Latest / Mythic Mind Games / 5 - Red Dead Redemption 2: Honor, Loyalty & Arthur's Redemption (feat. Master Samwise & Jeremy Kee)

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5 - Red Dead Redemption 2: Honor, Loyalty & Arthur's Redemption (feat. Master Samwise & Jeremy Kee) · Mythic Mind Games

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to Mythic Mind Games, where we discuss
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: video games through the lens of the Christian humanities. I'm Dr.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Andrew Snyder, and I'm glad.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: That you're here.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Hey there, welcome back to the latest episode of Mythic
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Mind Games. Today I am joined by Jeremy Key and
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Master Samwise, both of whom have been on the main
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Mythic Mind podcast before, although it's been a little while.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: And we are here to discuss Red Dead Redemption 2.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Just an incredible game, as I've talked about some in
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: the last episode, really focusing specifically in on Arthur Morgan.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Today we're going to have more of a broad-reaching conversation
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: about what makes this game so great, and why it
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: provides good evidence for the argument that games can serve
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: a role that's at the very least analogous to good literature.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: And if you enjoy this conversation and you want to
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: see more of this happen on a regular basis, then
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: you can head over to patreon.com slash mythicmind to lend
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: your support and also to get involved in these conversations
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: because patrons get open invitations to any of these chats
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: we have on this podcast, the main Mythic Mind podcast,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: or Mythic Mind movies and shows. But for now, let's
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: go ahead and get right into our conversation on Red
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Dead Redemption 2.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Hello, hello. Jeremy, I'm glad to see that you dressed
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: for the occasion.
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: Oh, I'm underdressed.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: No, no. See, I'm a Texan. We just dress like
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: this naturally.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Man, I should have planned ahead on this. What can
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: you do? Welcome to the latest episode of Mythic Mind Games,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: as we're going to continue our conversation on Red Dead
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Redemption 2. This time I'm joined by Jeremy Key and
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Master Sam Wise, both of whom have been on the
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: main podcast before, although it's been a little while, especially
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: for Jeremy. And so I think it'd be helpful just
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: to start off, quick review, brief introduction, whatever you want
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: to say about yourself, whatever you want to plug. Jeremy,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: you want to go first? Yeah, sure.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: So my name is Jeremy, Jeremy Key. I don't actually
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: know what my Twitter handle is, but I would plug
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: that if I knew what it was. But I'm on Twitter,
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: and people seem to enjoy me from time to time.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: I'm a therapist in Dallas, born and raised Texan, which
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: is one of the reasons I think I'm on this podcast,
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: but also... relevant to the podcast, a great appreciator of
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: the West and the storytelling power of video games. And
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: so here we are to discuss that. There's a lot
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: more to me, but I think that that's the most
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: relevant bit for now. All right.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Fantastic.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: Sam. All right.
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: I'm Sam.
• 2:48
  Speaker 4: I run the Master Samwise channel on YouTube, which recently
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: made a video about Red Dead 2, specifically the character
• 2:55
  Speaker 4: journey of Arthur Morgan back in January, February of this year.
• 2:59
  Speaker 4: I think I played the game for the first time
• 3:01
  Speaker 4: last year and yeah, it's a truly fantastic story. I'm
• 3:07
  Speaker 4: not really a Western guy. Typically I'm a born and
• 3:09
  Speaker 4: raised Minnesotan, but my mom is, my mom is Texan
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: and grew up in North Carolina. So I've got a
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: little bit of that blood in me. But yeah, I mean,
• 3:16
  Speaker 4: it's just a fantastically told story, beautiful game. And I'm
• 3:20
  Speaker 4: excited to talk about it more.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: Good. I should, I should watch that video before this conversation.
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: I'm glad you played the game and didn't watch it
• 3:30
  Speaker 4: before then.
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: Good to go in fresh.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. And so I'm experiencing a lot of games fresh.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: I've mentioned a few times in these parts that I
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: really took a break from video games for like a
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: decade or so, just doing other things, kind of overcorrecting
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: perhaps for playing too many games in my youth. But
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: now stepping back in, I'm just discovering for the first
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: time some of these incredible stories of And Red Dead
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: 2 definitely is up there in the realm of incredible stories.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: In the last episode on this podcast, I did a
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: solo episode connecting Arthur Morgan with the death of Ivan
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: Ilyich by Tolstoy, which I think that there are some
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: strong thematic connections there as you deal with a bad
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: guy who yearns for nobility, yearns for goodness. And the
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: way that he has to come to terms with that
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: through wrestling with his immortality. And I should say that
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: there will be spoilers to the nature of what we
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: do here for anyone listening. So starting off just generally,
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: I mean, obviously we all think this is a great story.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: It's a great game. What do you think, looking at
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: just the aesthetics here, what is it about the West?
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: What is it about Westerns that tends to draw in
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: especially the American mythological spirit? Because it's really the cowboy,
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: I would say, is the quintessential American folk hero, mythological hero.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: He is the closest we have to the European knight
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: is the American cowboy, I would say. What is it
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: about the West, about Westerns that tends to draw us in? Jeremy,
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: I feel like you're probably equipped to say something about this.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. And I'm not going to make this political
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: other than to point out that At the moment of
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: this recording, there is a lot going on with a
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: certain U.S. senator wanting to sell federal land, particularly out West.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: And there's a lot of opposition to that. And so
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: to your question, Andrew, I think the reason or one
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: of the reasons for that is because, at least in
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: modern times, the West represents a way of life that
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: we don't live anymore. We live in most mostly we
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: live in. In cities or towns, we're very modern. Everything
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: is technologized and plugged in and digital and connected and
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: all these things. And, you know, I live in Dallas,
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: ninth largest city in the country. And it's very claustrophobic, right?
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: Everything is concrete and glass. And I can see about
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: 10% of the night sky from my apartment balcony. which
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: really bothers me because I know that there's a lot
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: more than just that little 10% that I can see.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: And so when you think about the West, when you
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: go out West, when you watch a Western movie or
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: play a Western video game, you're confronted with wide open
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: vistas and wild untamed land and That's today. If you
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: go back into the idea of the Wild West, it
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: was truly a lawless time. It was people just going
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: out there and figuring it out as they went. And
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: so I think what speaks to us about the West
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: is just that there's something foreign about it compared to
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: how we live today, but there's also something beautiful, romantic
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: about it, right? The idea of packing it all up
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: and just heading out west. You know, even in more
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: modern times, you know, back in the 60s and 70s,
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: a lot of young people did that as a means
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: of like their early adulthood rite of passage, right? Like
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: going and just becoming a wanderer for a while, which
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: is a very modern take on the western idea. And so,
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: I don't know, there's something appealing about the freedom of
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: wide open spaces and the way that it stokes our imagination.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: I don't know how much time either of you have
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: spent out West, but when you're wandering through Colorado and
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: you're at the base of a 14 or you're looking
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: up at this huge, massive land that seemed just impossibly big,
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: You can't help but feel very small. And some people
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: find that very uncomfortable, but I think a lot of
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: people find that very refreshing. It takes away a lot
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: of the sense of, I have to figure everything out.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: The world is on my shoulders. It's like, no, it's not.
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  Speaker 2: You're actually a very small piece of a much larger world,
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: a much larger natural thing that you are a part of,
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: but a small part of it. So I'll stop it
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  Speaker 2: there for now and throw it over to Sam. But
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: those are my thoughts.
• 8:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think you touched on a lot of what
• 8:39
  Speaker 4: I well, you touched on a lot more than I
• 8:40
  Speaker 4: would have said on that. So there's an interesting book,
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: which I haven't finished reading, called Red Dead's History. It's
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: by a history professor called named Torsey Olson, I believe.
• 8:51
  Speaker 4: And he's clearly of a different political ilk.
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: Than that I am.
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: And that reflects in how he views his history, but
• 8:58
  Speaker 4: does have a lot of interesting points. points that he
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: makes where as like as industrialization everything started to set
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: in especially now in our modern era where i i
• 9:09
  Speaker 4: work in technology right so i work at a keyboard
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: and with screens both my job and my hobby you
• 9:15
  Speaker 4: know making youtube videos um i work with all this
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: tech and there is this an innate sense innate urge
• 9:23
  Speaker 4: almost in me to like want to work my hands
• 9:25
  Speaker 4: So when I get to do a little house project,
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: whether that's just putting up blinds or, you know, painting
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: something or, you know, doing a little bit of yard work,
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: it feels good, right?
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: It feels natural. It feels like this, I needed that.
• 9:38
  Speaker 4: And as even in like, you know, the setting of
• 9:41
  Speaker 4: Red Dead 2 in 1899, things were starting to move
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: away from that. Firearms, for example, were being manufactured in
• 9:48
  Speaker 4: factories en masse, right? They were, you know, revolvers were
• 9:50
  Speaker 4: no longer unique artisanal pieces anymore.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: It was just like, you know, now you as you know,
• 9:56
  Speaker 4: Colt was manufacturing them by the hundreds, thousands. And so
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: you kind of touched on this when you talk about,
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  Speaker 4: you know, the romanticization of the West is the time
• 10:07
  Speaker 4: when men worked with their hands, when men were, you know,
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: free in a sense, like you could explore and wander
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: and you just, you got to do traditional man stuff.
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: That was all you had. Now you could do really.
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: And so like, there is a little bit of a,
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: you know, identity crisis, um, within, you know, masculinity, because
• 10:25
  Speaker 4: it's just like, well, this is what we've been doing
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: for centuries, working with our hands and everything. And it's
• 10:29
  Speaker 4: all of a sudden it's shifted again, that began with
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: the industrial revolution, I really think, and kind of continue through, uh,
• 10:35
  Speaker 4: through today. Um, so I think that's part of it. The,
• 10:39
  Speaker 4: the romanticization of the, uh, the cowboy is interesting because
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: cowboys were in reality, just kind of like glorified. sheep
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: herders except they were you know they're men not not
• 10:50
  Speaker 4: not dogs and they're they're wrangling cattle they're just getting
• 10:53
  Speaker 4: cows from one place to the next eventually get them
• 10:55
  Speaker 4: to chicago or whatever so they can be shipped off
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: to the east coast to be slaughtered they weren't anything
• 11:01
  Speaker 4: really all that special they just spent a lot of
• 11:04
  Speaker 4: time out in the open field um and it reminds
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: me of like the you know the eastern you know
• 11:12
  Speaker 4: a kind of ideal man especially japanese is the samurai
• 11:15
  Speaker 4: right everybody will have the glorified ideas of samurai and
• 11:18
  Speaker 4: they're very romanticized in fiction.
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: And then you read about.
• 11:22
  Speaker 4: The actual history of samurai and like, no, they were
• 11:24
  Speaker 4: just kind of, they were largely bullies. They were men
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: in power and with swords who could do whatever they
• 11:32
  Speaker 4: wanted without really any repercussions, as long as they were
• 11:35
  Speaker 4: doing those awful things to people beneath them in status.
• 11:40
  Speaker 4: And so it's, but they are glorified or romanticized because
• 11:44
  Speaker 4: of this supposed code of honor that they lived according to.
• 11:48
  Speaker 4: And I think you see the same sort of thing
• 11:50
  Speaker 4: with the cowboy, where you take the aspect of it
• 11:52
  Speaker 4: that we kind of long for, like Jeremy said, that freedom,
• 11:57
  Speaker 4: that open country, that experience of vastness, and you kind
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: of focus in on that and some other aspects like
• 12:04
  Speaker 4: their supposed toughness, their no-nonsense attitude. And you kind of
• 12:09
  Speaker 4: leave out the bits where they really were just kind
• 12:11
  Speaker 4: of lowly workers that just rode horses with a bunch
• 12:16
  Speaker 4: of cows from one place to the next.
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: So yeah, I think that's all in there right now.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: And I had one more thing just to, just to
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: go along with that. I found this quote just happenstantially
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: this morning that I think is, is relevant. So I'm
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: going to read it now comes from a Teddy Roosevelt.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: We know Teddy Roosevelt. We like Teddy Roosevelt. He wrote
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: or said, I'm not sure which, but he, communicated, the
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: West with its boundless prairies, its mighty rivers, and its
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: rugged mountains is a land of infinite possibilities where the
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: strong thrive and the weak are tested. And so I
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: think that, you know, going back to what me and
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: Sam have said, I think that it's, you know, the
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: infinite possibilities. You don't know what you're getting when you
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: go out West, right? And that's a very it's a
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: very scary, scary thing. And a lot of people fold
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: under that pressure, but, you know, kind of like, uh,
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: like Frank Sinatra said about New York city, if I
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: can make it here, I can make it anywhere. That's
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: kind of the same out West, or at least it was, uh,
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: back when it was untamed. If you can, if you
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: can carve a living for yourself out there, you can
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: do it anywhere. And I think that that's that idea, uh,
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: still exists. I think it still pervades the the popular
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: imagination of the West, that it is rugged and it's
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: wild and untamed. But again, there's something, going back to
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: what Sam said, there's something very appealing about just like
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: rolling up your sleeves and getting to it and seeing
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: what you can put together.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot to comment on there. First of all,
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: I'll say, and thanks for disenchanting us from the great
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: American mythology.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: Anytime.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: But to that point in particular about what were the
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: cowboys really like on a regular basis? I think it's
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: natural that as the fact of something, the historical reality
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: starts to fade into history, that our imagination naturally begins
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: to gravitate up toward the ideal, toward the archetype. Because
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: there are certain things that we all long for. When
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: we think about the European knight, normally we think of
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: this great, noble warrior, which I'm sure there were such knights,
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: but that obviously is not... Not all knights were good guys.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Put it that way. But we tend to think of
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: them as the ideal virtuous warrior because we have certain
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: certain desires, certain inklings of what human nature is supposed
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: to be, what the ideal person is. So natural imagination
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: starts to move these historical realities up into this realm
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: of myth, this realm of archetypes. And really that's, that's
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: what a myth is. Um, it, um, uh, Carl, Carl
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: Jung says that the, the myth is a, it's like
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: a public dream and dreams themselves are often, um, well, there,
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: there are our desires for what could be, maybe what
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: should be what we want to be. And, um, to
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: what Jeremy was talking about, about the West being just
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: this brand, this big expansive place that helps to break
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: us out of our claustrophobia. You know, it makes me
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: think of the major differences between pre-modern and post-modern thought
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: in that in post-modern thought, we always talk about how
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: we want to contextualize reality within ourselves. What does this
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: mean for me, right? We contextualize reality within myself, you know,
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: I'm going to speak my truth, that sort of talk.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: Whereas if you look at the pre-moderns, for the most part,
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: they're not going to talk about this language of, you know,
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: live your truth, of contextualize reality within yourself. They can
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: talk about how do we contextualize ourselves within reality, right?
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: When you go into the the ancient Greeks, going to Plato,
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: going to Aristotle, as much as they may have some
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: disagreements with each other, they begin with the presupposition that
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: there's such a thing as capital reality, that there is
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: a good that I didn't come up with, but that
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: I have a responsibility to contextualize myself within. And that's
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: how you grow in virtue. That's how you get closer
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: to being the ideal person. And I think that's fundamentally true,
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: which is why even the most radical postmodern, that when
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: they experience sunset, look out over the ocean, maybe even
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: experience a good storm. I mean, I'll ask my students sometimes, like,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: you know, how many of you, as long as you're
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: in a safe place or you're relatively safe, how many
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: of you enjoy like a really good storm? And most people,
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: most students will raise their hands and say, yeah, I
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: get it. Even if I ask them why, they'll usually say,
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: because it just kind of makes me feel small, which
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: sounds like it should be a bad thing, but it's
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: actually a very human thing. It's something that we long
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: for because it's the way that we are supposed to be.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: And so I think that there is something very grounding
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: about getting outside of our hyper-controlled environments that most of
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: us experience. We live in the safety of society. We
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: live in the safety of our own lives, which as
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: much as we're able to, we can kind of manage
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: and shape the way we want to. But when you
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: just get out into this idea of the expanse, well,
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: suddenly now you're not in control. And that's potentially a
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: very good thing. Um, so I, I think that, that, um,
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: I think it's at least in part why the, the West,
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: the American West has such a strong mythos for us. Yeah.
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: The idea of awe is something that like we all
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: have this deep longing for awe and wonder, right. And
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: that's where we get the words awesome and wonderful. And
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: I know that you have a tweet that still sticks
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: in my mind to this day, Andrew, about, um, like people,
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: I think it's maybe in Beowulf where someone, someone or
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: something is described as awesome. And your students were like,
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: why are they using such a mundane word? And you
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: said something to the effect of why have you like
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: made this incredible word? So, you know, so mundane, like
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: we should not take this word as that because, you know,
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: awesome is, you know, inspiring. Oh, which is this incredibly,
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: I don't even want to say primal. It was like
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: God given feeling for us as we are, as we
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: experienced like the just incredible depth and height and width
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: of like the created universe.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: Like awe and wonder are supposed to ultimately point us
• 18:34
  Speaker 4: to God. And like, that's what we experience in our
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: smallness in the middle of a thunderstorm, where it's just, wow.
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: Like it gives you the sense like there is like,
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: I am so small and I like something is so big.
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: Like, what is that? It really just, it kind of
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: draws you out of yourself.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: And so much of like postmodern thought you'll have said most,
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: most things you see on, you know, most modern writing
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: or whatever is so focused on the self and just
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: looking at yourself and it's, it's doesn't look, it doesn't
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: look outside. And that's what like experiences like that force
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: you to do. And I think, you know, relating this
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: to the game, I mean, that, that is the.
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: Experience that you get just riding through the open country.
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: And I think it's a large part of the reason
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: why the developers let you just do that, where you
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: just spend time riding from place to place and experiencing
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: the absolute vastness of the world. and the enormous amount
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: of possibilities that you have, all the thousands of little
• 19:32
  Speaker 4: interactions you could do.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: It's awesome.
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't want to push the conversation too quickly,
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: but there is that moment early on in the game
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: where you're out of the opening area, you're out of
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: the tutorial area, you get to Horseshoe Bend, right? And
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: that's where the game really opens up. And now it's
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: truly an open world and you can go anywhere and
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: you can do whatever you want. And there's this, I'm
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: sure you both went there, there's this overlook in the
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: camp there in Horseshoe Bend. where it's, you know, it's
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: right on the cliff, and down there is the bend
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: from which it gets its name, but it's just, it's
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: such a view, and up to this point, the game
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: has been very, again, very confined. You're up in the mountains,
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: and it's snowing, and so visibility is limited, and again,
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: using the word claustrophobic, because it, you know, everyone's just
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: huddled together to stay warm and survive, and then you
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: get down there into the plane, you know, and It's
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: just the game literally and mechanically just opens up. And
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: that's when the player really gets a sense, you know,
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: going back to what you were saying, Sam, about awe,
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: to the extent that you can experience awe in a
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: virtually curated experience. That's when the player first gets it,
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: because that's when the player first really sees, like, this
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: game is wide open, which again... that's the West, right?
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: That moment there's, um, I don't know if either you
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: played breath of the wild, the one of the Zelda games,
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: but early on in breath of the wild, he, uh, link,
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: he comes out from this cave and it's at the
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: very beginning. He stands on this cliff and it just
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: shows all of the map. And it's this very cinematic moment.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: And that's when the player realizes like, Oh wow, there's
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: going to like, there's a lot of adventure to be
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: had here. Right. Um, And there's there's a very, you know,
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: it's not quite as curated, but there is a very
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: similar moment in Red Dead. And it just it is bracing.
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: It just makes you stop for a moment and just
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: kind of like even though it's a video game, you
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: kind of want to just stop and take pictures and
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: look around and imagine the possibilities. So maybe that's what
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: the West is. And this is just one big possibility.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that sudden realization of possibility, right? You
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: come out of, and I'll admit, I was getting kind
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: of tired of the introduction. It's a very slow intro, which...
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: Everyone does. Yeah, I guess I can appreciate what they're
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: doing story-wise, and they're taking you by the hand toward
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: teaching you how to play the game, but it's so
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: incredibly slow. But just like.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: Whenever you're walking around camp, I get so frustrated with
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: how slowly he walks. But that aside, to your point,
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: that moment of entering into expansiveness past the intro territory,
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: this is something you see in a number of games.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: video games that are kind of in similar, um, space
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: genre wise, like for example, uh, Bethesda does this a
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: lot where you leave the opening area, you know, the,
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: the prison and oblivion, the cave in Skyrim, the vault
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: and fallout. And there's just like this moment where everything
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: is bright and expansive. And now suddenly you can just
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: go wherever you want to. It's a, it's a way
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: of just awakening you to, to possibility, to the, the
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: glory of exploration. Um, and, and I think that something
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: similar does happen in red dead and, I think that
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: there's something good about that. And this is part of
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: my ongoing thesis of doing this whole project and talking
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: about games at all. As somebody who's primarily had a
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: literary and philosophical focus for a number of years, that
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: I think there's something good about enchantment. There's something good
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: about wonder. There's something good about, even if it is
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: in this confined design space, there's something good about the
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: possibilities of exploration, forging your identity, deciding what kind of
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: character you are. Because all of those things, if you're
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: engaging them the right way, you can engage in video
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: games or anything the wrong way. But if you're engaging
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: it in the right way, I think it makes you
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: more of a curious kind of person. a person who's
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: more given over to wonder. And so to just really
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: echoing what Jeremy said, I think that is a good moment.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: It's a good launching place to the wonder and enchantment
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: that this game has to offer.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, not a lot of people know this about me,
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: but years ago, I actually wrote essays about video games
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: for an upstart video game website. I have no idea
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: what's become of it since. But one of the essays
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: I do remember writing was about Breath of the Wild,
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: and it was about this very idea of enchantment and
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: encouraging curiosity. I wrote about the environmental storytelling in that
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: particular game, how so much of the story was just
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: told by the ruins that you wander through or the
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: towns that populated the map, and how... All of this
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: was based on Kyoto, Japan, which is where the developers
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: and the writers were from, how they based the map
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: off of Kyoto. And it just encourages, again, it encourages
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: that awareness that the world is a lot bigger than
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: my bedroom or my office or even my home. The
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: world is a very big place, and there's a lot
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: to explore and to do and to see and to try.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: And Red Dead, I think, does an excellent job of
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: that because not only is the story wildly engaging, and
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: I'm sure we'll get into that in due course, but
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: just the world itself. There are so many characters to
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: interact with and things to do. Do you want to
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: be a good guy? Do you want to be a
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: bad guy? Do you want to be just kind of
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: middle of the road? You have this total choice. And again...
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: I'm going to hammer on this all morning. The idea
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: of the West is what are you going to do?
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: You know, you're going to get out there. Who are
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: you going to become? What are you going to build?
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: And I think that Red Dead does a good job
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: of that, not only in a video game perspective, but also, uh, for,
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: for people with eyes to see and ears to hear.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: I think it's a good way of reminding the player
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: that like, there's a real world out there. You can
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: live it. And to a large degree, you can choose
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: how you live it too. Um, Do you want to
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: be the good guy, the bad guy? Do you just
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: want to be an NPC? Yeah, so I really like
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: what you're doing with video games because I think that
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of value that can be taken from them.
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: And I think that Red Dead is a good way to...
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: is a good carrier of that value.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and maybe at this point, now that we've done...
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: we've talked about just the general aesthetic, the general experience,
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: maybe we should talk about the story a little bit. So...
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: I think it's a great story. It could easily be
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: turned into a movie. What about the story? You can
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: get as general specific as you want to. What about
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: this story is compelling to you? Or maybe I should ask,
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: did you guys play Red Dead 1?
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: I have not yet. It's on my list.
• 27:14
  Speaker 4: It'll probably be the next game that I play.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: Okay, then we're all in the same boat there. I
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: was going to ask if anyone can share any insights
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: on that connection there, but okay, fair enough.
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: I don't think there's a whole lot because Arthur's does
• 27:26
  Speaker 4: not feature at all in Red Dead 1.
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: It's just John.
• 27:29
  Speaker 4: I mean, I think there's other members of the gang
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: who you see in Red Dead 2 that carry over
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: to Red Dead 1 because Red Dead 2 is the prequel.
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm familiar with the story. And yeah, it's a
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: sequel to the prequel that would become Red Dead. And
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: from what I know, it seems like there are a
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: lot of scenes uh, in the first one that are
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: better realized or that grow in the second. Um, yeah,
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: that's the extent of mine.
• 28:01
  Speaker 4: And I know that the John Marston was a very
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: beloved protagonist. And when the release trailer or the, you know,
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: the whatever trailer dropped for red to two, and it
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: was revealed that you're going to be playing as this
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: Arthur Morgan guy, all the fans of the original game
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: were like, who's this?
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: I want to play as John. What are we doing?
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: Like what's going on? And then, you know, they played
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: the game and went, okay. And yeah, no, that was,
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: that was, I like, I like this guy.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: Nevermind.
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: Whereas now playing Red Dead two first, I feel like
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: if I played Red Dead one, I'd want to be
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: Arthur Morgan.
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: Which obviously can't work for, for obvious reasons. So, okay.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: So just focusing on, on Red Dead two, what, what
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: about the stories generally or specifically as you want to
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: get with it? Like what makes this a compelling story
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: to you?
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: I mean, the title is right. It's right there in
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: the name. It's a story about redemption. And I really
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: love that they, I mean, they handled the way they do. Again,
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: there are different endings to this story, right? So, you know,
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: how redeemed do you want your Arthur to be, right?
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: My Arthur was max honor, right? I played, you know,
• 29:11
  Speaker 4: I got through all the, you know, all the missions
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: that you could play, I think, only if you have
• 29:16
  Speaker 4: high honor. And it's, you know, it's this incredible story
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: about just Like finding goodness where it can be found, right?
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: Because you have this guy who like grew up without
• 29:26
  Speaker 4: a mother with, you know, apparently abusive father. Arthur says like,
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: I watched my dad die and it couldn't have happened
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: soon enough. Who was raised by, you know, a main egotistical.
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: you know, sociopathic maniac, you know, grew up on the
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: streets in a life of crime that he just fell
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: into because that's how you survived. And the fact that
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: he just sought for nobility, right, that he was able
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: to at all find some sort of self gift within
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: himself that he could give to someone else uh is
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: truly remarkable right so i mean that's just very broadly
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: when you start from that foundation and there is so
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: much to work with um and they did a fantastic
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: job executing on that theme.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah i uh when i played i've only played one
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: so far at some point i need to go back
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: and do it again with a more compelling character arc
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: because i don't really I didn't have it mapped out
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: who my Arthur Morgan was. Uh, and so I, yeah,
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: I'd started off, you know, kind of neutral going, going dishonorable.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: Cause it's fun to rob trains and stuff. But, uh,
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: eventually once I recognize that, no, I feel like. I
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: feel like redemption makes sense for a game called redemption. Um,
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: that obviously they're, they're pushing you in that direction. Like
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: there is a good ending and a bad ending, not
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: just morally speaking, but like there's an ending that makes
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: more sense. That would be the honorable ending. Um, and
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: so eventually it got to that point in the story.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: I figured, no, I should turn it around, but I
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: just wasn't consistent enough. So it was kind of a
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: schizophrenic character. Uh, but you know, taking the honorable path,
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: taking the redemption path. Um, I think it really is
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: a profound story, profound character arc. You know, as you said,
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: you got this, guy who's raised in this pretty lousy environment,
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: but it's all that he knows. And even within that
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: environment of outlaws, they're robbing people and killing people and whatnot,
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: that he's obviously someone who's striving for virtue, which is
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: why he prizes loyalty so much because that's the virtue
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: that he knows at least. And so he's maintaining fidelity
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: to that. Even Tolkien says that Sauron was better than
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: Morgoth for no other reason than for a time he
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: was loyal to someone beyond himself. It's like loyalty is
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: a good thing, even if it's in the wrong context.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: And so he's trying to hold on to the good
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: that he knows. And eventually, as he continues in this
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: path and he's faced to come to terms with his
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: own mortality and ask the questions that mortality always makes
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: us face of what's truly important that allows him to
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: see through the, the lies of Dutch, the lies of
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: this deceitful father figure and start to carve out his
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: own path, moving in a different, ideally more positive direction. And,
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: and that's very much why I connected with Ivan Ilyich,
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: similar arc there. But I, I think that there's something
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: just deeply redemptive about that, something deeply upbuilding about that,
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: that that's striving for goodness and hopefully finding it in
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: the end.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I would only add to that, that, You know,
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: you mentioned, Andrew, you mentioned loyalty, and that was obviously
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: a very clear through line in the entire game. I
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: almost said book. In the entire game, you know, some
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: of the later conversations between Arthur and John, when the
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: writing is on the wall and the gang is really
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: beginning to fall apart, Arthur and John talk very explicitly about, like, Well,
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: what about loyalty? Yeah, well, look where that loyalty has
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: gotten us, right? And so Arthur is still acting according
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: to that loyalty, but he's seeing that it was misplaced, right?
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: And so that shows that striving towards virtue, the base
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: loyalty was always there, and now it's growing and flourishing
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: and kind of coming into its own. But beyond that,
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: if you're playing, as I believe the game is meant
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: to be played, which is more high honor, hence redemption,
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: he's also motivated by love, right? I can't remember, what
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: was the name of his love interest?
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: Mary Linton.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: Mary Linton, yeah, that's right. So if you read his
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: journal entries and you do all the missions or the
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: quests that involve him and Mary... like that wasn't just some,
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: some body sort of, you know, Western thing or fling.
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: That was, that was a guy who grew up in
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: an environment where men didn't talk about love and he
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: was experiencing these very tender feelings towards this woman that
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: maybe he didn't know how to express or even act upon,
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: but he was, he was very clearly feeling them. And,
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: And in acting upon them, but also, you know, towards
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: the end, when she finally gets on the train and
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: goes away, you know, he wants to go with her.
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: You can see that he wants to just throw it
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: all away and just tell Dutch to go pound sand.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: I'm out of here. But what does he say? Well,
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: I just I got to get this one more score. Right.
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: We just got to do this one more job, get
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: some money and then I'm gone.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: So there is that there is that pull between. that
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: we all know all too well. We've all been in
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: situations where it's like, here's the path I should go, but, oh,
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: this one over here. And, and as far as I know,
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: the game doesn't give you an option, right? Like you
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: have to, you have to, exactly. And so, so it's
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: a little bit directed there, but, but Arthur was very clearly,
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: he was very clearly aware that, that there's more to
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: loyalty than just the gang. There are levels or layers
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: of loyalty, and he was feeling this pull towards a
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: higher form, a more exclusive sort of loyalty. And he
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: just couldn't quite get there. And that leaves the player asking, like,
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: what might have been? What might have been? I mean,
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: at that point, the die was cast for Arthur. But
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: how might his last days have been different had he
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: gotten on that train? Right.
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: So even in that scene, he says, like, there's there's
• 36:09
  Speaker 4: some things I need to take care of, like one
• 36:10
  Speaker 4: more score. But he also I forget if he says
• 36:13
  Speaker 4: there's people I need to see, too. But it's very
• 36:17
  Speaker 4: at that point, he's very clearly thinking of John and
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: Abigail and Jack.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 36:20
  Speaker 4: So, like, they're kind of his big motivation in the final. Like,
• 36:23
  Speaker 4: he's got to get them to safety. That's what he
• 36:25
  Speaker 4: needs to take care of. So, yeah, if he had
• 36:27
  Speaker 4: chosen to go with marriage, I get it all. I
• 36:29
  Speaker 4: don't think I could fault him for that at all.
• 36:31
  Speaker 4: But his motivation to stay is very much loyalty-based. And
• 36:36
  Speaker 4: more true loyalty, right? It's not just about money. He
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: wants to see to his gang for their legitimate good.
• 36:43
  Speaker 4: So the evolution of Arthur's idea of loyalty throughout the
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: game is really fantastic. Where at the beginning, it's like,
• 36:50
  Speaker 4: I'm loyal to Dutch. I'll do what Dutch says. I
• 36:52
  Speaker 4: trust Dutch to guide us as he sees fit. And
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: it kind of evolves into... be loyal to what matters,
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: which is what he tells John. And that scene you
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: were alluding to, it's after they've set the dynamite on
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: the train tracks. And Arthur is telling John, this is
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: all just about done. When the time comes, you get
• 37:13
  Speaker 4: Abigail and Jack, you get the hell out of here.
• 37:16
  Speaker 4: And John asks, what about loyalty? Arthur says, be loyal
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: to what matters. So this is what's kind of come
• 37:20
  Speaker 4: to Arthur over the course of, I mean, we're near
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: the end of the game at this point. where he's
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: realized that, okay, loyalty does not mean obedience, right? Loyalty
• 37:28
  Speaker 4: means seeking. I mean, loyalty means essentially love, or it
• 37:31
  Speaker 4: means like seeking the good of the people that you
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: are loyal to, the people that have been placed in
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: your life that you are obliged to take care of.
• 37:40
  Speaker 4: And so I think that's, I mean, that's really beautiful,
• 37:43
  Speaker 4: like character evolution as Arthur kind of understands like the
• 37:47
  Speaker 4: actual virtue in loyalty rather than loyalty just being a
• 37:51
  Speaker 4: trait or a characteristic.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And there's, you know, this thought just came to me.
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: There's also this memento mori aspect of it, right? Like
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: he only, Arthur's thoughts only really begin to change and
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: he really begins to act on them when he gets
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: his diagnosis, right? When he sees like, oh crap, my
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: days are not just numbered as they all are, but
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: highly numbered or lowly numbered as it were. That's when
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: he really starts taking these thoughts that have been kind
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: of percolating in his brain. Like, you know, is Dutch
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: losing it? Is he, is he not the man he
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: once was? That's when, you know, the scales fall from
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: the eyes and he sees like, you know what, now's
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: the time to do something about it.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: I don't have a lot of time. So let's make
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: the time that I have count. Which I think that's
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: the kind of clarity that can only come through the
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: a deep awareness of one's, not just one's mortality, but
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: one's pending mortality. There's a great scene in one of
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: the early episodes of Band of Brothers where there's a
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: soldier and he's afraid, as all soldiers were, and he's
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: kind of cowering in a foxhole. And then there's another soldier,
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: Lieutenant Spears, who It's just kind of like a man's man, right?
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: Like he runs into the battle all the time and everything.
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: And they're talking about the foxhole soldier says, like, how
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: do you do it? How do you like, just throw
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: yourself into these fights? And Lieutenant spear says you gotta
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: you gotta accept that you're already dead right until you
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: accept that you're already dead you can't do the one
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: thing that a soldier is supposed to do which is
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: throw himself into the fight with reckless abandon but once
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: you accept that then it's just a matter of of
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: pulling the trigger right and you know that's good it's
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: good uh good advice for folks in the military, but
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: I think it's good advice for all of us. And
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: you see that with Arthur, right? Because again, he's a
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: dead man. He's a dead man walking. And so what
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: does it matter if he acts on these deep thoughts
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: and feelings that he's having and maybe offends some people
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: that he's always been loyal to? What does it matter?
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: Because now he's finally acting really and truly in accordance with,
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: I'm going to use my, my therapist hat here. He's
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: acting really and truly in accordance with his own values, right?
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: Like he sees loyalty in a completely new way and
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: he's acting according to that. And yeah, I'll leave it there. Yeah.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: Um, and similar to what you just said there about
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: from a band of brothers, I was recently reading the
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: letters of Seneca, uh, as I'm putting together this, uh,
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: Plato's Stoicism Until We Have Faces course that's coming up.
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: And Seneca says that, well, you're going to spend far
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: more time dead than you are alive. And so, you know,
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: basically live accordingly. Make that your primary thought. And of course,
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: how much more value does that hold for the Christian
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: when we consider the difference between the eternal and the temporal?
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: And that this loyalty, this idea that this virtue that
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: he's had, perhaps in shadow, that's now coming more into
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: substance in light of his mortality. Well, first of all,
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: I should say that as I played this game, I
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: didn't know the overarching story. I didn't know how things
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: were going to play out. And so I was actually
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: very surprised when this tuberculosis thing just takes him over.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: I didn't see that coming because it's not something you
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: expect in a video game for them to just like
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: throw in this major plot element. that seems to come
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: out of nowhere. I mean, looking back, you know that
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: he caught it when he was beating up this debtor
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: who coughed in his face, but you don't think about
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: that in the moment. And so it's very much this
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: kind of movies situation where they just bring in this
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: major plot element almost out of nowhere, which I think
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: is fantastic. But anyways, so yeah, he starts to see
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: more clearly and going back to his relationship with Mary,
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: I mean, it very much could be argued that in
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: turning her down at least for a time, but I mean,
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: really ultimately that he was demonstrating loyalty even to her, right.
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: Because he knew that this was not going to be
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: a good life for her, even if it would be
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: for him for his remaining days, that not only was
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: he dying, uh, but that, that he's still an outlaw, right?
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: Like this is, this is no life for a respectable
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: woman that he actually cares about. Um, and, and well, you,
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: you feel for him and, you know, you want them
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: to go off onto the sunset together and, you know, him,
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: live an honest, good life with the days that he
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: has left that on some level he must've known it
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: wasn't going to work. It shouldn't work. And at that point,
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: he's kind of a tragic hero or it has this,
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: this death to self idea that that comes with the
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: right relationship to mortality.
• 42:49
  Speaker 4: There's a, there's a letter that you get from, from
• 42:52
  Speaker 4: Mary near the, very near the end of the game
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: where she, she returns like the ring that he gave her.
• 42:58
  Speaker 4: So they, they were, engaged apparently before her family kind
• 43:02
  Speaker 4: of stepped in um it's the sense that we get
• 43:05
  Speaker 4: and she says you're a good man arthur but you
• 43:08
  Speaker 4: know you're wrestling with a giant and the giant wins
• 43:11
  Speaker 4: time and again um and then flash forward to again
• 43:15
  Speaker 4: this is assuming you've played as you are playing as
• 43:18
  Speaker 4: high honor arthur and i think it might be in
• 43:20
  Speaker 4: only in the one ending just four possible endings right
• 43:23
  Speaker 4: whether high honor low honor and then If you go
• 43:26
  Speaker 4: with John or you go back to get the money, right?
• 43:29
  Speaker 4: So the ending I got was the high honor going
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: with John. And so in this ending, Arthur is, you know,
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: kind of, he's down, he's dying, he's crawling. And Micah says,
• 43:39
  Speaker 4: you lost my sick friend. And Arthur says, no, Micah,
• 43:42
  Speaker 4: it seems that despite my best efforts, I've won. And
• 43:47
  Speaker 4: I'm pretty sure that he's referring to that letter, right?
• 43:51
  Speaker 4: He's referring to this battle between, you know, himself and
• 43:54
  Speaker 4: the giant. the giant being his life experience, right? All
• 43:58
  Speaker 4: the people he's, that are around him, all his vices
• 44:02
  Speaker 4: and negative tendencies that, you know, just turn him time
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: and time again to the life of an outlaw. And,
• 44:08
  Speaker 4: you know, here he's like, you know, I've, I've won,
• 44:10
  Speaker 4: I've broken free of that. I've gotten, I've helped someone
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: else break free of that, right? I've become, you know,
• 44:17
  Speaker 4: at least in this one act, a good man. And
• 44:20
  Speaker 4: I think that's, I think it's so beautiful in a
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: number of ways, but just like what others can inspire
• 44:27
  Speaker 4: us to do, right?
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: Where Mary is, you know, she's not, she didn't have
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: Arthur's life.
• 44:33
  Speaker 4: And Arthur could very easily resent her for that fact,
• 44:36
  Speaker 4: where it's like, you shouldn't, who are you to judge me?
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: You grew up in wealth and, you know, life of ease, right?
• 44:44
  Speaker 4: You know, she was widowed, so there's that. She has
• 44:46
  Speaker 4: experienced some hardship, to be fair, but he doesn't hold
• 44:50
  Speaker 4: any of that against her, right? He just, you know,
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: wants to be, you know, worthy of her right from, but,
• 44:58
  Speaker 4: you know, isn't willing to sacrifice, you know, loyalty to
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: his friends to, you know, to do so, to become,
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: you know, that, that gentleman or whatever, as if he'd
• 45:05
  Speaker 4: be accepted anyway.
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: So I don't know.
• 45:07
  Speaker 4: I absolutely love that moment where Arthur is like, I've, I've,
• 45:10
  Speaker 4: I've beaten that giant.
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: I've never made that connection before, but I, I like
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: that connection a lot. I'm going to go with, with
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: the idea that that's intended. Because that's just too perfect
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: not to be a callback to that letter. That's... God,
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: what a game. What a game.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean, that idea of winning though he's dying,
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: you know, by any kind of traditional worldly power concerns,
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, he did lose, right? I mean, he lost
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: by getting tuberculosis, according to just a, you know, survival
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: of the fittest sort of mentality, a will to power mentality.
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: You know, he became weak, and it could be argued
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: that he became weak by his desire for a virtue
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: that extends beyond his own self-preservation. It, you know, makes
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: you think of in.
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: Obviously, I've been doing a lot with Lewis over the
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: last few years, but in medieval cosmology, when they talk
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: about the influences of the heavens, that the martial influence,
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: the influence of Mars, that it not only is what
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: guides the noble knight who goes out and gains victory
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: in combat against the forces of evil, but also it's
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: the influence that leads the noble martyr. Hence the name martyr, right?
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: It's the martial spirit. but portrayed in a different kind
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: of way. It's the resolve, the victory that comes through
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: fighting against the own shadows of your own temptation, as
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: well as the evil forces that would come against you
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: and do you harm for doing what is good. And
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: so being a martyr for a noble cause is a
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: certain kind of embodiment of the martial spirit, which goes
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: with this idea that though he died, though he was
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: disenfranchised from his gang, he ultimately died I mean, he
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: suffered death for his desire for virtue, even though death
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: would have come eventually, as it would for all of us,
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: that he still gained victory. He died a noble warrior
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: of sorts. And I think that it's a very Christian idea.
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, Rockstar isn't going to take that all
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: the way and have a literal come-to-Jesus moment. But at
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: the same time, I think it's almost about as close
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: as you can get to embodying the Christian ideal without...
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: explicitly embodying the christian ideal.
• 47:26
  Speaker 4: Did you play the missions where you have the conversations
• 47:28
  Speaker 4: with uh sister calderon.
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: Yes um remind us of the significance of that it's
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: kind of hazy.
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: To me i mean i missed them when i like
• 47:38
  Speaker 4: i don't think i even played them when i first
• 47:39
  Speaker 4: played through the game and i saw one of the
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: scenes on youtube and went oh my goodness i need
• 47:43
  Speaker 4: to like i need to play this mission so basically
• 47:45
  Speaker 4: it starts out where you i forget how it is
• 47:48
  Speaker 4: exactly you you run into um, you run into a
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: brother in, in San Denis, um, I forget his name now.
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: Um, and you talk with him a little bit.
• 47:58
  Speaker 4: He says, he suspects the, um, the, uh, like pawn
• 48:03
  Speaker 4: shop or whatever around the corner is actually like trafficking, um,
• 48:07
  Speaker 4: slaves basically. Uh, so Arthur goes, investigates, finds the slaves,
• 48:10
  Speaker 4: brings them, brings them to the brother. He gets them to,
• 48:12
  Speaker 4: you know, to their, their shelter or wherever. Um, and
• 48:15
  Speaker 4: you meet him again and a sister from his order, um,
• 48:19
  Speaker 4: And basically, you have a couple missions where you talk
• 48:22
  Speaker 4: to her and stuff, do various things. And then you
• 48:26
  Speaker 4: run into her again at a train station where it's after,
• 48:32
  Speaker 4: it's the whole, during the Indian plot at the end where, like,
• 48:36
  Speaker 4: there's the one army officer who kind of, who's resisting
• 48:41
  Speaker 4: his colonel's orders, right?
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: To kind of, who's really, you know, trying.
• 48:45
  Speaker 4: To basically, his colonel is basically trying to shove the
• 48:50
  Speaker 4: the the what is it the wapiti wapiti yeah thank
• 48:54
  Speaker 4: you um i was thinking wamapook that's the indian tribe
• 48:57
  Speaker 4: from uh parks and rec um but he's trying to
• 49:00
  Speaker 4: shove the wapiti off their lands yet again and so
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: you you kind of pull that officer out of there
• 49:06
  Speaker 4: um and get him on a train send him off
• 49:08
  Speaker 4: and arthur runs into sister calderon at the train station
• 49:11
  Speaker 4: and he.
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: Just completely opens up to her right i don't know if.
• 49:15
  Speaker 4: He's told anyone about his diagnosis uh to this point
• 49:18
  Speaker 4: but like he he's he's like yeah i got tb
• 49:21
  Speaker 4: um like i'm dying sister and they have this conversation
• 49:25
  Speaker 4: where like he for the first time he really admits
• 49:28
  Speaker 4: like he quite literally says i'm afraid and it just
• 49:31
  Speaker 4: i mean the voice acting and the motion capture like
• 49:34
  Speaker 4: is perfect like the expression on his face is unreal
• 49:39
  Speaker 4: it's like this this mask of like barely veiled like
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: pain and terror um and yeah so that's where she
• 49:49
  Speaker 4: tells him um you know take his gamble that love
• 49:51
  Speaker 4: exists and do a loving act which i mean if
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: you know if you have if you're at all versed
• 49:57
  Speaker 4: in you know um i don't know trinitarian theology uh
• 50:02
  Speaker 4: at least this is how i i've heard it time
• 50:04
  Speaker 4: and again is that you know god in three persons
• 50:06
  Speaker 4: is an external is an it eternal exchange of love.
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: You know, the phrase God is love has been said many, many,
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: you know, countless times. And so like, that's, I mean,
• 50:17
  Speaker 4: I think that's just a beautiful example of like how
• 50:19
  Speaker 4: to evangelize to someone when you have 30 seconds to
• 50:22
  Speaker 4: do it.
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: And like, you don't, I was like, where do I start?
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: What do I even say? And she says, you know,
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: take a gamble that love exists. And I think that's, yeah.
• 50:31
  Speaker 4: So I'm like, this is, and Rockstar is not a
• 50:33
  Speaker 4: Christian company, but it was like, that's a very Christian
• 50:35
  Speaker 4: ideal right there. Um, and I love that they included
• 50:39
  Speaker 4: that because again, redemption is kind of Christianity's whole thing. Um,
• 50:43
  Speaker 4: and the fact that they made this, this character, this sister. So,
• 50:47
  Speaker 4: I mean, again, she's optional. You don't have to, you
• 50:49
  Speaker 4: don't have to run into her. If you don't, you
• 50:51
  Speaker 4: run into Reverend Swanson and his scenes pretty dark, pretty
• 50:53
  Speaker 4: good too.
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: Um, but, uh, yeah, it's like, it's remarkable.
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: It's like, wow.
• 51:00
  Speaker 4: I mean, it, they, they lay it right out there. Um, it,
• 51:03
  Speaker 4: it's an incredibly emotional, beautiful scene.
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no notes. I was hoping you would bring that up.
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: I was shocked that they included that in the game
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: because it's like, you know, this is the same developer
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: that really built its reputation on being able to carjack
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: people and shove hookers into trunks. And, you know, in
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: the GTA series, and now here they are, intentionally or not,
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: including such a fundamentally... christian idea into this game about
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: the wild west it was it was uh it was
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: a a very welcome surprise when i came across that.
• 51:46
  Speaker 4: You can still hogtie people and feed them to alligators
• 51:49
  Speaker 4: that is you can you can still do those things
• 51:52
  Speaker 4: yeah i don't i don't know much about the gta
• 51:55
  Speaker 4: games but i've heard from like catholic friends of mine
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: that um let's say once i was like he's like
• 51:59
  Speaker 4: considers it equivalent to like breaking bad in terms of
• 52:03
  Speaker 4: kind of the story, right? I know, I don't, I
• 52:05
  Speaker 4: know GT is this huge open world like Red Dead
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: 2 where you, yeah, you can just go be a
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: complete and total miscreant if you want to. But it
• 52:13
  Speaker 4: has this kind of, when the actual story and these characters,
• 52:16
  Speaker 4: it's like no, no person of an actually relatively well-formed
• 52:20
  Speaker 4: conscience should, should want to be like, you know, Jason,
• 52:24
  Speaker 4: I think is the main character in the GT series.
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: Maybe that's the new one.
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 52:28
  Speaker 4: And it's like, yeah, no person should want to be
• 52:30
  Speaker 4: like Walter White in Breaking Bad. And yet a lot
• 52:33
  Speaker 4: of people do because people don't have super well-formed consciousness.
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: And I think that's a trap or a pitfall when
• 52:41
  Speaker 4: you're developing or writing a story about deprived people, depraved people.
• 52:49
  Speaker 4: If they exhibit any sort of strength, then people, young men,
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: are going to look up to and admire them, even
• 52:57
  Speaker 4: when you definitely didn't intend that.
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, but on the idea of showing strength in
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: the scene that we were just talking about, that was
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: arguably one of the strongest moments in Arthur's story, assuming
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: that you played it. Because you got the sense that
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: that was, as he was saying, I'm afraid, you got
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: the sense that he was just coming to that realization himself.
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: That didn't seem like something, a thought that had been
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: consciously rolling around in his head until the words came
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: out of his mouth. And for a big, bad, tough
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: enforcer in a cowboy gang, Arthur Morgan, you don't admit
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: that you're afraid. This is a cold-blooded killer for all
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: intents and purposes. And here he is talking to this
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: little wispy nun who You know, she's 105 soaking wet
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: and pretty close to death herself by the looks of it.
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: And here he is basically giving a confession of sorts.
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: Like that is a profound show of strength, just not
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: in the way that you would expect. But that's what
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: makes it such an important inclusion, right? Because strength isn't
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: just beating up a dude who's in debt and telling
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: him to get your money, strength is also that vulnerability
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: and that admitting I'm not okay right now, right? And
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: I don't know what to do about that. And, you know,
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: the fact that Arthur Morgan's story resonates so pervasively across
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: video game culture, I think that having those more vulnerable
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: moments from, again, this big burly man's man. Uh, I
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: think that that is a, that was a very important inclusion,
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: I think.
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Um, you know, obviously Arthur Morgan at this point
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: in the story, when he has this conversation with, with,
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: with his sister, he, he is somebody who is well
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: acquainted with death, just not his own. Um, I, uh,
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: For a number of semesters now, I've taught a course
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: at my state university called Life, Death, and Meaning. And
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: the first class of that course each semester, at some
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: point I asked the question, how many of you know
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: that you're going to die? And everyone raises their hand. Like, okay,
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: that's kind of a ridiculous question. And then I'll, you know,
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: everyone raises their hand. And then I'll follow up with,
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: how many of you have thought about the fact that
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: it is you that is going to die? Suddenly they're
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: a little less... Um, a little less jovial in the
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: response to that question. It's no longer such an obvious
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: answer because on some level, like on, on paper, we
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: all know that we're mortal. We all know that we're
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: going to die. It's very different thing to recognize that
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: like my existence in the way that I currently know
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: it is going to come to an end. And, you know, we,
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: we can do a number of things with that dread
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: that we all inevitably experience. Either it can be transmuted
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: into something good, as we find in the Christian gospel,
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: or we can just hide from it and play the
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: coward and just pretend like it's not there. But as
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: we see in Tolstoy's Ivan Ilyich, it's always going to
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: haunt you on some level. You can't avoid it completely.
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: It's always going to be there, casting a shadow on
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: the good times and the bad times. Or you can
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: just live in absolute dread, and that's not... necessarily healthy either.
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: Given those options, I feel like there's only one positive solution,
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: but fortunately it's the real one, the true one. But
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: I would argue that if you've never had that moment
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: where you've recognized not just I'm going to die, but
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: it is me that is going to die, then I
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: don't think you've come to terms with what human life
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: actually is. You can't understand anything, the good times or
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: the bad times. You can't understand your experiences unless you
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: fully recognize your mortality, which is why we, we, uh,
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: you know, have this momentum, momentum, Maury idea, you know,
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: remember your death, remember that you're going to die. Um,
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: because when you recognize it within that light, then suddenly
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: what you do actually gains significantly more significance. Uh, and
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: that in turn makes your life more worth living. It's
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: the kind of thing that can actually give you more joy,
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: more meaning, more substance, recognizing that you're going to die,
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: as paradoxical as that seems on the surface. And so
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: when Arthur Morgan admits, I'm afraid, that is, as we've
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: been talking about, it's a powerful moment of just discovering
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: something fundamental to the human experience.
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: There's a quote from Alexander Solzhenitsyn. It's a long one,
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: so I won't recite it here. But in the quote,
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: he makes the point that if human life were all
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: just about having fun and experiencing pleasure, then we wouldn't
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: be made to die. And so the fact that we
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: are made to die, the fact that all of our
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: lives end in death, must mean or suggest or at
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: least indicate that there is something something higher that we're
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: supposed to do. Um, and so again, I think that
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: we see that, I think that we see that in
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: the story of Arthur Morgan, right? Like before, before the diagnosis,
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: he's not exactly living a life of pleasure or fun,
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: but he's living a very violently, uh, hedonistic life. You know, he's,
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: he's part of this gang. That's the last vestige of
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: of the wild West because one of the subplots is,
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: is the gang keeps getting pushed further and further, uh,
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: to the peripheries because the world is civilizing and they
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: don't want to civilize with it. They want to stick
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: with the, the, the lawless ways of the old world. Um, and,
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: and Arthur is very much a part of that, but
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: as he, after the diagnosis, uh, he realizes there's stuff
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: that I got to do, right? There are important things
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: that I need to set right. So yeah, I wanted
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: to incorporate Solzhenitsyn, and I've done that, so mission accomplished.
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that this arc that we've been
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: discussing hits a high point toward the end when we
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: have the stuff with the Indian chief that... We just
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: mentioned it. What was the tribe's name? Wapiti. Yeah, the Wapiti. So,
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: you know, you've got the chief who he's just so
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: tired of conflict. He just wants peace really above everything else.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: And then he's got his Warhawk son who, you know,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: wants justice, wants revenge. Like he just wants to go
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: to battle. Even if they die, he figures, well, that's
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: a better way to go out than just fading off
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: into nothingness. But Arthur, he really sympathizes with the father and,
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: who is just so tired of the conflict. And I
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: think that is just a good continuation of this arc where,
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: you know, Arthur Morgan is a guy who's lived in
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: conflict his entire life, but he just is so tired.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: In many ways, he's preparing for a life that he
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: could never possibly find on the side of things as
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: he increasingly comes to terms with death. And, you know,
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: if you've ever had a season of your life that's
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: given over to particular conflict, to drama, to tension, We
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: can all probably sympathize with that. I just want peace,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: even if that doesn't necessarily lead to practical solutions.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 4: There's a line that Arthur says when he's talking to
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 4: Chief Rainsfall. He says, I killed a lot of people
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 4: for a lot of dumb reasons. I ain't ever seen
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 4: any glory in it. Putting that quote against the backdrop
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 4: of what he's experiencing right now, where he's facing his
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 4: own mortality.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: And.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 4: He's realizing how many people he's, he's sent to, you know,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 4: to meet their own. Especially cause like he, as Charles said,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 4: tells him at some point around this, that like, he's
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 4: been given a gift, right. Where he like gets to,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 4: to see his end coming and to, to prepare for it, to,
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: you know, take time to make things right. Whereas, you know,
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 4: who knows what, what was in the lives of all
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 4: those people that he killed. They never got time to
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 4: consider their end, to have a deathbed, to see it coming.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 4: And yeah, that's running through his mind. And I think
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 4: that's kind of going to the end of the story.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 3: So in the.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 4: Low honor ending where you go up the mountain with John,
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 4: Arthur dies by getting shot through the face point blank
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 4: by Micah.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 3: And I remember I was watching that on.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 4: YouTube because I was like, OK, what are the other
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 4: endings after I finished mine? And I was like, oh,
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 4: I mean, like this really shocked me. I mean, it's,
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 4: you know, it kind of violent and it's kind.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: Of an appropriate it's almost appropriate. But like, yeah, that
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 3: makes sense.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: Of course you did. Of course this happened.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 4: But it robs Arthur of like of those final moments
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 4: that he gets in that high honor ending. where he's
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 4: lying there and facing the sunrise, literally looking at it,
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 4: literally metaphorically looking towards a new day, right. If, you know,
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 4: even if that, you know, literal new day will not
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 4: be for him, but it's a gift he's given to
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 4: John and his family. So like, yeah, the, you know,
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 4: he's lived his life, you know, his last days in this,
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 4: you know, just continued despicable fashion and hence, you know,
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 4: the low honor and it just ending suddenly and violently
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 4: without him getting those, you know, final moments of, uh,
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 4: of peace is, yeah, it's like, Oh, it's stunning. Yeah.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: And that, that symbolism of dying facing the sunrise, there's the,
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: the symbol of resurrection is there that he dies with
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: the new day. Um, and it, which again, connects to,
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: to Yvonne Illich, if you've read that, that, as the
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: main character, as he's dying, there's all kinds of symbolism
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: of resurrection built into that scene. Even to the point
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: of the last words he hears, which weren't spoken with
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: any great significance, but they are to him, the last
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: words he hears before he dies is, it is finished.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: And so there's all this symbolism built into that scene.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: And I think that we definitely see that with High Honor,
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: Arthur Morgan dying, that there's life even in death when
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: death is approached in the right manner. I think often
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: in Tolkien that the hope is in the West. Yet
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: Aragorn says at Helm's Deep that dawn is always the
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: hope of man, which obviously the dawn is in the East.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: And so it's like we look toward the West, toward
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: the sunset. We look toward death with the hope that
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: there's a sunrise on the other side. Right. And I
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: think that on perhaps a less significant, but still significant level,
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: we see that symbolism here with the death of Arthur
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: Morgan in The Sunrise.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 4: Well, Arthur even says in an earlier conversation at camp,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 4: I didn't happen to find this one. It's just a
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 4: random encounter you can have in camp where the gang
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 4: is discussing how they want to be buried or how
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 4: they want to die.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: I forget which exactly.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 4: I found it just doing research on the internet and
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 4: seeing all that. And Arthur tells them, I don't really care.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 4: Just bury me facing west so I can remember all
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 4: the good times we have. And I think he might
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 4: actually be buried in that fashion if you watch the
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 4: end credits. But the fact that he does die facing
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 4: east is kind of like, it kind of flips that
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 4: on its head a little bit, which is cool. Where
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 4: he's no longer looking back, he's looking forward, just not
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 4: for himself. Especially as far as life on earth goes anyway,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 4: where he's looking forward for John, who his last act
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 4: was getting him to safety. And his family as well,
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 4: which is another point of Christian symbolism that I wanted
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 4: to bring up, which I was like, there's no way
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 4: that wasn't intentional. Um, it's a conversation of Arthur has with, uh,
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 4: Abigail and Sadie.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 3: Um, I don't know.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 4: Sadie might be gone at that point, but yeah, it
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 4: was Abigail and Sadie and, um, Jack's already gone.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: He's off to safety.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 4: Um, or Arthur is about to go back to camp
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 4: to confront Dutch trees, which continue talking about loyalty. Arthur
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 4: could just try to run away at this point, but
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 4: he goes back to try to talk, talk Dutch down.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 4: He feels like he owes it to Dutch to be like,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 4: let's like, you gotta stop.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 3: We gotta get out of here.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 4: Um, but, um, Abigail gives him like the key to the,
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 4: the money, you know, safe or whatever that Dutch has hidden.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 3: Uh, and she says, um, I always was a good thief.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 4: And I'm pretty sure if I remember correctly, that right
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 4: at that moment when she says the words, good thief,
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 4: like the last song that plays throughout Arthur's ride back
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 4: to camp starts. And I'm like, yeah, there's, there's no
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 4: way you didn't do that on purpose. If, if it
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 4: wasn't you on purpose, then like, I swear that's like
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 4: divine intervention, sticking this into your game. Um, it's a
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 4: really cool moment and like I've gone back and revisited
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 4: that scene and went no way.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: Again something I never caught but that's intentional or not
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: like you say intentional or divine intervention that's that is
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: a really interesting thing to include in a game that's
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: not meant to be Christian but that is a very
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: very interesting thing to include.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: See, I think that these are things that you find,
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: whether you're talking about a movie or a game, when
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: the developer isn't giving you propaganda, like when they're just
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: trying to tell you a good story, that naturally a
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: lot of that's going to resonate with Christianity. It's the
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: true myth, as Lewis says. And so when you're telling
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: a good story, we should expect a lot of these
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: connection points. That's a good example. Well, is there anything
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: else that you feel like should be mentioned that we
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: haven't hit on at this point?
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 4: I'm sure there's a million things, but I made a
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 4: two and a half hour video about the game. So
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 4: like I, anytime you talk to us about a certain point,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 4: there's a line that pops into my head, but nothing,
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 4: nothing off the top of my head at this point.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: I mean, the, I guess just to, to summarize my,
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: my thoughts on the matters that there's all it's popular
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: today to criticize video games for for the admittedly very
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: negative potential consequences that playing video games can have. We
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: are all familiar with those. We don't need to go
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: over those. But games like Red Dead Redemption 2, and
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: there are other really good games, but in my experience,
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: this may be the best of them. Games like this really,
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: really lend credence to the idea that this is an
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: overlooked medium. in terms of, of value communication or, or
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: philosophical community, like in terms of a, a medium for
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: transmitting idea. Cause look at us, we've been talking for
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: an hour about loyalty and love and honor and, and
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: theology for crying out loud through a game about the West. Right.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: And this, this game is a great example of, of what,
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: this particular medium can do if done correctly, right? And
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: it's a good reason for people who are more skeptical
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: of video games as a whole to maybe reconsider them.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: That's why, again, Andrew, I'm really glad that you have
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: taken on this particular project because there are a lot
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: of good games that offer, maybe not quite to this level,
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: but that offer really good uh opportunities to pause and
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: reflect on on what what a person's values are what
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 2: their beliefs are what would i have done in that
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: situation on that sort of thing um not all of
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: them right you're probably not going to get this from
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: like mario or something but that would be wild if
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: you did but there are games that that present this
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: uh to those who are willing to to look for
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: it and and do it in such an interesting way
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: because they're interactive They're not movies. They're not lectures. They
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 2: are interactive where you are the character and you have
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: to make the choices. And so that more than anything,
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: the game is fun. It's great. Everyone should play it
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: if they get the opportunity, all that. But more than that,
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: the game is a standout for what video games can be.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: And I think that more than anything else, that's what
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: I appreciate about this game. Yeah.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's well said. And same when I've
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: talked about this before, that if somebody is just interested
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: in amusement, meaning not musing, then, well, they're not likely
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: to find a lot of value in video games or
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: much else for that matter. But if you're not looking
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: for value, you're probably not going to find it. Alternatively,
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: if you are looking for value, you typically will find it,
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: especially in good, compelling stories like you find in Red
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: Dead 2 and other games. And I've even made the
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: argument that, Tolkien says on various stories that one of
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: the reasons why literature is better than movies is that
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: literature allows the participant, the reader, to participate in the
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: act of subcreation. That not everything is just given to them.
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: And so out of your own self, your experience, other
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: things you've read, other things you've thought about, like the
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: way that you cast the characters in a book, the
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: visuals that you have, the sense experience, all of that
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: is something that you are bringing to the story. And
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: so that's what he thinks makes literature better than film
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: and why he was kind of skeptical that Lord of
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: the Rings could be adapted well. because so much of
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: it is just given to you, thereby forbidding sub-creation. Well,
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: I've tried to make the argument that games can... have that,
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: that dimension of sub-creation in a way that movies don't. They, yeah,
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: obviously there's still a lot that's given to you and,
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: you know, the visuals, the story, the structure, but I mean,
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: there's a lot given to you in books as well.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: But when you have this room to carve your own path,
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: to kind of participate with the protagonist, that it does
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: provide that realm for like contributing something to the story.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: And I think that there is something upbuilding about that. Now,
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: before I started talking, I think Sam was about to
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: say something.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 4: I think I was probably going to talk about that
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 4: same point that I know you made when last, when
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 4: last we talked about video games where, yeah, I mean,
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 4: you are able to tell a story through your playthrough.
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 3: Some games more than others.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 4: Some games have a very, you know, the games like
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 4: God of War from, you know, 2018 where it's like,
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 4: they have a story to tell you are participating in
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 4: that story. You're not so much sub creating as you
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 4: are in, in red dead too. I'm not bashing God
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 4: of War by the way, but it is, Like it's,
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 4: it's more an interactive movie, a very fun one. It
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 4: works great as a video game, but I love the
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 4: game to death, but, um, it, it is far more
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 4: of an interactive, active movie, um, than a game like
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 4: red dead to where.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 3: You have actual choices that you make with the character.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 4: And just for like your, the, the various, you know,
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 4: side quests, which you can do, which got a bar
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 4: has to, um, various side quests that you can pick up,
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 4: which contributes to your story or just the interactions that
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 4: you have, you know, what kind of Arthur Morgan do
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 4: you want to be? There's really only one Kratos, um,
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 4: but there are thousands of potential, you know, Arthur Morgans.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 4: And this goes beyond Red Dead 2. You pick any
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 4: sort of like, you know, strategy game like XCOM where
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 4: you're playing through, you have a squad of soldiers and
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 4: they die and you bring, you know, you raise new
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 4: ones up through the ranks and they die too. And,
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 4: you know, there's tons of storytelling that can be done
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 4: through video games, even ones that aren't strictly story-driven ones.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 4: And I think that is, you know, really beautiful. But yeah,
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 4: I mean, video games as this method of storytelling is,
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 4: um or as a genre of storytelling or a medium
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 4: for storytelling there we go um i think absolutely have
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 4: potential to be superior to film and television because you
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 4: have that interactive element where you really just are in
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 4: the in the person of you know whoever you're playing
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 4: as and you you know you fight as them you
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 4: talk as them you choose what what they say and
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 4: what they do um it really kind of lets you
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 4: put yourself more into that world and feel it more viscerally,
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 4: which is fantastic. So especially as Hollywood continues to just
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 4: not learn its lesson time and time again, and as
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 4: indie and AA studios continue to step up and make
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 4: games that have, who knows.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 3: They have the chance of going viral. I think.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 4: I kind of hope because I generally prefer games to
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 4: TV and movies. I hope we see more games that
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 4: just continue to tell great stories. And I, I hope,
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 4: I think, but mostly I hope that we'll continue to
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 4: see that, which brings us to one game that I've
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 4: played very recently, which is kind of a little bit everywhere,
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 4: at least on my court of the internet right now,
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 4: which is called Claire obscure expedition 33. If either of
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 4: you have heard of it by looks and faces, I
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 4: guess not. Um, but it's a, it's a French developed game, uh,
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 4: by a bunch of developers who at least they're, I
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 4: think most of them were, uh, they left, uh, I
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 4: believe Bethesda or no.
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 3: They left Ubisoft.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: Um, it was Ubisoft. Yeah.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 4: They left Ubisoft or at least the, the, you know,
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 4: like I started the studio did, um, and I'm sure
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 4: he brought people with him. Uh, and they made a,
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 4: I mean, it's a, it's in the style of Japanese RPGs.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 4: So it's kind of like turn-based party-based combat. Um, But
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 4: it's a very story-driven game set in kind of like
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 4: a post-apocalyptic fantasy France, essentially, where groups of people every
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 4: year are sent out to try to defeat the Pinterest,
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 4: this kind of mystical distant giant who is slowly erasing
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 4: the population of their city. And so, yeah, it's a really,
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 4: really philosophically fascinating story. Um, it goes into a lot of,
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 4: you know, different elements about, you know, hope and grief, um,
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 4: duty and, and, you know, family. Um, so yeah, I mean,
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 4: if you ever, if you get the chance, it's, it's
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 4: well worth picking up and, um, you know, it's not even,
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 4: not even, I don't even say that because I'm like, oh,
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 4: I agree with everything the game has to say. There's
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 4: definitely a lot of it's philosophy or I'm like, Hmm, that's,
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 4: you know, but it leaves a lot of it kind
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 4: of open to the player to experience, to think about, right.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 4: Like I've said a hundred times, I'm sure many other
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 4: people have said this, that good stories prompt you to think.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 3: Bad stories tell you what to think.
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 4: And Red Dead 2 is certainly one of those where
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 4: it's like, it gives you the story and it gives
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 4: you the journey.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 3: It lets you create it. And then it lets you
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 3: think about it and talk about it for years and
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 3: years after.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: When did Red Dead 2 release? Was it 2018?
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 2: So here we are in 2025 still. It's still picking
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: it apart.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 4: I'm sure it's still selling well, too. I know it
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 4: sold something like 70 million copies, which is utterly insane.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, good.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: I feel like this is a good conversation. We hit
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: on the general aesthetic grounding experience of the story, of
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: the game. We hit on the story elements, especially the
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: Memento Mori redemption arc. We hit the meta level of
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: why video games can be profitable. I think that the next...
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: episodes that are going to come out after this. We've
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: got a couple that are actually already recorded on Zelda.
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: After that, we're probably going to do a Mass Effect series,
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: which I've just started playing through for the first time.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: If that interests you guys, you're more than welcome to attend.
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: No obligation. We'll be in touch.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 4: I played the Mass Effect trilogy for the first time
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 4: probably four or five years ago. And I have the
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 4: Legendary Edition. I was like, I got to play this again.
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 4: I really want to make videos about it, but I've
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 4: not found the time yet.
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: I played the first two. I didn't get around to three,
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 2: and then I heard things about three, and I decided
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 2: not to finish the trilogy, which is very unlike me.
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: But the first two were just chef kiss, just amazing games.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: Very KOTOR-like, right? I think they were even developed... by
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: the same people or something like that, but very, very KOTOR-like,
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 2: which is obviously a marked quality.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah. I've nearly finished two, which
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: is just, it's a great game. I'm going to go
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: on to three because I've got to finish it out.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: I've heard things as well. And it's always sad when
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: you have a great franchise that they tank. I mean,
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: I'm still upset about Dragon Age, but that's for another time.
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: But for now, let's go ahead and wrap for now.
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Sam. Thank you, Jeremy, for joining us. And
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: I'm sure that we will talk again.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 3: Thanks for having me on again.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 4: Thank you.
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening or watching that if you're over
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: on YouTube. I hope that you enjoyed that conversation. I
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: know that I certainly did. And I look forward to
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: what is on the road ahead. And so after this,
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: we have a couple episodes that are already recorded on Zelda.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: One group conversation, one interview conversation. And so that's going
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: to be, if it's not already, it's going to be
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: on Patreon very soon. And so if you want to
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: access that sooner rather than later, go to patreon.com slash
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: mythic mind. Get access to all episodes of all these
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: podcasts delivered into one feed. early and ad-free. And so
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: we've got a couple episodes on Zelda, and after that
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: we're going to do a series on Mass Effect, as
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: I mentioned in the conversation. So that's what's coming out
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: ahead of us on this show, and the good news
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: is that because we have a decent stockpile of episodes
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: right now, we are going to go back-to-back with weekly episodes,
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: at least for the next few. Now, if you want
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: to see that continue, then I'm really going to need
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: your support to keep up that schedule, so go to patreon.com
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: slash mythicmind. But that's it for now, and until next time. Godspeed.
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: The Elder Scrolls in Philosophy, a six-week course beginning in
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: September 2025. I don't play many video games these days,
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: but there are certain titles that have stuck with me,
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: enchanting the mind of my youth and never entirely fading away.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: One of the chiefs among these titles is the Elder Scrolls,
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: namely Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim. The level of artistry, mythology,
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: and lore of this universe is vast and provides a
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: strong representative for asking the question as to how video
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: games might relate to literature as an art form. Where
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: might it rise to such a level? Where must it
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: fall short? and what unique advantages does it possess? For
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: this eight-week study, we'll be seeking to answer these questions
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: while analyzing various elements of this franchise, specifically focusing on
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: content related to Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim. We'll be taking
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: a look at the philosophy of RPGs and considering the
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: philosophical implications of character creation and formation in an open-ended
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: series such as this. And we'll be looking at the
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: relationship between in-game, religion, lore, and ideas with our primary world, philosophical,
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: and religious concepts. Each week will include one to two
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: videos addressing these topics, ongoing Discord conversations, and live meetings.
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: You are also encouraged to spend at least a little
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: time playing one of these titles each week as a
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: launching pad for conversation. Join us in Tamriel that we
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: might better understand our primary life here on Mundus. Enroll
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: today by going to patreon.com slash mythicmind and checking out
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: the shop. Or you can access all courses that begin
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: during your subscription period if you purchase a Tier 3
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: annual subscription. Get that Tier 3 annual subscription and I'll
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: give you that special code for your all-access pass. I
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: hope to see you there.