#49: Reimagining Warfare

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We, on the other hand, will keep making Tuesdays great again. But enough chatter. How about you onto the show? Greetings and segmentations.

Welcome back to Sacred Symbols, a PlayStation podcast. This is episode 49. Whoa. My name is Calm Warrior.

I'm joined by the disruptive Chris Raygon, who's the reason that we're a day late this week. Yeah, posting and posting the podcast to Patreon. These things happen every once in a while though. We always post every week and I really do take a lot of pride in the fact that we are always on time.

I don't miss weeks. I don't miss episodes. Things go out. Yeah.

Over Christmas, even over Thanksgiving, everything's good. And when we're late, which we are every once in a while, three feet in a really, but once in a while, we have to post a day later, so because of scheduling and all this, this was an unanticipated one. We were not able to announce this particular delay until right before it happened. So we apologize about that.

But what happened, Chris? You were in an Alberta. Yeah, and I took a flight to Seattle and then I, my second connecting flight was canceled. And I was stuck in an airport 14 hours and it was awesome.

Seattle airport. Seattle airport. That's a really 14 hour. I mean, that's a long time.

It's quite a while. It was kind of shocking, Colin. Yeah. I was kind of, you know, taking a back.

Yeah, I bet. Yeah. I bet. It was a day.

Well, I'm sorry to hear that. It's fine. I'm back home. Yeah.

Nice. I survived to the trip, I suppose, even though one of the planes that I got on, I can't remember if it was two or coming, like going to Canada or coming from it. I'm pretty sure it had flex tape on the wing, which is like, OK, yeah, that's a sign. Well, you're going down.

You're going down. Yeah. Isn't that right? Now, I'm glad that you're back.

I'm happy that you're back because this episode, episode 49, we're on the precipice of episode 50, first of all, which is very exciting. Three while technically we've done, I think 54 episodes, 53 episodes because we've done special episodes. So it's not really that exciting, but it's nonetheless, you know, something is put literally around. Yeah, it'd be literally my own, my own, my milestone.

That's the word I'm looking for. Geez, I'm a little out of it. It's a Tuesday. Never recording.

I'm used to recording on Monday. I get ready to record on Monday. Yeah, you know, so, you know, it's no big deal. We're here.

We're excited. E3 is right around the corner. I'm not that excited. It's really not.

I'm actually going to be. You're soaked. Only four conferences really have no, I guess five Nintendo and Microsoft will go. And then you be square.

And who am I missing? I'm missing. I'm a bit of a mess. And so, yeah, we're looking forward to that.

We're going to do two episodes next week. We're going to do a whole episode on Xbox only, which I think will be really funny. I kind of a op-o research one since Sony will not be there. I think Xbox and I will be showing you an episode all about it.

We're going to. And then we'll have our normal episode go live on Tuesday all about. But that's the UBSware, etc. So that's going to be pretty exciting.

Yeah, it's going to be a fun one. It's going to be a good one. Chris, a few other things to note before we get into this. This is going to be a long episode.

I think that's for sure. But it feels like it's going to be a long episode. We're going to do our E3 game at the end of the show. As you guys know, I'm fake salty about the fact that everyone does E3 predictions.

It's boring now when we used to do it back on like podcasts beyond. It was like an exciting thing. No one was really doing that. It was like this weird thing we used to do.

We'd make weird bets. And I just feel like everyone does it. I like the bingo card kind of thing. Yeah, that's a fun idea.

That's a fun idea. That's a fun idea. That's a fun idea. And I just felt like, you know, I don't assume that a lot of people that listen to the show, obviously 50,000 of you are so listened to the show, I assume some of you only listen to the show as far as doing a podcast.

But I assume others of you listen to other gaming podcasts and how many times are you going to hear E3 predictions over the next week? Yeah, probably a lot. You're not going to hear from us. Instead, we're doing kind of an E3 word game that I've constructed.

Kind of like Adlibs or Madlibs, but Madlibs I should say. But Madlibs is like a trademark. Yeah. And I'm not going to be like, you put an adjective here and now.

And it's not just like, fill in the blank. We're going to play that. I asked audience for input. We're going to have a lot of fun, Chris.

We're going to have a lot of fun later in the show. It's going to be neat. All right. I'm excited.

A few other things that everyone should know. New Let's Play, One Last Week, Kingdom Hearts 3. We did put our Kingdom Hearts 3. Let's play up.

It's finally out. You go check it out. People really loved it. I'm really happy to hear that.

Yeah, we had a lot of fun too. I think doing it. Our next one is going to be overcooked. That will go live next week.

That's already been recorded. A new side quest, obviously, went up the week before. That was the history of Konami. The side quest this week is going to be all about the PlayStation Network outage of 2011.

I just screened the video and it's awesome. So you're going to have that to look forward to as well. Chris, I submitted a Sacred Symbols panel request for PAX West. Okay.

Okay. And Seattle. We're going to see if we're going to hear back from them. We made you Sacred Symbols live at PAX West.

That's totally up to the PAX organizers. That sounds awesome. That'll be fun, right? Yeah, that'd be a lot of fun.

I'm confident. So here's the thing. Our show is definitely, definitely bigger than most of the podcasts that do the PAX shows. Okay.

So I'm not trying to be, I'm not trying to be insult anymore. I'm just saying, from a numbers standpoint, if you're just looking at it for popularity, we should absolutely be fine to do a podcast there. But you never know, right? We're the same show in which multiple publishers won't even work with us.

You'd be soft. Yeah, that's true. You'd be soft as hired someone, a new person from IGN who already blocked me. So I can't even talk to anyone from you.

Oh my God. But anyway, the point is that we'll have to wait and see. But that's an exciting possibility because we might be in Seattle. Chris will probably be there anyway, but if we do the show, I'll be there.

We'll do the show and then I'm going to disappear like a fucking puff of smoke. Can you never see me again? It'll be very exciting for everyone, right? Yeah, it'll be quite the day.

I love PAX West when I went. It's a fun thing. Zachary Wellman wrote in with some Patreon. Obviously, Chris, if you support the show on patreon.com slash Collins, last stand, you get the show early and ad free.

You also get the ability to speak questions, comments, concerns, and ideas, just like Zachary did. He said, Hey, crappy Colin and copper penny Chris. That's not very nice to call me crappy. Yeah, I don't know if copper penny isn't insulting.

I think it is. Oh, people take copper out of like old houses in Detroit and sell it though. You know, like copper pipes and sell it. It's valuable.

Yeah, isn't it? It's a comedy. You can have copper futures and stuff. I mean, that's definitely commodity.

He said, no question. I just wanted to tell you how disappointed I am in the both of you. Mr. Donald Duck is a national treasure.

He has to let's play and I was devastated by your comments concerning. Mr. Duck, daffy is better. Huh?

I doubt it. Keep up the good work. Very defensive. I thought it would be more offensive than I thought for half.

That was daffy Duck. That was daffy Duck. Daffy Duck is better though. Mr.

Duck. Chris, I also got a question from Steve Nealey wrote in. He said, Hey, chronic Colin and cocaine Chris. Oh, well that's, I don't know if that's accurate.

He says I'm a physician, I was a guest on yours on Fireside a few months ago Dr. Nealey is a radiologist. I remember correctly he can go into that Fireside Chat. So he was a good episode.

How's he gonna goass school for that? Really? Yeah, radiology? Yeah.

I was like, that's easy. Yeah, I could only imagine you in med school. Not from the intellect point of view, because you could definitely do it, but just in med school, Chris as a doctor. Hey, I'm broken, man.

Idiot. Holy moly. He says, so my ears perked up when you mentioned last episode of the new ICD coach for gaming disorder. As you guys might remember, we were making fun of gaming disorder, which is now a disease.

You both expressed this may of the fact that this could be taken so seriously. You should know that ICD codes are really only for billing purposes and are built to be incredibly specific, not necessarily reflecting reality or what is common. To prove my point here is some of my favorite ICD 10 codes. W56.22xA struck by Orca, initial encounter.

Whoa. V96.03xS balloon collision injuring occupant. That's going to be like hot air balloon. Yeah.

He says, we actually see this in Albuquerque, where hot air balloons are popular. S31.25.XD open byte of penis. Ooh. W220.2xD walked into lamppost.

Walk. V91.0xD burned you to water seas on fire. It might have been so much bigger deal at the internet gaming disorder to diagnose this in DSM-5, the American Psychiatric Association's manual of mental disorders. Keep making Tuesdays great again.

That's so interesting. So we made fun of something, but it seems like there's plenty to make fun of. I want to copy this entire thing, just keep it as just like interesting information. You could just buy a copy of the entire book.

You can read it before you go to bed. That sounds fun. Chris, before we get into what we're playing, you didn't fill in in this week by the way. No, because I couldn't play anything.

I was in trouble. And when I wasn't, I was sleeping in Seattle Air Force. Fair enough. I write this up.

I write every episode and then Chris goes in and fills things in his knees. I thought I'd do a clever thing like I was playing the waiting game. And you were like, I never heard of that. What's that?

I don't know. But you didn't want to trick me? I got lazy. Fair enough.

I wanted to have kind of a PSA before we get into the games, though, Chris. Sure. Sony's state of play is going on right now. This is an 11-day thing that actually is not right now.

It goes from June 7th to June 18th. June 7th to June 18th. The reason I wanted to let the audience know this is because there's a ton of really deep sales happening during that time frame. So if you're a penny pinching consumer, as many of us are, you'll want to know this.

From June 7th to June 18th at participating retailers, the following things are true. PS4 Slim, the steel edition that we'll talk about a few weeks ago, that's special edition, 29999. PS4 Pro, 3.4999. PSBR bundles beginning at $249.99.

Dualshock 4 is beginning at $39.99. And so-called PlayStation hits like the last of us on Chartered 4 on Bloodborne, $999. And new exclusives like Days Gone, God of War, Spider-Man, et cetera, are beginning at $19.99. So lots of really great deals there.

You can spend not very much and get a lot of great games. $999 for Bloodborne, something like $99.99 for Spider-Man. These are good deals. Go for PS4 Pro, et cetera.

So go check that out. Deals for the smart consumer. Yeah, those are really good. Yeah, absolutely.

So again, that's June 7th to June 18th at participating retailers. It's called the state of play. That was not what their things are called? Yeah, I think that's what it's called.

Or maybe it's called 11 days. I don't know what it's called. It's a weird naming convention. Yeah, that might be state of play.

But yeah, crack. Chris, games were playing. Again, you left this empty you have been busy. You were traveling.

You were with friends. You couldn't blame VWA. You weren't. Chris, I've been playing a game that I'm going to proclaim is the best game of the year so far.

OK. It's called Felsiel Arbiter's Mark. Now, a few weeks ago, during the end of every show we read, the various games that are coming out, I do this and we do this just because I want to acknowledge at least one time every game that comes to PS4, PSBR, PS Vita. Felsiel Arbiter's Mark is the first game from Six-Sci Studio, which is just a two-person team.

I was reading a little bit about them. They worked with a bunch of contractors as well in the game. I published by One-C Entertainment. And it's a turn-based strategy role-playing game that is a level of letter to Final Fantasy Tactics.

This is exactly what I want from a strategy role-playing game. Really? Yes. Is it like a spiritual kind of successor to it?

Absolutely. It's not even trying to hide it. There's so many things in it that, like for instance, it's after a cut scene or a story scene that the camera pans up. That's very much what Final Fantasy Tactics does.

It has classes that are all represented in this wheel, just like Final Fantasy Tactics. The fights are just like Final Fantasy Tactics. The story is very deep and very nerdy, just like Final Fantasy Tactics. This is my favorite game of 2019.

Sounds like a rip off, Kyle. It sounds like it's a rip in an eye. It's not really a rip off because I'll say it. There are no new Final Fantasy I'm busting your balls.

I would absolutely purchase a hell out of a shadow of the Colossus rip off. Really, I want that again. Please. Exactly.

Anyone, please make it. Exactly. I'm sure someone's hard to work on it right now. I'm sure.

Now, the game's a little expensive in 2099, but I think that it's worth the price of admission. And I'm really crazy. I'm just blown away by this game. I love it.

I'm about 15 hours into it. I'm playing on normal difficulty. It's hard. The story is interesting.

Like I said, there's also a really cool, interesting mechanical quirks to it. For instance, you don't use items. You don't go buy items. Instead, you have a bunch of items that you upgrade.

And you can use them a certain amount of time during a battle. So you have a potion. And you've upgraded it. So you can use the potion twice during the battle.

That's it. Or you have a rock that you can throw in an enemy. And you can only use it three times. So that's useful if you're far away.

You want to do a little bit of damage. And so there's cool quirks like that. And the other cool quirk I really love that makes the game hard. And why I keep restarting battles and really being meticulous about it is if your character dies in battle, he is what's called injured.

And he has to either sit out the next battle, or he continues to be injured. And his injuries get worse the more he dies, basically without being able to rest. So the idea is to not die. If someone dies and you have to switch him out of battle, the next battle let them sit out.

Even if that puts you in a disadvantage. Otherwise, he can die again. And then he twice is injured. And so on and so forth.

It's really cool. It's not a micromanaging kind of equipment. Equipment, abilities, job points. Their whole ability points in the game.

Learning and mastering all the different classes. There's a little side quests and side events. There's a tournament that you can fight in. It's so good.

It's so good. Again, you guys should go check it out. I really, really love it. It's called Fel Seal, Arbiter's Market.

It's not only the Lumbp, he has four. It's also a Lumbp, he's the next one. If you want to play it there. Colin Moriarty's Game of the Year.

He's actually smiling quite a bit, which is proof because he never smiles. No, I'm not happy about literally anything. He's basically a gargoyle. Yeah.

Which is the shame because I'm like the gargoyle or Notre Dame, but Notre Dame obviously is now a little bit. That's right. By the way, did you see that some of the new designs, like the glass one, are you in your fucking mind? It looks a little weird.

It's a thousand year old church. You better not fuck with it. I don't want to see the Louvre or whatever. I want to fucking, you know, like this one.

I can't do that glass thing. God. One of the concepts I saw for that glass thing looked kind of cool, but I don't think it was the main thing that they were actually going to do, which kind of, it's a little sad. Yeah.

Well, this is the thing too. If you just redo what they did before, it's kind of like this cheaper replica of it too. That's the point. This is another point where it's like, I guess it's the same, but...

I would leave it alone and just like clean it up and just be like, this is the way to... You know, I got a little mad when I found out that Stonehenge, which I've always wanted to go to England. Right. The circular pagan celebratory, whatever the hell it is.

That a lot of those stones were tipped over and that they put some of them back. Just leave it the way, like the way... I don't want to see it the way it was, you know, I want to see the ruins. You know what I mean?

It's an interesting thing to see the ruins of your... Do they clean it? Do they clean? I assume...

Look how good it looks. You know, the lawn is nicely manicured. I don't even convince it's real. Really?

I've never been there. You don't believe... You believe dinosaurs walk with man, don't you? You're a young Earth creation.

I believe dinosaurs still walk with man in the portal. Chickens. Yeah, that's true. They do.

That's a good point. It's really unsettling actually, when you look at a cassowari or an emu, you know the Australians had a war with emus? That sounds familiar. It's a real thing.

Did they lose? I had an Australian comedian friend of mine stay over my place before I left and he told me about this emu war and I looked it up and he was like, yeah, they declared war on emus and they lost. Because they were too fast. Wow.

You got a new country. You got a new country. You're in the middle of Australia. There's nothing in the middle of Australia.

There's nothing. Yeah, no, because it's all hostile. There's probably an alien there. Just dropping you got it.

That's fine. Chris, let's get into the news, shall we? There's a lot of news to get through. Number one, Death Stranding has a release date coming to a PlayStation 4 purportedly near you on November 8th.

The PlayStation blog's description of the game is brief though it makes for a nice elevator pitch. Quote, in Death Stranding, play as Sam Bridges. What's up with these names? Introverse, a ravage nation to reconnect a fractured society and save mankind from the brink of extinction.

In his own message creator, Hideo Kojima noted in part quote, Death Stranding is a completely new type of action game where the goal of the players to reconnect isolated cities on a fragmented society. It is created so that all elements including the story and gameplay are bound together by the theme of the strand or connection. As Sam Porter bridges, you will attempt to bridge the divides in society and in doing so create new bonds or strands with other players around the globe. Through your experience playing the game, I hope you'll come to understand the true importance of forging connections with others.

I quote, alongside the release date, announce became a nearly nine minute long trailer. By the way, we can talk about the trailers. I refuse to watch any of them. So I don't want to know anymore at the game.

Honestly, I watched all of it and I still don't know. So we'll talk about that in a second. I'm interested in your impressions, but I just wanted to be clear. I'm not watching anymore.

Let's do any trailers. Likewise, Sony also revealed information about the game's special editions. The regular game naturally costs $59.99. They'll pre-order and will also get you some gold colored components like a hat and sunglasses wear in game on day one.

The special edition costs $69.99 and includes all of the above, but also comes in a steel book case and digital downloads for music and music videos. The $79.99 digital deluxe edition gets all of the regular versions, pre-order perks, plus more armor and other gear. And finally, the collector's edition which costs $199.99 comes with all the digital offerings from the previous editions. The steel book and other real life goods, including a statue of the baby pod ving, a cargo case, and a keychain.

I already got the games about bridging society and the guy's name is literally Sam Bridges. It's real bad. Hunter Holiday wrote in and said, Hey, see, after watching the Death Stranding trailer, do either of you have a change of heart or increased interest in Death Stranding? I love Cojima's games, but I was not interested until I saw this most recent trailer.

I was interested in what other trailer you got. Your guys hype. Keep up the awesome work. I didn't watch it, but Chris did Hunter wants to know what you thought of the 90 minute trailer.

I feel the same way as I did before. I still don't really know what it is. I mean, they showed some game place where they showed an inventory system and it's like, OK, I kind of get how it would play. But I still don't understand what I'm looking at when I see it.

It looks kind of like if Metal Gear Solid 5 was Breath of the Wild, almost, is what it seems to be reminding me of, but I still don't know. My hype is just kind of the same as it always was. I feel like the most exciting that I can muster for it is I am interested in it and I'm very curious, but I feel like I'm not going to even know what game I'm playing until I finish it. I agree with you.

It just feels like one of those kinds of like, I guess I'll play it. I think the exciting thing about the game to me, not having seen the newest trailer, is that I don't know what it is and I don't know how it's going to play and I don't really understand it. I think that that's one of the intriguing things about what Kujima does. I think we can all agree on that.

So it's almost the lack of understanding that drives me towards any interest in death training because the fact of the matter is out of all the exclusives that are announced, that's the one I'm least excited about. And it's almost, I guess we'll say the release date chat or anything of another question on it, but it's a surprise actually that it's coming out this soon. And I don't believe it. I just want to throw that out there.

I don't believe it. You don't believe it's coming out? I think so. No, I don't believe it's coming out.

That's interesting. Do you know things? No, I don't know anything about that. Because it is being developed in Japan.

There's a way where it disconnects there. So I know a thing or two about the last one, I know a thing or two about Kujima, et cetera. But I don't know anything behind the scenes about that. I just feel like this was an announcement that was made in the pre-three environment because there's not much else to talk about.

And this is the next game that's ready to go. It tells us anything. It tells us that the last one is not coming out this year. And it also tells us obviously that Kujima's not coming out this year.

There's no way that they would announce this and then say, oh, we have another announcement for a game coming out before this. Yeah, no for sure. Yeah. So it looks like we're going to ride this year out with a few of the state of play, little exclusives that we saw.

And then we're going to get medieval in October, which by the way comes out the same days we're going to find out of coal duty. And then we're in November. We're apparently going to get that straight. So it's another pre, I don't want to say another, but it's a pretty light year for exclusives.

Yes. It seems. I think it's kind of a memory. I think we feel like it's not because we know so little about the game.

And it just feels like we should know more by now. I think it's that, but I also think it's just, well, let's get into the next question. We'll analyze this word. How's that?

That sounds good. Brian Lee was already known since they fell. It would appear that death stranding is indeed coming out this year, barring any delays. Colin, I know you predicted 2019 or 2020 a few years back.

By the way, someone dis-circulated a video that got retweeted a shit on the times because when the game was announced, I said it's coming out no sooner than the end of 2019, but probably 2020. So, you know, you're broken clock right today, guys. But my question to both of you is considering what we've seen so far death stranding. Does this really surprise you?

I expected full 2020, so 2019 is a bit of a pleasant surprise for me as Coachea pretends to take his time on developing his games. As always, thanks for all you do. Yeah, it is definitely surprising, but I feel like he has been taking. That's the thing.

It's been a while since we've known about this game. So it's not like it's just coming out of nowhere. I think what's really jarring about it is that, like, most games, by the time we have a release date that's that soon, we know more about it. But I think the whole point of this particular project is to keep everything close to the chest.

And I think that's what's been throwing people off. It's like, oh, well, if it was coming out in this, if it was coming out in 2019, we'd have character breakdowns and stuff like that. Or just some vague kind of idea. I'm surprised that it's happening now, but it doesn't surprise me that it's coming out this year if it makes sense.

The timing is strange to me just because of Coachea's usual working condition, as it were, right, of being an author and kind of like taking your time and things being delayed. Everything's worked on. It's been delayed. So I don't know how this works.

This is the thing that's so surprising, I guess, because I don't know how this is all working. Let's go over the timeline real quick, right? Melling yourself five comes out in 2015, in September of 2015. So it's not even four years ago, right?

By the time we're recording this, he's still a Konami at this time. Game comes out, he leaves Konami in the fall of 2015. At E3 2016, as I recall, it was my death, Stranding announced. At that point, they're talking about how the game's not even in pre-production.

They're working on Decimo, which is basically the Horizon, Gorilla engine, or making that. You can tell it's looking at the game. It runs in the same engine. It works the same.

Yeah. And so we have some idea of that, but then they're constructing the team and talking really vaguely about it. And so to me, it's either Sony put a shit ton of resources in this game, which is possible, like Studio Japan or someone who's working alongside Kujima. I think that's crazy likely.

Which is probable, right? Again, I'm not really too familiar with what's going on over there right now with that. But even if that's true, and they have Decimo, which is an internal engine, so I have to worry too much about documentation and working on that. They understand it.

It just seems so quick from we're talking about four years about between Metal Gear Solid 5 coming out and that's Stranding coming out and all this upheaval and constructing a new team and leaving Konami and going to Sony and all these times, and then they go to Sony with their second party. Doesn't that seem kind of rapid to you? That's why it does stuff. It does seem kind of rapid, but it depends on what the kind of game that we're going to be getting is.

Like, it looks like to me, like Metal Gear Solid 5 was very heavy on the sandbox elements. It was like, this story was kind of like, that was the most disappointing thing about it. As far as I can remember from my personal experience and everybody else's experience was like, yeah, this story wasn't good, but man, what game? Like, you could just do kind of anything.

And from what I've seen from this new trailer, it looks like it borrows a lot from the kind of open world kind of setting of MGS5 and a lot of, it just seems like a very dynamic kind of game. I wonder how heavy the story is going to be. And if it's not, then there's, it's quite feasible that they could just possibly just make a huge sandbox game in the time that they've had. That's true.

It's really a conundrum, right? Yeah. That's how I thought about Metal Gear Solid 5 as well. I played it, I think a year after it came out, I didn't want to play it first because I didn't like Metal Gear Solid 4 that much.

I hated Metal Gear Solid 4. I just understand the direction it's all going in. And what was so funny about Metal Gear Solid 5 was that I loved the first 90 minutes in the hospital. I was like, yeah, yes.

You know, this is awesome. This is exactly what I want. It's something that I was like, great, it's Metal Gear ever played. And then you get to the sandbox and I'm like, this is not for me, right?

So I'm not excited about it from that perspective because I think that Metal Gear Solid 5 from my perspective just didn't, didn't play that well compared to some other games that it was, I wanted something linear in story-driven because that's what I wanted to go to Gima. And you might be right because it seems like, I don't use the term copying out because I don't think that's the intention, but it seems like they're trying to string the story by being everyone's interactions with each other, which kind of removes them as the storytelling element, but I don't know exactly. I guess it's hard. We're talking about it.

So I guess it's exactly what people are. Yeah, it's hard to, it's really hard to pinpoint what the hell this game is. I don't know. I've seen the 9-minute trailer and I still un-baffled still.

I'm probably even more confused than I was before. But that's exciting from a perspective. Like when we put it in in November, if it comes out in November, when we get it, we might come, we might be surprised. Like by, for better or for worse, I think we're going to be surprised.

Yeah. But isn't it interesting too that medieval, again, medieval is not a big game, but medieval comes out October 25th and then just two weeks later, that's stranding comes out as well. And I just want to put it out there. I just don't believe it.

I think that's stranding will come out in March or February. Yeah. I think now we're going to get last most probably in June next year. What a weird and then go to the gym in the front of the ball.

It feels like a big slew of delays. The beauty is it's true, Chris, but they haven't really something about not saying anything. Like we don't, they've never said when the last one's coming out. That's true.

You know, they've never said it. Like we've made assumptions. We've made assumptions about go to the gym. And we're still making assumptions.

Like if anyone was like, what order will these games come out, that's stranding would have never been the first one ever on my list. So it just goes to show that you can't really expect. The Right. That was a big controversy.

I forgot about that. Yeah. I remember that being a big controversy because it was misogynistic. I don't know.

I just thought it was creepy. No, it's definitely if I go to my friend's house and like the only thing he has on the shelf is that thing and I'm like, you know, maybe I'll reevaluate this. The torso or the baby imagine if it was the torso and the baby and that's all he had on the show. The baby's a little bit miraculously somehow a little bit less unsettling.

I have a statue from Manhunt the rock star game that came out in 2004 of like one of the big enemies like a chainsaw or whatever. And it's so like, well, I guess it's so accurate that if you look up his little two niki, you have like a dick and balls. That's my favorite collectors item. That's good.

Yeah. Don't invest in a glowworm baby is my advice. No, this is a weird one. This is cool.

I guess I just I don't understand physical collectives editions of all for video games. I just unless it's something that I really, really love and I assume that some people are really, really love this game in which case I understand it. But yeah, that's the thing. Are you really going to have this baby like on your bookshelf and your living room or something?

It's a little weird. Yeah, I understand it. But like yeah, it's got to be something that I think I have every Halo collectives edition I think with the exception of two because they're hard to find. But yeah, I don't know.

You haven't played this game yet. You don't know what the hell. No, what if you spend like all this money and you have this baby that just reminds you of like a really bad purchase? I would like it if the baby just always reminded you of this amazing experience you had.

And that would be the other side of the game. Yeah, that's the gamble I guess you take. Right. It's kind of like gambling I guess.

Yeah. You know, I would just buy the normal version of the game if I were you. Just buy a real baby and put it in there. Yeah.

Put it in a fish tank. There are baby markets in this world. Yeah, there are. Number two, the rumors were true.

Call of Duty's 2019 entry is called Modern Warfare and it will launch on PlayStation 4 and elsewhere on October 25th later this year. Call of Duty was the first mainline entry to lack a single player campaign entirely but developer Infinity Ward is bringing it back this year along with the unified statistical and progression experience across every mode in the game. Interestingly, publisher Activision has confirmed that this version of Call of Duty will support cross-platform play right out of the box. Though it's been noted that because of the major advantages PC players would have in such an environment, it's conceivable that console players will be cut together.

We don't know anything more about that right now. Additionally, the game will have no season pass as it shares its name with arguably the most famous Call of Duty game, 2007's Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare. It makes sense to ask if this game is reimagining or a new game it is being described as a reboot. So there's a lot in here.

That's kind of cool. I love this game so far. Me too. Like literally everything.

Cross-play I love. Cross-play is happening consistently. I would perhaps urge that console players be kept together but for custom games and stuff, I would recommend opening that up to everybody. What about mouse and keyboard?

Can you play it with mouse and keyboard on PS4? Would that be interesting? Why not? Why not?

And then maybe the game will be able to read that and then be able to put you with the appropriate player base. That could be cool. There's a lot of stuff happening here because I think it's really cool. I agree with you.

This is exciting. First of all, Infinity Ward is very well respected although it's kind of a shell of what it really was yesterday. Reimagining or rebooting or whatever, the other point of reboot of Modern Warfare which is arguably the most famous Call of Duty game so that's that. Last year, no campaign this year.

Again, as I've heard through the grapevine, there was supposed to be a campaign last year and it was really fucked up so they just canceled it. So that's not a huge surprise. I knew that the campaign would be back. I heard that one time ago.

But I think the biggest thing here is no season pass, no paid maps. Now this is a big deal. This is a really big deal because Call of Duty usually has these big, a couple of two or three big map bursts in subsequent six months or eight months after the game comes out. Now that's going to be conceivably available to everyone for the price of nothing.

They're in a very different environment now where the main competitors are free to play games and they have to jump in on that. They have to make their game as accessible as possible and inherently charging for more content that's going to split the player base is by definition kind of alienating. I agree. Very smart, probably a risky move for Activision because as we've discussed with kind of the relationship with Blizzard right now and some of the other games, they don't have a lot of releases right now, it's a very tenuous situation there because I think what you're saying is true.

I think they realize that their big money maker is now in an existential crisis. Now we're going to talk in a minute about the best settling PS4 games of all time because we have a list of that now and you'll probably not surprise that it's littered with Call of Duty games. So I think they're going to be just fine but Activision has these big expectations of a player base of 15 or 20 million and they do have to compete with the likes of Fortnite. They have to compete now with PUBG and all these other games that are coming out.

So I think it's really smart, $60 price of admission, cross play, free maps, free updates, probably, again, you and I really disagree on this. I think the best gunplay in the industry. So I think that you're kind of paying for that premier experience and I think that's going to be the big difference between Call of Duty and Fortnite is you're going to get that premier experience. Yeah, we'll see what happens.

I wonder if they'll release the campaign for a cost and keep the multiplayer and release the multiplayer for free. I would love that to compete. I think that'd be a smart idea honestly. Maybe that's what's next.

I would gladly pay $29.99 for the campaign. I don't play multiplayer. I don't think I'd call it a multiplayer in 10 years. So I would love to just segment the campaign or even just zombies or whatever.

Sometimes I play zombies by myself too. That'd be awesome. I think that they have to approach that a la carte situation inevitably. I think they're going to have to start doing something.

Yeah, they definitely will. Because I think people will pay for Call of Duty's multiplayer. I think they'd be glad to do it. But I also think that, again, the environment's different.

Also, no battle royale. I don't think this year. So I wonder how that experiment works for them. It doesn't seem like that's going to be in this new version of the game.

Yeah, I don't think it worked all day long. That's what we were basically competing on. It didn't work for Battlefield either. Well, you're charging for a battle royale.

Why would anybody play it if they could just play the free thing? You know, the main, the huge, the biggest crowd of people playing those games are kids. And if they can't afford your game, then they're just going to go for the thing that they can't afford, which is obviously always going to be the free thing. Right.

You're absolutely right. By the way, did you see the video that was making the rounds? I retweeted this past weekend of the kid outside beating the shit out of a bush. What is that?

What is that? So apparently, I thought it was funny because I'm just thinking of this kid outside just beating the shit out of this evergreen bush. He's trying to get materials, I guess. Oh my God.

It's funny because people recognize that and made the story around this video that the parents probably like, right, enough go outside and play. And so he took up room and started beating the shit out of a bush. We're in a dire situation. Forbes wrote a new episode on page guys with modern warfare bringing back a campaign and seemingly having a strong focus on it.

Does the game interest you enough to play through it? How do you feel, Chris, about the campaign? I often talk about my really positive experiences with it over the years, but I know you feel a little bit differently about Call of Duty than I do. So I'm just wondering, is this something that kind of will grab a thing?

I've never been big on the campaigns for Call of Duty games, but I like that they seem to have a focus on it. That's the thing because I never felt like there was a big focus on it. Like even with Call of Duty 4, which was arguably probably the most, probably the point in history where they probably started to stop focusing on campaign as a main thing, that's probably the last one that they actually would be like, hey, let's pay attention to this. But it seems like they're actually, they actually get a shit.

There's no like M&M track backing the trailer or anything showing explosions. It does seem kind of greedy and like boots on the ground. And I like that. So yeah, I'm definitely, I'm definitely far more interested in this game than I ever thought I ever would be.

So yeah. Well, again, that comes out October 25th and they always hit their release date. So you can count on that. We're going to be very distracted that day with medieval.

That's such a crazy, why would you, whatever, whatever, never mind. My buddy at PS4 trophies, who, you know, was a great resource for Chopi Hunters, Brian was saying like, and actually did a poll, like, is this going to affect people's interest, hardcore PlayStation audiences, interest in medieval? And I was interested in that question, but I'm like, I don't know that it matters. Probably comes out every fall.

Yeah. And medieval's never going to sell a lot of copies. And so I think whoever's going to buy medieval's going to buy it. I don't think anyone's going to go like, call of duty or medieval.

That's fair. I think if you're going to buy medieval, you're going to buy medieval. Parents might think that though. Maybe.

Yeah, I would agree. But I wonder if that would be very attractive. I think it's just like a weird choice to put it out that day. It's Halloween.

I think maybe you want to do it a week earlier. Maybe you can just do it on Halloween. You could, but I guess, well, what day is Halloween? Let me look.

I have a calendar on my phone. Well, it's presumably Halloween. So Thursday, I mean, they were really saying whatever they want. Yeah, that's what I guess is really the answer.

I got over 30. I don't know. I don't know if I would do that. Yeah.

I don't know. Maybe I'll push it up. But whatever. I'm sure the cost of medieval's probably not super high anyway.