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But enough chatter. How about you? On to the show. Greetings and salutations.
I cracked a little bit there. Oh, no. Bobby Brady didn't crack. Peter Brady was the one that cracked, right?
His voice was the one that cracked. Anyway, greetings and salutations. Welcome back to Sacred Symbols, a PlayStation podcast. Yeah.
This is episode 52. My name is Colin Moriarty. I'm joined, as always, by the water-drinking Chris Reagan. That's a good adjective.
Just looked right there. I think it's very native. A year. It's been a year.
It's been a year. Well, I was thinking about this. It's almost been a year. This is like, this is episode 52.
It's like why we have no year zero, right? It went from 1 to 1. 1 BC to 180, or common era, if you want to be more politically correct. Did we have an episode zero?
No. We had an upload zero, which was just the theme song. Oh, right. So, I guess what I'm saying is, we don't celebrate our birthday on the 52nd week.
We celebrate our birthday on the 53rd week. Right. Right? So, I don't want to get ahead of ourselves, because what if we're celebrating, we're just being real cute about it, and then we die?
Yeah. That seems plausible. Anything can happen. Stranger things.
Stranger things have happened. Chris, how are you today? I'm doing pretty good. My hands are bleeding.
They're broken. You are going to, I want to save this for a little while, but you've been playing Crash Team Racing, getting the Platinum Trophy, you're going to get it. Yeah, I think so. I think you're going to get it.
Only a few people have it in the world, so you'll be one of the first people to have gotten it, I think. But let's save that for a little while. We will. And I haven't downloaded it on my machine.
I'm seriously asking you to download it on my machine so you can play it here. I don't know why. I've got to use my time wisely. That's what I say.
Now, Chris, for the uninitiated, Sacred Symbol Supply Station podcast goes up every week, you can get it three days early in entry by supporting us on patreon.com slash Collins Last Stand. That's also how you submit your questions, comments, concerns, thoughts, and ideas to our show, which we splatter around. I was going to say splatter around, but that sounds a little disgusting. Yeah, I like that one.
Sounds like you're taking poop, maybe. Yeah, that'd be good. Skip that one. Okay.
By the way, the furry talk last week was pretty awfully. Yeah, of course. I can't imagine why it wouldn't be. Yeah.
You don't want to imagine things like this. No. No. You don't want to imagine a grown man in a...
You're going to paint the picture again. Yeah. You're going to paint the picture again. You're a terrorist.
Chris, we have quite a bit to get through, but I have some procedural shit that we need to get through first, like some really important things for the show. All right. I tweeted out this past weekend just a poll asking the audience something that you and I have discussed in the past. Actually, you and I have talked about this almost since the beginning of the show.
Yeah. Which is doing it twice a week. And I'm getting more comfortable with this idea. And you and I had discussed it only briefly.
You and I had very briefly discussed it over the past this weekend. But I wanted to ask the audience what they thought. And three out of four audience members or so that answered. Thousands of people answered the poll.
Again, it's just a poll. It doesn't mean anything. But it can indicate what the truth might be. They want a second episode of the show a week.
Why don't we do a second episode a week that's only 45 minutes to an hour. It'll only go up for patrons. It'll not be numbered. And it'll allow us to dive deeper into different subjects that don't necessarily fit into the show.
Because I don't like, like if we had just played The Division 2, I don't really want to talk about it for 45 minutes on the show. But it would be cool to talk about The Division only and dedicate an entire episode to it. Or dedicate an episode to just a news item that we really want to delve deeply into. Or just we have a bunch of really good listener questions that we want to use that week and we can't fit them in the regular show.
So I think we're going to do this. But to Chris's point this past weekend when you and I discussed it, I think we'll start doing it in August. Yeah. And is there a reason you're going to be gone?
I'm going to be gone actually after July. I'm going to have like any family's coming or something and I have to go to them. Right. Because there's been like a bunch of bullshit regarding flights.
Yeah. So that's going to be like a weird period at the end of July. Also if we count on all this crap. You know, it's a busy month.
It's a busy month that month. Well, anyway, I just wanted to throw that out there. We'll figure this out. Nothing's changing right now.
And nothing's going to change for the show at all. It'll be indistinguishable from the usual insanity that we publish every Tuesday or Friday depending on where you receive it. But I want to let you guys know that I'm thinking about that. We're thinking about that.
And I think we're going to do it. Yeah. But I really do think it's going to be a Patreon. Like just for dollar patrons or above.
Just an extra piece of content. Like supplemental content. And I don't know what I want to call it. Sacred, sacred symbols.
Sacred, sacred, sacred. Triple S. Sacred, simple, special. We'll figure it out.
Sacred, simple, select. Sacred, simple, select. Sacred, simple, select. Like chicken, select.
Exactly. They're just a little bit better than the nuts. Right. So I'm thinking that this will be a really fun way.
And the other thing I talked to someone about. Someone made a joke saying that they were homeless in response. I hope they were serious. But I'm a big fan of Sam Harris.
And his is way more expensive than anything we did. Then you can email him. And he'll figure out a way to do a subscription for free. Or a student or something like that.
So I want to do the same thing. It's the same thing we did with merch. Where I made the merch available for free. Well, the logo's available for free.
So you can make your own merch for free. If you don't have money in another disposition. We'll do the same thing for sacred, sacred, simple. We're not really going to call.
We're not really going to call. So we'll figure out something in a way that if you really can't afford it. If you're really tight on money, you can't afford it. Literally the dollar or month it's going to cost.
We'll make it available at some point in the future. Excuse me to birth. So just throwing that all out there. Something we're thinking about.
Want your feedback? That's not it. Yeah. Chris, Derek Wechter.
Wrote it to us. He said, I just said a vote in this. He said, hey Colin and Chris. Hope all is well with you and yours.
Just wanted to clear up some of the confusion and concerns surrounding sacred, simple, and reviews disappearing with Apple getting rid of iTunes. Threat not. Your reviews are not going anywhere. And Apple podcasts aren't going anywhere either.
You'll notice on your iPhone that there are individual apps for podcasts, music, books, and TV. These four apps that make iTunes. So going forward back, OS is going to follow suit and break the iTunes app into four individual apps. So this is great.
You're concerned that our incredible iTunes review library. Yeah. Which you guys can continue to add to at your leisure. That they might have been gone.
Yeah, which would be awful for us. Yeah. Now, I think we're being fraudulent on iTunes. I straight up have talked about that in the past.
I think we're being absolutely fraudulent on iTunes. But, but, but, it's so important that you guys go over there and review us if you can. If you download us there. I just wanted to throw that out there.
I don't want to discourage people from leaving us very nice and complimentary things. Some of them are relevant. There are. I read them once in a while.
Yeah. Now, I want to, I shit on game journalism all the time, Chris. Yes, mostly terrible. By the way, I usually only shit on more mainstream game journalism.
There's a lot of really great smaller sites that I say all the time that are great. Yeah. Push Square and Kamatsu and stuff. But there is a really interesting interview with Andrew Wilson, who is the CEO of EA, done by Mike Futter, who used to work a game informer for GameDaily.biz.
It's Andrew Wilson's first interview in two years and it's fascinating. You guys really gotta go read it. A lot of people have been pulling a little news out of it. I am not doing that on this episode.
You should just go read it. He's also, because people are pulling out, like, oh, they gave up their bonuses and all this kind of stuff and they think Anthem is very good but not great and all this kind of stuff. That's interesting, but just go read the interview. It's really long and it's really fascinating.
I didn't know about this. And since we shit on game journals all the time, when a good piece of game journalism happens, we might as well highlight it. Yeah. So Mike Futter's interview with Andrew Wilson on GameDaily.biz.
Go read it. Jake Witter wrote and said, I have one simple question for you boys. Is a Pop-Tart a calzone? What a bewitchingly evil question this is.
A calzone is by definition, by the way, a folded pizza. A pizza that has been folded on its own. Folded on its own. So that's what it is, like, actually.
I'm pretty sure if you look up the definition of calzone, that's what it says. If you wouldn't consider an open Pop-Tart a pizza, then a Pop-Tart is not a calzone. That's a really interesting point. You deconstructed it.
Yes. And you threw it right back in Jake Witter's face. It's not a calzone. Get the hell out of here.
Eat shit, Jake. And finally, just a PSA from a man who goes by the name Fat Houdini. Oh, I like that. He says, fellas, I'm on a charity speedrunning marathon games done quick this week up here in lovely Bloomington, Minnesota and I need to utilize this platform to tell everyone, please bathe and be aware of your body odor.
Don't let the memes be reflections of reality with how badly people who play video games smell. If you need help, massive nudge, nudge, wink, wink, wink, wink, wink. Why is it? I don't like to be mean, but I've been to enough of these things, right?
And by the way, it's not exclusive to like Comic-Con or PAX or E3. I've been to many sporting events where people smell like shit. Oh yeah, concerts. Yeah.
Like airplanes. You see, here's the thing about air travel. Right. When someone smells like shit at nine in the morning.
What happened? Did you wake up wherever you are and take a shower and come to the airport? What, you roll out of a fucking dump? It's worse because the air is recycled up there, you know?
It's not that you're in an enclosed space, it's bad. But look, you're in a convention space, watch your balls for God's sake, all of you. Watch your balls. It's not difficult.
And you're assholes. All right, Chris, let's talk about what we're playing. I want to start with you. You've been playing Crash Team Racing, Nitro Fueled, and boy, have you been playing.
Yeah, I'm on the hunt for this platinum. I gotta get it by Thursday night. My thumbs and index fingers are actually calloused and numb, but my God, I'm having such a good time. I'm glad to hear you.
It is so good. I was initially really bummed about it because I just, I've been playing the original one on PS1 like consistently for like years. Like, it's not like, oh, I haven't played this game in a while. You know, I played it like the day before this new one came out.
So it was initially like really irritating that there were some changes, very minute, but obviously due to the difference in fidelity and the difference in the engine that they're using. So I was initially like really put off guard by the fact that, oh, why would they change anything at all? But once you get the hang of it, man, it's such a genuinely fulfilling game. Challenging as hell.
Like way harder than the original one, which is wild considering it's like a 90s game that was like probably designed to be frustrating. Now, what are the different, so there's single player, I guess it's like a single player campaign you use different characters. Yeah, so there's an adventure mode and that's easy, medium, hard. Hard is insane.
It's great. Best car racer around right now, honestly. Cool, that's great. That's great to hear.
I'm really happy that you're enjoying it. You can play online, right? Yeah, you can. Are people good online?
I mean, I play online to relax, you know, but I'm also like, I'm in probably the rare percentage of people who's like weirdly obsessed with this game. So like online's kind of easy. Sometimes I'll get second place, you know, but not to toot my own cart. Oh, you guys said toot your own horn.
I mean, the cart could have a horn. No, cart's not that horn. It's not this one. Well, the one thing I want to ask about this is if it's got the rubber banding that was so notorious in Mario Kart games that turned me off, obviously, at a very young age from playing any of these games.
Not that I noticed. I don't think so. If you're good at it, you can get a substantial lead. They can't do that thing where they trail behind you and get a boost from your line.
No, it's none of that. It's very mechanically complex. There's a lot of maintaining, there's a lot of really complicated systems at play that I think really elevated above something like Mario Kart or Garfield Kart or Team Sonic Racing or whatever. There's a lot of like, you have to drift across travel paths to maintain, to save that boost for later.
There's like a reserve system and it's like to master it's like kind of wild. So it's, I'm loving it. I want to delve deeper into the difficulty if we can. Sure.
Jeremy Miller wrote in what's on Patreon just like you guys can out there. And gals. Why am I cracking so much? And gals.
It's one of those days. Hey CNC, my question is more so directed at Chris. What are your thoughts on the difficulty of Metro Fuel? I felt like I couldn't make a single mistake and always needed to boost on medium difficulty.
So for the first time in my adult gaming life, I turned the difficulty down to easy where I would win each race by about 30 seconds and making the game far less fun as there was no challenge at all. It seems like the game is far more difficult than the original. Curious to hear your thoughts. Keep up the great work.
For sure. Like the medium, the medium mode in this new one is equivalent to the hard mode in the previous one. And then hard is like up to a whole new level. But I think, I mean, the thing about this game is it's very like, you need to learn the ins and outs of this game to be really good at it.
And I think hard mode and even medium to some degree really challenges you to do that. And I think it does sound in a way that really makes you want to learn how the game works. Like I know more about how the game works now than I did when I played it in the original just because, you know, there's more hints as to how things work with the graphical fidelity. There's more things that the game can get across.
The black smoke in your exhaust is something that you gotta pay attention to. When you have a blue flame coming out of the back, you have to know how to maintain it. You have to know how to hop and, you know, maintain a speed that isn't slowed down by the fact that your tires are slowing down on the pavement. It's wild.
And it's mechanically complex. I love it. I'm glad that it's harder specifically because, you know, the old game is something that I can just destroy at any point at this point. So the fact that it's the same spirit of the old design with this added challenge is something that I really appreciate.
That's great. And did it review well? Actually, it didn't even look. It's done pretty well.
I think it's like, I think last time I saw it was like 87 or something like that. It's done pretty well. Otherwise, LL people are like, I don't know if it could stand up to Mario Kart because it's like, bullshit. Come on.
Be real. Get good. Well, we all know what the stories of the title games. Don't we, everyone?
Yeah. Don't we. All right. Chris, I've been playing a couple of games.
First of all, I've been playing Blessing Ritual of the Night and I really like it a lot. I think it's really great. Now, it's important to note that I received what many have received which is a cataclysmic game-breaking bug. Oh, yeah.
How was that? About six hours into the game. What's that? What did that do?
So there was this interesting bug. If you started your save on 1.0, 1.01 patches and then it continued in 1.02, it made a bunch of treasure chests unlock and empty their contents for some reason in the game. So you reach a point in the game where you need to get the silver bromide after killing this boss and you use it to, you know, proceed to get an item that you need to proceed and the treasure chest is open and there's no silver bromide so you can't continue. And I went and looked this up and I'm like, this is fucked.
And, dude, tons of people like reached this bug and they looked into it and they figured they can't fix it. Like, they were like, you gotta start again. That's kind of crazy. So I was really upset about it.
I was like, first of all, threw off everything. I was gonna review the game last week. I hope to review it this week. And so I had to sit down and you know when that happens you have to play through parts of a game you've already played and you have to just do it.
So I got back to where I was like half the time. It's fine and then I keep playing. It's great. But that's a really unfortunate and inexcusable bug to introduce into a video game when you're most eager people.
I mean, I downloaded that game the second it was available. Like, I bought it with my own money. I had a little timer on the cross media bar. I was ready to go.
So a bunch of us got fucked. You know, that spent $40 on your game. So that sucks. But it's fixed now.
It shouldn't be a problem for anyone. And it's a really, really cool game. I will give it this. It's so inconsistent in the way it looks that sometimes I'm like, oh my God.
There's this one character that creates, he can cook dishes and create like synthesized items and stuff. And when he runs around it looks like he has a shit and has a dump in his pants. Like some of the animations are fucking terrible. And then I was showing Aaron yesterday there's like these amazing animations.
You can tell that different people were obviously in any game. Different people were working on different characters. Some of the characters animated there's one character with a shield and the spikes in front of the shield. If you guys play the game and I'm talking about watch the animations on this character.
I was like, holy moly. So there's this really inconsistent look with the graphics with the backgrounds with the music with everything. It's all inconsistent. Some of the enemies are really uninspired.
Some of the enemies are incredible. There are these severed dog and cat heads that you have to fight which are really creepy that I think if you supported the game on Kickstarter you can design enemies so you can see what some of those enemies are clearly in the game. There's one enemy with an electric car that's really fucking cool like a zombie. So I really, really dig what they're trying to do.
I think this is a really nice step in a positive direction for IGA and for this fledgling franchise unlike Mighty No. 9 and Keiji Inafune and my other boy and the other game that I really wanted to work out. This is working out just fine. And the only thing I will say is that I think Curse of the Moon the 8-bit innie-creates game from last year is actually better than this.
And I actually said that last year when I was playing, I bet you this game will actually be better. And they're very different. One is based on Castlevania 3, one is based on Castlevania Symphony of the Night. I highly recommend it.
It is expensive. It's more expensive than I thought it would be. It's $40. But I really kind of think that's a reasonable price.
At least for someone like me. Now, systemically it's very deep. Almost too deep. There's almost too much shit going on in the game.
You know, you get these shards from enemies that allow you to, I think it's almost like order of a collegiate where you can use enemy skills and you have all this equipment and these weapons, different weapon types. You can cook dishes and you have to find ingredients. There are tons of side quests that you have to do people around the castle they have to do shit for. There's a lot.
Did anyone write in about this game that I wrote down? Oh, Sophia Arwitz wrote in about this. Sophia is the new writer of my series Psychoist. And by the way, new episode of Psychoist went up today all about Ooyah, which is now dead.
Officially. What a surprise. We've just seen that coming. She said, hey boss, another, so Colin, you just had a game-breaking bug which killed your progress in bloodstain.
I myself won't suffer a broken PS2 memory card and lost everything. I was devastated. Losing progression no matter how many cards is easily one of the worst things a player can experience in gaming. So my question to both of you is, what's the most painful moment you can recall where a save state glitched, got deleted, or was somehow lost?
Did you ever return to the game, or was the moment so heartbreaking that it killed all your motivation to go back? Oh my god. I lost multiple memory cards back in the day when you lose a ton of season ones. Yeah, I'm sure this happened.
I think actually, when I was a kid, I 100%ed Crash Bandicoot 1, which is notoriously hard, by the way. Like even recently, I think it's even harder than the new one, but back then it was really tough. And I 100%ed it, I was like, yes, I 100%ed this ridiculously hard game. Back then I was like, yeah.
And then I think my tug chewed up the memory card because I had it laying on my bed because I was bringing it to a friend's house and I just forgot about it. And that was pretty devastating. I haven't got 100% of that game again since. Remember when you used to have to bring memory cards with you with games?
Yeah. And then PS2 had that really convenient memory card holder inside the case. In the case? Yeah.
There was like a... Oh, that's right, yeah. Yeah, that was cool. Pretty clever.
Yeah. Now you just send your stuff to the cloud. Thank God for that, by the way. Chris, the other game that I want to talk about quickly, which I've been playing in somewhat secret.
I revealed last week. I've been playing Persona 4 Golden on Vita, finally. This is like my third time trying to get through the game, trying to play it. I got a few hours in both times.
I'm like, about 15 hours in now. I really like it. I think it's really a lot of fun. And it's incredibly systemically deep.
It's a little bit confusing. It's very Japanese. It's very melodramatic. But it's fun.
It's a fun turn-based RPG. It's got a lot of things to upgrade. It's got amazing music. I really find this Japanese pop music quite appealing.
Yeah. No, the music's always been good in Persona games from what I've seen. So, yeah. Yeah.
So, just wanted to throw that out there. I just want to talk about it more in the weeks and months to come because I imagine it's going to take a long time for me to get through. I basically have been playing it in bed before I go to bed at night or in the morning for like an hour or two. That's when I play it.
And it's good. I really like it. I just wanted to throw that out there for everyone. Now, Ryan Barlog wrote in a message and said, Hello, gents.
As I replay a new game plus on Persona 5, I'm reminded that this two-year-old game longer for Japan has never once received an update. In this day and age, that's insane to think of. This game is huge for lots of different things that can happen. It was all polished before release.
I know you're both chomping at the bit to play the game. So, have added, what if every game was launched in this state? Well, every game would take as fucking long to make it a Persona title, I guess. I didn't want to throw it out there.
Persona 5 is going to be next on my list when I get through Persona 4. But I found that unbelievable. Persona 5 never updated. Yeah, good.
Pretty interesting. That's how things used to be, by the way. Games used to work. Yeah.
And even when games used to be launched kind of broken, that would just be the game, and people would have fun with it anyway. Halo 2 is notoriously broken, and still it's highly regarded as one of the most competitive and, you know, one of the most renowned arena shooters ever. You would think you would want to sell your game in a working condition for obvious reasons, but also because it costs money to submit updates and QA and stuff like that. That's always been confusing, man.
You're just wasting money by not perfecting the game before it goes gold. Yeah. Finally, Chris, before we get into the news, Eugene Lanzioni wrote a note and said, Dear Colin Moriarty and Christopher Raygun, which of the following recent Spiritual Successor video games is most likely to spawn a rebirth of the Spiritual Successor? Okay.
So, Bloodstained, 2D Castlevania. Not really 2D Castlevania, it's really 2D Metroidvania. Felseal, Final Fantasy Tactics, or Wargroove, which is Advanced Wars, that game looks great. Also, feel free to sub in a non-intended IP for Wargroove and Advanced Wars.
So, he's asking, will Bloodstained encourage the return of Metroidvania and Castlevania games, will Felseal encourage the return of Final Fantasy Tactics, or will Wargroove encourage the return of Advanced Wars? Huh. You know, honestly, I don't think any of these are high profile enough to really spark any kind of dramatic rebirth of the entire genre, but, I mean, of the three, probably Wargroove. Yeah, we agree.
I would imagine. Just because I think Advanced Wars is the most likely franchise to actually come back. So, there is a Final Fantasy Tactics like Square Enix coming to mobile in Japan, and who the fuck knows what Konami's doing, so. Yeah, I think that's the right answer.
I think that's objectively actually the right answer. And finally, Brian Shazano wrote in and said, Hey, Colin, Chris, please pronounce Felseal Arbiter's Mark with a Boston accent. Thank you, and you're welcome. What was it?
Felseal Abismak? Felseal Abismak. Abismak. Felseal Abismak.
Yeah, some of the... Good lord. That accent is fascinating. It was one of the second most sexiest accent, by the way.
It's like, listen, that's not true. I've lived there for a long time. There ain't nothing sexy about that accent. And what's funny is, who gets in, who doesn't?
Erin is a mass caller, family are a long-time mass caller. Her dad sounds like this. But she doesn't sound like that at all. Yeah, my mom sounds very, very New York.
My mom does too. Yeah, yeah. All right, let's get into the news. Let's do it.
It's quite a bit to get through. There's been a lot of booby trouble brewing, so I wanted to get started with that. Number one, there's been major confusion brewing about an interview Final Fantasy VII Remake's director Tetsuya Nomura gave to long-running Japanese gaming publication Weekly Famitsu, particularly in regard to the breasts of the character Tifa, which were quite large in the 1997 PS4 original. Translations of this interview have swirled seeming to indicate that forces of Square Enix somehow asked the more to make Tifa's breasts smaller, or somehow add the character, and that's something called an ethics committee at Square Enix made these demands.
However, this doesn't seem to be the case according to what is apparently a rock-solid translation from Kotaku's Brian Ashcraft. And by the way, there are tons of other better translations that were originally making the rounds. So, Mitsu asks the question, he translates as, quote, since Tifa's chest is large, was there any consideration also given how this rendering was done? And this question is being asked, by the way, on the back of talking about accessories and clothing and what the characters look like, so that's kind of context.
So that's what's asked. The more answer according to Ashcraft, quote, first of all, since we wanted Tifa to have defined abs, we made her more athletic looking. And then, there were also directions from our internal ethics committee that is to not make even the most intense action look unnatural. It was necessary to bind Tifa's chest, and thus for her simple upper body clothing, we put a black undergarment with a fitting tank top for a fitness-conscious sporty design, unquote.
That's what was said. So this sparked some sort of problem. I don't really get it. I don't get it, really.
I don't get it. You know, I got into it with some people this weekend about it, and I look at the situation, and I'm like, you're basing this all on assumptions of a conversation that never happened, and then you're talking down to people who are subject to the mistranslations. Instead of being journalists and finding someone in your orbit that speaks Japanese, and there are plenty of them, I know them, and translate Famitsu for yourself, and then you'll realize that what they're saying is that they just wanted her boobs not to jiggle. In fact, from my point of view, this is a not inoffensive comment.
This is a comment that should actually please the PC crowd, because what they basically said was, can you not make Tifa's gigantic boobs bounce around when she's fighting? And they were like, okay. And that was basically the long and the short of it. It's so strange.
No wonder that these guys, especially in Japan, don't want to talk to anyone. Yeah, of course. Why would you? So a lot of people took umbra with this, and I took umbra with it too, because it's just another easy way for people to score on quote-unquote gamers, or just strawman.
It's just strawmanning something, so you can be mean to people. Well, the thing is too, I feel like there's an inherent incentive nowadays, specifically with a lot of these, it's not print media, but article-based sites, to kind of just get a story out there immediately, to get eyes on it, and then you can issue a correction, and then that's a whole new swath of people coming in to check the correction, so that's like a second win for the article, basically. I feel like you have more people checking in on the articles, if you correct them later. Possibly.
I also think that, that could be true, I think that is true, but I also get concerned, and you see this on Twitter all the time, right? Like, something gets 50,000 retweets, but it's wrong. That is corrected, and it gets like 500 retweets. Like, you've seen that recently with all the drama on the southern border where people are sending all these pictures around, and they're all from the Obama administration, and so everyone retweets them, and everyone in the correction is like, these are from Obama's administration.
Everyone's like, oh, never mind, all right, next tragedy, you know? So, that's the thing that bothers me, is like, you gotta get to the nugget of, and the meat of what is being said, and why it's being said, etc., and if you're not gonna do that hard work, then you leave yourself open to criticism, and I don't even know who you are. If your article sucks, I'm gonna tell you it sucks. You know, you're gonna put it out there and try to be cute and try to, like, straw man and all that kind of stuff.
Too bad. Like, if you put yourself out in the wild, you're gonna get that back. I get it back all the time. So, I was really disappointed with this because I thought this was kind of like a celebratory thing, almost.
If you look at the real translation, it'd be like, yeah, she's not gonna have dead or alive bouncing tits that are gonna smack her in her face when she's bouncing, you know, because we gave her a sports card. I mean, also, it's a PS1 game. I mean, I feel like it renders back then are kind of exaggerated for the purpose of, you know, actually being translatable to the fucking human eye. She had triangle teats.
Yeah, it's like Lara Croft. Yeah, exactly. So, had to start there, but it really has much to do about nothing. Yeah.
Boob trouble indeed. Everything has really much to do about nothing, honestly. Number two, that same controversial weekly Fimitsu interview with Final Fantasy 7 remake director Tetsuya Nomura did net a couple other interesting tidbits, however, as related by website. Come on, Sue.
Perhaps most interesting of the bunch is that the infamous cross-dressing event at the Honey Bee Inn in Midgar is remaining in the remake. This was, of course, a key question as Final Fantasy 7 launched back in 1997 when transgender issues were being discussed pretty much at all. In the scene in question, Cloud recrossed us as a female prostitute to gain access to a character. Nomura says that some changes have been made to the scene, however, perhaps alluding to toning down its more lurid elements.
It did kind of suggest, if I recall in the game, that it's like a little, some of it is involuntary what's going on in this place. I think it's kind of the insinuation. It's been a little while. Additionally, the game will have dialogue options, which is for the most part a completely new edition, and there's new content surrounding the core experience we're familiar with.
One of the things that they said which I thought was interesting was that MP, magic points, will need to be replenished by items. So, I don't know if that means that you can save or use tents or ins, I'm sure you can too, but there's been a real tradition in recent Japanese role-playing games for the most part to just refill magic points after a battle's over or as you walk around it happens in tails, et cetera. So, I like that you're not going to be able to spam your magic, which as we said yesterday or last week, you're not going to be able to do it anyway because you have to earn your right to use magic in Final Fantasy VII, yeah? Which is a neat, really neat idea.
I agree. Number three, 8th Escape may just be ready for a comeback, or Sony could just be celebrating its old-school cartoonish franchise. It's still hard to tell. The confusion rests with Sony launching a new official Twitter account but never actually saw the light of day.
There were four PSP games in there as well beginning in 2005. It makes sense that all this would lead to a new announcement of some sort, especially with Sony going through the trouble of setting up a Twitter account and putting together a video. My assumption is that this will either lead to a new Ape Escape game or maybe a collection because if you watch the trailer they show a bunch of these different games and I know they're trying to celebrate the whole thing but could it be some sort of compilation? Is that why Ape Escape 3 never came to PS4 as it was planned to?
I would love this, by the way. I haven't really played the majority of the series but Ape Escape 1 is one of my favorite PS1 games, period. You're a fan of Spike? I'm a fan.
I just like the way they can control it, especially at the time. It's so interesting with the DualShock control. Yeah, entirely DualShock based and the face buttons were like weapon switches. It was so cool.
Still a great game. We'll probably hear about this I assume at some point. I don't know. It seems hard to believe that they're just making this Twitter account they're just making these videos of celebrating Ape Escape.
Yeah, unlikely. I think it's going to be a collection of some kind. If only just for the original three, maybe, but I don't know. A lot of those games are stranded on PSP so it'd be interesting to see what they would do with those as well.
Number four. As Chris alluded to last week, it seems that Respawn Entertainment's upcoming Star Wars game, Jedi Fallen Order, is actually some sort of non-linear Metroidvania type game. This was for some reason not at all effectively communicated by publisher Electronic Arts during its pre-E3 stream. Website for SquarePoint is a video from Game Informer featuring Respawn's Jeff Makers who confirms that in Metroidvania style, the game's protagonist will learn new Jedi scales and find various pieces of equipment that will both open new areas of the game and make revisiting old areas worth your while.
As the game takes place across multiple planets, you can use your ship to get between them at well. This approach is totally new for Respawn, a studio founded in 2010 and the remnants of the original Infinity Ward, the active in own Call of Duty team. Respawn's other two major games, Titanfall and Titanfall 2 are both as far from non-linear as can be imagined and as is Apex Legends the team's smash-hit battle royale title. So such information about Jedi Fallen Order is far from a given.
Mark Elfring wrote in and said, Gents, why do games insist on not really telling us what they're about? Jedi Fallen Order is apparently a Metroidvania only revealed via off-topic conversation at E3. Would it not benefit the company to explain the game and generate hype? Also, friends, remember to fuck in those dog costumes.
God damn it. So you brought this up briefly last week when I went and investigated this a little bit. They really didn't say this when it counted. I thought it was like a linear shooter.
Well, I feel like that's a weird thing to get across naturally without just saying, hey, this is a Metroidvania. Like God of War has Metroidvania elements in it too and that wasn't even remotely hinted at at all. Leading up to release or even kind of during while I was playing it, I was like, oh, this is a Metroidvania. You gotta get new weapons and go back and like, you know?
I think it's just kind of a difficult thing to highlight during an E3 presentation, especially with a 3D game. I feel like this is a lot more easy to get across in like a 2D kind of thing where you go, oh, he's going up? Oh, he's going left and right? Whoa, how neat.
But I do think they really dropped the ball on not highlighting it at all. At least show the flag of war, you know, or like something like that. Yeah, it's very strange because it looked like just, it looked like Uncharted. Yeah, exactly.
It kind of looked a little generic to me. I think it looks cool, but they didn't do it justice by the way that they talked about it. And my bigger question about this, Chris, is just, I guess you would want to make it seem like a more robust game because from my, like my perspective, the way it was rolled out last year at E3 when, you know, or Vince Zampello just talked about it randomly because it was clearly not planned. It seemed like a game that's really been rushed.
That's my impression. And it doesn't look like a game or sound like a game that's been rushed. So you want to meet in the middle somewhere and for people that have that impression like I do, which I think is an earned impression, you just brought the game out of fucking nowhere. And Vince Zampello was clearly working on a ton of other shit.
So really sell it, especially in the wake of electronic arts kind of bungling a bunch of other high-profile stuff recently. It's just not, it's not a good look. So I'm more excited about the game now that I was, but EA didn't get me excited. I had to go and like read people's random shit that they had to say about it to let me know what EA should let me know from the beginning.
And I agree, you can't say it's a Metroidvania, but you can say like this is a non-linear, explorative, third-person action game. It's not a linear game. That's all you got to say. Yeah, for sure.
But then you have to worry about what you say in place of Metroidvania. Do you say it's open world? Because then a bunch of people are going to be like, uh, another one of these. Yeah, that's true.
I can see why they didn't necessarily want to hammer down on that messaging, but I think you at least want to have some kind of messaging to show that it's not just the Force Unleashed again. You know? I think that's ideal. Number five.
As loot boxes continue to come under consumer and governmental fire, publisher of Electronic Arts continues to defend them. Website PC Games and Relay's word of the testimony given by EA's British VP of Legal and Government Affairs, Kerry Hopkins, to a subcommittee of Parliament, referring to loot boxes as, quote, surprise mechanics, unquote. Here's what Hopkins said, quote, We do think the way that we have implemented these kinds of mechanics, and FIFA, of course, is our big one, our FIFA ultimate team in our past, is actually quite ethical and quite fun, quite enjoyable to people. We do agree with the UK Gambling Commission, the Australian Gambling Commission, and many other Gambling Commissions, that they are in gambling, and we also disagree that there's evidence that shows it leads to gambling.
Instead, we think it's like many other products that people enjoy in a healthy way, and like the element of surprising. Quote, It's worth noting that EA does have a substantial financial reason to protect the business of loot boxes. One dollar in every ten dollar spent on or in an electronic arts game is spent on or within FIFA alone, and EA's ultimate team revenue across all its sports titles was $800 million, as reported two years ago. Daniel Schiffer wrote in and said, I swear, First off, congratulations on 52 episodes, a full year of sacred symbols.
Thank you, Daniel. Can't wait to see what the next 52 has in store. Be careful what you wish for. What are your thoughts on EA redubbing loot boxes as surprise mechanics and comparing them to Kinder Surprises or CCGs?
On one hand, it's a fair comparison of toys, but on the other hand, I love it. I love the verbiage surprise mechanics. Yeah, so I'm curious what your instinct... tells you on this particular story, because I read this, actually, before I even say that, I should introduce this from Ruben Bauer as well on another one of our listeners, because I did not watch it, okay?
He says, hi guys, I'm sure by now you've watched the EA loop box court video. I just wanted to say, regardless of your opinions on loop boxes, I don't think I've ever seen a video of someone looking so guilty and ashamed of what they are saying or doing. It was amazing, especially when she's done talking and had a little bit of utter shame on what she said. She looks like she just ran over a puppy.
And so, we'll talk about this, but I didn't watch it. And I say that only because I read this and I'm like, I don't really disagree with her. You know? Like, I don't really disagree with this Carrie Hopkins, is one of your name Carrie Hopkins of EA?
Yeah. She says, we do think the way that these have been implemented, these kind of mechanics, and she's basically saying, they're quite ethical and quite fun, quite enjoyable to people. It's funny when you read it, because it sounds ridiculous. Yeah.
But I agree with her. Like, why are people so upset about loop boxes? I understand you're upset from a mechanical standpoint, but that's not what people are upset about here. They're upset about these guys just selling loop boxes.
And guys, here's what you do about loop boxes. Don't buy them. And if you don't let your kids to buy loop boxes, be a parent. Otherwise, I don't really understand what the argument is here.
Like, what she's saying is true. People actually do enjoy these. FIFA makes an enormous amount of money selling this stuff. So does NHL.
So does Madden. And no one's holding a gun to anyone's head to buy them. Right. So people are chasing after EA, I think, as usual, because it's EA, and not because of the heart of the matter.
The artichoke heart, let's say, Chris. Which is that it's a choice-based mechanic. If you have a problem with them doing it because they're charging you $60 for a game, that's a different story. But that's not really an ethical question, right?
That's not really a legal question. It's a value kind of proposition kind of question. What do you think about? What do you think about what I just said?
Because that's not a popular opinion, what I just said. At all. People have been making fun of this shit for days now. That people like loot boxes?
Not that people like loot boxes. This Carrie Hopkins shit from EA didn't really say or do anything wrong. She's basically telling the truth. I mean, I don't know what the video is, so I can't comment on the video.
I didn't even know that this was a thing that was happening. But I will say that I just think I find the messaging of surprise mechanics very amusing. Just from like a very... Because it reminds me of that George Carlin bit about like, you know, soft language.
Just admit it. It's just like it's a gambling thing. It's fine. Whatever.
Just admit it. You're fine. If people want to spend that money, they'll spend that money. If people don't, they won't.
But just like the surprise mechanics... It's not an assassination. It's a surprise permanent knockout. It's like, what?
Just calm down. Be transparent. Yeah, the PR or the marketing speak is really shitty. But I just totally disagree that it's gambling.
I totally disagree with that. I just do not agree with that notion at all. Because it's not gambling to go buy fucking Pokemon cards. It's not gambling to go buy like hockey cards.
It's not gambling to buy those eggs that you buy in Japan or in Japan town. That's not gambling. I guess you don't have to pay for the... When you buy a Pokemon card or a pack of Pokemon cards, that's it.
You haven't spent $60 worth of privilege to then buy Pokemon cards. You know what I mean? You're not buying something that facilitates that ability. Yeah, but that...
The thing you're paying for is useless unless you have to spend more money. I don't know. There's something off about it. There's something maybe off about it.
It's not gambling. No. Right? The British and the Canadians and the Australians have all rendered...
This is going through now with the US where we love gambling. So this is definitely not your problem here. But I guess I'm just... I just see this...