Sacred Symbols, Episode 94: Cloud Nine

We'll do it in a few weeks! =)

Colin Moriarty

Ugh...we are now on Kingdom Hearts level story telling for FF7 remake....can't wait for the spoilercast for it😁😁

Jajcen Harris

Cloud is level 7 at the start of FFVII? I don't remember that, but you could be right.

Colin Moriarty

There has to be a cutoff at some point, like Vader in Empire. 23 years and four consoles ago is a reasonable cutoff, I think.

Colin Moriarty

I think we explained the Metacritic situation pretty well?

Colin Moriarty

I disagree about TLoU2. There's no reason to voluntarily enter the fray with another big game if you can avoid it, and you definitely don't want to release the game when the new console is coming out (supposedly). August seems ideal. That's where I'd place my money, currently. We'll know more about Ghost in the coming weeks.

Colin Moriarty

Not good enough!

Colin Moriarty

I'm with you, but I understand what Chris is saying. There's something within the spirit of that game, its colors and its ambiance, that needs to be retained at all costs. But a remake is a no-brainer.

Colin Moriarty

Of course I'm gonna beat it!

Colin Moriarty

Possibly so! But I'm not so sure about that, when you consider how much some big games sell...

Colin Moriarty

Gotta wonder if Ghost of Tsushima is the next shoe to drop, then!

Colin Moriarty

Dream interpretation is interesting, but I'm not sure I believe it.

Colin Moriarty

Just as an aside, the reason Cloud starts the game at level 6 and levels up to 7 after the first fight is a reference to the first game, it was briefly mentioned halfway through the show.

Cash

Hey man I get it that final fantasy VII is 25 years old but this remake is new. I never played it so like why do you say,"I don't feel bad spoiling it at this point. " had to stop your podcast I look forward to listening to simply just to avoid spoilers

Nate Meel

The podcast would be so much better if C&C upped their knowledge of the gaming industry. Lack of understanding of the metacritic scores, for example. And bringing up the baseless PS5 overheating rumours?

Dee Han

RE4 absolutely needs a remake. The movement and stop & pop gunplay is too stiff now. RE4 also looks really old, upgrading textures won't do, it needs a complete fresh coat of paint and modern changes. I enjoyed RE3 way more than RE2, so I’m happy the same studio is working on RE4 remake.

Colin we need you to beat FF7 Remake. For the culture. Your opinion on this game is coveted. No rush, but we as a community need to hear your thoughts on............I won't go any further, but I'm super curious as a fellow lifelong Final Fantasy fan how you react to the culmination. Going to be interesting to hear how it grabs you.

Brett Carlson

Hey Colin, Great ep. Fair point about social media not necessarily translating to the real world. However, I do want to contest that I think the overlap between social media users and console players is probably bigger than social media users and election voters. Nonetheless, your point is well taken. Cheers, Pete

Pete

At first I thought it was the subject matter with TLOU delay but I've been looking for a week to order FFVII online and it's out of stock everywhere. Makes sense Sony would want to avoid that.

Your Boi Nicky V

Here's a link to a dream dictionary where u can interpret dreams. Chris mentioned being a spider, and it says something about a spider spinning a web could be related to the world wide web. Idk, he mentioned it was cool, so it's probably a positive association to his waking life somehow...or maybe he's been playing spiderman way too much. http://www.dreammoods.com/dreamdictionary/s4.htm

Not Sure

I just do it on Twitter. You can do the same!

Colin Moriarty

How do you gift games? I’d happily donate a game or two to a listener or two. Thankfully, I am still employed so i’d love to help!

Hodge

Too late, you're That Guy.

Colin Moriarty

Colin, hate to be "that guy" but the Last of Us isn't about a virus. It's about a fungal infection. Some may argue it's semantics, but there is a difference

Jay Phillips

Thank you for your kind words. I'm glad you're enjoying the game!

Colin Moriarty

It's something special. They really did a wonderful job on this project, and I feel stupid for ever doubting them (though, again, it seems like they made a sharp turn halfway through when they removed CyberConnect from the project and brought it in-house).

Colin Moriarty

I mean, I do, too... but he's got a good shot.

Colin Moriarty

Gotta beat them all.

Colin Moriarty

You're welcome!

Colin Moriarty

Just do it, no balls.

Colin Moriarty

Of course you haven't, because it's no good for the narrative.

Colin Moriarty

Did you listen to the show? We talk about the weights. =)

Colin Moriarty

I don't speak this language, Nathan!

Colin Moriarty

That's really nice of you. Thank you for doing that.

Colin Moriarty

Yeah, I don't know what that's all about, but that whole line of marketing was added later for whatever reason. I find the combat incredibly satisfying.

Colin Moriarty

Colin, Agree with you on FF7 remake. The visuals are absolutely stunningly immersive. The soundtrack is brilliant. Gameplay is super fun and never tiring. I love the Disney/Marvel story feel where you get the hokey dialogue and loveable characters with a meaningful story. I actually almost didn’t even buy this game. I haven’t played a final fantasy in years. Glad I did. Although this is a very different experience, there’s so many pieces that hit me with nostalgia and remind me of when I was a kid playing the original. This is a special one. I’m on chapter 8 and I’m taking my time. Thanks for the awesome podcast. I’ve been a fan for a long time back to your IGN days. I really respect and appreciate your perspective. Eric

Eric Bolella

I gotta say, I'm in the same boat as you Colin when it comes to exceeded expectations for FFVIIR. I was worried when it seemed like there were some development issues after they announced the game, but it feels like they really treated this game with a lot of care in the end. I’m a little over half-way through, but so far I’m actually kind of blown away. The fleshing out of the characters, the beautifully composed score, and just the tone and cinematic presentation, I did not expect them to nail it the way they did. I also love that by staying true to the design and style of the original, despite it being a modern game, I still get that grungy late-90's sci-fi vibe. Love it! I know that my experience, like many others I’m sure, is very tinted with nostalgia as it’s difficult to separate yourself from the experience of playing the original game for the first back when it came out. And while I can understand people's hesitance to play games from that early polygonal era, if you can you should really try to play the original first! Plus the original is a more traditional and totally different kind of game than this remake, so playing both shouldn’t feel too redundant. This game is definitely less of a remake in the vein of Spyro or Crash, and really more of an homage I think. Not being able to appreciate all of the creative twists in this remake would be a lesser experience in my view.

Tim Crecelius

Anyone else blown away that Colin said “Joe Biden is most likely going to be our next President”🤔🤔🤔 I have SERIOUS questions about that

knowing the ending of the game, i think it's a requirement. even jason schreier thinks so

B00ch

I must dispute the notion that playing the original FFVII is a near-requirement for getting the most out of Remake. Indeed you will gain perspective on how the devs were able to more fully realize the world and the narrative. Is this necessarily the superior experience? No. Imagine how wonderful it will be for all the people playing through the story of FFVII for the very first time, or possibly even their first Final Fantasy game period. I am actually more jealous of them. Not to mention the absurdity of going back to the original game in 2020. It looks dated, feels dated. Not to mention being the most overrated game of all time, but that's not necessarily a point against it. If you're going to sink 40 hours into a PS1 era FF, do yourself a favor and play IX instead. Edit: Had to come back to this because I'm also reminded of a point made by Colin leading up to the release of Persona 5. He felt like he couldn't get hype for it because he didn't play the previous games. It wasn't his game to be excited about and the excitement was reserved for those who were more familiar with the series. Not allowing yourself to be excited for something because you feel you missed the official boat has gotta be the apex of hipster mentality. And I must say there are hints of it in the "play the original first" argument. Sounds kinda like "I was a fully cognizant gamer back in the hay day of FFVII and you weren't, so get in line newb".

Vincent DePalma

I'm 100% on board with beat-em ups being renamed to beat them all.

Billy Wright

Thank you guys for providing the other side of the KOGOTYOU Gearbox story. Much appeciated!

Josh Walker

Ughhh omg do I really have to play FF7 original? This is brutal.

sean McGuire

Glad you guys brought up the Gearbox update. Haven’t heard that brought up anywhere else.

NeO JD

Hi C&C, With regards to the MetaCritic average debate: You were correct in your assumption that a true average would mean that regardless of number of reviews, things would even out, go up or go down slightly. But, as you know, Metacritic has unidentified weights for reviews, giving a 90% from IGN more influence than a 90% from some other site in their overall "average". Because of this, each review can contribute different values even when they give the same score. This means metacritic doesn't offer a true average, and unless both platforms have the same number of high, medium and low value weights on both sides, you'll likely end up with an uneven score. To achieve parity in this system, you need the same number of high, medium and low weights, rather than the same number of samples. If you want the true average, OpenCritic provides that, and also pools platform reviews into one.

WhatDarrenPlays

Rugby Union = More international and the original traditional Rugby Rugby League = Bastardized version of union that's considered more entertaining and is considered football (or footy) in Sydney NSW AFL = Evolved from our indigenous culture and is Australia's biggest sport and is considered football (or footy) in Melbourne Victoria

Bruce The Genetic Jackhammer Rando

Your giveaway inspired me to do something similar and I bought a couple of people copies of Persona 5 Royal and FF VII Remake. Hope you and your family are doing well.

ZachAttacksGames

I guess my disappointment comes because FFVIIR breaks it's promise. You can not play it as a turn based RPG, despite telling us you could. Being a fellow lover of the genre, I was hoping to hear it ripped apart and was shocked when you went the other direction. This button slap nonsense barely deserves to be called an RPG, let alone FF. And maybe it's not the best, but the materia system is easily top five. I'm yet to play a turn based (ie real) RPG to match it since.

Biv

It could be. I don't really know. It's all guessing.

Colin Moriarty

I'd say I don't want more clutter, but I just keep buying GI Joes, so.

Colin Moriarty

I don't understand why you'd be disappointed. Final Fantasy VII hardly had the best JRPG combat system in history. I loved it, but let's be real.

Colin Moriarty

I imagine it's a combination of semantic technical problems and anticipations of charge-backs.

Colin Moriarty

I believe only on a browser.

Colin Moriarty

Thanks! I talk about whatever's on my mind, as you know... and. well, it's been on my mind a lot!

Colin Moriarty

At the risk of sounding fanboyish, is there a possibility that games score higher on Xbox One because there aren’t as many high quality exclusives? I know it sounds strange but hear me out. Playstation-centric media outlets are used to a certain quality of 1st party games, which not only tend to rank higher but also become the standard to which a lot of other games are compared. Xbox has less exclusives and not as high quality as Sony’s. Therefore good quality 3rd party titles might make more of an impact, be welcomed more and maybe rank higher by Xbox media outlets and fanbase? Just a thought, not an attack on Microsoft’s console.

Juan Paolini

I have steered clear of collector's editions in part because I don't want physical discs. I'm not too likely to buy with a digital code alternative, but there would at least be a possibility.

Kevin Sullivan

I'm so disappointed by Colin. I played the FFVII demo and thought the combat system was just horrendous. Just twitch gaming idiocy. I know, let's remake the game and get rid of the single best RPG combat system in history. *insert angry emojis*

Biv

I don’t know if anyone has ever asked this question.. I know that I’ve asked it before but I know it wasn’t read aloud.. why doesn’t Playstation allow “Gifting” on their store?! I’ve wanted this so that I can gift games to friends of mine who have less means than I do. As it is, I need to purchase a PS store digital gift card on Amazon then share it with my friend so they can “hopefully” buy the game that I wanted to give them. Granted they can get whatever they want, and that’s fine. But I’m giving Amazon a cut of the order because Sony will not allow a gift option on their store. Colin, do you have any insight? Should I write in about this again so you and Chris can talk about it? I wrote a letter once as an “idea” to Sony and I got a response but it never went anywhere. This baffles me because they have a genuine opportunity to make more money if we can buy games or DLC for friends directly on the store.

Tony Rivera

Wishlists are a thing on PSN! I use mine regularly and there is even a privacy setting that allows other people to see it or not. Logical next step would be to allow a player to buy something for someone off of their list. Thank you both for another great episode! Stay safe, boys

Richard Duflo

It sucks, 'cause like, I'll sleep for 4 hours or so, and then when I become cognizant, it's right back to the worry. I usually fall back asleep for a bit after reading, then I'm back to being anxious, and it takes most of the day to wash away. =\ Stay safe out there.

Colin Moriarty

I'd like to do something more than that! I'm gonna think on it for a bit.

Colin Moriarty

Oh, it'll sell like fucking hotcakes, no doubt. Thank you for listening! <3

Colin Moriarty

I'm glad you're better. =)

Colin Moriarty

Hey Colin. I don't really participate in discussions and what not. But I hope you're doing okay! You've been talking about your mental health more than usual. I want you to know people care and you're in my thoughts!

juicy1nonly

I'm slowly working my way through! Kinda scared to get to the ending; not hearing great things.

Colin Moriarty

I'd do the PS4 version of the original just because it has the time-skip functionality that makes playing it 3-5x faster (literally) without ruining the experience. So you could get through the game in 20 hours or so.

Colin Moriarty

Could be, but that just seems so high. They've done a really nice job of moderating the in-game economy downward by making items cheaper and Gil more scarce, so it'd be a shame for them to go in the opposite direction with leveling.

Colin Moriarty

Nah, it's some proprietary thing. We talked a lot about it at IGN.

Colin Moriarty

Crash and the Boys is a 1992 NES game, so... the ode goes in the other direction. =)

Colin Moriarty

Potentially. In agnostic media, people review games depending on which build they receive first, so that probably has a lot to do with it, too.

Colin Moriarty

It's all good. I'll live. Thank you!

Colin Moriarty

That's not really very surprising.

Colin Moriarty

I have no idea what you just said. LOL.

Colin Moriarty

Possibly, but the entire more-means-lower thing just doesn't make sense to me.

Colin Moriarty

We're happy to be here for you. Thank you for listening.

Colin Moriarty

Maybe it's rolling out; I dunno.

Colin Moriarty

Freedom Lettuce.

Colin Moriarty

Thank you! I'm trying to read at night. It's not working. =)

Colin Moriarty

Thank you for listening. <3

Colin Moriarty

I also deal with anxiety in the morning. I Forever just thought I wasn't a morning person until it got really bad in my early thirties. I start work at 730am so I'm up early to begin with but when it got bad on me I was waking up at 3am with massive dread. I'm a UPS driver so I'm outside all day and like you, it always gets better throughout the day. Melatonin also helped me start sleeping through the night. Good talk ;) be well.

Jason Price

Maybe for Episode 100 you can just answer more listener questions? Instead of answering 6 at the end, maybe you answer 8, 10, or even 12? Just a thought. Great podcast this week!

Real Radec

I agree with Chris about RE4. The game also holds up really well so I think it's a waste of a remake. However RE4 is very popluar and it will sell, so what the fuck do I know. Great show lads.

Ryan Murdoch

Colin I shared similar anxiety as you. I would wake up very anxious. I wouldn’t be able to eat for at least a few hours after waking up without getting sick to my stomach. Now I’ve gotten better.

Nathan Favreau

Colin. I'm so glad you are enjoying FF7R. I am truly in love with it and I am excited to hear your thoughts on what they did with the rest of the game.

Dr. Peter Venkman

Colin I’ve been on the fence about FF7 remake. I just got my refund from TLOU2 before listening to the show. You convinced me to use the refund to get it but I’ve never played the original or any final fantasy game. This thing will probably take all night to download so I think I’m going to at least try to take your advice and play the og. I already own the ps1 classic that I can play on vita. Should I just do that or get the updated version with trophies?

Dom posa

Colin, I regards to the level cap in FF7R, I’m guessing the next game will just continue it from the level cap so maybe let’s you cap at 75 or 100. And I’m guessing the final game may let you cap at level 200 or something similar to level raising in games as service or other RPGs.

Jason Bristol

I wonder if metacritics algorithm just uses the foundation of Googles Pagerank. It doesn’t look like people care enough to try and figure it out though lol

Kenneth Oms

There is a PS Store Wishlist option, but it's not accessible from the console for some dumb reason. I use it through the PS Store on the Playstation App on mobile.

Jake Z

Yeah I recently graduated and did my final paper on spotify. They have heavy lawsuits because most artists aren't getting paid. Makes me concerned for smaller devs that are going to get lost in the mix once streaming becomes the norm (like Netflix)

Vinny Pepperoni

That Crash and the Boys game sounds like they're ripping off Scott Pilgrim. That's the name of the opening band at Toronto Battle of the Bands, and Todd is Ramona's third evil ex.

Josh Tedrow

One could make an argument that the reviewers who still review games on Xbox are probably more partial to Xbox in general, and therefore inflate game scores knowingly or unknowingly to boost the value of Xbox. Whereas games on Playstation get most reviewers, whether they're partial to Playstation or not.

Jake Z

Im sorry about your anxiety, man stay strong.

larry Seitz

Colin, not to give you more anxiety, but you told the same exact anxiety story last week haha

Jake Z

Hey Colin statistician/data scientist here, the average or mean is highly influenced by outliers because one poor score such as a 1 or 0 drastically affects the average. A better metric would be the median but I digress. You can test this by taking the average of 6,7,8 and 3,7,8. When you have a larger number of people reviewing or taking the average of something the more likely it is that you get more lower scores. Note in this situation, a 10 affects it less than a 1 does because 10 is much closer to the average 7 than the 1 one does so the 1's and 10's don't cancel each other out per say. Additionally, the birthday problem is an application of the pigeonhole principle, which means that if you have 4 holes for 5 objects or pigeons, and a pigeon or object must be in a hole, there must be one hole with two pigeons, but we can not say with certainty which hole, just that there is one with two objects in it. Given there are at most 31 days in a month, you can reason from the pigeon hole principle about how it is easy to see why it has been proven that 23 people is a 50-50 and 35 gets your well above that.

Cameron O'Neill

Hey guys just wanted to throw some clarity on the Spotify question. Streaming is 10000% THE WORST way for musicians to get paid. They get paid from touring and merch in today's age. According to CNBC an artist PER STREAM gets paid between 0.006 and 0.0084 dollars. Yes you read that right less and 1$ PER STREAM. So unless your Drake, Eminem, U2 etc; you aren't making living off streams. If you want more info on how trash the streaming business model is watch Joe Rogans episode with the lead singer of Smashing Pumpkins. He eviscerated the corporate model of Spotify and said all big artist make the lions share of money of shows in which a guy like Drake gets as much as 200,000 per show and merchandise which gets equated to album sales in today's market. Billboard has actually just recently changed the rules and said album sales figures must be from strictly buys of the music not merchandise bundles. Just a little music info for the Sacred Symbols friends.

Brett Carlson

RE: the Metacritic scores, you're correct that just having more total scores won't necessarily drive the scores up or down on its own. The potential issue, though, is with outliers. For example, let's say there's a game that is given a 7.0 in every review except for five reviews that give it a 10. On PS4, given 80 total reviews, that's a score of 7.2, while XBox with just 40 total reviewers would end up with a 7.4 This would be exacerbated by sites that generally review more positively than their PS4 counterparts, leading to a difference in score that can be considered statistically significant. At least that's my guess, couldn't say for sure.

Jason Cartwright

These episodes mean more every week. Thank you!

Andreas Lennartsson

Did anyone get digital refund for last of us 2 preorder? I haven’t received refund or got an email but on my PS4 still has countdown for May 29

Mr. Figs

What games?

Johnny Rosado

Betty Ann: "What are you growing there, Colin? Colin: "Oh, nothing mom. Just some...lettuce."

Max Stahl

The day needs to move just now we have news Sony added 2 new free games to help with the spread. That being said good show

Adamthm

Sleep tip Colin: as someone who has always had trouble sleeping I've found what keeps me up is my racing mind. What has helped a ton is downloading Audible and listening to audio books at bed time. Distracts my mind from itself & about the time I'm invested in the story I pass out. May be worth a shot Colin! Also, no matter what I'll keep supporting on Patreon! Nothin but love fellas!

Remington James

As always, you guys provide great entertainment in these difficult times. Thank you!

Anthony J Sanchez