much published these kinds of games.

And what's so interesting about these games and their first person shooters is what you had kind of said. They love health and armor-based shooters, which I love too. So Wolfenstein, Rage, and all the rest of Doom are all armor-based and health-based shooters in a world of regenerating health, which is so weird. So these games are inherently more difficult, which is something that I really embrace a lot because I like the regenerative health and quality.

It feels right for some reason. But I don't know why everything started going in that direction. It was definitely Halo. Halo did it.

And then like everything kind of. Bungie tends to do that where they'll do something and they'll just work for this. And then everybody's like, let's do that. So like regenerating health, it was.

And then like when Destiny came out, it was like social hubs, you know? Well, they're trendsetters. And it's so funny, man, because when we were talking about Anthem a few weeks ago, Biler had said that they weren't really allowed to encourage you to look at Destiny when you were making a game. That's so insane to me.

Still. I think about that. I wake up in the cold sweat. Like how the hell?

How do you just blows my mind? Just wake up like that at 3.30 in the morning thinking about Anthem. No, he does. So the other thing I want to point out, I don't know if you've noticed this, and I'm interested to hear from others if they've noticed this when they start playing Rage, is you had mentioned the writing is like, you know, B tier and it's silly, but no, right?

And I'm not talking about the dialogue, the writing and the game. Like when you look at the code, it's everything, it's fucking terrible. I want people to go, dude, it's bad where I'm like, this isn't bad to be funny, this is bad writing. It has like all the, it's not even grammar errors, it's just like run on sentences and like, no comments.

I'm like, well, I wrote this. This is like so weird, you know? So that's another thing I want people to keep an eye on if you're interested in that sort of thing. Because we get spoiled, I think, from games like Mass Effect and others that have these really beautifully written, finely edited, believable things about planets and comets and all this.

And then I'm reading about these characters and I take a run on Sense and I'm like, this is what, oh, like this was even edited by him. I do have a really good time too. It's awesome. The text was really small, but that was so weird about it.

Someone actually just put the time to write it properly. So, you know, Rage 2, all the rage, which is one of the episodes is going to be named, by the way. That's not a bad name? No, I like it.

I like it too. Chris, I also want to give a shout out to a game I played on Vita while I was going to Boston. I was in Boston and I was coming home. And it's also available on PS4 now.

So you can play there. It's called Valhalla. We had mentioned this a week or two ago because it just came to PS4. It was on Vita for a while.

It's VA-11 and then I've never played anything like it. So, what is it? It's a visual novel, really. But it's a visual novel.

So, again, this is going to cut off a bunch of people. I don't know if people are not interested in this. I get that. But it's a visual novel where you play as a bartender in a bar called Valhalla in the future.

And you listen to people as they come in and you talk to them and you make them drinks. And there's this whole thing where they're like, I want something sweet. So you have like this list of things and it's like, well, these are the sweet things. Maybe they're like one of these.

And so you make all the ingredients and then you put ice in it or you age it and you mix it up and then you hope that they like the drink or whatever. And so there's this little gameplay element to it that I really got hooked on. And I'm at the very end. I haven't beaten yet.

It's over the 19 days. It takes place in December between mid-December, up through New Year's Eve. It takes place in the far from future, like the 20s or 20s or 20s, 80s. And it basically is in this, all takes place in this bar.

You're a bartender named Jill. And there's like a lot of crazy shit going on in the world outside. It seems like society's falling apart. People are coming in to like talk and like, you know, it's all these.

It's very, very strange. But I really like it. I think it's like really interesting. And again, I just never played anything like it before.

It's super endearing and funny and well-written. A lot of Seinfeld references in it, which is really weird. There's a whole guy named Art Vannele in it. That's like one of the characters.

In 2018? Yeah. Like, he's a boy guy with glasses. His name is Art Vannele.

And he's like one of the... And it's just a really interesting, passive, relaxing game, really cool soundtrack. I might check it out. Yeah.

The prices are all hyper-inflated because like the economy is all fucking... The future's like the drinks are like $200 each. Your rent is like $10,000. And the cool thing is it's like you're basically getting tips and like by not making mistakes, you get bonuses and more money.

And that allows you to buy things for your apartment and allows you to kind of like sustain a life for yourself outside that keeps you happy so that you're better at work. And so like, that's really cool. It's like really new game. I highly recommend it.

They're making apparently a sequel called Nirvana, which is like N1, RVA, N8 or something like that. And I'm excited to play that whenever it comes out too. So I highly recommend it. Vahal, go check it out if you'd like.

Now Chris, there's a lot of news. A lot of news. In fact, there's so much that I cut some out because we're gonna be all fucking dead if we go through all of it. But again, we mentioned the state of play earlier.

So some of these are coming from state of play. Some of these are just announcements. We'll go through all of it. You guys wrote in, of course, your Patreon supporters.

Our Patreon supporters, we appreciate you. I want to start with the game that Chris cares a great deal about. Number one, the medieval remake currently in development at Canadian studio, other ocean finally has a release date. The PlayStation 4 exclusive based upon the beloved PS1 original is due to come to console on October 25th, just in time for Halloween.

Perfect. The original medieval came to PS1 in 1998 and was followed by a sequel also on the original PlayStation in 2000. We last saw a new medieval game back in 2005 called medieval resurrection, which was actually a European PSP launch game. Other ocean established itself with the Du-Gyo games, which it created on behalf of public economy.

Though this is by far their biggest game to date. They also actually did the virtual reality game that we talk about every month on the PSN that that's also there. So they do that? Yeah, really?

Apparently. That's pretty wild. So Joey Williams wrote it in this on Patreon. He says, Hey, see that the second power hope y'all are copacetic.

We can answer that medieval is being released for a scant $30. Is it odd for me to feel somewhat guilty for paying so little for a game that obviously had hundreds of man hours and millions of dollars invested into it? I don't understand the argument that I quote because it's a remake of a 20 year old game that inherently makes it less valuable and quote using that logic resident evil to remake should have been released at half the price it was. I know this low price tactic worked well with Ratchet and Clang 2016, one of the best games this generation, by the way.

I actually agree with you in terms of exclusives and led to that game selling game busters. But Insomniac is a giant in the industry who doesn't necessarily need to see the revenue of a $60 game. But I highly doubt other ocean interactives in a similar position. I know Sony can eat the cost but I just feel that a franchise re-direction developed by a relatively small studio needs every penny you can get to stay afloat and warrant a potential remake of medieval to or hell just keep the lights on.

Thanks for all the amazing work you guys do and thank you for helping me maintain a future identity during trying times. You're very welcome Joey. Thank you for your detailed inquiry. Yeah.

So before we get into all this Chris, how do you feel about what we saw? The game looks great. I'm excited. I mean I've always loved medieval.

I have a bit of more of an affinity for medieval to so I am kind of standing there. But $30 isn't really bad at all. I feel like a game like this that's been out of the public consciousness for a really long time. I feel like a $30 price point is probably going to help them sell way more definitely.

I feel like it's probably going to be way more enticing to be like, well, what's that? It's a Halloween themed game that's kind of neat. 30 bucks. That's not bad at all.

I suppose like, I don't think it sells for 60 even if they did have medieval to in it, you know, because it's just such an old IP that's like, it's definitely like for the fans kind of thing and hopefully new people will graft onto it. But I think the $30 price points perfect actually. I do too. So there's a few things that Joey went into here that I think are interesting and that need clarification.

So first of all, this isn't going to hurt other ocean. I don't know the details obviously of the contract that they signed with Sony. But my assumption is that Sony just paid them a lump sum. They own the IP.

So the price like they have nothing to do with the price thing. So I wouldn't worry about them. Like they got paid whatever they got paid and Sony is taking the game and now selling it. Now I think you're overestimating how many people worked on this game and I think you're overestimating how long they've probably been working on it.

I actually did a little digging Chris with other oceanics. I didn't know much about them. That's how I found out about the virtual reality thing. But they have a bunch of different divisions.

They have a studio in the maritime provinces in Canada. They have a studio in Emeryville in Northern California. They also have a QA studio. They have a bunch of porting studios.

They ported Minecraft to 3DS. They did all this week. So they're a studio like a contract studio. They're not a contract studio.

It's really common. That means they take money up front and they help with a port. They help with assets, whatever the case might be. So I wouldn't worry about their health.

They might have points on the back end where the game sells while they might get a bonus. But this game's not going to make a break their studio. They're going to exist and live. And I think the $30 price point, Joey, is going to allow them to make that medieval to remake.

Because I think that Chris has been really upset that they didn't include both. But I understand this tactic because you want to just see if people care. For sure. Yeah.

And so I think per Chris's point, I think this is going to make people care. $30. $60 for medieval is a lot of money. Yeah.

Well, the thing is like medieval one specifically is a very short game. You could be that game in an hour. Probably. I don't know if they're going to change it and make it kind of like a little bit more modern.

But that was my initial thing where it's like medieval one so short. I feel like medieval two and one would at least be a more compelling package for $60 or $40. But at $30 maybe. Right.

Maybe it works. I think it's gonna. I think people are going to like this game. I think people are going to care about this game.

I think the blade October release date is perfect. I'm so pleased that they did that because that was that was something that they really missed out on with until dawn back in 2015. I think they made a huge mistake releasing it and like August or whatever they did. I'm like, why did you just released this like October and like make Halloween commercials and make this a big deal.

So they're not obviously going to make commercials for medieval, but it's just nice that they're going to be able to have a few beats on PlayStation blog and on their Twitter account, whatever the case might be, which I think is really exciting. And show, I think you're just a little confused about the way these relationships work because you brought up Ratchet 2016. Again, that's a second party game. Sony owns the Ratchet IP.

They go to Insomniac. They pay them a lump sum. Again, maybe Insomniac gets money based on how the game performs, but these are financial arrangements. They're in these studios.

Right. These are financial arrangements that are kind of in stone and they're delivering the product. So don't worry too much about it. You should be happy that you're paying $30.

And by the way, Sony is looking at it and being like, they think they can make a profit on the game with $30. Yeah. I'm really excited, man. Me too.

And comparing Resident Evil to remake the medieval's a little fun crazy, by the way. Resident Evil to remake is like a triple A game. Yeah, it is. You know, medieval's not a triple A game.

Number two, during the second state of play stream, Sony revealed that it's partnering with Studio Ilphonic to deliver a second party exclusive multiplayer experience to PlayStation 4. Better yet, it's using a beloved film IP to do so. Predator Hunting Grounds is an asymmetric online multiplayer game that Fox, which owns the Predator franchise, is partnering with Sony on. The game is due to come exclusively PlayStation 4 sometime in 2020.

Ilphonic is a Colorado based developer that's best known for the Friday of the 13th game that came out back in 2017. An asymmetric horror game that probably provided the blueprint for Predator. So two things about this. Number one, I was shocked that no one wrote in about this game.

The reason for that is that I thought it was so calm when they showed it. I don't know if you had one of these short for 10 or 15 seconds. I'm like, oh, oh, you know, this is a so calm game. It's not.

It's a Predator game. But it kind of is a so calm game. It's kind of a way. It's kind of evolved, you know, in that way too.

But what did you think of this? I think it's cool. I don't really give a shit about Predator at all. Me neither.

I always thought he was like one of the weakest monster designs. Just this butt-faced thing with dumb mouth and dreads. Like, what am I looking at? I love asymmetric multiplayer.

I love I love Left 4 Dead versus Mode. I love, you know, I just like a lot of this when I say I'm a multiplayer player. It's like, ah, this is neat. It's like asymmetric.

And like, I'm glad that there's more stuff like this coming. I'm glad that it's a this is the first party. It's Sony's polishing it. Second party would make it a little fun.

So I heard rumors and we talked about this right across on the show. I had heard from multiple people that Sony is trying to get involved in second party multiplayer games. Yeah. We just talked about this a few weeks ago, I think.

So here you go. I was calm was right. You know, but when I saw this, because I've been hearing some rumors, some really strange rumors about so calm from someone who I trust I'm not going to go into them today. I haven't verified them.

But when I saw this like a few days later, I was like, oh, shit, you know, already, I do believe that so calm. I believe that deep in my balls, you know, I think that that's a play franchise that makes a lot of sense today. Yeah. But this is a nice step in an interesting direction with the studio, a little fun that actually delivered a game that people really liked with Friday the 13th and what people might remember about that game is that they had some trouble after the game came out because there was a lot of legal issues with the Friday the 13th IP that engulfed their ability to update the game.

I don't know if you remember anything. Yeah, I remember. So they found a new patron basically in Sony. It's cool.

And the game is due out in 2020. And yeah, I was shot in the one road in about it. I don't know if that's because we got any like 75 degrees this week. I don't know if that's a good sign for the game.

I think it's because Predator is just such a weird IP, you know, like the movie that came out recently that also nobody talked about. Do you remember that? I saw theaters. I haven't seen a Predator movie in 20 years.

Yeah, it's fine. But like, I don't know. I'm excited about the prospect of Sony published asymmetric multiplayer. It's awesome.

It is. I think that it was, you know, especially with Turtle Rock with Evolve. We talked about that game. Yeah, obviously for dead.

I think that those games were maybe a little ahead of their time because they were almost like these Fortnite like experience not in the gameplay, but in like left or dead meant that right. Like Fortnite or PUBG meant this. And my only question for you Chris is because we were talking about Fox's inclusion in this IP. Does it mean something?

Do you think that they would have been better off just making a second party new IP as opposed to like partnering or are they kind of passing the box of the box to pay for the game? Maybe something like that. Maybe they got a pretty good deal on licensing and like maybe I think it might be cool to have something that's licensed just because I think people are still scared from what happened with Evolve. I think people have this idea that Ace and Metroply player is not something that people like, even though Left or Dead is like one of those probably people, whatever.

Evolved in D well. That was a new IP. That was new stuff. So I guess they're banking on maybe, hey, you know, maybe the Predator IP is enough for people to be like, oh, what's this?

Right. And maybe get their, you know, cut a teeth on it. I think, I think it makes a lot of sense. I think you're probably right, too, Chris, in the sense that we talked about the Friday the 13th game.

That's not a big IP, really, either. You know, not a modern IP. It's not a modern IP. All these things are big old IP, which I think is the key.

Right. So maybe these guys just have an expertise in treating these IP with respect and that's very attractive. You know, even if you don't, like who's going to care if like who's going to care for a Predator games, but I think that's kind of thing. It's like you want to get something that's recognizable, but also won't won't be so high profile that if you mess it up, it's going to be this colossal, you know, thing.

Right. And probably not a massive investment either. Yeah, exactly. But I was really interested.

I thought it was really interesting to see that Sony's last year before that, which means that it's an exclusive. So we have that look forward to now. The interesting thing with that is, will they bring it to PC? I think that this is another game similar to hell divers and a few others.

I think this makes sense to bring a PC. And in fact, I think it makes sense to bring a PC immediately and allow cross play between the platforms. That'd be cool. It happens.

Yeah. Just happens. You have nothing to lose, really. Yeah.

Doing that. Number three, a new Ghost Recon game has been announced and it's coming in fairly hot. It's called Ghost Recon Breakpoint and is the direct sequel to Ghost Recon Wildlands, who was launched in the first quarter of 2017, who was surprisingly quiet commercial reception, though it was fairly well regarded critically. The game is due out on PlayStation 4 and other platforms on October 4 of this year and promises a ton of content both out of the box and in the months to follow after release.

As was the case with Wildlands, the game is playable solo, but is made from multiplayer and takes place in a sprawling open world. If you're interested, you can sign up for the game's beta right this second by going to go to recon.ubisoft.com, though your participation isn't guaranteed unless you preorder the game, apparently. So this is another one of the things where you preorder the game at some point, you get into a beta. Who knows what happens?

Neo J D wrote into us and said Ubisoft just recently revealed Ghost Recon Breakpoint, the sequel to Wildlands. Originally, I was ecstatic to learn all about the game, but the more I dove into it, the worse it got. And the original, you could play the whole game on your own with the rest of your squad as AI, the game that you gave orders. People wasn't perfect, but it worked.

According to reports from Game Informer and IGN in the sequel, this is no longer the case. If you play solo, you have no AI squad and you can't access end game raids that have been added. As someone who loved the original, this completely soured my opinion on the sequel. Colin, I know you're in the same boat where you play everything solo.

Why do you think Ubisoft changed Wildlands this way? Why does it feel like more recent games are forcing players to play co-op to experience everything in the game? This is so interesting, Chris, because I look at this and I'm excited about it. Because I'm like, all right, fuck the late game stuff.

Now I don't have to order my dudes around. Now I can actually play by myself. So I actually look at this news and it makes me more excited to play the game. Yeah, in my experience, whenever I've ever wanted to play a game alone, I've never wanted to do that end game stuff because the end game stuff is designed around cooperative play.

So what does it matter even if I'm in there by myself with AI dudes? It's more, it's even more tedious. Yeah, this is a contradiction to me, actually, you know, JD, because you want to play alone, but you want to give your AI squad orders, but then you don't want to play with other people to play the end game content. In other words, it just seems like you're kind of getting what you want, and maybe a little bit of what you don't.

But this is more of what I want because I was, I played Wildlands for only a few hours. I was like, I don't want this. This is not what I want. What I was playing.

Did they force you to have AI in that? I think I don't recall that well, but I remember thinking about it a lot. I used to think of Rainbow Six three back in the day where you have this squad. In Rainbow Six Grand X box, I used to kill my squad at the beginning of the stage, and then just go through the stages by myself because it was annoying.

So having these AI controlled things and pointing people at different parts of the map, that's not fun at all. In fact, that's a massive turn off. So I'm glad that they're making this a truly solo game. And I wonder, Chris, because this is a Ubisoft published game, I wonder if they are looking at games like the division and they're seeing like, well, people are actually playing this game alone a lot, and we should make this more accessible to people that want to play like that.

Maybe. I do think maybe you could make the argument that locking people out of the late game without or making it inaccessible to people without friends is kind of contradictory to that. But yeah, from personal experience, I've never, I've never once cared about the end game, especially when I'm playing by myself. I only care about the end game if I'm playing with other people.

Right. I never care about it usually beyond the ending of the actual core game, because that's just not the shit that intrigues me about those games. I know that I'm in the minority. I guess Neo JD, it would be interesting to hear from other people that are similar to mine because I don't know that sounds more attractive to me.