Sacred Symbols, Episode 397 | Nothing Seems To Fill This Place
Added 2026-02-06 17:00:24 +0000 UTCIn the wake the reveal of the PC-only MMORPG Steel Frontiers late last year, the other long-rumored Horizon multiplayer game has finally been announced. It's called Hunters Gathering, it's in development internally at Guerrilla, and it's set to launch on both PS5 and PC at some point in the future. Excited? Well, some of you (and us!) are. But the response at this early hour has been mixed. Is Horizon being overexposed? Where's the third core game? What's with this obsession with multiplayer? From our perspective, it seems like nothing pleases anyone these days. We discuss. Plus: Sony's FY Q3 '25 financials show profit growth and strong console sales, Grand Theft Auto VI's promised November release date seems to be solidifying, The Last of Us on HBO may not go past a third season, rumors say Starfield launches on PlayStation 5 in April, and more. Then: Listener inquiries! What are our favorite gaming-related revelations from the Epstein Files? Is Resident Evil: Requiem being overexposed? Should the industry worry about Google's Genie 3 environmental AI module? Will Colin continue to take unpredictable call-ins on Sacred Streaming?
Timestamps:
0:00:00 - Intro
0:22:28 - Colin's superbowl plans
0:32:09 - Patreon names
0:36:54 - Colin-slop movies
0:56:45 - Horizon: Hunters Gathering announced
1:40:30 - Sony financials
1:52:24 - What is "Wallet Credit"?
1:56:54 - New Sony patents
2:07:56 - Confidence is growing that GTA VI will launch this year
2:26:31 - Rumor: Starfield coming to PS5 in April
2:28:38 - No TLOU Season 4
2:31:48 - Netflix on PS3 is shutting down
2:36:42 - January top PSN downloads
2:39:18 - What We’re Playing (Castlevania Requiem, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, Turok 2: Seeds of Evil, Jak and Daxter, Nioh 3, Neon Inferno)
3:06:38 - Gaming characters in the Epstein files
3:18:07 - Content creators playing it safe
3:27:43 - Marketing going too far
3:37:20 - First Dragon Quest game
3:42:16 - Spooked by AI
3:58:07 - Will Xbox beat PlayStation 6 to market?
Comments
Hell yes Chris! Keep singing the praises of the Jak series! It's fucking good man.
PuppiesOnParade
2026-02-14 17:11:32 +0000 UTCYou're absolutely tripping Dustin, the Lighthouse is incredible. Also, I highly relate to fucking up containers by screwing things on too tight. RIP all my water bottles, I break the treads lol
Gooch Gobbler
2026-02-12 15:21:26 +0000 UTCYou guys complaining you aren’t in the files is like that episode of Sunny where Mac is mad that he wasn’t molested lmao. Hilarious.
Jordan Moyer
2026-02-11 22:24:55 +0000 UTCAm I allowed to hate the new horizon game because I think it looks like trash without being strawmanned as a reactionary?
Bailey Callis
2026-02-10 00:25:23 +0000 UTCAs an amateur artist I really appreciated the AI conversation. I think AI in the right hands could help creators with some tasks, but I agree that the people that like it the most tend to be uncreative. I’ve long had a saying “Virgins can’t sing love songs”, because they’ve never had their heart broken and emotions shredded. Listen to young people sing a song like Imagine and compare it to Lennon or Cornell’s versions. Also, things an “AI artist” didn’t do: Study perspective Study anatomy Study lighting Study storytelling Study cinematography Take art theory, color theory, art, and anatomy classes. Read about art. Lots of reading and studying. Studying other artists. Staring at the same image for hours multiple times. Drawing. Actually drawing. And failing. A lot. And the complete mind bending anxiety showing it to other people. Getting your art ripped to shreds by a professional. Laying out an image. Most people don’t understand that basically everything in a film scene or painting or drawing was done intentionally. And lastly, me. My line work looks like my line work. It’s why AI content almost always looks the same. Same attempt at realism or the same cartoon style because it’s a thing uncreative people don’t even think about. It’s why so many people went crazy when Studio Ghibli AI art was available. Real artists want their art to look like they made it. It happens with digital art all the time. Look at amateur anime and it consistently looks the same.
Xemphanis
2026-02-09 22:44:24 +0000 UTCRogue one is definitely top 2 if not the best Star wars movie
Grundlebundle69
2026-02-08 11:56:26 +0000 UTCAlso the new batman film I fell asleep in the theater. And tried to rewatch but it's trash as well weird cuts and bland acting from most
Grundlebundle69
2026-02-08 11:51:53 +0000 UTCWill you have Bryan Paul from Without Parole on again soon? Need a PSVR injection
nevernosam
2026-02-07 08:50:24 +0000 UTCI’m as exhausted by knee jerk cynicism as anyone these days. And I don’t dislike Horizon. But I don’t know how anyone can look at this and feel anything but fatigue. It’s a conversation worth having but should be saved for when people are especially out of line because this ain’t it.
Dante B
2026-02-07 07:29:41 +0000 UTCLotta novel typers in these here comments this week lol
RIP Marcus
2026-02-07 06:47:04 +0000 UTCMy other post was long enough and most people probably won’t read it but I forgot to mention one thing - how is it that a Korean studio that was licensed out to, has a much better looking Horizon game than the studio who created the series?
PairOfShuse
2026-02-07 05:29:30 +0000 UTCThe Horizon talk and the talk about negatively I think is kind of misguided and biased. To say the new Horizon game doesn’t look like Fortnite so extremely either looking the other way, bias, or talk from people who don’t pay attention to just how much looks like this. It’s an extremely over exposed art style and looks very samey. It’s kind of like the whole Cal Arts style in American animation is one of the few style of American cartoons that is just extremely old hat (and in my opinion never looked good). If you like that then you will be ok with the look of this new Horizon game. If you don’t, it will turn you off completely. It just feels kind of disingenuous when anything that looks like anime gets glib comments from Colin saying “of course Chris, you don’t have anything to say about this” or similar comments. How is that not exactly what is being criticized in this podcast just in the groups direction? At least with anime, compared to American animation anyways, there is waaaaaay more variety in visual style. It just comes off as anything I find interesting looking is ok and everything I don’t like the look of, it’s ok for me to criticize, but no one can complain about the thing I personally think is ok. Add into that, the reason why I think that people are negative on these big franchises is because they have increasingly become not even just checklists, but bland looking checklists and even more preachy a lot of the time. Hence Spiderman 2 being ridiculed while the first one is looked at more fondly. Same with Horizon Zero Dawn and Forbidden West. One thing that I just don’t agree with as a point is that just because something sells, doesn’t mean it is good. Tons of saccharine, bland, mindless garbage sells. That is not a good point of argument. I play a pretty large amount of and variety of games. So far this year I’ve played Ninja Gaiden Sigma, Bright Memory Infinite, all the DLC for DBZ Kakarot, Anno Mutationem, Signalis, and currently playing Lollipop Chainsaw. I’ve mainly been sticking to short games in wait for Resident Evil 9. All of these games are vastly differently to one another. While there may be a lot of negative talk, there has also been a lot of positive talk too. Just because it’s not targeted towards these huge companies franchises that tend to push agendas on purpose, go for a more broad bland look in a lot of ways, and tend to be less unique than lower top tier studios, mid size developers, and small developers, doesn’t mean all of gaming is infested with negative talk. Little example - if we went by this podcast, only Dustin would sign the praises of Nier and this would be seen as the series not being good. When in fact, it’s sold tons of copies using the logic earlier. It all depends on what you gravitate towards. Me personally, visual look and attitude will a lot of the time dictate if I’m going to spend the time playing a game since there are so many options. I see normal Horizon and it interests me. I see this new Horizon game and it looks bland, tropey, and I just don’t like the whole attitude games that look like this go for. You might feel the opposite and that’s ok. But saying people are just hating or that a broken clock is right twice a day, is pretty dismissive.
PairOfShuse
2026-02-07 05:21:59 +0000 UTCHorizon: Zero interest
Hammertime44
2026-02-07 05:00:18 +0000 UTCNew Horizon is the most Herman Hulst coded game imaginable, he walked into the studio and demanded a horizon online game that looks like Fortnite x Arcane, because that’s what the kids want! He can only chase trends, not set them. Feels like Sony is devoid of creativity under his stewardship.
Smegaladon
2026-02-07 04:09:10 +0000 UTCLove it as well- Star Trek has always been both woke and optimistic and I'm there for it :).
David Jaffe
2026-02-07 02:15:47 +0000 UTCIm loving Starfleet Academy, Star Trek has always been "woke" but now its just showing it more proudly. The only thing is that I wish they'd start exploring instead of it all being in the academy in San Francisco, maybe after they graduate.
Clay Miller
2026-02-07 01:58:12 +0000 UTCThe new horizon literally looks like a Fortnite/horizon collab event. Such a disappointment, was looking forward to 3/4 player raids with the decima engine fidelity.
Slippery when wet
2026-02-07 01:08:40 +0000 UTCThe parking chair is a thing everywhere there's snow...
Lunar Tear
2026-02-07 00:36:04 +0000 UTC
