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42 - Forgotten City: Truth, Ethics, and Religion · Mythic Mind Games

0:03
Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Mythic Mind Games, an extension of
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Speaker 1: the Mythic Mind Fellowship, which pursues wisdom on the paths
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Speaker 1: between primary and secondary world. I'm doctor Andrew Snyder, and
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Speaker 1: I'm glad.
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Speaker 2: That you're here.
0:17
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Mythic Mind Games. This time we're talking
0:20
Speaker 1: about the Forgotten City, which was originally a SKYRIMOD, which
0:23
Speaker 1: then especially spun off into its own thing, as it
0:25
Speaker 1: deserves to do. There's a lot of substance there, more
0:28
Speaker 1: than belongs within a skyrimod, so look forward to getting
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Speaker 1: into that. David, Since you introduced me to this game,
0:35
Speaker 1: how about you give us our initial opening remarks?
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Speaker 2: All right, well, thanks, Yeah.
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Speaker 3: The first thing I'd say is that if anybody is
0:44
Speaker 3: interested in it, I would recommend they play it before
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Speaker 3: they watch this, because we'll surely spoil.
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Speaker 2: Everything about it.
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Speaker 3: And it is a game that gradually unfolds a pretty
0:54
Speaker 3: intriguing concepted story.
0:57
Speaker 2: So yeah, I.
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Speaker 3: Played this in twenty two and I thought it was
1:02
Speaker 3: pretty interesting, and I played it again last week just
1:07
Speaker 3: to refresh myself on it. But it basically you are
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Speaker 3: a person who finds yourself transported back to I guess
1:16
Speaker 3: it's around seventy a d in an underground Roman city
1:25
Speaker 3: where everyone who lives there lives under the constant threat
1:30
Speaker 3: if anyone sins, then everyone will die, everyone will be
1:36
Speaker 3: turned into these golden statues, and so if they break
1:40
Speaker 3: the golden rule is what the game keeps stressing what
1:44
Speaker 3: the Golden rule is exactly. No one is completely sure.
1:47
Speaker 3: They don't know what is a sin, what's not a sin,
1:49
Speaker 3: what they can get away with, and so it's sort
1:55
Speaker 3: of a groundhog Day, sort of a time loop where
1:58
Speaker 3: you when you make a stake, you can rush back
2:01
Speaker 3: to the portal and start that day over with the
2:04
Speaker 3: knowledge and even the items, thankfully that you had from
2:07
Speaker 3: the previous day. So gradually you're trying to figure out
2:13
Speaker 3: who's behind this, how can you stop it, how can everyone,
2:17
Speaker 3: or at least yourself escape.
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Speaker 1: It's really interesting, you know, I went to this game
2:22
Speaker 1: based off your your recommendation, not really knowing anything about it,
2:25
Speaker 1: and you know it. So it starts off even before
2:30
Speaker 1: you get to this ancient Roman city. You're pulled out
2:34
Speaker 1: of the river by Karen, who seems to be just
2:38
Speaker 1: this helpful woman who pulled you out of the river,
2:40
Speaker 1: and she sends you often search for this other guy
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Speaker 1: al who went off into the ruin before you. And
2:45
Speaker 1: you know, it starts off like you're just adventuring through
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Speaker 1: these recently discovered Roman ruins, but there are all these
2:51
Speaker 1: ominous golden statues and they start whispering to you. And yeah,
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Speaker 1: i'd just say, what one of the mechanics that like
3:00
Speaker 1: by this game is that you get hints along the
3:02
Speaker 1: way as the statues whispered to you. But it's just
3:04
Speaker 1: it's such this like haunting, kind of scary way of
3:09
Speaker 1: giving you advice. It just really captures the the mystery, oppression,
3:15
Speaker 1: horror of this town. But but yeah, and so you
3:19
Speaker 1: went up for this town and you have to do
3:22
Speaker 1: some investigation and figure out what's what's going on, because,
3:25
Speaker 1: for one thing, before you can get to this town,
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Speaker 1: you find this Alguy you suposed to be finding hung outside.
3:31
Speaker 1: It's a gold statue. So it's just it begins just
3:35
Speaker 1: this deep mystery, and as you said, it continues to
3:37
Speaker 1: unfold over time. And I mean I kind of started
3:41
Speaker 1: a piece of together before they laid out to you directly.
3:44
Speaker 1: But you know, the the really big reveal is, you know,
3:48
Speaker 1: after you do some investigation, you ask around, Okay, how
3:50
Speaker 1: did you get here? How did you get here? And
3:52
Speaker 1: everyone has the same basic story. We're escaping the fire
3:55
Speaker 1: of Rome or something else, and then we just sort
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Speaker 1: of woke up here, pulled out of the river, right,
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Speaker 1: And so the big reveal is, Okay, Karen is actually
4:05
Speaker 1: Karen the the ferrymen of the underworld, and so you
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Speaker 1: are indeed in the underworld. Now, this golden rule idea
4:15
Speaker 1: is is kind of interesting. As you said, it's it's that, okay,
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Speaker 1: nobody can sin if anybody sends the many are what's
4:24
Speaker 1: the what's the line? They say?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, that many are punished for the one I think,
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Speaker 2: or yeah, something like that.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And and so the idea behind that is
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Speaker 1: that we're all responsible for the virtue of our neighbor,
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Speaker 1: which I mean, it's a it's a very classical idea
4:41
Speaker 1: that you would get in the likes of Rome, that
4:43
Speaker 1: you get in likes of Greece. And one hand, obviously,
4:46
Speaker 1: in this extreme situation, is obviously unjust, or I guess
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Speaker 1: it seems to me maybe it's not so obvious. I
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Speaker 1: don't know, I don't know, what would what do you?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't really I think it's just either and
5:01
Speaker 3: they talk about decimation, which is I guess one in
5:06
Speaker 3: ten in a group. I guess is that actually a
5:11
Speaker 3: practice in like among Roman soldiers.
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Speaker 2: I guess, like to keep the men in line.
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Speaker 1: I mean, I assume that's where we get the word decimate.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, one intent.
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Speaker 3: So uh you Yeah, like you said, you want to
5:24
Speaker 3: kind of police your buddies because you don't want any
5:27
Speaker 3: of them causing everybody as a group to suffer. But
5:33
Speaker 3: as you get to know the people in the town,
5:35
Speaker 3: you can see ways that they are. You know, there's
5:39
Speaker 3: a merchant who's knowingly ripping you off. They've they've got
5:44
Speaker 3: a mentally handicapped guy in a cage because he just
5:47
Speaker 3: can't resist shiny objects. And then there's an assassin that
5:56
Speaker 3: comes in from outside looking for someone, and he just
6:00
Speaker 3: thinks everything you say is, oh, you've just been indoctrinated
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Speaker 3: by this cult. I don't believe anything you're saying. So
6:05
Speaker 3: you have to deal with that aspect of it as well.
6:08
Speaker 3: But people are clearly doing things that as a Christian
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Speaker 3: we would say that's definitely a sin, you know, the
6:15
Speaker 3: way that you treat other people and the motives for
6:20
Speaker 3: you know, sins of omission and things like that that
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Speaker 3: is also a sin.
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Speaker 2: And I think it's like.
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Speaker 3: Octavia is actually a secret Christian in this town, and
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Speaker 3: I believe if I remember right, when someone commits suicide
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Speaker 3: and that does not break the Golden rule, she or
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Speaker 3: one of the other secret Christians says, I don't know
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Speaker 3: what God it is that's watching, but it's not my god.
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Speaker 3: If suicide is not a sin, so it's kind of interesting.
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Speaker 3: And several other ones make the same sort of comments
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Speaker 3: like this seems like a sin.
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Speaker 2: I don't know how they're getting away with it, which
6:58
Speaker 2: is interesting.
7:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, And a lot of the way they work this
7:03
Speaker 1: out philosophically, I think works well for making the narrative,
7:08
Speaker 1: like you know, making the game the world that trying
7:10
Speaker 1: to construct. But also it seems like a lot of
7:12
Speaker 1: it is intentionally arranged in such a way to let
7:16
Speaker 1: their philosophy come out. I mean, in that it seems
7:20
Speaker 1: to be the moral of the story from the developer
7:23
Speaker 1: seems to be very very subjective. You know, we're getting
7:27
Speaker 1: against this idea of ideal morality altogether. And in fact,
7:31
Speaker 1: you know, eventually you get down into kind of the
7:37
Speaker 1: first part of the underworld and you meet this philosopher
7:40
Speaker 1: guy who's obviously supposed to be Socrates or something like that,
7:45
Speaker 1: is this Greek philosopher, And to get through the dialogue
7:48
Speaker 1: tree appropriately, you pretty much have to say there is
7:50
Speaker 1: no morality. Everything is just whatever you say it is right.
7:54
Speaker 3: I wrote some of that down because he says, out
7:58
Speaker 3: there you can be unsure about right and wrong without
8:01
Speaker 3: much consequences. But to navigate this mays, we have to
8:04
Speaker 3: be certain. And then he says, is there one system
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Speaker 3: of morality which is always perfectly correct, which you could
8:11
Speaker 3: follow in every situation and always do the right thing?
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Speaker 3: And then if you say yes, he just says, let
8:16
Speaker 3: me guess, is it yours? And like, you can't sit
8:20
Speaker 3: here and have an actual philosophical discussion with this guy,
8:24
Speaker 3: which makes it a bit frustrating, because, yeah, you're limited
8:27
Speaker 3: to the choices that the developers want to lead you into,
8:32
Speaker 3: which are not often things that I would say at
8:35
Speaker 3: all correct.
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Speaker 1: I wanted them to give me a textbox, let me
8:39
Speaker 1: type something in here. Yeah, And so then it just
8:44
Speaker 1: it starts to become this I don't know, freshman level
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Speaker 1: philosophy experience experiment where they say, okay, well there is
8:52
Speaker 1: no truth, Well why can't you just push back and say,
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Speaker 1: should I believe that? You know, there's an obvious problem
8:59
Speaker 1: with pushing that sort of philosophy that even Socrates himself
9:03
Speaker 1: didn't push, right, he definitely argued or believed, at least
9:07
Speaker 1: as far as we have him through Plato. You know,
9:08
Speaker 1: he definitely argued for an ideal good like that. That's
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Speaker 1: what drove him. So it's this caricature of the enlightened
9:16
Speaker 1: Greek philosopher that's really just a postmodern with the beard.
9:21
Speaker 1: So even though I appreciate a lot of what they're doing,
9:25
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's just it's kind of strange because
9:28
Speaker 1: esthetically or or on some level, it's very strong philosophically,
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Speaker 1: you know, they're they're quoting the Stoics and like they've
9:34
Speaker 1: actually done some of their homework. As far as the
9:37
Speaker 1: philosophical messaging that you get throughout the story, it's it's.
9:40
Speaker 3: Pretty weak, right, And yeah, and he says, you know,
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Speaker 3: virtuous people don't need rules, and non virtuous people will
9:50
Speaker 3: find their ways around them, which yeah, I mean I
9:53
Speaker 3: can sure, I suppose, yeah, But that's when you start seeing. Okay,
10:00
Speaker 3: so we have the Romans up here, and then we
10:05
Speaker 3: have the Greek beneath that, and Egyptian beneath that, and
10:09
Speaker 3: Sumerian beneath that, like literally stacked on top of each other,
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Speaker 3: and then also theologically and philosophically story wise stacked on
10:19
Speaker 3: top of each other. And the thing that we're supposed
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Speaker 3: to imply is that all these religions are falsehoods, just
10:25
Speaker 3: based on earlier falsehoods. But it's okay because it forced
10:28
Speaker 3: us all to be good people.
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Speaker 2: Right, which yeah, of course don't agree with that.
10:36
Speaker 1: Right when you get to the big reveal, and obviously
10:40
Speaker 1: we're spoiling all over the place, but you're eventually you
10:44
Speaker 1: get to Pluto, or as the Romans call him, right,
10:47
Speaker 1: the god of the underworld, who I guess is like
10:49
Speaker 1: the celestial alien or something. In the game, you know,
10:53
Speaker 1: it's been there for countless generations, and you know, the
10:56
Speaker 1: framing of the game is that you see Persephone became mortal,
11:02
Speaker 1: who was one of the gods, and that I can't
11:05
Speaker 1: even remember her Roman puts her Roman name off him.
11:07
Speaker 3: Do you do you remember prosser Pena? I think, yeah,
11:11
Speaker 3: something close to that.
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Speaker 1: I'm gonna call her Persephone because that's easy go with
11:15
Speaker 1: the Greek name. So Persephone decided to become human out
11:20
Speaker 1: of identification with the humans that the gods initially were
11:23
Speaker 1: kind of cultivating but then gave up on right. But
11:26
Speaker 1: she she decides to become mortal, and so then Haiti Pluto,
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Speaker 1: he suspends her so she won't die, puts her suspended
11:33
Speaker 1: animation and gets into this deal with Jupiter where if
11:41
Speaker 1: the humans can prove themselves where some group of humans
11:43
Speaker 1: can go for a year without sending that he'll turn
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Speaker 1: her back into a god and they can go off together.
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Speaker 1: So that's why Pluto is a rageous scenario. He's trying
11:53
Speaker 1: to see if humans can maintain perfect righteousness for a year,
11:58
Speaker 1: whatever righteousness is. But and he says that the you know,
12:03
Speaker 1: the first stories of the underworld came from the Sumerian
12:07
Speaker 1: king who was just so annoying that he set that
12:10
Speaker 1: Pluto sent him back to the lay of the living
12:13
Speaker 1: and try to wipe his mind. But he had like
12:15
Speaker 1: these faint memories and dreams of the underworld that he
12:17
Speaker 1: starts to share, and that eventually becomes the groundwork that
12:22
Speaker 1: the Egyptians made their Book of the Dead on and
12:24
Speaker 1: and the Greeks built on that with their stories as
12:27
Speaker 1: well as their Greek heroes who escaped the underworld, and
12:30
Speaker 1: and so there's some root reality at the bottom all
12:33
Speaker 1: of all this. But religion is just all these stories,
12:36
Speaker 1: you know, to pull from till we have faces. It's
12:39
Speaker 1: the lives of the poets, right that that are built
12:42
Speaker 1: on top of this based reality. And even says that
12:46
Speaker 1: the Egyptians pre sad a love for prophets, start to
12:48
Speaker 1: develop this religion, and then you know, the Greeks and
12:51
Speaker 1: Romans and I supposed to some extent the cultists as
12:53
Speaker 1: they call that, the Christians. It's basically, yeah, religion is empty,
12:59
Speaker 1: is sort of the message there. It's all just power plays.
13:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, they do tread a little more lightly when it
13:05
Speaker 3: comes to Christianity. I felt like, you know, they didn't
13:09
Speaker 3: come out right and say much about Christianity, Like Christianity
13:13
Speaker 3: isn't one of the things that's built upon, but it's
13:15
Speaker 3: just a cult that's kind of coming out of Rome.
13:18
Speaker 3: I suppose they're implying that it's the next layer that's
13:22
Speaker 3: going to be built on top.
13:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I just yeah.
13:28
Speaker 3: He He suggests that the core of the Golden rules
13:32
Speaker 3: to determine what is right and wrong based on the
13:35
Speaker 3: principle of you know, the biblical Golden rule doing unto
13:38
Speaker 3: others as you would have them do unto you, But
13:40
Speaker 3: nobody can manage to do it, and they have like
13:46
Speaker 3: slight variations on how the Golden rule is phrased in
13:49
Speaker 3: these other cultures. But I mean, the Golden rule is
13:51
Speaker 3: a it's kind of a self evident principle.
13:56
Speaker 2: Really. I feel like, you know, like, yeah, you should.
13:59
Speaker 3: That's a good way to treat other people the way
14:02
Speaker 3: that you would have them treat you. But that doesn't
14:06
Speaker 3: mean that there is not an objective truth underlying underlying
14:10
Speaker 3: that principle.
14:12
Speaker 1: Right, because I mean if they're If there weren't, then
14:16
Speaker 1: why is that a good principle? What do we even
14:19
Speaker 1: mean by the word good? I mean it sounds good.
14:23
Speaker 1: I mean even you know, earlier on in the narrative
14:26
Speaker 1: when you ask the magistrate, okay, what is a sin?
14:29
Speaker 1: And he says, well, I mean we all know, like
14:32
Speaker 1: don't kill each other, don't steal from each other. Beyond that,
14:35
Speaker 1: I don't know. But but even there's basic ideas that
14:40
Speaker 1: everyone agree with that murder is wrong. Well, why do
14:44
Speaker 1: people actually have value if we're taking just this vague
14:49
Speaker 1: sort of secular pagan mindset, which yeah, they are very
14:54
Speaker 1: explicitly doing, you know in that line after the suicide
14:58
Speaker 1: of you know, I guess it's not my God's in charge.
15:00
Speaker 1: So okay, So we're not appealing to something like the
15:02
Speaker 1: transcendent ideal that Christianity provides. What we're left with is paganism,
15:08
Speaker 1: which doesn't have absolutes really other than powerplays, right, which
15:13
Speaker 1: is very convenient if you're trying to say that appeals
15:16
Speaker 1: absolute morality is a power play.
15:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, but yeah, the God at the core of this
15:24
Speaker 3: is not truly omniscient, and he doesn't represent moral perfection
15:29
Speaker 3: and or perfect justice.
15:31
Speaker 2: It's just.
15:33
Speaker 3: I don't need to worry about you. You're like an
15:37
Speaker 3: ant compared to me, so I'm not really concerned. But
15:42
Speaker 3: you can, and I did manage to in this playthrough
15:47
Speaker 3: talk him, talk him through it, like I didn't have
15:51
Speaker 3: to get in a fight or anything. At the end,
15:54
Speaker 3: I earned. That's the one trophy I earned that I
15:57
Speaker 3: didn't earn in twenty twenty two was that I taught
16:00
Speaker 3: my way through every situation. There's still some trophies I
16:03
Speaker 3: didn't earn. Apparently you can get out in one day
16:07
Speaker 3: without looping, and you can get the best ending in
16:11
Speaker 3: just three loops, but I'm not particularly concerned with trying
16:15
Speaker 3: to do everything perfectly. But regardless, I think that's where
16:23
Speaker 3: the philosophical underpinnings of the whole game kind of fall apart,
16:26
Speaker 3: because this god is not truly a god. It's not
16:31
Speaker 3: an omniscient, it's not the you know, the prime mover
16:35
Speaker 3: sort of a god.
16:37
Speaker 1: Right, And so yes, if we're living in a reality
16:40
Speaker 1: in which there is non ultimate ideal at the top,
16:43
Speaker 1: what we have is basically a superhuman then sure that
16:48
Speaker 1: aren't in the ideals. If that's the world that you're
16:51
Speaker 1: giving us. Yeah, it's a way to, I think, really
16:55
Speaker 1: sidestep the philosophical debates between something like Christian absolute morality
17:02
Speaker 1: and the Pagan power plays and just saying, you know,
17:04
Speaker 1: we're dealing with the pagan power plays, but then they
17:06
Speaker 1: try to obviously imply that's the case for the world
17:09
Speaker 1: that we actually live in. Yeah. Yeah, I did not
17:14
Speaker 1: talk him out of it. I watched it on YouTube
17:16
Speaker 1: how you can do that, But I definitely just attacked
17:19
Speaker 1: persephone and took a crown.
17:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, I well, initially I had shattered persephone and then
17:27
Speaker 3: I failed to grab the crown, and then I ran
17:30
Speaker 3: away and was like, well, I have to do that
17:32
Speaker 3: whole conversation again. So I just backed it up and
17:36
Speaker 3: made some different choices and talked to him out of it.
17:38
Speaker 3: But yeah, another thing on the sort of the false
17:46
Speaker 3: dilemmas that it presents you as responses when you get
17:52
Speaker 3: down to the Egyptian part of the underworld and you
17:55
Speaker 3: meet that guy Kabash, and he won't let you take
17:59
Speaker 3: this own plaque that he's found because it shows that
18:03
Speaker 3: the Egyptian god of the underworld is just a new
18:05
Speaker 3: name for this older Sumerian god, and he thinks that's blasphemous.
18:10
Speaker 2: And so.
18:13
Speaker 3: One of the things you can say to him is
18:14
Speaker 3: that if something can be destroyed by the truth, it
18:17
Speaker 3: deserves to be destroyed by.
18:18
Speaker 2: The truth, which which of course is true.
18:21
Speaker 3: But then you're presented with this false dilemma where you
18:24
Speaker 3: have to choose to either say, well, even if our
18:28
Speaker 3: beliefs about the afterlife aren't quite accurate, isn't it the
18:31
Speaker 3: important thing that they motivated you to live a good life?
18:35
Speaker 3: And I just that just made me roll my eyes.
18:38
Speaker 3: But then the other thing you can say there is
18:41
Speaker 3: if you were only good in life because you expected
18:43
Speaker 3: or award were you really a good person? But those
18:47
Speaker 3: aren't Those aren't the I mean fair right. But you know,
18:52
Speaker 3: I see people post on Facebook like I don't treat
18:57
Speaker 3: people well because I'm a afraid, you know, I wanted
19:01
Speaker 3: God to send me to heaven. I'm afraid they're going
19:03
Speaker 3: to send me to hell. I do it because it
19:05
Speaker 3: makes me feel good, as though that is a better
19:08
Speaker 3: motive that you're helping other people because of the feeling
19:12
Speaker 3: that it gives you. That's not truly, that's not altruistic
19:15
Speaker 3: in any way.
19:16
Speaker 1: I mean, if that's our standard, what's wrong with the
19:20
Speaker 1: sociopath sudo killer if they feel like that's how they
19:23
Speaker 1: wouldn't live their lives? Right? Or I mean, in a
19:26
Speaker 1: less extreme example, I'm just day to day. What if
19:29
Speaker 1: I just don't feel like living out the Golden rule?
19:33
Speaker 1: What's wrong with that?
19:34
Speaker 2: Right?
19:35
Speaker 1: We're not using a standard, right.
19:37
Speaker 3: So, I mean as Christians, you know, we strive to
19:40
Speaker 3: do good because of out of gratitude for what Christ
19:44
Speaker 3: has done for us, not not because we're hoping it'll
19:48
Speaker 3: it'll earn us a pleasant afterlife. I mean, it's what
19:50
Speaker 3: the way Christ told us to live.
19:52
Speaker 2: We love christ. So that's what we strive to do.
19:56
Speaker 3: So I wish we could inject more of the Maybe
20:00
Speaker 3: we need to make a mod of this mod where
20:02
Speaker 3: we inject.
20:02
Speaker 2: Some actual Christian theology into it.
20:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would love if I all knew how to
20:10
Speaker 1: make it a game like this by who is Good Philosophy?
20:17
Speaker 1: We got into the heavy stuff quickly, Yeah, we did.
20:20
Speaker 3: I'm trying to think of other nuances of the story
20:24
Speaker 3: that I thought were interesting. There's really not, Like I said,
20:30
Speaker 3: you know, it's a fairly short game. There is a
20:34
Speaker 3: kind of a creepy side story that the game actually
20:36
Speaker 3: tells you, like, look, if you don't like scary stuff
20:39
Speaker 3: or action sequences, you.
20:40
Speaker 2: Don't have to do this.
20:41
Speaker 3: But it's where this woman has locked herself in the
20:44
Speaker 3: temple and you go in there and you're getting attacked
20:49
Speaker 3: by these golden statues that have they look kind of
20:52
Speaker 3: like skeletons, and you realize that she has been peeling
20:56
Speaker 3: the gold off of these people who have been encased
20:58
Speaker 3: in the gold but kind of kept alive for eternity,
21:02
Speaker 3: and they're just begging you to kill them, and you
21:04
Speaker 3: can shoot them and cover them in gold again, which
21:07
Speaker 3: is they thank you for but yeah, it's sort of
21:10
Speaker 3: a weird kind of Greek myth sort of a thing
21:12
Speaker 3: where she's kind of fallen in love with one of
21:15
Speaker 3: these statues and is trying to figure out how to
21:18
Speaker 3: get the person out of the statue, but in her haste,
21:22
Speaker 3: because you came in the building, has actually deformed them
21:25
Speaker 3: and messed them up.
21:27
Speaker 2: But yeah, that.
21:29
Speaker 1: Is a pretty creepy sequence. It's definitely creepier than anything
21:31
Speaker 1: you find in skytrad. These gold dmbies definitely outthoror the Dragger,
21:39
Speaker 1: I think.
21:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and.
21:42
Speaker 3: The gold statues around the town. Do you know, it's
21:45
Speaker 3: sort of like the weeping angels in Doctor Who. You
21:47
Speaker 3: turn and look at them and they have turned to
21:50
Speaker 3: look at you while you didn't have the camera on.
21:52
Speaker 3: You can see them turning their heads sometimes. But I
21:55
Speaker 3: think that's a pretty nice touch.
21:57
Speaker 1: Yeah. I always hated when I had to break the
21:59
Speaker 1: golden rule. Just that's the whole sequence. Just I don't know,
22:02
Speaker 1: it creeps me out.
22:04
Speaker 2: Yeah.
22:06
Speaker 3: One of my favorite things is when you work and
22:08
Speaker 3: work and work to get this one guy elected, and
22:15
Speaker 3: the purpose of that is so that you can let
22:18
Speaker 3: the mentally handicapped guy out of his cell because you
22:22
Speaker 3: need the plaque that's in the cell with him, and
22:24
Speaker 3: then while you're getting the plaque, you just hear him saying, ooh,
22:27
Speaker 3: this looks neat.
22:29
Speaker 2: Somebody just left it here.
22:30
Speaker 3: Like the moment he walks out of the building, he
22:33
Speaker 3: breaks the golden rule and you have to run back
22:36
Speaker 3: to the start. But yeah, that's that's another thing, like
22:45
Speaker 3: would that have been a sin? He's you know, would
22:49
Speaker 3: you not take into account someone's mental capacity? I mean,
22:52
Speaker 3: of course it's it's a sin, but he's just because
22:55
Speaker 3: he picked a thing up that he saw somewhere. Some
23:00
Speaker 3: say no, no, no, that's not yours, and like, oh okay,
23:02
Speaker 3: and go on.
23:03
Speaker 1: But right, yeah, intent definitely matters. And I think that's
23:06
Speaker 1: just another thing that's meant to to kind of break
23:11
Speaker 1: off this idea of absolute morality that you know, well,
23:16
Speaker 1: obviously if we believe in absolutes, then we can't take
23:18
Speaker 1: into account circumstance. But it's kind of like, you know,
23:21
Speaker 1: it's just recently getting into another one's conversations about how
23:25
Speaker 1: you know Tolkien isn't morally nuanced in his writing when
23:30
Speaker 1: people can't understand that you can have absolute morality but
23:35
Speaker 1: still have nuance in the way that things play out
23:39
Speaker 1: or the way that characters interact with that absolute morality,
23:42
Speaker 1: and so you can have a difficult moral scenario which
23:45
Speaker 1: is only difficult because you're weighing it against a standard.
23:48
Speaker 1: If you don't have a standard, it's not difficult, right,
23:51
Speaker 1: And so it actually adds room for that kind of
23:53
Speaker 1: nuance and that sort of complicated storytelling if you actually
23:56
Speaker 1: believe in absolute morality. But I do feel like that
23:59
Speaker 1: is just another situation that the developers put in there
24:02
Speaker 1: to try to kind of artificially push the idea of absolutes.
24:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, and.
24:13
Speaker 3: It's not even really the underworld, you know, like it's
24:18
Speaker 3: not even a true afterlife. It's when people die, they're
24:23
Speaker 3: sort of brought back to a physical life in this
24:27
Speaker 3: place if they were carrying one of like I think,
24:30
Speaker 3: like a thousand of Karen's obols that were just out
24:34
Speaker 3: in the world, so it was only those people when
24:36
Speaker 3: they die. If you have those coins on you, then
24:40
Speaker 3: you come here and it just so happens that you
24:42
Speaker 3: and al had the last two that were in the wild,
24:45
Speaker 3: so this is the last chance.
24:47
Speaker 2: Thankfully you pull it off.
24:49
Speaker 3: But I almost feel like the implication there is that
24:53
Speaker 3: there is no real afterlife. This was just an alien
24:58
Speaker 3: experiment that became these legends of the afterlife that these
25:03
Speaker 3: different civilizations had.
25:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the God of the underworld basically says that
25:09
Speaker 1: when you're questioning him about this whole thing, saying that
25:11
Speaker 1: nobody wants to be here, you know, you're holding them
25:13
Speaker 1: against your their will, etcetera. And he says, well, what
25:16
Speaker 1: do you want them to cease to exist? And so
25:18
Speaker 1: that is the implication there.
25:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then there's sort of an odd epilogue where
25:28
Speaker 3: all the characters are brought back together.
25:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was definitely narrative breaking, and that there's no
25:36
Speaker 1: reason for that to happen when all the characters were
25:39
Speaker 1: brought into your time for some reason. And the only
25:44
Speaker 1: purpose behind that, I have to believe is just because
25:48
Speaker 1: it's cool to talk to all these people in a
25:50
Speaker 1: different context. But it just doesn't make sense.
25:54
Speaker 3: They all fell right into modern society and somehow had
25:57
Speaker 3: no problems with citizenship or any.
26:00
Speaker 2: Thing like that.
26:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I like, this isn't really like a walking
26:07
Speaker 3: simulator kind of a game, you know that was that's
26:11
Speaker 3: a label that's put on games as kind of a pejorative.
26:13
Speaker 3: But I actually really enjoy those kinds of games where
26:19
Speaker 3: you're really just exploring and a story is unfolding in
26:23
Speaker 3: front of you. This is almost like that, because there's
26:27
Speaker 3: not a whole lot you can do except solve this
26:31
Speaker 3: mystery as you go along. But I do, like you said,
26:37
Speaker 3: I do like that they were trying to ask interesting
26:42
Speaker 3: questions and you know, within this unfolding mystery, and I
26:50
Speaker 3: think it's fascinating and it, like you said, though, I
26:52
Speaker 3: wish I would like to see it on a higher level,
26:56
Speaker 3: on a more.
26:59
Speaker 2: Expert philosophic level. Behind the design.
27:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I I'd never played a game quite
27:06
Speaker 1: like this, and so it definitely spurred my thinking in
27:10
Speaker 1: just further advancing my belief that video games can play
27:15
Speaker 1: a quasi literary role. And in fact, I think this
27:18
Speaker 1: is a great way of doing philosophy. I mean again,
27:20
Speaker 1: it could be done better philosophically as far as the form.
27:24
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan and I would love to engage
27:26
Speaker 1: in more things like this. Yeah, I think.
27:32
Speaker 3: It.
27:33
Speaker 1: I don't know how it would relate to, say, reading
27:35
Speaker 1: asocratic dialogue. I'm obviously going to put play to above
27:38
Speaker 1: any video games can get put out, but at the
27:40
Speaker 1: same time, just kind of looking at the form, I
27:44
Speaker 1: think that there's there's something special about getting put into
27:48
Speaker 1: the dialogue, even if you have to deal with the
27:50
Speaker 1: dialogue tree, you know, but still like living the philosophy
27:55
Speaker 1: as it plays out in the narrative around you. I
27:56
Speaker 1: think that that there's something there's a lot of potential there.
27:59
Speaker 1: I think I would love, as I said, I would
28:01
Speaker 1: love to find some way to make something like this,
28:04
Speaker 1: even if it's on a smaller RPG maker scale or something.
28:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
28:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, do you have any any other thoughts here?
28:16
Speaker 1: As you said, it is a short game, but.
28:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a short game. So we kind of had
28:20
Speaker 3: a short talk about it. I mean there's, of course,
28:23
Speaker 3: there's other characters. There's the there's the cruel bartender woman
28:27
Speaker 3: who's just extorting money out of people because she says
28:29
Speaker 3: she knows how to escape, and they give her the
28:32
Speaker 3: money and she's just like, drink some hemlock and escape.
28:37
Speaker 2: Yeah.
28:40
Speaker 1: Oh, and then there's the the I think there's the
28:43
Speaker 1: other Christian who's picking on the gay guy, but then
28:51
Speaker 1: you know, he acts like it's because this guy's so immoral,
28:54
Speaker 1: but turns out he's just grumpy because he's sick or something.
28:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, he has arthritis, right, and then and then like
29:00
Speaker 3: the two of them are a couple in the epilogue,
29:02
Speaker 3: like it's a pretty it's so work if if you
29:08
Speaker 3: yeah if obviously, if you criticize a gay person, it's
29:14
Speaker 3: just because you are gay, that's the.
29:18
Speaker 2: Yeah.
29:19
Speaker 1: As I said, a lot of this game is freshman
29:22
Speaker 1: level of philosophical thinking.
29:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, we want to end on that note.
29:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, very very unfortunate.
29:31
Speaker 2: Ten.
29:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I should play this game. But yeah, seriously,
29:39
Speaker 1: even though anyone who's listening to this at this point
29:41
Speaker 1: that hasn't played it has just had the whole game spoiled,
29:44
Speaker 1: it's still it's definitely worth a playthrough. As much as
29:48
Speaker 1: I can critique it, I really did thoroughly enjoy living
29:52
Speaker 1: through the mystery and you're talking to all these different people.
29:56
Speaker 1: It's been a while since I played a game that
29:59
Speaker 1: doesn't focus around like fighting things, where it's about talking
30:03
Speaker 1: to people and thinking and solving puzzles. I mean, probably
30:05
Speaker 1: the last game that at least close to list I've
30:07
Speaker 1: played is like Journeyman Project or something from a very
30:11
Speaker 1: long time ago.
30:13
Speaker 2: Yeah. But yeah, right, well you'd like you enjoined it.
30:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, well then I guess we'll go ahead
30:20
Speaker 1: and wrap it there. I think the next games we're
30:25
Speaker 1: talking about Red Dead Redention kind of one and revisiting too,
30:30
Speaker 1: since I haven't talked about one yet. All right, all right,
30:33
Speaker 1: well see you next time. Thanks David, you met think.
30:36
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30:38
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Speaker 1: Mythic Mind. But that's it for now. The next thing
31:14
Speaker 1: to come out from Mythic Mind will be on the
31:17
Speaker 1: main Mythic Mind podcast on Monday as we continue through
31:20
Speaker 1: material related to boithiesis the Consolation of philosophy and so
31:24
Speaker 1: I will talk to you then