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Sacred Symbols, Episode 408 | The Thin Line Between Entertainment and War (Patreon)

Published:
2026-04-24 16:00:26
Imported:
2026-04
Tags:

Content

A duo of interesting stories quietly circulated around the PlayStation ecosystem over the last few days, with potential clarity shone on some lingering, years-long issues. For starters, beloved ex-Sony exec Shuhei Yoshida recently spoke at a gaming event in Australia, where he revealed more precious information on his departure from first party, noting that ex-CEO Jim Ryan ultimately fired him from his role for not acceding to his demands. Meanwhile, an ex-Naughty Dog lighting artist seemed to spill the beans on some of the behind-the-scenes drama surrounding Uncharted 4, which -- as you may recall -- was a tortured project. But no one knew things were as bad as they seemingly were, until now. Plus: Age verification is coming to PlayStation hardware near you in the UK and elsewhere, Assassin's Creed IV's remake has finally officially emerged, SEGA's classic Ecco the Dolphin franchise is being revived, and more. Then: Listener inquiries! With Kotaku making aggressive new hires while touting increasing traffic, can the once-storied media brand be saved? Do any of us mess with motion aiming on DualSense? Is there a feeling of melancholy when deleting an old online friend from your PSN list? Would you believe that Colin never even one time suffered from "imposter syndrome"?Timestamps:0:00:00 - Intro

0:18:01 - Saint Slayer is here!

0:34:43 - Gaming with a new baby

0:46:30 - Imposter syndrome

0:54:21 - Colin power

0:55:07 - More details on Shuhei's exit from Sony

1:21:11 - Uncharted 4 drama

1:38:29 - PlayStation age verification

1:42:25 - Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced

1:49:51 - Ecco the Dolphin returns

1:54:56 - March 2026 Circana

2:01:29 - What We’re Playing (Saint Slayer: Spear of Sacrilege, Pragmata, Mouse PI for Hire, Tomodachi Life,Vampire Crawlers)

2:31:12 - Communism and Tetris

2:35:44 - Fired for a review?

2:48:44 - Can Kotaku be saved?

3:00:35 - Motion aiming

3:05:37 - Learning from video games

3:22:33 - Deleting PSN friends

Files

Comments

Jacob Lesperance

Picked up Saint Slayer and hope to get to it soon. Thanks for all the enjoyment of the yesrs boys.

NUTSO JIMBO

This is my first new SS episode I'm listening to in over 8 months. I've missed this 😭

Orb Ponderer

Need another Sacred x Duke episode after this week

DogMeat

I have a bucees 8 minutes from my home Dustin. I can snag one easy

Kyle Day

Haha. Well done “Ray”. Colin got GOT. I enjoy Chris leaving that one for us to giggle to.

Mike1core

Dude There’s a buccees like 2mins away from my house lol I never go. But I’ll go check bro big D dustin

TheWubbz

“You are right thanks for the advice.” Reads as very sarcastic to me but who knows

Caleb Greer

I know Barry said “Shut the fuck up” about it, but I appreciate the sales insights we get about your games and I’m happy for you. Fuckin relax, Barry, damn..

Nathan R

Sent Dustin an Instagram DM about Buccees puck. If he still needs it.

SneakerHead24

“Barry has been fairly explicit that I say too much, and that I should shut the fuck up”….. …Proceeds to talk about the game for 16 straight minutes. 🤣🤣🤣

Jordan Cruz

Is there a place to get Saint slayer physically? Ps5?

Billy but not so Talented

I’m glad Dustin and Chris mentioned the lack of a walk keybind in Marathon. Every competitive PC game has a key bind for walking so you don't have to crouch and lose vision just to stay quiet. It’s a very odd choice, but I guess Bungie is still a console dev at heart.

Risen

The simple reason Reese’s changed was covered in a recent WSJ report. There is a purported global cocoa shortage so the ingredients changed to supplement with more palm oil, which mimics cocoa. I agree Hershey should’ve just increased the cost of Reese’s etc., but that’s the why.

Bisexual Lighting Rigger

I'm kind of surprised Colin isn't more worried about age verification. To me its a far bigger issue than generative AI. This whole thing is disguised as "won't somebody please think of the children!" but its clearly just the first step to digital ID which NOBODY should want. These places that do age verification seem to always lie and keep personal data and sell it. my PSN is 18 years old but do you think that would auto qualify for being verified? doubtful. Sorry if this is a sore issue for me but as a Canadian, I've seen what the government did during the trucker convoy.

ChaosZwei+5

That age verification nonsense in anything is just pure dystopian bullshit protect the kids my ass companions just want your biometrics to do terrible things with fuck that noise

Tyrone Yhip

Colin mentions parents will now become the #1 annoyance. Well I'm already annoyed by them and their fuckin preachy asses, high horse attitude, and their boundless levels of obnoxiousness and annoyance.

Max Stahl

Speaking of continuity of a product for you fellow WWE fans out there: I hate how WWE looks with all the ads, now. Vince McMahon's evil dictatorship had many problems, most having do do with his personal character, but I'm sorely missing how the presentation of their shows was as recently as 2023 (from before, through, and sometime after WrestleMania 39). It looked prestigious, something befitting the self-contained, theatrical universe that is played out on a weekly basis. Now, it's just consumerist slop. We're headed towards Idiocracy at a breakneck pace. This same "make the quickest buck at any cost" mentality is playing out everywhere, and getting noticeably worse. McMahon cynically handed the company over to a holding company that doesn't understand the nature of the WWE product at all. It's just a vehicle for them to use for advertising. I hope they're going to sell it to someone or some entity that actually cares, in the future.

Vanzant

I just picked up Saint Slayer. Congratulations to you and your team Colin! I’m on Stage 5, already addicted. I cracked up during the stage coach level when the second carriage comes, the beat hits and the skeleton legs are moving to it.

ChaosZwei+5

People are weird about review scores bc a six is a positive review that person liked that game more than they didn't. It's someone's opinion it isn't that serious. I think hollow knight is a six outta ten and that's probably way more upsetting to people than mouse pi

ChaosZwei+5

You guys were calling it motion aiming but it's called gyro aim and in the perfect world it would be the default for game control schemes. Theoretically it's the perfect bridge between mouse aim and controller movement but people wrongly associate it with Wii era motion controls and games that do rarely implement it do it poorly. Dualsense 5s have fantastic gyroscopes and steam input allows it to be mapped to mouse aim on certain titles. It's a genuine godsend to gaming controls but sadly people are hesitant to accept what is an objective improvement to joystick aim.

CombatSneeze

The reason it’s less adopted on console is that PS players would have an advantage in cross play games since Xbox doesn’t support gyro. No reason for it not to be in SP games though

ChaosZwei+5

That's why aim assist exists. it's crazy to me it's not standard in any shooter game by now

Grahamer Naughtsi

I wish I was good at Saint Slayer. The jumping is absolutely killing me. Still glad to support it though, but I don't think it's for me.

Subeg

Santa Cruz medicinals

They Now Call Me UNC.

The weird thing about the review is the reasons why he didn't like it and yet he never considered the context that it's a cartoon. It really isn't that serious, but it is another reason to dogpile on ign lol

Publix Chicken tender sub

I had to swallow my pride and I put it on easy. Really loving the game. I super recommend Saint slayer for retro lovers.

NUTSO JIMBO

I opened a business last year. Was super busy/stressed and just didn't have time for gaming. Quit gaming and everything gaming related (including podcasts etc.) Recently broke both of my legs so out of action for a while. I'm actually pleased I broke my legs though as it's giving me time to catch up on gaming lol

Ryan

Guys the last thing they care about when they’re building your voluntary digital footprint scanning your face and collecting all your information is making sure a 15 year old doesn’t buy an M rated game. It’s data, your information, a digital ID matching the face to the name

Michael McCoy

Most people, especially reviewers, don’t use the grading scale that way. Technically you are correct that a 6 is a positive review since it’s over the halfway point to 10, but no one reads it that way, including the reviewer. I can’t even remember a time where a 6/10 was considered “good”

Supes

It's because people aren't sharp enough with their critical thinking to conceptualize reviews beyond "Game good" or "game bad." Steam uses a "Recommend" vs "Not Recommend" system because they recognized, at some point, that the lowest common denominator of internet user thinks in purely binary terms- "should I play this game or not?". It's like how YouTube did away with the 5-star system and moved to a like system- it's because their telemetry indicated that the overwhelming majority of reviews were either "5 stars" or "1 star." That's just how it goes. I'm not even necessarily saying that people are stupid- it's just that they have no interest in expending the mental energy on these things other than boiling it down to a simple "yes" or "no." In the gaming space, anything that is above an 8/10 is considered "yes," anything less than that is considered "no." A 6/10 would be considered "okay" in a space that's interested in the finer points of what makes a game interesting or worth checking out, but most people simply don't care about that. They want a yes or no.

ChaosZwei+5

Idk about that 5 is obviously the mid point (mediocre) so anything above that is a positive review and any below that is a negative review

Supes

I work in a space (background screening + DCSA clearance) that involves a lot of handling of PII and biometric data. We don't sell it, but boy fuckin' howdy all these other companies do. "Keeping children safe" is, like, 10% of the reason age verification exists (and even then it's more about protecting against litigation than any sort of ethical concern). The other 90% is absolutely to sell your data.

Kevin Cooper

Zero chance of convincing a Canadian to move to the United States right now 🍁

Kevin Britts

They fucked up Reese's (and most other companies are starting to mess with their own products as a whole) so bad that I have started making my own in bulk. It tastes so much better that I have started thinking about what other overpriced garbage I want to start replacing by making them at home.

C

Chris, I don’t think I’ve ever been more in agreement with you than I am right now regarding Mouse: P.I.

Michael Ryan

I think "Darksiders Warmastered Edition" is the worst name Remake name Ive heard.

Save The Game Media

I’m with Chris. Unfortunately- Mouse PI for Hire was brought down massively by all the dialogue and the overly serious story

NeO JD

Wild thing to read. Hope you have a healthy recovery.

NeO JD

Came off like Barry trying to hide something. 😅

NeO JD

Dustin says “even groups like us are on the way out”. Whether it’s a single person or a group talking, I’m there for the personalities. As long as I connect to the people and the content is good, I’ll be there. Fan for life. ❤️

NUTSO JIMBO

Thanks dude, all going well so far. Just catching up on some gaming from my bed with the PS Portal 😀

Terminal Creative

Very excited for all the Saint slayer stuff! I’m very hopeful for a tee, maybe a crew neck or a zip up hoodie. I also can’t wait to buy the physical special edition despite not having a ps5 yet.

Joshua

I was waiting for the "not really communist " line and it came quick 😂. In the West we often oversimplify, when China does something impressive it's Capitalist when it does something bad it's Communist. In reality it's functionally a Socialist system but ran by a Mono-Communist party. China uses Capitalism yes, but in Vietnam and China Capitalism isn't the end game it's simply a tool to further their parties own idealogical agenda. Where as here in the US for example Capitalism IS the endgame and it IS the idealogical agenda of both parties. Hence the vastly different outcomes.

ChaosZwei+5

I refuse to believe that that would make no sense

Cody Mahoney

The first child is not the worst. It’s when you quickly introduce the second and third child into your lives that gaming becomes much harder. My third last year had extreme colic too and I don’t wish that hell on anyone.

Bailey Callis

Anyone else roll their eyes when Colin starts glazing apple like a white girl?

Marco Maluf

Neil Cuckman as Sony president? Corey, Colin you are tripping man… if you think its bad now, imagine with those two, we will never see a male character again or one with testosterone like Kratos was in GOW 3, we will be Doomed.

Marco Maluf

Me with all Colin’s game, day one only for support 😅