Sacred Symbols, Episode 81: Arkham Assumption

One way or another, they're going to get him.

Colin Moriarty

That's good to know, but it's the ghost-killing ones that seem tough.

Colin Moriarty

I think it'll be in February, yeah.

Colin Moriarty

I'm not blacklisting it. I just don't want to support devs that idolize Stalin. You can do what you want!

Colin Moriarty

Roaches trying to flood Chris out is hilarious. I’m still slacking on Seinfeld but I loved Friends. I don’t mind Pepsi or Hunt’s 🤷🏻‍♂️ Didn’t know all that about Tencent. That’s pretty crazy.

NeO JD

Colin, in case you hadn't discovered, as ridiculous as the Ms Pac Man trophies appear to be, the options menu allows you to select number of lives and start on any level you've previously cleared. This makes the Platinum hunt much easier, and helped me make Ms. Pac Man my first Platinum earned, ironically, on PS4. Sure, it might not be the most honorable way to earn it, but both you and I have given Ms. Pac Man enough quarters since '82 to warrant this digital prize.

Zach Brown

It's media though. Colin or anyone else have a right to not consume it because they don't like it's message or it's creator. Nothing wrong with enjoying it yourself though even if the devs are pretty wacky. Have a great one.

Tom Smith

Do you think the PS event will be in February? It's all so topsy turvy this year. I could see them waiting and holding their carts until after e3 so they can control the narrative a little more and respond directly to anything Microsoft does.

Tom Smith

Hello fine gentlemen, about the Disco Elyssium discussion, I understand Colin's traction because I have a similar negative reaction to religious themes in games. Still, I believed that when Disco Elyssium is released in consoles, if there's one person who I would like to hear their opinion about it, is precisely Colin. Putting the game in a blacklist because they have different believes (even if I don't agree with them) is exactly the same censorships some people try to impose on Colin. I'm distrustful of this dev because of their extreme left inclination, but hey, even if Roman Polanski is a fucking pedophile and I could really enjoy The Pianist and Rosmerys' Baby, I can play this game and try to be objetive in that regard.

Arquimedes Quintero II

The WB teases are cool only because they're coming from some rando studio.

Colin Moriarty

I fucking hate Dr. Pepper, I'm gonna be real.

Colin Moriarty

I don't because tradition dictates he goes first, but I often count ahead just to know if I'm gonna have a hearty laugh or two.

Colin Moriarty

I still don't know what a fuckboi is!!!

Colin Moriarty

I'm a riddle.

Colin Moriarty

*blank look*

Colin Moriarty

I am not reading a comic book BRIAN.

Colin Moriarty

Well perhaps I am!

Colin Moriarty

Yes!

Colin Moriarty

Play it, you loser.

Colin Moriarty

I'm sure I'll fuck it up.

Colin Moriarty

It's very sad. I saw it rained!

Colin Moriarty

It's the Mayo Civil War.

Colin Moriarty

i wish wb would stop with the teases. couple more things DBZ is the greatest animated show ever. Also Friends is better than Seinfeld, but I would say How I met your mother is the best of that kind of show. also Curb, always sunny are better than Seinfeld. I could never get into that show, feels so old and slow. just don't have the nostalgia for it. Tetris effect i didn't love as much as other people, i actually fount Tetris 99 way better, simply because the background and effects really distracted me. I was hooked to Tetris 99 for a while, best part, it was free.

B00ch

fun fact: I'm from PA (born and raised) and my wife and I moved down south to NC to be closer to her family about 5 years ago. I was 29 when I found out what Cheerwine and Bojangles/Zaxby's were. Also Fun fact: if you take a cup at a restaurant and do a ratio of 75/25 of Dr Pepper and Cheerwine your mouth will thank you.

Jordan Knepp

I love the drop! Two of the most intelligent dudes just destroyed but bad writing and Japanese words!! My hope is that Colin purposely gives Chris all the Japanese games. Haha

FoxHopSmash

I will keep an eye out.

Colin Moriarty

God damn it.

Colin Moriarty

Shut up, Marcus.

Colin Moriarty

If Koei Tecmo insists on releasing these games every five seconds, you just might get your wish.

Colin Moriarty

There are plenty of smart and talented communists. Doesn't excuse their backwards and ridiculous ideology.

Colin Moriarty

Amen.

Colin Moriarty

I think it's fine to endorse a candidate or a viewpoint. I don't think it's okay to be a Stalinist. It's certainly your right to be one, but... I'm going to judge you relentlessly and think you're a bad person if you are. That's just how it is.

Colin Moriarty

To add to this generally bits for consoles and in turn graphics cards, refer to the Bus width of the GPU and its dedicated RAM. This is basically a measure of how much data traffic can flow in parallel between Vram and the GPU. Consoles slightly differ since, like the ps4, they often use an APU which is a combo CPU/GPU. The bus width of the ps4 and pro is 256bit. The bus width of nvidia's current flagship gaming card the RTX 2080ti is 352bit. People stopped referring to this number for marketing quite a while ago.

Alex Cabrera

Duke's Mayonnaise is where it's at!!! Can only get it at Firehouse in the midwest. Hellman's is for fuckbois!

Luke Bernhard

Says he’s not into games that take forever. Committed to playing a jrpg per month. Hahahah.

Owen

Unless you wanna get a little more specific into bits you can ignore this comment (it's for people who may want to know more). So bits aren't computer instructions, but rather a potential 1 or 0. So 4 bits can have a combination of 1s and 0s ranging from 0000 to 1111 (counting in binary). So the more bits you have the more combinations of numbers you can have. 4 bits can have 16 combos, 8 bits have 256 combos and so on (2^n where n=number of bits). The more combos you have the more you can do with the hardware and the higher number the computer can count to 4bit 0000 = 0 1111=15 8bit 00000000=0 11111111=255 The bits can translate to commands that can be sent at once, colors that can be used, and more. Fun fact: Pac-Man only has 256 levels because they only dedicated 8bits to level counting! (counting from 0 instead of 1)

TheBufferPiece

Chris did pretty good in explaining the difference between 8, 16, 32, and 64bit until he got to the part about RAM. RAM is what can be saved for current use such as the textures/models that are in the room you're loaded into. You load the things you need from the Hard Drive to the RAM for use since HDDs are a lot slower. It gets a lot more complex than what Chris said (and what I typed), but as a layman explanation it does what it has to.

TheBufferPiece

Colin as a casual Batman fan like yourself, I have to recommend reading the Court of Owls Batman trades. It is one of the best batman tales I have read.

That part where Colin goes "Sometimes there's blood in my Poop....I'm probably dying..." and then it cuts away as if it was never said lol Laughed too hard at that

Remington James

The flying kick lady in Nioh. My god.

Alan Ortega-Lopez

Hey Colin, huge FromSoft fan here. The Nioh 2 difficulty topic does not surprise me. I think what makes good souls-likes...well...good, is that push and pull between challenge and fairness. I personally do not even like “hard” games. Although I play all the FromSoft games and love them, pretty much all other games I play on the default difficulty. I don’t think I’m alone in saying that if the difficulty of a souls-like overshadowed the fairness, then I would probably complain as well.

Maxx Lazos

Did you just assume the Arkham sub-title??!?!

SteelChevron

I haven't played Tetris Effect, but the free dynamic theme on the PSN is soooooooo good.

Jason Stafford

I try not to support communists in general, it's unfortunate that I bought the game before they outed themselves

Watch Ergo Proxy

After all this time criticizing game write-ups, the write-up for Twin Breaker better be fuckin flawless. You got this boys.

Watch Ergo Proxy

Thanks for the shout out to Australia. Although I'm not In a disaster area we are inundated with smoke here in Melbourne. . Keep sacrificing those babies for our rain please. Thanks.

kiNeMs

I’m a turncoat as well. We used Hellman’s in CT, but when I moved to SC five years ago I turned to Dukes and now my northern friends won’t talk to me. Mayo is serious business.

Forrest Hunter

I hate that the "English Breakfast" got so much press for Dreams. Yes, the art stuff is great, but it's the scores of "indy games" that makes Dreams shine. At least pay attention to the Impy Awards next Sunday to see some of the best stuff being made. (Nominees voted on by the community) Unfortunately Mm seems to be way too enamored with the art side of things.

Biv

I just don't think Xbox is that concerned with the sales of any particular box. It's all about getting you on GamePass Ultimate.

Biv

Colin, you mentioned earlier in the episode that you didn’t understand what “have your cake and eat it too” meant. However, later in the episode, when you were talking about the communist game dev, you mentioned they can’t have their cake and eat it too. Make up your mind man. YOU CAN’T HAVE YOUR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO!!!!! Jk love you guys.

Nathan R

55:30 I can see Chris' point but I think there is a difference between praising a mass murderer (Stalin) and disagreeing with Colin on tax policy. You can bash capitalism all you want, but maybe don't charge $40 for your game? Maybe you market this shit to your commie audience and say, "It's free but please donate to help us keep making games." Just because a game might be good doesn't mean I am going to support a bunch of hypocrites.

Context Should Matter

Hey Hunter, your brother is right. Friends>Seinfeld

Marcus Brown

I could listen to these two read Atelier descriptions all day 🥰

Barry M. Johnson

Disco Elysium devs really threw me for a loop because I only became aware of their politics weeks after I devoured the game. The game itself, while very political, didn't push their own stances either, it even actively shits on communism all the time. I kinda just had to reconcile the fact that it's actually these fucking weirdos who made one of my all time favorite games. It doesn't even make sense to me that this kind of people could create and ship such a good product, I find it incompatible with that ideology.

Michal Dudic

My therapist: so why are you so down this week. Me: have you ever read the drop on the PlayStation blog?

Aj

Usually people avoid doing work by listening to our show, so I respect your courage and determination.

Colin Moriarty

I'm glad to hear that! I think he's doing a great job.

Colin Moriarty

Will do.

Colin Moriarty

I couldn't even get past the first boss, so.

Colin Moriarty

Submit corrections on the weekly thread! Goes live on Friday.

Colin Moriarty

Fuck communism.

Colin Moriarty

I think we're gonna see them not make the same mistake (well, false start) twice.

Colin Moriarty

Don't be a gigantic nerd, Timothy.

Colin Moriarty

She'd do it!

Colin Moriarty

You've got a month to the day!

Colin Moriarty

That's a great idea.

Colin Moriarty

Chris lives in LA, so he can just join one of the many tent cities.

Colin Moriarty

If it's here, then it did. You might be having an RSS issue.

Colin Moriarty

The roaches are trying to flush Chris out of his apartment!!!

Colin Moriarty

<3

Colin Moriarty

Alas! Sacred Symbols+ will be all about it.

Colin Moriarty

Happened to me recently when it comes to the question about a devs political beliefs. The devs of 'Untitled Goose Game' said the anyone in the UK to vote for Labour, despite them being in Australia. The only thing they probably know about Labour is that the the left wing party

John Apocalypse

Grading papers and listening to Sacred Symbols; 'tis a wise combination.

David Graham

Just want to say I have been really enjoying Chris’ conversation lately, especially the past few podcasts. His conversation has gotten a lot more robust and he’s been giving his opinions and interjecting a lot more. Just going to be totally honest with you guys, for a while it really felt like it was just Colin talking most of the time or Colin talking at Chris. Now it really feels like you two are having a conversation. Keep up the fantastic work gentlemen! Please leave the chicken alone.

Joe West

Direct inject this shit into my veins

Eric Smith

Worth mentioning that the first Nioh also had its difficulty toned down after feedback from the Alpha and Beta. The game was still brutal in the end but nowhere near the almost insurmountable slog I remember it feeling like in the alpha. The level of difficulty they ended up with in the final product was perfect for me, and it's still one of my proudest platinums and likely a personal top 3 PS4 favorite. Needless to say I'm happy they're once again taking feedback into consideration to hopefully end up with another winner.

Travis Johnson

I played a bit of Enslaved years ago but since my PS3 is packed in some container, I'd really like to play it to completion on PS5 if they somehow figure out backwards compatibility.

JD

Hey C & C a small correction for this episode, the Witcher series especially the Witcher 3 has dialog changes and consequences based on your data save from the previous game. And if you didn't play the previous game it lets you simulate the outcome of those choices.

Emir

The Stalin portrait is absolutely unacceptable. My great grandfather was sent to a Serbian work camp to D I E by Stalin (indirectly, of course). Both of my grandparents are victims/refugees of WWII and Russia’s post-war conquest of Poland and Eastern Germany. My grandfather just passed away too, so that little factoid enrages me even more. Thank you communism.

GameSimp

We did get a reimagining of Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.... it was Horizon Zero Dawn. It’s a spiritual successor in a lot of ways. And developers said that if they made a sequel to enslaved it would be too similar to horizon zero dawn.

Philip Andersen

I remember when seeing twitch logo during one of the PS4 events, I knew that was going to be big because how easy it is compared to something like a PC using capture card and web cam and messing with bitrate and all settings which is also expensive. I can see how a company like StreamLabs (owned now by logitech) could be integrated with ps5 with making the streams more interactive.

Philip Andersen

Tbh I find myself struggling very much with this. I’m not full russian by my heratige of my great grandparents wanted to leave the bad systems are there. However it’s always tuff cause their arguments are like well America also has committed many acts of terror as well. I think the issue I run into is simple I don’t like nazis their ideology and what they stand for has not changed and still is terrible. Same with communism. However the America idea has becomes something that isn’t the same as it was from the 1770’s.

Adamthm

Can’t wait for dragon ball kakarot. This anime series is like Mario for most people as in whenever a game releases in the series I will be buying it. I will most likely leave a review for you guys in the comments. Lucky you 😁

Timothy Bryant

Love the new outro. Idea : Ask your mother BettyAnne if she would read it. That would be epic !!! Long Island accent saying the patrons names.

Anthony Longo

Exciting to have had my question on the show! I normally would agree with Chris about separating the art from the artist. It’s this specific case where it just hits me personally and I can’t shake my own subjectivity. But yes! Picture of Stalin = picture of Hitler. So I will pass on this one. It’s not like we’re starving for awesome games anyway. P.S: Following your recommendation, I’m giving Days Gone a chance and I’m having a good time! (In Bane voice) Thanks, brother!

Juan Paolini

I'm also playing through Dragon Quest 11. Picked it up during the holiday sale on the PS Store. The goal is to have it finished before Dreams releases.

four24twenty

Colin, you might want to leave your roller blades near the front just in case you need to get your food at the gate again.

FoxHopSmash

Do we need to crowdfund a new apartment for Chris?

Craig Carter

Did this not get pushed to the podcast feed?

Isaac Cynova

Time for my weekly roach talk podcast. :)

Jeremy Menear

The knowledge is strong in this one.

Saúl Nolasco

Shame the E3 stuff isn't in there by the looks of it. Sony hates this show releasing news on Monday/Tuesday!

beeperbeeper5