#51: Uncanny Valley

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And let friends and family know about Sacred Symbols. We on the other hand, will keep making Tuesdays great again. But enough chatter, how about you? Onto the show.

Greetings and citations, welcome back to Sacred Symbols, a PlayStation podcast. This is episode 51. Whoa! My name is Calmory, I'm joined as always by Soviet mining expert.

Yeah, it's me, I survived. You survived the Chernobyl disaster? Yeah, I just got really lucky, I guess. You're in all that graphite.

Pretty crazy, man. Pretty hairy up there in Ukraine, I'll tell you. By the way, I grew up saying the Ukraine and I even heard it learned as the Ukraine, but that's not proper, apparently. A few years ago, someone was like, that's not the way it's supposed to be said.

Why did everyone start calling it that? It's just Ukraine. It's just Ukraine. Do you know what I'm talking about?

The Seinfeld episode where they're playing the game on the train and the guy from the Ukraine's like, you clean it strong. You've been bashed the report. That's all I learned about Ukraine. That's all the knowledge you have of Eastern European geography.

Yeah, basically. Chris, we are in the afterglow of E3. We appreciate everyone listening to both of our episodes last week, episode 54, so it's our E3 episode. And we also did a special episode, special episode four called opposition research, all about Xbox.

Really appreciate you guys. Patreon did really well. Appreciate your sport over there. Patreon.com slash.

And early every access to every episode of our show, the ability to make questions, comments, concerns, lots of ideas, et cetera. We really appreciate you. Sacred symbols is really starting to blow up. Yeah, means a lot.

Start to blow up like that. Nuclear reactor. Almost blow up. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.

It melted down. The China syndromas. I used to call it. Now, Chris, before we get into everything, we have some news to get into.

Lots of new games came out this week. I also wanted to integrate plenty from the audience. There are a few things that we need to correct because we were moving kind of quickly last week. Yeah, a lot of new info.

We were being digested very quickly. Indeed. That is indeed true. But the first thing is just an unforeseen error that a lot of people have run up to me.

So last week, I know we were talking about Cyberpunk 27, which is throughout next year from CD Projekt. Really excited about the game. It looks really fun. Already kind of controversial with the predictable journalist types.

Yeah, same one. But I had said in our write up that this was their own IP, which I had always assumed it was, but it's not. They don't own this IP. So I thought that CD Projekt does it on the witch IP.

I thought that this was a way for them to kind of integrate some of their own ideas into something that they can control. They don't. Cyberpunk 2077 is actually adapted from a tabletop role-playing game from 1988 called Cyberpunk 2020. And I was reading about it.

And apparently the dude who made it is still pretty active in making tabletop role-playing games and is still bouncing around. That's kind of interesting. Yeah, it's weird because I knew about that tabletop role-playing game, but I also kind of assumed that Cyberpunk was just kind of a generic like, I kind of equated it to Steampunk kind of like, you know, it owns Steampunk. That's what I thought as well now.

But I was wrong. Whoops. So there you guys go. Cyberpunk 27, if you didn't know, seems like a lot of you did.

It's actually based on the 1988 tabletop role-playing games, Cyberpunk 20, which apparently has multiple editions and you can still probably play it if you can find people nerdy enough. Maybe you have to go on like IRC or something like that. There was a guy when I went to college. He was a really nice guy.

He lived with a friend of mine, Chris, in our freshman dorm. And he would go on Merck, M.I.R.C., which is an old, really chat thing. I think people probably still use it. And he would be in the Star Wars chat room.

And it was like this live-action, LARPing, Star Wars thing. So we'd have a headset on and we would just be sitting there smoking and join our playing games or whatever. And he'd be there being like, yes, Commander, I'll get right on. And like he would just hear him talk every few minutes as they were doing this random thing.

This is like what this guy did. And he was a very friendly guy. But I was like, well, that just showed me even what, 16 years ago now, there are nerd communities that will do just about anything. They'll even, they're nerd communities within nerd communities.

They'll even dress up in animal. I don't know if you know anything about this. There are people that dress up as animals and fuck other people dress up as animals. Oh, furries?

Yeah, I know. I could believe that you've gone this long without hearing about it to be honest. It's a little frightening, right? I usually don't judge people's kinks.

You got to do what you got to do as long as no one's getting hurt. Everyone's consenting. But this desire to fuck a dog man is a little weird to even for me, right? You want to fuck a dog man?

You want to fuck a cat man? I guess. We're going to. Hey, let's go to the next thing.

All right. Steve Corber wrote an was on Patreon. He has a little bit of a long write up. But this is another important correction because we've been talking about Stadia.

Google's upcoming for below. No, Google's upcoming platform. They're streaming platform. We've been talking about it a little inaccurately or at least what I would say is flippantly.

So right, Steve, Corber wrote in Chris with some corrections. He says, hey guys, long time listener first time writing in. I've been listening to both of you talking about Stadia and then there might be some misinformation. I think Chris keeps saying it will cost money to play period.

I think this is false. Next year, they're launching a Stadia base membership, which is free. And all you do is buy games to play them. The Stadia Pro membership works like a PS plus membership where you get free games and better discounts.

Also, Colin, you had said 10 mbps results in 30 frames. I believe this is also false. I think there are 60 frames as long as you meet the 10 mbps minimum. By the way, I should throw in here.

This is me now again, guys, before I finish Steve's letter. I had said that my internet was around there. I looked and it's I thought that that was true. That's also inaccurate.

My internet's faster than them. Everything's inaccurate. I guess what I'm I'm saying. Well, I agree 720p is practically the stone age in 2019.

I just wanted to make sure all the facts about it were straight. I also skeptical about how about it like you both are, but I'm very interested in how we'll play. I'm shocked LA has such bad internet speeds. Now, this is true.

LA is internet's horror. It's horrendous. It's the worst internet I've ever had living anywhere. I live in rural Ontario, Canada in a town of about 5000 people and I have fiber connection with up to one gig.

One GPS speeds, I guess is what was that to be like. Anytime that's pretty good. Must be nice. My parents live on a farm 20 minutes away and they get 50 mbps using a technology called YMAX.

So that's kind of what I get. Anyway, just like writing in is always keep up the great work. That's good stuff. We've been talking a little bit about Stadia in an inaccurate way, I think.

That's true. So I wanted to correct the record. This is not a Stadia podcast, of course, but I wanted to throw that out there. By the way, speaking of framerates, did you see where you here when we were talking?

No, you weren't. I don't think so Dustin, our editor was here for E3 with his own company and we were hanging out here a couple days ago. We were talking about the Witcher 3 coming to switch. Did you know that the Witcher 3 is running at like below 720 on switch or something?

That doesn't surprise me at all. I can't believe that. It's a switch though. I mean, like people don't seem to be bothered by it and they own switches because it's like, Hey, of course, it's going to be worse.

But the fact that you can play it at all is pretty amazing. Is that true? Can it really be below 720? I mean, yeah, I mean, a lot of games that came out on the 360 period or like the PS3 period were running at sub 720.

That's not surprising. Yeah. Those machines are ancient. I don't know.

I just I was seeing a lot of people make fun of the Witcher port yet another port coming to the switch. Yeah, enjoy. This is a good port. Yeah, it's just a pretty pretty pretty great game.

Apparently, I don't know. If you enjoy your switch more power to you, Aaron plays Pokemon Go or no Pokemon, let's go on switch. Yeah, that's pretty much the only the switch playing going on. I could not play.

I could not play Witcher 3 at that at that frame rate or at that resolution. 15 frames a second at 480. I got doomed because I thought it'd be like, hey, I can play Doom on the go. That's awesome.

But it's just like it just reminds me of how much worse it is on the switch. It's literally anything else. Are you ready for the corrections to continue? Yes.

Tanner Brandt wrote in and said, hey, boys, just a quick correction. Tales Upper Zaria was the first game in the series without Baba Hideo Baba at the helmet. It was great. And the last Remaster came out on PS4 last year.

So these are two more errors that we need to correct or these are my errors. Now I can't play Christmas. We can play Christmas with the Stadia errors. That's fine.

And I'll be happy to do that. But I'm going to take the credit for these errors. Now I didn't believe Tanner when he wrote in. So last week we were talking about Hideo Baba who was a longtime Taylor producer, went to Square Enix, started studio, is totally, I was going to make a new Triple A RPG.

Then I got all shut down. Now he's gone. No one knows where Hideo Baba is. That's probably the last probably not true.

Someone probably knows where Hideo Baba is. He's with his family or something. But Tales of Bursaria came out in 2016, which is after Baba left, I think. So this all makes sense.

Anyway, I looked at your absolute right 2015. Tales of Sieria was his last produced game. And you're also right. The last Remnant came out last year 2018 on PlayStation 4 in December.

So there you go. All right. Now let's get out of all of this and get into some inquiries before we get into the news of the game for playing. Will Vlander or the Lander run and said, what do you think about this year's E3 being boring for most people?

I think it was due to holding all the games for next gen, whatever that means at this point. Chris, how do you feel basking in the afterglow of E3 2019? I think overall I was pretty happy that I could see that this is very much the year before the big one. You know, this is very much an off year like a year where a lot of things are being held off because there's a lot that can't be said yet about the next gen and like how games will run and how they'll function and like what exactly will be what exactly will be present on those platforms.

It does seem kind of like one of those mystery years. I think that's probably the main reason why somebody didn't show up to be honest. I don't think it really has anything to do with them thinking E3 is dead. Oh, that's probably true.

But I do think it comes down mostly to the fact that it is an off year. We don't have anything yet. Sorry. I think so too.

I think that you have to stay in a holding pattern. First of all, observers of E3 will note that E3 typically moves in three year cycles. If you read about E3s, there are like really big E3s every three years or so. And I think next year's E3 is going to be another one of those years, similar to 2013 and so on and so forth.

It kind of works roughly in that cadence to give or take a year. So I was also quite pleased with it. But I did hear from multiple people that came through the house, so the apartment and that I was talking to and went to dinner with a few people, including my good friend, Gio Corsi, who was the head of Sony second party. We had a really nice dinner while he was out here.

But what I was hearing from others was that it was boring and that it was pretty empty and that ESA, the runners of E3 said that 3,000 fewer people were there this year than last year, but that it felt like way fewer than that. And I think the reason is because publishers and companies buy their badges on mass and then people just don't show up or just don't go. So I think that that's kind of what's happening. But I don't know what people expected either.

Like what? So think about it. So many has nothing that they didn't already announced the year before. Yeah.

So think about how bad E3 was for Sony last year from that point of view. They've announced nothing. That is of any consequence then. You have like maybe medieval and a few of these other games like Reddy said heroes and stuff, but other than that, there's not much doing pretty barren.

Yeah. So I kind of get excited by the silence personally. Yeah, I was happy. But I was, you know, Chris, I don't say I was happy because I'm never happy.

But I will say I was pleased. Yeah, that's fair. The Wayne Hankins running inside Colin and Chris. Now there were a few days removed from E3.

Oh, actually, sorry, the way we already covered this, I guess, because we accidentally integrated your question. Because yes, how do we think about Sony skipping out on the show as well? The Wayne you had a good question, but we accidentally answered it already. Samuel Mills, who said hello gentlemen, hope you are both doing well.

My question is in regards to many people's negative reactions to Microsoft E3 showing. I tend to agree with your assessment and I think they did exactly what they needed to do. Well, it would have been nice to see gameplay for the next Halo and maybe a price point for Scarlet. I frankly wasn't expecting it.

Do you think that people's expectations for E3 are set way too high? Or is it just that Microsoft can do no right in their eyes? I realize this is a PlayStation podcast. But I noticed some PlayStation fans are very quick to dismiss Microsoft.

I'm not trying to stir the pot with the idiocy of console wars. But I just like to call balls and strikes when I see them, which is what you gentlemen always do. Hope this all made sense. Good day to you.

feel free to ignore this if it's too long or leave out some of it too late. I've read the entire thing. And indeed, I don't like calling strikes, but I like calling balls. You understand what I'm saying?

Now balls. Now like that. I like this kind of sound like this exchange. Chris Microsoft, the D three.

Yeah. We did Apple research. We did our own and again, that's a joking term. We don't know that.

Now a lot of people reached out to me and I think you saw a two Chris on Twitter and other places. People were two things either complete disagreement with us that Microsoft did well. And he threw it into what they needed to do. I think you're a little less higher than I was.

But also that people kind of do perpetuate what Samuel was calling the console war here. I do feel he says something really important here, which I think is he says, do you think people's expectations for either your set we do high or just that Microsoft can do no right in their eyes? I think both of those things are true. Yeah.

I think that there are a lot of people that look at Xbox and it doesn't matter. If they showed Halo gameplay, someone you would have found something else can play about. They obviously can't price the Scarlet because the scarlet is probably not even fully built. Yeah.

Yeah. So what do you think about that? Do you agree with me? I really do want to hit this drum that I feel like people are just being too hard on Microsoft.

Like I just I really I've said this before, but I just think it's the younger brother syndrome. I think they're like the newest kid on the block, even though they've been around for a while relative to like a lot of other things and they've been around for a while in literal years. They are still the new kids on the block as far as everybody in the gaming spirit is concerned. So I feel like Nintendo gets the most leeway because they've been around the longest time.

They could show literally they could show Samus Iran doing a Fortnite dance and it would get people would flip the fuck out about it. It would win like a best of three Sony's like in that middle ground where like they can do kind of a lot right. And even if they fuck up, it's kind of like, Oh, whatever, you know, it's whatever. It's PlayStation remember, remember Metal Gear and Xbox is like that last one where it's like, Hey, Halo's great.

But that's it. You know, there's still the new people. They're still trying to figure stuff out. They're doing all these weird.

They're really, especially now they're focusing more on like, you know, the user experience of being a part of Xbox is opposed to just like what you're getting on it. The whole game has for PC and all that stuff. It's like, these are all great things, but I don't think they necessarily translate to excitement in the way that we normally consider E3 excitement to be. Indeed, it's just complicated because like you're saying, it's an optical game so much so is it is also a literal game, right?

Like they have literal products. They're competing on a literal market. They're only so many people like a body's product. So it is a corporate exercise.

But from this, this is why I don't like E3 because I don't think it's an effective way for these companies to message anything. And like you said, Nintendo is always going to win in people's eyes and so many is always going to win in other people's eyes and Xbox can't do right or whatever. I'm a little disappointed in the rampant fanboys that always surrounds the stuff. Now, I know I've been in the gaming industry since 2002.

I'm not new to this. Yeah, but I just kind of feel like we got to grow out of this. Like we're getting to a point where things are becoming more integrated and that's a positive. So this abusive shit that goes on online with fans of different consoles and I'll get somewhat silly.

It is annoying. Stratton intro wrote in germane to your question, Chris. He says, hello, gentlemen. I was just wondering if I could get some quick thoughts on the Nintendo director.

You guys, is Chris excited for Breath of the Wild 2 and how surprised are both of you that banjo isn't smashed now. I called that by the way. What'd you call banjo being smashed? Did you really?

Yeah. On this show. I don't know about on this show, but I tweeted about it before it like way before it happened. Oh, interesting.

Did you make sure to bubble that tweet up? I did. I brought it up. Excellent.

So you have to rub that kind of stuff and people say what happens now. I was going to say I was going to pass myself on the back. I feel like you have more of a reason though if you actually literally predicted this. It was only a week or two ago that I was going on and out of how Sony has nothing to lose by letting its characters in the smash brothers.

Right. And this is a great example of there being nothing to lose nothing. Right. Like banjo and so for people that don't know banjo kazoo was an N64 game made by rare rare was then sold with their IP to Microsoft and became an Xbox developer.

Now this was a big deal back in the day for the other gamers. This was like big deal because rare was in bed with Nintendo since the end yesterday. They made a shit ton of games over the year. They probably made the best games on the console on N64.

Yeah. They were definitely one of the premier, you know, which I'm a lot of other games. They put a lot of stuff out there on N64. So this is a really nice full circle story.

If you're an Nintendo fan, but also just another example of like what do you have to lose? Why isn't Kratos in there? Why isn't someone now if Nintendo is like fuck you guys, we don't want anything to do with you. That's one thing.

But if the reason is the other way, if the reason is that Sony is approaching them and be like what can we do? Why can't we be in your game? Can we give you Sackboy? Can we give you Ratchet?

Like who makes sense in this game? Sackboy would be cool. Yeah, Sackboy was a super cool character. Like I love that character.

So, you know, now as you can put Drake in there, you can put whatever, but you really want your cartoon characters in there. And so I really hope that we're going to see something like that. And Ratchet, I think is actually a really great target because, you know, we haven't, there's going to be more Ratchet and Clang obviously. The 2016 Ratchet and Clang was a big success.

Ratchet and Clang is going to be part of PlayStation Future. That would be a really nice character to get in there. Maybe a little bit more relevant to Sackboy who hasn't seen a new game from Media Molecule since 2011. The new game.

Yeah, that's true. Yeah, so I really was very excited. That was the most exciting thing out of that direction. Because I was like, this is great.

Like, this is so, this is so cool because now we're getting, so he's really the only player not involved. Even Konami has a fucking character in it. And everyone hates Konami. Yeah.

No, I mean, Nintendo Direct was happy with it, I guess. I don't know. Like, I'm really only interested in Zelda. Really?

That's really about it. I don't know. Nintendo just doesn't really facilitate anything, but I particularly am interested anymore. I like Banjo though.

It's nice to see him in there. Yeah, it's cool. It just fits very dramatically if it's perfectly. So I'm really excited about that.

Yeah, as far as the direct, I didn't watch it. I just went through the news and looked at the games many years out, I'm sure. And we're going to talk about some of the games that were announced because they're coming up here as well. But I think Nintendo, again, did what they had to do in the drive or seat right now.

So they're in great shape. And now I think that Nintendo's fortunes could change not in a dramatically bad way. But I think that once the new consoles are out, they're really powerful ports are going to become impossible. That's probably going to really slow for a shit.

That's going to be a problem. But that's why I really am convinced that they're going to make another one. Like, they're going to immediately and probably organize it on as quickly as they can. Because they have something really special here with Switch.

I think the final pre what games we've been going for a while now already. So I'm sorry that we're taking so long, but shit fucking deal with it. It's my show. Jeremy Miller Ronin said hi there Colin and Chris.

My nephew was turning five soon and I've always had an itch to get him into video games. My question is what age do you think you should introduce gaming to a child and what consoles will be good start? My idea is the PSP has to be there is too big for his hands and there is an extensive library of games as well as back on the PS1 games. It also means his parents don't need to worry about sending out a console to the TV.

Best wishes from New Zealand, which is a country next to Australia. It is. That is very well now. Now Chris, we're not fathers.

No, I am a uncle to six children. It's also been a long time since I've been a child. Yeah, it's been a long time longer for me than for you, but it's been a while. I like the idea first of all, the tradition of my family, especially for my three nephews that are my one of my sisters kids.

I bought them PS3 when you know about a PS4. I want to switch. They're all ages 12 right now, 12 to five or six, I guess. So they were really young when I was buying them the stuff and I integrated them quickly and they understand video games and know how to play them.

It's, you know, not that this is an important skill set, of course, but they know how to play. They understand video games like they're into it. So I think introducing them to them early is good. Now, I don't think PSP is a good idea.

And the reason I think that is because go look at your PSP sometime. Everyone out there, if you're a PSP somewhere hidden, go look at it. Listen, I love the PSP. Don't shit talk to PSP.

Okay. You know what I'm saying about the PSP though? The batteries are fucked up in all PSPs. Yeah, but if you go, so we had a we had a drawer full of PSPs that actually my desk at IGN that we hadn't touched in like a long time.

And then I opened it and like went through them and all of the battery packs were exploded. So the back of the PSP case was like popped off of every one of them. So what I'm saying is if you think you have a PSP put away, that's in working shape. You might not just throw it out there and let's you have the force.

I think I read that battery probably accurate. I was what my PSP is all about because of it. So I miss my PSP man. The beat is better than the PSP.

So it doesn't really matter. Chris, what are we playing now? I'll go first just because I just want to throw it out there. I'm still playing fail sale.

Phil, sale, arbiter mark, the final man's tactics game. I only played about 10 hours last week was obviously a busy week. I put up a let's play for the game today on YouTube on the console. I stay in psychoskeletal channel.

So you can go look at it. I called it. Why is my game of the year so far? I brought you through a battle.

I showed you the menus, all that kind of stuff. So you can go check it out. Highly recommended. Chris, what have you been playing?

So we're going through Borderlands 2 just to get myself acclimated with that entire university. It's been a while since I finished. I don't even think I finished Borderlands 2 back in the day. I didn't either.

So I'm trying to get through that again. But I actually recently started playing World War Z, which is that most recent, like I guess it's a recent zombie game again. It's cool. I guess it's basically Left or Dead 3rd person.

Like I believe so. Yeah, I'm playing it on my Epic account, which is a press account. So it's free. Just letting you know, I got that for free.

But it's pretty solid. It's basically Left or Dead in 3rd person, which is exactly kind of the thing that I was looking for. It's not too, it's not so deep that you get in the weeds worrying about attachments and stats, but it's not so shallow that it feels like just this kind of mobile game kind of experience. It's a nice little game to turn on every once in a while and shoot some zombies and it feels good.

It's a single player game? It's like Left or Dead, so you can play it by yourself or you can play with other people. I think there's a versus mode where you can play as zombies. I'm not super sure because I haven't tried it out yet, but I did a couple of missions.

It's fun. It's nice and simple. You know, you started up, you play, you done. It's good.

Cool. Super interactive, who I think developed that game, we talked about them a few months ago because they actually had approached Sony to make the multiplayer component of days on, which Sony turned them down obviously. Right. But World War Z is getting actually good reviews, I think.

So it's not that at all. It's better than it has any right to be considering what it is. It's a movie based tie in game kind of. Yeah, it's a game based on a movie based on a book.

Yeah, which is like a disaster. It's like the most red flags to possibly have. I have the book, but I couldn't get through it. It's written in journal form, which I hate.

Yeah, it's like an anthology kind of. Yeah, it's like an anthology kind of. Right. It's in the movie.

I don't know. Who cares? Fair enough. Chris, let's get into the news.

We have a few things to talk about this week. Doesn't seem super heavy. It's not super heavy, but it's heavy enough. Yeah.

Number one, one of the biggest games revealed at E3 2019 was Square Enix's Avengers game, which was a long been in development at Developer Universal Dynamics. Well, we have a few new points as well as points of clarification to go over for starters while the publisher made clear that the game would have no loot boxes. This has been confused with having no micro transactions at all, which it does according to IGN. The game will at the very least include customizable outfits.

Quote, but there is nothing that affects the gameplay, end quote, according to Crystal. The game's rollout was also incredibly confusing. Seem to indicate that it was a multiplayer center game as a service. Now I want to talk about this later.

I thought that multiple people had no fucking idea what this game was. So this isn't a me problem. This isn't everyone's problem. It's including the industry that I was like, oh, we'll get into this.

I was so confused by this. However, this is also interesting. It was a service. IGN reports that the game actually plays out kind of like an uncharted or two-brainer game in some respect with prescripted events peppering between periods of intense gameplay.

This isn't a huge surprise considering Crystal Dynamics petary making two-brainer games, but the game isn't playable in multiplayer. Only optional side missions are, and those missions are only playable online, not locally. And finally, perhaps the biggest point of conversation of all surrounding Square Enix's Avengers is the appearance of the main characters who kind of resemble cheap knockoff versions of their movie counterparts for obvious licensing and legal reasons. Once again, according to IGN, while Developer Crystal Dynamics does hear the complaints of players quote, there are currently no plans to change our character designs and quote, according to the game's creative director, Sean S.

Kake. So that's a lot. Now, I guess to be fair, I guess we did record right after so we didn't have the clarification, but that struck me as a game as a service when they were showing it. There was nothing about that sequence at the Square Enix conference that indicated that was a single player game.

It seemed very bizarre. It seemed like a multiplayer game focused game. It seemed like it was going to be like Anthem or Destiny. I mean, that's the way it looked like that.

I know this is a weird comparison given that I just mentioned it, but it almost struck me as like kind of like, oh, this is like a cinematic, almost leopard kind of thing where like you play with other people and they inhabit different characters and you go through like a single player kind of vignette playing with other characters and they have their own sequences. That's what seemed like, but I guess it's a single player game with multiplayer side missions? Yeah, so there are side missions that kind of peel off the main quest that you can optionally do and then you can jump online. So it's a same player game and then you find these side quests and then you're put into a matchmaking queue.

And then you match with other players to do those side missions. That's a bad feeling about this game. It's confusing. Yeah, it's very confusing.

Like I told you, I thought multiple people, including someone well connected at a big publisher who was like, I don't know what that was. I have no idea what that was. I have no idea what that was. I have no idea what that was.

I have no idea what that was. But still don't know what the hell it is. So I mean, it's clear now why Square Enix was so hesitant to show it because they don't know what the fuck it is. And also because it doesn't look very good.

And I'm kind of interested in if it was in development, I mean that game was in development and had been development forever. I want to say that I was still at IG on when I heard about this game. So this is a game that was that has been kind of marinating for a while, at least in talks for a long time, in pre-production, whatever the case might be. So I wanted to do good.

I like Square Enix and I like Crystal Dynamics. And even if I didn't, I just don't want the game to do good. But I don't know, I feel like this game has some issues, but I also don't know if it really matters because I think it's just so big. Yeah, I think it'll probably do fine.

Honestly, I don't think it's going to be like a huge colossal failure, but I do think it's going to be like one of the most confusing games that, until I feel like I won't know what it is until I play it. Yeah, you know, it feels like one of those kinds of things. Well, just not the best. You'll apparently play it next year.

We'll see. The respiratory therapist adjusting your oxygen, the dietary aid who knows your diabetic, the personal support worker helping your loved one live independently. These are the allied support and community health professionals who care for patients every day in our hospitals, labs and local health centers. But today, chronic shortage doesn't burnout are pushing them to the breaking point.

It's time to stand up for the whole team that keeps care alive. Support them at heartbeatofcare.ca, a message from the National Union of Public and General employees. Number two, during Nintendo's E3 press conference, a remake of the old school action RPG Trials of Mana was revealed while it's obviously coming to Switch, it's also coming to PS4. Trials of Mana originally came to Super Famicom in 1995 and is known as Satsui 3 in Japan.

It was never released outside of Japan or was it ever released outside of lone Switch collections on the franchise, which was only released in Japan. So in other words, this game was stranded on Super Famicom and then it only came to Switch in Japan only last year. So this is a pretty interesting thing. People had to play fan translations this for a long time.

The remake of the game is slated for launch on PlayStation 4 sometime in the beginning of 2020. The Mana series began back in 1991 with the release of the Game Boy Game known as Final Fantasy Adventure or Second Datsui in Japan. Its sequel, 1993's Second Datsui 2 is perhaps the most beloved game in the franchise known in the West as SNES' Secret of Mana. Nerds.

So that's a pretty... That's a pretty big... It's a pretty big nerd. Hey, I know.

Number three, just in case you aren't being bombarded with enough games subscription services, Square Enix may just be ready in one of its own. Jesus Christ. Word comes by way of Game Informer, which also notes that Square Enix would ultimately like to bring all of its games from all eras to as many digital platforms as possible. Quote, we're working on that in a variety of ways.

That is the request that we hear often. As far as our major titles go, most of those, we still have variations out that you can play now. The more classic titles that you might have played on NES, we are still working hard to make it, so you can play those. We actually have launched a dedicated project internally to port those, so we are working to make them available on a variety of platforms.

Certainly down the road, we would like to see that on a subscription or streaming service, so we're exploring the possibility of creating a dedicated channel for ourselves. I think everyone is going in that direction, so we want to be proactive in considering those options. We still don't know if it would be a subscription service or an exclusive download service or what form it might take, but we do want to leverage our catalog. Ellipsis.

Now, this is fucking crazy. Nicole Wiles, I think her name is Kimberly Wiles, I think Nicole Wiles is a CBS person. Wiles, the gaming former, then asked about some of the missing games. This is a fucking crazy quote.

He says, quote, I'm embarrassed to admit it, but in some cases we don't know where the code is anymore. It's very hard to find them sometimes, because back in the day you just made them and put them out there and you were done. You didn't think of how you were going to sell them down the road. Sometimes customers ask, why haven't you released the game yet?

And the truth of the matter is it's because we don't know where it is gone, end quote. That doesn't surprise me. It doesn't surprise me, but this is the thing that's weird to me. Because I first heard this about 15 years ago with Capcom, where they had announced that they were going to bring the Game Boy, the Five Game Boy Mega Man games, the PS2 GameCube and Xbox.

And then they released a statement saying that they didn't know where the ROMs were. But my whole thing was, go on the fucking internet and grab it. Like, I don't know. This is the big confusing to me.

Why do you need the source code? Don't you have people dump ROMs and then fucking manipulate the shit out of them. They have no idea what they're doing. So I guess I'm a little confused by this particular excuse.

Why can't you mirror an existing port of the game somewhere else? I wonder what the legality is of ripping a ROM of something that's not legally, you know what I mean? Like if you made a game and then it gets stolen and put on the internet, who's where is that? But even then Chris, wouldn't be able to go and say, hey, we have a fucking case of unopened Final Fantasy 7 copies from 1997 or Final Fantasy 8 from 1998.

Go open one of them and rip it. No, yeah, for sure. I guess I'm just confused. Certainly you want to work with the original tools and the original code.

It seems like more of a NES problem or like a cartridge problem than a CD problem. It's very strange. Because I'll never forget that because we still have knock out on the releases of the Mega Man Game Boy games. And they're great because Capcom apparently doesn't know where they are.

But I can just go online and find 7,000 ROMs that are running perfectly on the games. So yeah, I'm a little confused on the lesson. Very weird. Number four.

When Final Fantasy 7 remakes first part launches early next year, you'll have the option to buy the so-called First Class Edition, which is an edition so first class. It costs $329.99. Jesus fucking what? What?

It can be pre-ordered, right? This very moment. This version of Final Fantasy 7 remakes comes with the game, a steelbook case, an artwork, a soundtrack, special DLC, and perhaps most vividly. Cloud Strife riding his iconic motorcycle.

Website Polygon reports that the so-called Deluxe Edition is also available, which is everything just listed, Sans Cloud and motorcycle. That only costs $79.99. Square Enix has since confirmed that the first part of the game itself will be two discs, and Final Fantasy 7 remakes subsequent parts should they ever see the light of day will also be as long. Unfortunately, the publisher still won't comment on how many so-called games the remake will span.

Other than to confirm that the second portion of the remake is currently in pre-production of some time, so I was reading and flipping reports from E3, they had said at one point that because they know what they're doing now that the next part will be quicker, and then they came in and said no, it won't be quicker. So I guess that you have the engine in place, and they have the character models in place, and they have the animations in place, and they have all that stuff ready to go, I suppose. So it probably is going to be quicker, right? I would imagine.

It has to be almost. Yeah, I think some of it will be because if they're only showing Midgar, so that's only a very limited part of the game, you only have four playable characters at that point. So they're going to have to create all these new environments, all these new places, they're going to have to work in Sid, and Yuffie, and Vincent, and Kate Sith, and all these. So I don't know- That's true, I suppose.

I wish that instead of them promising more, they just said, let's see how this one does. This is going to tell the story about the Avalanche and the Terrorist Organization, which is what Final Fantasy VII is about at the beginning, and then if people like it, then we'll work on the next part of the game. I think that that's a little more responsible. Now you're promising, like I just swear, it doesn't know what the fuck it's doing with the way it talks.

That's also one hell of a fucking special edition. I'll say. Evan Smith wrote it on Patreon, remember you can support us on Patreon.com slash Colin's last answer and do- Here are your questions, comments, concerns, thoughts, and ideas on our show. He said, Yo, hope all is well.

I'm a die-hard Final Fantasy VII fan. The reveal of the game at the Square Conference put my fears to bed. I was honestly scared that some hope he had at adaption of my favorite game was going to be shown off at a last but they really seem to capture the spirit in Vibe. My question is, do you have any guesses on what the long-term plan might be for the game, part 2 on PS5?

So we can handle the open world, maybe lots of love to you both? Well part 2 is that if it ever happens is definitely going to be on PS5. They had said something else weird too where, and this is again the confusion about Cross-Gen Chris, is someone from Squarehead said something of like, they're working on the game so it works on PS4 and PS5. And I'm like, guys, of course, it's going to work on both PS4 and PS5.

Yeah, yeah, of course. That's going to be the way it moves. This is not a story anymore. Yeah.

But as far as what I expect out of it, I expect this game is gonna do very well. But I really do wonder if they set themselves up in such a strange way where like, you're gonna play Final Fantasy VII Remake Part I, what are you gonna wait, three years or something? Four years for the next one? Probably like, probably four years.

I don't know, it seems like a weird thing for me. I would have rather than just have remade the game true to the game. And then they would have been able to get it all out. Because I just have this strange feeling, if we finish this adventure, it's gonna be 10 years from now.

Okay, me. But what an adventure it will be. Final Fantasy VII is good, but it's important, but it's not that good. We need to have this going on.

You can just wait 10 years and play the complete edition. I won't build it, I'll say you know that. Number five, it appears that Fantasy Star Online 2 will eventually come to Western PlayStation 4s after all. There was some confusion on this point, not only because the long awaited localization was revealed at Microsoft's e3 press conference, but because subsequent chatter about it only talked about Xbox One and PC ports.

However, website push square reports on an episode of the giant bomb cast in which Xbox had Phil Spencer said, quote, yes, it will end up on all platforms. The point was to have Sega on our stage before, since it's been a while, unquote. How long it will be before the PS4 version sees the light of day is of course another issue entirely. Fantasy Star Online 2 originally came to PC in 2012, Vita in 2013 and PS4 in 2016, but only in Japan.

The Xbox One and PC ports are due out in North America in spring of 2020. Good guy Phil Spencer revealing his own time exclusive as being a PlayStation game, so that was unexpected. I mean, appreciate the answer. I kind of assumed that that would be the case.

I didn't say on PS4 code, they're actually going to use it. I thought that was a thing where they were just trying to be dickheads, but apparently not. Phil Spencer's not a dickhead. Not Phil Spencer himself, but Xbox One.

I wouldn't you wanna take Fantasy Star, so I would take as much off of a PlayStation as possible. Personally, but maybe it doesn't matter. I wouldn't take Fantasy Star. Yeah, maybe Fantasy Star is one of those things, like eh, we'll take it I guess for a little bit.

That's not, let's be real, like that's not like a huge thing. No, by the time it comes out, it will have been eight years, I think, since it came out. I played Fantasy Star Universe online, like I think on the Xbox 360, I would log on every New Year's to see the people who would be on on New Year's to see who the hell would be there, celebrating a New Year on Fantasy Star Universe online on the Xbox 360. But it was a fascinating group of people.

But take it a step further, you are also online. Oh yeah, 100%. Yeah, so that might make you even worse. There were some sex chats going on there.

It was wild, I have no doubt about that. Also probably as we said earlier, people dressing in dogs who's looking to fuck other people dressing dogs. How many of us open to avoid that for the rest of the podcast? But it's been a lot.

Too bad. Number six, according to Kotaku, Amazon Game Studios doesn't have employees know that they will have 60 days to find a new job internally or they will be laid off. This came alongside the cancellation of several unannounced games. And the comment released to Kotaku, Amazon said quote, Amazon Game Studios is reorganizing some of our teams to, I don't know, I wrote this, I mostly miss I wrote this because it doesn't make any actual sense.

Nonetheless, it was, it's just really lengthy, I didn't write all of it either. It's just lengthy nonsense about them reorganizing and moving assets around, it's the same thing every time someone gets little. What is that? Well, that's like, I think that's the problem, nothing happened.

Nothing happened, you don't think it was like, hey, let's end up in the console business. Let's try and over throw out some PlayStation. And then say you came in, they were like, oh, wait. Amazon Game Studios began in 2014, but hasn't done anything of No Sense launch, even though it hired exceptional talent at the start talent that has largely since migrated elsewhere.

Only one Amazon Game Studios developed games, the Grand Tour game based on the Amazon TV show, ever made it to PlayStation 4 earlier this year, running on Amazon's proprietary engine, Lumberyard. The two games mentioned in Amazon's statement Crucible and New World are both PC games. So basically what they're saying is that they're concentrating on Crucible and New World, I think they're both MMOs. And Amazon Game Studios was founded and was really, I mean, it was attracting incredible talent.

It was getting people from all over the place and they've done jack shit. So it really remains to be seen, they wanted to make an engine, they made one, but it doesn't seem like anyone's using it. And I don't know what the future is for Amazon Game Studios. It goes to show you that these companies are blowing in everything.

Yeah. Number seven, the Witcher 3 Wild Hunt has passed a significant sales milestone. According to website Push Square, the game has surpassed a staggering 20 million units sold. As the Witcher 3's title suggests, developers CD Projekt also developed two other games in the franchise.

However, the Witcher 3's cumulative sales represent more than half of the entire franchise's sell through. The Witcher 3 initially launched on PS4 and elsewhere in May of 2015. CD Projekt is currently working on Cyberpunk 2077, which is due out as we said earlier in 2020. I gotta give this game another shot, man.

I don't know what the hell. I think I played it for a little bit and then I just didn't grab me. Something, it's very big. It's very deep.

I liked it a lot, but when I was 40 or 50 hours, I'm like, I just don't wanna do this anymore. I can see that. I can see that. Number eight, we almost got to live in a reality where Fortnite never happened.

War was never released anyway. War comes by way of Polygon which relayed an interview from Game Informer with Rod Ferguson, who leads the Xbox One Studio, the Coalition, the team behind the Gear series. Before going to the Coalition, Ferguson worked at Epic Games, the minds behind Fortnite. Indeed, when Microsoft purchased Gears of War from Epic in the early part of 2014, Ferguson kind of sort of went with the IP.

Quote, if I had stayed at Epic, I would have canceled Fortnite. Before I left, I had tried to cancel Fortnite. When I was saved the world, that was a project that just had some challenges. And as a director of production at the time, that game would have not passed my bar for something that we should continue to keep going.

That game you loved, that worldwide sensation would not have existed had I stayed at Epic. I wouldn't have admitted that. I don't mean either. That was a weird one to admit.

Yeah. That you, a lot of people would have, people passed on Minecraft. But there are stories of pretty much every major publisher passing on them. Oh, not because it would have been a mistake.

It's more to me like, you could have saved us. Really? Because I think it makes them look like completely out of touch. I mean, it also does.

But I also, like, I look at this and I'm like, why could you just drive a little harder? It's funny because if, I mean, the thesis a little bit, you know, obviously, Fortnite's obviously successful and there's a lot of people working on it and that's great. But like, there's a part of me that's just like, ah, no, totally, what could have been. It's funny that, yeah, Epic never sold Gears because he basically went with Gears to kind of shepherd that transfer.

Then yeah, it's funny that that deal is the reason we have Fortnite today. It's interesting. The butterfly effect. Number nine on the heels of the recently released Contra Anniversary Collection comes word of a new Contra game.

According to Web Psycho, publisher Konami is prepping a twin-stick, third-person shooter called Contra Rokor and it's coming to PS4 and elsewhere on September 24th of later this year at a double-a price of $39.99. The game will reportedly allow for local co-op in addition to online multiplayer with up to three other players. There will be PVE and PVP options and multiple playable characters including a Panda Bear. By the way, you've got to look at Panda Bear, the screenshot of the Panda Bear using a Gatling gun.