Sacred Symbols, Episode 93: Indefinitely Quarantined

No Trophies!!!

Colin Moriarty

I can’t speak to Trails of Cold Steel, but I’m two games into the Trails in the Sky trilogy and man... these are JRPGs which need to be played. Damn solid character writing, story telling and combat.

Marc Boggio

Hey Dean, submit your question using the weekly thread, posted on Fridays! <3

Colin Moriarty

Jesus Christ.

Colin Moriarty

Hey Colin, hope you and Chris are keeping well and enjoying the excuse to stay at home and game to your heart's content. I'm trying to focus on the positives and for me even though I still work from home my friends are currently furloughed - this has brought them more time to actually get back to doing some things that make them happy rather than work, work, work... one of these things is gaming...a friend of mine - Paul (liberated from work) and myself got back to an old game of Dead Nation apocalypse we started two years ago but never finished. This for me is one of the most underrated games in the playstation catalogue and was Housemarque at their best. The game holds up just as well now as it did back in the day and has given me and Paul some great moments - the gameplay may be simple, but the graphics, sound design and thoughtfully designed levels and upgrade system make this such a great game to pick up and play. My question for you guys is whether you think we'll ever get a sequel to this ? - Alien Nation just wasn't the same. Looking on ps store this has a staggering 4.5 stars from over 23'000 ratings and I can't believe I'm alone in wanting a follow up. Can you give me hope or had Housemarque moved in another direction now ? Thanks Dean Willicombe from UK

Dean Willicombe

I was living in the dorms with my new coffee maker, and as I was drinking a cup, I felt something brushing up against my lips. I looked inside, and noticed this round brown looking sphere. I googled it with suspicion, and to my dismay found out it was a cockroach egg. And advice: do not use roach bait in an apartment to kill them. It just attracts them from the whole building to your room. Use roach deterrent.

Not Sure

He's definitely Hispanic, LOL.

Colin Moriarty

How has Chris never heard the name Guilherme... It's the common Spanish name for William and very common in Europe at least. Either he is not actually Hispanic or for some reason that name never made it to the Americas.

Ed White

That could very well be, but as I understand it, they are indeed working on it from home. In what capacity, I don't know.

Colin Moriarty

As a game developer myself, I think Naughty Dog isn't able to work from home with the current pandemic situation. ND is pretty secretive and protective of their games. Now image if every ND employee could go home and work on it from home - QA, artists, programmers. Suddenly you run into a situation where information about the game could very easily leak and the studio can't enforce any controls to protect that from happening in the current pandemic situation. I also think some of these studios are limited by their infrastructure. Developers have big computers which are typically connected to a secured network in the studio where content can be easily shared. Dev kits are needed and also connected to this network. Artists have these tablet-monitors that they use on a day-to-day basis. All of this is now needed to work from home. A VPN can alleviate the issue of connecting to a secure office network, but other than that you need to have physical access to all of these devices to develop the game effectively. I think its a combination of these factors that's going to affect a lot of studios

Shubham Goyal

If they release a console during an economic depression it won't sell.

Colin Moriarty

I don't want to stagger you, but it's all the same to me. =)

Colin Moriarty

The pending depression won't have an impact on when Sony release the next console because of how far along the development process is. The last recession hit in 2008 when ps4 was in RnD. Plenty of time to hit the breaks. Sony has already dumped RnD costs into making PS5 and they have presumably already contracted with Chinese and Malaysian companies to produce the units. They can't back out of these contracts on account of corona if the factories can continue to produce. That's my 2 cent anyway.

Ed White

AFL is Rugby? Oh dear, oh boy. You couldn't be more wrong. Aussie Rules footy is way more sophisticated than Rugby.

Haydyn

I think I will. Once Final Fantasy VII R is done, I won't have anything truly pressing to play. And I could really use the workout.

Colin Moriarty

Thank you. &lt;3

Colin Moriarty

Just don't catch the Corona.

Colin Moriarty

That's anecdotal, but interesting, sure. Question is: Will the next Switch not be? Because I bet it will. =)

Colin Moriarty

Wrong head.

Colin Moriarty

You always say "comes on the back of" and my mind just go to the gutter

lazer_josh

Gamefly is still around and I still use it. It's actually pretty convenient.

Gr4vity400

Thanks for looking at my question, going to have a look at the list you put on Twitter. Great episode keep up the amazing work.

Do it Colin! Dust of that PSVR and give it a go. If you're looking for a workout try BeatSaber &amp; SuperHot. Great games that will get your blood pumping guaranteed. If you're looking for some escapism, which is really useful in times like these, try "Ghost Giant" &amp; "Curious Case of Stolen Pets". They're small and whimsical games with mature undertones like depression, loneliness and nostalgia (in the original sense). Sounds contradicting, but trust me, they'll put a smile on your face. You'll also be able to finish them in short order (&lt; 5 hours). Lastly, please, for the love of all things holy, play AstroBot! I don't want to over hype it, because then it'll just ultimately disappoint. But it's seriously a masterclass in gameplay &amp; immersion. I cannot stress enough how enjoyable this game is. Cheers, Pete PS. Hang in there. You sound a bit down. Coming from Europe, I can tell you that the USA will make it through this. The curves have already started to flatten over here. We're getting more cautiously optimistic by the day.

Pete

Yeah, I mean... there is something about this dude that ain't right. No doubt.

Colin Moriarty

I have! Just need to watch the newest season.

Colin Moriarty

Hahaha, that's understandable, though. Don't wanna import the Corona.

Colin Moriarty

We'll see how it all shakes out. I wanted to read that question because, regardless, it's a compelling contradiction.

Colin Moriarty

I'm just saying.

Colin Moriarty

Thank you, Jack! Welcome.

Colin Moriarty

This is interesting, but the law of averages shouldn't affect the scores, no? Just because one platform has 10 reviews and another 20 doesn't mean the one with 20 would have a lower score.

Colin Moriarty

In the DualSense write-up, they did indeed double down on 2020.

Colin Moriarty

Oh, good to know.

Colin Moriarty

Hey man, whatever makes you happy.

Colin Moriarty

We used the liquid traps in San Francisco, and it did indeed work.

Colin Moriarty

I haven't even played it at all yet!

Colin Moriarty

I think I misspoke, because I know that. But you're not the only person who has brought this up, so I must have said something wrong.

Colin Moriarty

Yes, but why would this make the score lower, that doesn't make sense.

Colin Moriarty

Oh and I didn't mention the alleged peep shows and grooming parties that he puts on in his estate with his wife. Now those parties are just hearsay, so it's best to leave them separate until they are actually proven.

Alex Bolton

So about Randy Pitchford, I wrote my senior minor thesis on Bad Leadership, and Randy Pitchford was the centerpiece of that thesis. From this shit he pulled with Aliens Colonial Marines, to the lawsuit with his prior lawyer and friend, to the USB stick that contained highly sensitive Gearbox company information as well as 18 year old pornography videos left in a Medieval Times restaurant, to now this. Colin you are 100% correct where there is smoke there is fire, the man took a 12 million dollar bonus before off the backs of his employees, and now he seems to be doing it again. I wish that man would do a magic trick and make himself disappear.

Alex Bolton

Watch Ozark

lazer_josh

Ending listen - I understand ya with not being able to bring packages into the house - my Mom has banned us from ordering from Amazon etc....when will this Quarintine Stronghold end!? And I HATE Japanese devs releasing all the beans!

Erk-Prime

I have to agree with the writer of the last question. People who bounced from 360 to PS4 were willing to give up on their digital purchases but now its 2020 and I dont think the same will happen with PS5 users going to Series X. Digital ecosystems are way more important now and with both next gen systems being BComp. I doubt Series X will outsell PS5 imo.

Real Radec

Exercise reduces your stress hormones.

Daryl Rodriguez

Try doing some exercise Colin, it might help calm your mind too.

Ryan Murdoch

Gotta agree on the sound compliment. You guys are the top-tier in audio. “Don’t look at me. I’m just a white man.” 😄

NeO JD

When they said that "anyone that dies with Covid-19 will be counted as a death" showed me exactly how they want the data to look.

Shawn Hayden

Ok so Colin keeps saying this is the worst thing we’ve ever gone through. 9-11 was way worse than this, and it was the beginning of a war that is still going on. Look at the H1N1 stats in the first 3 months of the pandemic, it is the same thing we are going through, but there wasn’t a peep and it definitely didn’t warrant a complete lock down. I’m sorry to say this but I feel worse for all the suicides that this is causing by prolonging this shit because we are blowing this out of proportion or all the people that die from other things that no one seems to cares about. Why? Because death is trival to those in the media unless there is money in it. At the end of the month when the lockdown is over I hope there is some pushback from us the people if big government want to continue this. There are at least 355,000,000 people in this country and I’m sorry but I’ll take the odds I won’t be one of the 100,000 dead (even though they are getting liberal with how a person dies and it’s becoming a catch all). Big government is just trying out how we live in the police state with fear. This isn’t America and we need to stop acting like sheep. I’m starting to get mad at how we are acting. Life is going to go on for 99.9% of us and we can’t let some of our hopes of the downfall of Trump no matter what the cost, to blind us that the media and WHO have there own agendas and every death from this and the fear it causes is just dollar signs to them.

Michael Thew

Hey Colin big fan for years just signed up on patron for the first time. Thank you for everything you do!

Jack Doheny

Hi C&amp;C. Responding to your discussion about the difference in Metacritic scores between PS4 and Xbox One versions of games. I'm a part of the editorial team at our site who submits reviews to Metacritic, and for us (maybe the top dogs have different rules) we can only submit our review for one platform, even if we played it on another platform as well. For example, I was the one responsible for reviewing Twin-Breaker, but when it came to the submission of the review to Metacritic, we could only submit it for PS4 or Vita, but not both. Naturally, we picked PS4 for Twin-Breaker because more eyes would find the review. This would then extend to other games that straddle Xbox and PS4. Most reviews will go for PlayStation (i assume) for the same reason why we picked PS4 for Twin-Breaker, because there's more PS4s out there and more people looking at the PS4 SKU of a game when hunting reviews. This would lead to more reviews (in the case of RE3 there were 70 for PS4 and 22 for XBO at the time of writing), and by extension a difference in review scores - seemingly with Xbox being the primary beneficiary of this. Hopefully this makes sense and is useful in some way

Paul James

You guys are absolutely wrong though. The PS5 WILL NOT be delayed. Not even a little. Bet your bottom dollar folks. We can wake up tomorrow and the confirmed case total will have dropped and be back to work in 2 weeks. And most manufacturing is in China who after doing a communist quarantine are bouncing back really well. And this is China home of the sweat shops. If many jobs in the US are still open you can guarantee China is. November is a looooong time away. Snap out of it guys. It’s hard to see the forest through the trees.

Anthony Longo

For example, games with gold for this month are Project Cars 2, Shantae half genie hero and fable anniversary. Still don't understand why you guys think game pass and gold is such a great deal... It's really at BEST equal to ps+/ps now. It actually costs more and gives you less quality.

Shawn Hayden

Gamefly still exists

Shawn Hayden

Oh man Ozark is a great show. I watched all that. And Outsiders on HBO. McMillions documentaries on HBO. Just watched all Westworld. Tiger King of course. Tom Seguras new stand up is good Ball Hog. I have to have a show to watch with wifey at night. It’s our process don’t judge.

Anthony Longo

Games with gold has been horrendous the past 4-6 months.

Shawn Hayden

For brad - liquid poison traps help. It attracts the ants, then the poison sticks to them as they go back to their home base, killing them with their own tactics. We’ve had three cases of infestations in the past year trust me it’ll work in a matter of days

I got the platinum in Resident Evil 3 in 20 hours 😂😂 it’s so damn fun to speed run on harder difficulties.

D'Ante Almo

Colin said you need to own the original game to play the backwards compatible games on Xbox. You can actually purchase digital versions of every single game that’s backwards compatible in the Xbox store. So you don’t have to have previously owned the games. Not sure if that’s what he meant but I figured I’d clarify. The games are all very reasonably priced for the most part to. I think I purchased KOTOR for around 6 bucks.

bix hutch

PlayStation always has so many more reviewers than Xbox. More people reviewing the PlayStation version because more people are playing that version

Dom posa

I just gave away $500+ on Twitter yesterday.

Colin Moriarty

It sure seems that way.

Colin Moriarty

To each his own.

Colin Moriarty

Yes.

Colin Moriarty

I'd be happy to play early and not talk about it at all.

Colin Moriarty

Thanks. &lt;3

Colin Moriarty

No, you cannot download them without owning them, that is the point.

Colin Moriarty

Well, you are the person we were talking about on the show, then!

Colin Moriarty

It has ALWAYS bothered me how Origins has been the bastard child of the franchise, as if it doesn't exist at all.

Colin Moriarty

That was my assumption.

Colin Moriarty

What? LOL.

Colin Moriarty

Maybe I'll do it. =)

Colin Moriarty

Harsh. Memory cards did corrupt once in a while.

Colin Moriarty

MTGA.

Colin Moriarty

It could be worse. You could be not working. =)

Colin Moriarty

Well put. Though I've not played yet, so I don't want to judge it per se.

Colin Moriarty

I know, but it's easier said than done. I have to imagine 95% of us are gonna be in worse shape when this is all said and done.

Colin Moriarty

I actually just exchanged e-mails about this today! Hope to have a solution soon.

Colin Moriarty

Stay safe out there!

Colin Moriarty

Thank you. &lt;3

Colin Moriarty

Colin, you are a betting man, so put money up for charity that Ghosts of Tsushima will get delayed. I wanna know how confident you are!

Jake Z

Oh man that PS5 controller looks pretty nice. But my goodness, if Sony isn’t botching the rollout of this console.

Avery Cope

I was thinking a month ago that TLOU2 would be delayed for it's subject matter, but then realized that Contagion was the #1 trending movie for a while, so if anything the virus would probably boost sales.

Jake Z

Haha Colin does care about being part of the conversation. He's annoyed that reviewers are talking about FF7 Remake and he can't play it yet.

Jake Z

There's a new PS5 controller

Anthony J Sanchez

You guys are one of the best sounding gaming podcasts for sure

Jake Z

You can download Xbox and 360 games on the One without owning the disc. So you can essentially download them from the void.

jab

Sony has the better single player games at this time by far, but I think the vast majority of 3rd party games edge them out, and the fact Sony doesn't respect your purchases going forward is unacceptable in my opinion. That's why I chose to cut my loses with them after this gen, and just buy my 3rd party games on xbox. It also looks like PS games will come to PC as well, which helps ease the blow of cutting Sony out of my life.

Corey Robbins

Bought the Arkham Collection my self, great deal because it also include a bunch of the DLC,.. but too bad Arkham Origins wasn't in it, I really loved that game even tho it wasn't a rocksteady game.

Philip Andersen

Colin Microsoft basically has confirmed all first party devs going forward will be kept on Microsoft platforms besides the mincraft ip. Second party deals coild see life outside if asked. Microsoft has been weird with their messaging but Phil Spencer and Aaron Greenberg have confirmed this all going forward. Inexil has also confirmed that they are working on a brand new AAA title from studio head brian Fargo.

Adamthm

Fanboy alert

Adamthm

Below the Mason Dixon line is the key here, Virginia is a very southern state culturally, though it's politics may not reflect that (D.C. area is to blame there). Moving here from New England, I can tell you that it is most definitely "the south." I'd say it's even more culturally south than a place like Florida.

Alex Bolton

I think the media might be to blame there, I don't think Canada has the same issue as the US with talking heads on 24 hour news networks blaming the opposite sides. Media here plays into partisan politics so much more than in Canada from what I can tell, and this causes that feeling of division. Now the media here also generally follows how the politicians act as well so...

Alex Bolton

You can literally program a computer in minecraft. How is it for children?

jab

Resident evil 3 runs worse on Xbox. The reason the scores are higher for 3rd party games is they don’t have as many good games so the standards are lower. Xbox live is not more competent, it’s down all the time now. I don’t know why Chris keeps saying this. It’s an old myth that carried over from last gen

Dom posa

Maybe other people will disagree, but in Canada it definitely doesn't feel like the virus is creating more division between people. Been seeing a lot of unity and solidarity, online and off. Maybe that's down to Trudeau's general lack of a cult of personality (whether that's earned or not lol), or the fact that people are (again, generalizing) relatively satisfied with the national efforts to effectively deal with the crisis. Really seems like this situation is uniquely and acutely exposing the weakness in the US political sphere currently, from the very top to the media to the way people discuss and brandish their allegiances. As an American it makes me sad to watch.

Travis Johnson

I can confirm Chris's claim, 3-4 songs in Beat Saber can work up a decent sweat. 45 minutes with obstacles enabled so you actually move around a bit and do some squats, you'll be good and tired.

Daniel Mitchell

I’m sure this is probably a east coast thing. But honest question. Being from the Mid-West, I’ve got to say hearing you call Virginia “The South” is so strange to me. Maybe in Colonial America Virginia can be considered the “South”? Is this really a thing or is this a Colin thing, with all due respect lol. I look at Virginia in the map. It does not qualify as being a southern state to me. Maybe I’m just completely oblivious to nomenclature like this. I guess when I hear someone say the “South”, I’m immediately thinking Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, SC.

Zack E

In 2006 my PS2 memory card corrupted and I lost every save on every game I owned. I was 13 and totally devastated.

Drew Sleezer

And just like that, Tuesday has become great.

Vaughn Allison

I am excited to listen to this while I work at my essential POS job 😂

Chance Autwell

I feel like Resident Evil 3 Remake caught that Final Fantasy 8 disease. Hard to follow up RE2 remake.

Kershon Chapman

Regular exercise (weightlifting + some cardio) would really help inform your sense of balance in your life and help you manage your anxiety, and lead you to alter your behavior within and your approach to your work and personal life spheres for the better (notwithstanding the need to clear your schedule/delegate to make time for it). The health of our minds and bodies are intertwined. We weren't built (whether by a God or the random forces of nature) to slough around as we so often do in this modern world, regardless of relative professional success (of which you have to a greater extent than I may ever dream of achieving). I hope that you consider that course of action. I have some sense of your personality after listening to you for hundreds of hours over the course of at least a few years, and it would suit you. It's hard, but more than worthwhile...especially for you. Yeah, you could say: "I'm a grown ass man who does what he wants and knows all this already and I'll judge whether it's worthwhile for myself prior to even trying." I hope not, because I'm a big fan and a thinking man like yourself who happens to care. Keep up the great work, brother!

Max Stahl

Same thing happened to me

Dom posa

CLS on my iPhone Podcasts app hasn’t updated since episode 92...just me? If not then I accidentally didn’t have enough funds to make my monthly pledge. Did it cut me off through the app? Do I need a new subscription link now that I’ve sorted my payment out and the April pledge went through?

Josh Lyon

Whats up with CLS Merch?

McHooliganXXL

Been waiting for this to drop before I go on my 1 hour government sanctioned walk 🙄

Nlindz27

Thanks, Colin, I look forward to these especially what's going on, you bring joy to me and many others, just want to say thank you

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