Sacred Symbols, Episode 99: The Approach

Just to add to the knowledge bank regarding changed trophies: overwatch did this, too. There are trophies tied to each hero and their abilities but since it's an ongoing multiplayer game, their abilities get reworked sometimes for balancing and they change the trophy accordingly.

Gabriel Garcia

You should have received an RSS link unique to you via e-mail when you signed up. You can also grab it from the Benefits page here on Patreon, or by going to CLS' front page on a browser while logged in. Thanks for your support!

Colin Moriarty

Thank you. <3

Colin Moriarty

Hey there! Just subbed, how do I get this rss link so I get the Plus and other show early in my podcast player? Any guidance is appreciated. Thanks!

Logan Willis

Excellent idea for Episode 100. Colin you are a wily old operator and a safe pair of hands in the podcast space. Giving the listeners what they want. Celebrating the milestone but not self-indulging. Looking forward to the next 101 episodes.

Ed White

Is that what it is?

Colin Moriarty

No.

Colin Moriarty

This is reasonable enough, but I don't know this is what we really need on console...

Colin Moriarty

Fair enough.

Colin Moriarty

Why didn’t chris just say he has a Rise Against tattoo lol :P

Josh Lucas

Hi Colin, did you get a review copy of The Last of Us 2?

Dee Han

Hey Colin and Cris, I think this is how the microphone one the dual sense will work. https://youtu.be/uWUHkCgslNE

Like I said, there is no reason to play. The game is crap. I don't care how good the mechanics are if you can't do anything with them

Biv

I don't know, but hopefully there's a karmic debt for people who treat others like that.

Colin Moriarty

Fair enough, but it can't be THAT good. No one is playing!

Colin Moriarty

I also don't predictably get the shits from certain foods.

Colin Moriarty

It's what's good.

Colin Moriarty

Right on! Enjoy.

Colin Moriarty

Good Canadian boys.

Colin Moriarty

Yeah, it's a bummer.

Colin Moriarty

LOL.

Colin Moriarty

Okay, good to know.

Colin Moriarty

Thank you! <3

Colin Moriarty

Not that it's exact math (obviously), but the Metacritic scores are somewhat equivalent.

Colin Moriarty

Great show guys so I just beat The Last Of Us for the first time and the game is amazing. It was a bummer that I posted it on social media and someone almost ruined part 2 but I blocked him. Why do ppl feel the need to ruin games for ppl?

Daniel Margaca

I think the big thing about Anthem is the controls. The flying mechanics are next level. Truly unmatched. The shooting mechanics are butter. Possibly the best I've played since Halo. It's just that ever other damn thing in the game is terrible. The bones are very strong. It just has no flesh.

Biv

I want it to be known that Captain Crunch cuts my gums, but I do NOT get the "Taco Bell shits" everyone complains about.

Cash

Honey Bunches of Oats. Word.

Biv

Thanks for the update on the shipping time for the TB physical copies. I got my email confirmation a little while ago. Looking forward to getting it. Stay awesome, dudes.

Wretched Spawn

Word up for my fellow Maritimers making the new 2k golf game.

Jason Price

The Doom Eternal trophy list is especially infuriating because the multiplayer sucks and its tacked on. Usually in most single player games I will gladly play multiplayer for a while to get trophies if its fun but I played one match of Doom Eternal online and I don't think I'll touch it again. I got all of the single player trophies so its really annoying.

Sumojoe118

Chris discussing food or flavor is becoming offensive

Hey Col, I'd highly recommend you get the Platinum Headset over the Golds for a couple reasons. 1) The build quality on the Platinum Headset is vastly superior. 2) The 3D Audio is freakin' fantastic. 3) If not for the other two reasons, the battery life is leagues better on the Platinum Headset as opposed to the Golds. It's a bit more in price (i think they're going to be sold at a discount this week with the Days of Play Sale), but the Platinum Headset is well worth it over the Golds.

KB

Great episode guys, Chris especially made some great points in regards to remakes/remasters and ongoing online services. Looking forward to episode 100!

Harry Stone

Correction: Life is strange 2 is far worse than the original.

Kaleb

I mean, I called it.

Colin Moriarty

Hello?!

Colin Moriarty

Maybe put a lil peanut butter on 'em.

Colin Moriarty

I'm not hearing anything at this timestamp.

Colin Moriarty

That's the whole thing: We simply don't know yet. So all we can do is put some conjecture forth...

Colin Moriarty

We wanna do it. Timing is just the issue, that's all. We're gonna do one.

Colin Moriarty

It's the little things.

Colin Moriarty

You're the culprit.

Colin Moriarty

Yeah, that's the one.

Colin Moriarty

Probably BioWare, in my opinion.

Colin Moriarty

Nah. Two reasons: 1.) I don't want to load up the YouTube feed with random three hour videos. 2.) Sending stuff to YouTube from Twitch apparently hurts your discoverability and watchtime.

Colin Moriarty

Your actually missing the point. Its about the architecture. The difference in the SSD is actually significant. It isn't the Grand Caynon but its also not minor. You have to understand its not about loading times. Its about storage of memory on the fly of complete assets. The PS5 can do 16GB of memory every 2 seconds. That is massively important when it comes to level of detail and open worlds. We are talking the almost complete elimination of draw distances with lower poly assets in the distance. No more pop in at all. The world's will be seamless. Thats the leap. And almost every dev has come out and said the architecture of the how the SSD interacts in the whole package is the biggest leap in games in 20 years. I am pretty well versed and schooled in this area and the PS5 architecture is one to behold. You have to understand that the bottlenecks that exist on this current gen are elimated in PS5 and Xbox went a different route. They still have the same bottlenecks in there design but they opted for more straight raw power. PS5 went for speed and efficiency. And the SSD in PS5 if you actually study it and listen to devs is actually a quantum leap for DEVELOPMENT. Your looking at it from a gamers eyes. Games are going to be able to be made much faster, with much higher quality assets and much less system strain because of how the interior mechanics are organized. Cerny has created a really "revolutionary" design. The proof will be in the pudding. But once again people need to understand its not a side by side with XBOX where you are going to see these big gaps. Its in game development. The pipeline for creating on PS5 is about twice as efficient as XSX. But let's get great games from everyone.

Brett Carlson

Colin this is pretty off topic but I was just browsing YouTube and have seen literally 30 video atleast from respective commentators reviewing Days Gone in 2020 and coming away talking about it being one of the best PS4 exclusive and one of there favorite open world shooters. I know me and you both really enjoyed this game, but do studios do themselves a disservice when they provide early copies to reviewers without the patches that players will experience on day 1. Because alot of reviews gave Days Gone let's say a 7 and minused some of those points based on performance, but if you turn on Days Gone today as a new player your game has virtually no bugs and runs smooth but you see it was given a 7. Is that not a weird place for a game to be? Days Gone is a good game from a studio that should be receiving more credit but they are now still relatively in the shadows because the initial reception of the game DID NOT accurately reflect what us regular players experienced. And had virtually no issues technically with the game and I played in 1 week post launch.

Brett Carlson

“Hello?!” Hahahaha love the Easter egg. Stopped listening to the end because you stopped doing funny outtakes. Thanks for bringing it back, albeit briefly

Tony Rivera

About the communion wafers, as long as the pieces of bread have not yet been used in a mass to become the body of Christ, you can eat as many of them as you want! So Colin, you can buy 100 of them and snack away like it's a package of Ritz crackers. It's during the ritual of the mass where the host becomes the host, any time before that it's just a piece of unleavened bread.

Alex Bolton

There seems to be a lot of fans interpreting the PS5's SSD speed as being some "monumental" advantage over the Xbox Series X. While the PS5 drive is certainly faster than it's competitor's, at the scale of speed in which we are talking- it's not THAT much faster. The XBSX comes equipped with a proprietary PCIe 3.0 SSD- reportedly equivalent to the specs available in most high-end SSDs that you might currently purchase for a gaming PC. The PS5 will be utilizing a proprietary PCIe 4.0 SSD architecture for their system. PCIE 4.0 is a brand new generation of SSDs that is not even currently available for PC Gamers. I'm not sure if linking to external articles is allowed here, bit SixthAxis had a great article that outlines the technical differences between the XBSX and PS5 SSDs. But the bottom line is- the PS5 SSD is roughly TWICE as fast as the XBSX SSD. It sounds like alot when just left at that. But this essentially means that where a PS5 will take .5 seconds to load in game assets, the XBSX will take 1 second to load in the same game assets. In the next generation when were talking about loading times, were usually talking about fractions of a second. So, if a PS5 game seems to have no apparent loading screens, the XBSX will also likely have no apparent loading screens, or if it does, it will be relegated to 1 or 2 second loading screens. There are two more important considerations to make when measuring the effect of the PS5's SSD- Ubiquity and Processing Speed. While first party games will be free to spec performance as they see fit, third party games will likely still optimize their games and design their games based on specifications dictated by the market. During this coming fall, the entire XBSX consumer base and 95% of the PC Gaming Community will be capped by PCIe 3.0 SSD architecture. They will not severely alter their game design philosophy to suit the performance of PCIe 4.0 if relatively speaking- no one has it. The same thing occured when PC Gamers began utilizing standard and PCIe 3.0 SSDs. Games as a whole weren't altered to accommodate for our system's newly improved performance. Even though I've had a PCIe 3.0 drive for the past two years, I've still had to squeeze through the same crevices and get the same "AI boost up to the ledge" as the rest of you motherfuckers have. And most importantly- it doesn't matter that you have the fastest SSD in the world if its bottlenecked by a mediocre CPU. Which is exactly what the PS5 has. The SSD can only process the requests from the CPU as fast as it receives them. If the system has a slow or mediocre CPU (which it does) , it's going to hinder the cutting edge effectiveness of the PCIe 4.0 As for whether or not the Unreal Engine 5 will be "better" on the PS5 or not- I think that's WAY too early and probably too nuanced of a discussion to even have. Unreal Engine 4 runs great on pretty much every type of modern performance hardware, and Unreal 5 will almost certainly be the same way. That's exactly Epic's intent when they're designing their engines. I think it's obvious that Epic chose to debut on the PS5 because they've built up a stellar business partnership with Sony over the past several years and hope to continue that into the future. Not to mention they were certainly compensated to debit with Sony.

Jack Sibert

Right at the 2:24 mark there's audio overlap of you say goodbye, and the outro beginning. Great podcast nonetheless.

Thanks for answering my question, Colin and Chris! Been following since Beyond days (~2013). I am a big fan of open world games and checklist-type games, for a long time. AC Odyssey was one of the games that really wore me out on some of these style of games in the past couple years. In fact, I had started RDR2 but did not want to finish since I had just platinumed AC Odyssey and another large game seemed daunting at the time. It was sort of how you described feeling a bit overwhelmed with the Witcher 3 at one point, Colin. Like you both, I think that Ghost of Tsushima will be a good to great game. I love samurais, feudal Japan, and the historical setting, as a fellow history major (European/Middle Eastern History speciality). We will just have to wait to see how it plays, how immersive the open world is, how the various parts of the game come together, and the overall gameplay. Evaluating a video game is largely about the intent of the developers in terms of what were they trying to accomplish and did they stick the landing. Judging a game by its own merits. However, I would not be surprised if games like the Witcher 3, Horizon Zero Dawn, and RDR2 were influences, even though they are entirely different games. I also think that there are open worlds that are much better realized than others, and we will have to see if that is the case with Ghost of Tsushima.

Man, if you guys don't like FF7 and don't really wanna do the spoilercast, then don't feel like you have too. Playing a game out of obligation is not going to make for a great episode imo. Good show btw lads, and glad everyone seems to be doing ok.

Ryan Murdoch

About 35min into the last episode.

Thank you for answering my question, Colin and Chris! Been following since the Beyond days (roughly ~2013). I love open world and checklist type games myself, although AC Odyssey really burned me out on those for a while. Spider-Man and Skyrim were my most recent ones, although I was returning to and finishing both. The latter was my second run through. Looking to go back to RDR2 eventually. Like you both, I think that Ghost of Tsushima will most likely be a good to great game. I love samurais, feudal Japan, and the overall setting. History major myself, but I specialized in European/Middle Eastern History in college and graduate school...now a middle school history teacher. In any case, judge a game based on its own merits and what the developers are seeking to accomplish (one of the core philosophies when it comes to assessing games, Colin?). Witcher 3 or RDR2 is apples to oranges when it comes to what Sucker Punch is striving to do, but I’m sure some high profile open worlds inspired the game somewhat. There are also certainly open world games much better realized than others, regardless of the design philosophy. We do not know how the game comes together, whether it is a compelling open world or not, and mostly importantly is it fun to play? I am cautiously optimistic but in two months, time will tell. I am just curious how Sucker Punch’s new IP is going to do critically and commercially, given the current gaming landscape and Sony’s marketing strategy with the game. Game reviews and your impressions about playing Ghost of Tsushima this summer will most likely help me decide if it is the right game for me or not.

I listened to the last episode, did I somehow miss when they talked about Ghost Of Tsushima?

LE

The diligent effort you put into answering my nonsense question about the dwarves is exactly what makes CLS so great.

David Graham

I got twin breaker to play on the plane to Colorado, however our flight had to be cancelled because of Covid so I still haven't played it as I've been balls deep in battlefield 4 again on ps4. I have it ready and waiting for my next trip, though!

Jordan Knepp

Star Citizen is the game y’all are thinking of. They make their money from people buying ships.

Kenneth Oms

Colin, which is worse: BioWare with Anthem and Andromeda or Bethesda with Fallout 76 and years away from Starfield and ES6?

NeO JD

Colin, have you considered dumping your Twitch VODs on youtube? I like to put them on as background noise but Twitch's handling of VOD playback is quite clunky.

Michal Dudic

I don't agree with anything you said, but you are of course entitled to your opinions.

Colin Moriarty

Hahaha.

Colin Moriarty

We'll know in two months. =)

Colin Moriarty

Interesting. That could be some of these people.

Colin Moriarty

Honestly, even if they were blessed I'd still eat them all.

Colin Moriarty

Infamous would have popped a lot more in this ecosystem...

Colin Moriarty

I can understand your argument about America in World War I, but the Allies wouldn't have won World War II without the US. It's not only about the war on the ground, but the war of materiel and capital, too. America's industry and money fueled the effort long before we got involved in North Africa, and then Europe.

Colin Moriarty

Really?! I've not even gotten mine yet. LOL.

Colin Moriarty

I like the first... the others I don't.

Colin Moriarty

This should be fixed.

Colin Moriarty

"That's enough of that." is such a glorious way to address people with Crohn's disease talking about their lucrative golden bowels

Matt tamer

I think it's fair to say you were being overly negative, not just with this game, but with the brand in general. I don't really care (which is why I'm only commenting on your reaction to the reaction), but your defense of 'I'm not worshipping at the PS altar and the game isn't revolutionary' is super weak. I don't think anyone is asking you to do that, and why is a game being revolutionary a per-requisite? I don't think any game bar Pokemon Go has come close to being revolutionary in my entire lifetimes (I include VR here). It seemed an odd stance. That's where my take on overly negative comes from - you're judging it because it didn't seem 'revolutionary'... Ok. I guess. Just seems a weirdly high bar.

hugplx

I think its to early to say whether GoT is game-a-fide like Chris was mentioning. Judging by the depth of the photo mode and the Japanese voice track and black and white mode i have a very strong feeling you will be able to turn on and off every single part of the HUD if you desire. Horizon Zero Dawn allowed you to really customize the HUD pretty heavily. But we shall see. The reason why I believe people find this game so compelling Colin is because they are not looking at it as a checklist game. Just the environmental stuff alone like the wind and fox and bird makes it seem like it won't be checklist. A checklist game to me is a game with 100s of icons on the map that you click on and then just follow to GPS and pick something up. I feel like the vibe I personally got from the State of Play was more Breath of the Wild style open world which I think is what everyone is also thinking which is why they are super compelled. Not saying that is the case cause obviously we don't know, but that is personally the vibe I got. Like the open world was going to be very emergent in nature.

Brett Carlson

Great show lads, regarding the caught a glimpse trophy, when I was younger and excited about getting the platinum in a game, I'd install it just to get the trophy list on my psn list, even if I wasn't planning on actually playing it until a months later when I'd finished with the games I was currently working on, a bit psychopathic in hindsight. Also Blindside fucking rule and I love the silence album, first international band I ever saw live in 2007 and they've never been back to NZ since

Big Swingin' Rick

When you buy a pack of communion hosts at the store they have not been blessed yet so you can eat as many as you want.

Sumojoe118

You guys aren't crazy, nothing we've seen of Ghost of Tsushima does anything for me at all. Another 3rd person action game from a first party studio, only this time with a samurai skin. Yaaawwwwn. I bet they wished they hadn't gone down this road when they found out about Sekiro. But it was too late.

Vincent DePalma

I think they did have some type of rerelease though and sold it as the “good version”. I know for sure thats how it was marketed when it left Playstation but I don’t think it had paid DLC.

bix hutch

Im Irish and Scottish and I was raised by my grandparents who were incredibly culturally proud of our people and the thousands of years of bull shit we persevered through. The Vikings caused incredible damage to our ancient culture, religion, statues and slaughtered our unarmed druids in places we considered sacred. However, I’m not the slightest bit offended by Vikings being glorified in a historically inaccurate way for two reasons. The first being that history is glorified and dishonest all the time. America is almost always portrayed as the worlds savior in WWII even though they came in at the tale end when Russia had been smashing the Nazis all up and down the eastern front and they probably would have won even if America never even joined the fight if you consider the amount of land they were taking back from Germany with virtually no help. The second reason it doesn’t offend me is because I’m not a little bitch. I guess my point is suck it up and save it for shit that’s actually offensive like small businesses being wiped out across the globe.

bix hutch

Got my physical copy of Twin Breaker today. I'm not going to lie the packaging is pretty sweet.

Austin N

Editing note for Dustin: There's a skip in Colin's track that causes an awkward silence later on at the 2:08:50 mark. Sounds like it could be from the rendering process, but just wanted to give a heads up. Great episode, dudes!

Collin Sparling

My favorite cereals are Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Reese's Puffs, and Canadian Corn Pops (much better than the styrofoam shit we have here).

Jorge Sosa

Hey Colin, just noticed you said something along the lines of that No Man's Sky fixed the game then charged for DLC once the game was fixed. I'm sure Hello Games has never charged for any of the updates. I've not played it in a few months, but I'm sure everything has been free.

Liam Mcnulty

That's the one!

Colin Moriarty

Was taking a sip and then spat out my water at Chris' "remedial deficit" line. P.S. The still-unreleased space game you're thinking of, with a ridiculously drawn out and lucrative funding model, is Star Citizen. It's been in development since 2011, launched a $2 million Kickstarter campaign in 2013, and has raised over $250 million in crowdfunding as of 2019.

Captain Canada

It's on the list!

Colin Moriarty

Haven't heard the name Dane Cook in a long time! obiwan.gif

Colin Moriarty

Sleepy seems like he'd be a UBI proponent.

Colin Moriarty

I'd go with Sleepy as long as he could pay his rent.

Gr4vity400

Colin, I heard you saying you wish for a game to be set in India. Play Uncharted: The Lost Legacy!

Will Hahn

Colin, you need to watch Dane Cook’s 30-minute Comedy Central Presents.. he talks about being Catholic and the Hosts, how the priests say “Time for snacks!” And he confuses the priest by sticking his tongue out and holding his hands out- “Your choice Holy Man.. choose wisely..” hahaha I’m a Catholic and go to church weekly but I was in tears laughing. He even talks about using them as cereal: Christ Chex. Hahaha trust me give it a watch. It’s worth it.

Tony Rivera

I'm starting to get creeped out more and more by my iPhone clearly listening to me and serving me ads. It's crazy that we accept this shit.

Colin Moriarty

How did I use it incorrectly?

Colin Moriarty

Well I do want a good battery!

Colin Moriarty

I wish I were that smart.

Colin Moriarty

It's disappointing it's so broken, and surprising that Hangar 13 would put their name on it and do such a poor job. I have so much else to play, anyway, so it doesn't really matter to me.

Colin Moriarty

Hey, thanks for the heads-up. This is fixed. <3

Colin Moriarty

Awesome! Enjoy.

Colin Moriarty

It would have made a little more sense if they dropped the price more dramatically. Then again, PS5 will be supply-constrained (and maybe expensive), so this might be some folks' only option for a while, even in 2021.

Colin Moriarty

LOL.

Colin Moriarty

Excellent.

Colin Moriarty

I don't think that's it, but it's a thought.

Colin Moriarty

I'm sorry for your loss. You'll bounce back!

Colin Moriarty

If there's a microphone inside my DualSense I'm taking the thing apart and removing it

Watch Ergo Proxy

I love when Colin spreads his wings and tries new words, but I have no idea how chicanery made sense in that sentence.

Jake Z

I don't think you guys are relentlessly negative at all. There's needless, depression-caused negativity sometimes, like when Colin said he was worried about the haptic feedback killing the battery haha. But overall I think you're more positive than not, now that Dreams is out in the wild.

Jake Z

When discussing activision Colin says the words "insane" and "reignited". I see what you did there Colin.

Tomas Pacheco

I had Mafia 2 in my cart on PSN. I already own Mafia 3 so I download the up grade and start the DLC... my god the game is still broken. Saw some footage on twitter and Mafia II is basically unplayable. It’s a shame to because the games are really fun. Hanger 13 just don’t polish their games at all. Instantly canceled my preorder for Mafia Remake. I’m almost certain it’ll have game breaking bugs.

D'Ante Almo

There’s kinda a strange audio skip at 2:08:51 followed by a strangely long pause (pregnant pause?) after you asked your question before Chris responds.

Ryan Harvey

Just got a noti that my copy of twin breaker shipped! Totally forgot about it but a welcome surprise

Caleb Peacock

The Last of Us is my favorite game of all time and I absolutely can't wait for the sequel, but coming out with a PS4 bundle months before the launch of the PS5 seems very strange to me. I've been saving up for the PS5 and already have a Pro so even i die hard fan like myself can't justify a purchase of this PS4 Pro bundle. In any case, keep up the great work gentlemen!

Anthony J Sanchez

Holy shit. Remedial Deficit is the best insult I think I've ever heard.

Josh Tedrow

Great show lads. And yes I can confirm that your Dick Van Dyke-Esque pronunciation of my name is in fact entirely accurate.

On the topic of trophies, maybe people out there boot up a game connected to the internet and then before earning a trophy they cut off the internet so trophies don't sync. Seems outlandish, but I don't understand how it's possible otherwise. There are 1000s of trophies you earn in games like 5 minutes in. So there has to be some tomfoolery going on.

Brett Carlson

Holy moly, since I just recently lost my job I thought it was Tuesday for a second! I really dig the new organization though - Thusdays and Fridays are so powerful

Ryan Harvey