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24 - Fallout New Vegas: House, NCR, Legion, and Legitimacy · Mythic Mind Games

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey there, I'm doctor Andrew Snyder, and I welcome you
0:02
Speaker 1: to this episode of Mythic Mind Games as we continue
0:05
Speaker 1: our Fallout series, this time heading over to New Vegas. Now,
0:09
Speaker 1: as I mentioned in the last episode, this series that
0:11
Speaker 1: we're doing is it's These are mostly kind of off
0:14
Speaker 1: the cuff, casual conversations about the Fallout games and eventually
0:18
Speaker 1: about the Fallout Show in this case, especially dealing with three.
0:23
Speaker 1: Dealing with New Vegas, We're dealing with games that are
0:25
Speaker 1: important to me and that I have good experiences with
0:28
Speaker 1: that I have not played in a number of years,
0:30
Speaker 1: and so these are not necessarily deep dives into the
0:34
Speaker 1: lore and philosophy, although we do do that, but I
0:37
Speaker 1: guess it's not as deep as it could be. That's
0:39
Speaker 1: what I want to say here. Take that for what
0:41
Speaker 1: it is now. I'm enjoying these conversations. Unfortunately, I and
0:43
Speaker 1: my conversation partner did come with some notes that helped
0:46
Speaker 1: a guide this conversation into some more substantial areas. But
0:50
Speaker 1: next year I intend to do a full run through
0:51
Speaker 1: the franchise and spend some time doing more deep dive
0:55
Speaker 1: analysis with the whole study, with an entire study called
0:58
Speaker 1: Fallout and philosophy. Make sure that you subscribe to Mythic
1:01
Speaker 1: Mind Games podcast, make sure you subscribe to my YouTube channel,
1:05
Speaker 1: and more information will come out on that eventually, but
1:07
Speaker 1: that's something I'm gonna run sometime in twenty twenty six.
1:10
Speaker 1: But for now, I hope that you enjoy our conversation
1:13
Speaker 1: on Fallout New Vegas. Hello, and welcome to Mythic Mind Games,
1:22
Speaker 1: an extension of the Mythic Mind Fellowship, which pursues wisdom
1:25
Speaker 1: in the paths between primary and secondary world. I'm doctor
1:28
Speaker 1: Andrew Snyder, and I'm glad that you're here. Welcome back
1:34
Speaker 1: as we continue with our Fallout series now with New
1:37
Speaker 1: Vegas joined today by Ian. Unfortunately some of the others
1:40
Speaker 1: had to drop out. But hey, I think we've got
1:42
Speaker 1: everything we need right here. We've got good conversation coming.
1:45
Speaker 1: I've got my Nuka quantum here. Just have me. Well
1:51
Speaker 1: to frame the expectations of this conversation, I should say
1:55
Speaker 1: that this won't necessarily be super deep dive into Laura philosophy,
1:59
Speaker 1: although so you know, Ian's got some notes here. Hopefully
2:02
Speaker 1: we'll be doing some of that. But this is a
2:04
Speaker 1: game that I know I haven't played for several years,
2:07
Speaker 1: despite the fact that it is one of my it
2:10
Speaker 1: probably is my favorite of the franchise favorite game, and
2:15
Speaker 1: I'm definitely not alone in that it tends to be
2:17
Speaker 1: a fan favorite. And you know, I've heard some rumors,
2:20
Speaker 1: apparently maybe they're substantial, that there might be a remake coming.
2:24
Speaker 1: I three seems more solid for that, but just recently
2:28
Speaker 1: I've heard from some of the leaks that seem to
2:31
Speaker 1: be have about as much substance as the Oblivion leaks
2:37
Speaker 1: had come out before that remaster. So I don't know.
2:39
Speaker 1: We'll see, But either way, this is a game I
2:42
Speaker 1: think is worth talking about, even if we're mostly pulling
2:45
Speaker 1: from memory here. Ian, I guess I'll start by asking
2:48
Speaker 1: what is your experience with this game?
2:52
Speaker 2: My experience with a Fallout probably started in actually in
2:57
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight with Fallout three, and I really
3:00
Speaker 2: and I really really liked, uh, I really really liked
3:03
Speaker 2: that game at the time. I still have a lot
3:05
Speaker 2: of fond memories of wandering the wasteland in Fallout three
3:09
Speaker 2: that I hold near and dear to my heart. Overall,
3:12
Speaker 2: my feelings on Fallout three, just like generally as a game,
3:16
Speaker 2: have kind of cooled somewhat I've definitely taken much more
3:21
Speaker 2: of a shine to New Vegas, which I played. I
3:25
Speaker 2: played New Vegas on on release, and I really enjoyed
3:30
Speaker 2: that as well, definitely appreciated it a lot more when
3:34
Speaker 2: I was older. I didn't have as much fun wandering
3:37
Speaker 2: the New Vegas wasteland as they did the Fallout three wasteland,
3:42
Speaker 2: and I think that I think that's not necessarily an
3:48
Speaker 2: accident because Bethesda in general are very very good at
3:53
Speaker 2: building sandbox like sandbox worlds that are like fun to
3:56
Speaker 2: romp around in and explore. New Vegas has got fantastic worlds.
4:02
Speaker 2: I want to make you know, I want to make
4:03
Speaker 2: that abundantly clear. But New Vegas was created by Obsidian
4:10
Speaker 2: Entertainment as opposed to the actual Bethesda development but as
4:15
Speaker 2: to published it, but they didn't develop it right, so
4:17
Speaker 2: it was developed by Obsidian. Obsidian has always been known
4:20
Speaker 2: for their strong writing, which lends itself more towards philosophy. Actually,
4:27
Speaker 2: So the older I got, the more I appreciated New
4:29
Speaker 2: Vegas and its world for that. But that's kind of
4:34
Speaker 2: the that's kind of the crash course there.
4:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, there definitely is a lot of potential there now
4:41
Speaker 1: as I've said in other contexts at some point in
4:43
Speaker 1: twenty twenty six, I want to do a full run
4:45
Speaker 1: through all the Fallout games and do more of a
4:48
Speaker 1: deep dive Fallout in philosophy, like what I'm doing with
4:50
Speaker 1: the Elder Scrolls material. I think that there's a lot
4:54
Speaker 1: of potential there, but I just need to spend more
4:55
Speaker 1: time revisiting and more time thinking about these things. But yeah,
4:59
Speaker 1: I agree that that new particularly lends itself to that
5:01
Speaker 1: kind of discourse. Maybe it'd be worthwhile just rehashing the
5:05
Speaker 1: very basic plot of this game for people who haven't
5:09
Speaker 1: visited for a while. So it starts off very different
5:13
Speaker 1: than the other Fallout games, and that you're not a
5:14
Speaker 1: vault dweller, You're not a relative of a vault dweller.
5:18
Speaker 1: You are somebody from the wasteland. You are a courier
5:21
Speaker 1: tasked with bringing this platinum chip to the strip. But
5:25
Speaker 1: as the game gets started, or I guess right before
5:27
Speaker 1: the game gets started, you get shot in the head
5:29
Speaker 1: a couple of times, which tends to put a damper
5:31
Speaker 1: on things. It's just a little bit, right, So somehow
5:35
Speaker 1: you survive and your body is I gets pulled out
5:38
Speaker 1: of the shallow Grave by this robot's Caratron, and he
5:43
Speaker 1: brings you to Doc Mitchell patches you up, and eventually
5:46
Speaker 1: you kind of followed the trail back to the strip
5:50
Speaker 1: or to the strip where eventually you do encounter Benny,
5:53
Speaker 1: the guy who shot you and took the chip, and
5:56
Speaker 1: you have various choices at this point, but not after
6:00
Speaker 1: that you you get introduced to guest Man his robot
6:04
Speaker 1: to Caratron that he well, he's very affirming, hence his
6:09
Speaker 1: name uh. And he was originally part of Benny's plan
6:12
Speaker 1: to take over the strip, take over New Vegas, which
6:16
Speaker 1: is only still standing in as much as it is
6:19
Speaker 1: thanks to the protection provided by mister House who brings
6:23
Speaker 1: us and.
6:24
Speaker 2: The Hoover Dams which everybody wants.
6:26
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, mister House brings us back to the pre
6:30
Speaker 1: war era, which I like that we have such direct
6:33
Speaker 1: connections to the pre war era. Here House, who was
6:37
Speaker 1: the CEO of rob Co and he was one of
6:42
Speaker 1: the main capitalist players in this era directly leading up
6:46
Speaker 1: to the bombs dropping, and so he manages to protect
6:51
Speaker 1: at least a portion of Vegas along with himself. Obviously
6:56
Speaker 1: he said, he connects up with some of his life
6:59
Speaker 1: preservation technology eventually through his mental ingraining in his system.
7:08
Speaker 2: Right, he's basically the wizard in the tower. Yes, yes,
7:12
Speaker 2: Like somebody pointed that out to me once and I've
7:14
Speaker 2: never gotten it out of my head. He's a wizard
7:16
Speaker 2: in his tower.
7:17
Speaker 1: That's a great point because but by the time the
7:19
Speaker 1: courier should up, by the time that the game starts,
7:21
Speaker 1: you know, he he is this sort of grand presence
7:24
Speaker 1: on a screen and he has a lot of influence.
7:26
Speaker 1: But I mean him himself. I mean he's this shriveled
7:29
Speaker 1: up little body in this tank being kept alive and
7:32
Speaker 1: and so yeah, and so all this kind of relates
7:35
Speaker 1: to or the whole game is centered around what do
7:37
Speaker 1: you do? Who are you going to put into power
7:40
Speaker 1: by the end? You know, are you going to side
7:42
Speaker 1: with House, with mister House and give him control his
7:45
Speaker 1: Carotron's control of the strip and the dam. Are you
7:49
Speaker 1: going to side with the NCR, Are you going to
7:52
Speaker 1: side with the obviously evil legion? Or are you just
7:57
Speaker 1: gonna take control of yourself and kind of get a
8:00
Speaker 1: independent Vegas? And so this is the various ways that
8:02
Speaker 1: you can go with this, and there are all kinds
8:04
Speaker 1: of sub branches you can take within those different pursuits.
8:07
Speaker 1: So there's just a lot of different ways that you
8:09
Speaker 1: can approach this game, which I think is one of
8:11
Speaker 1: the things that really adds to replay value. Well, yes,
8:15
Speaker 1: there are choices to make, and three the choices to
8:17
Speaker 1: make in four. I feel like there's a lot more
8:19
Speaker 1: room for maneuvering in this game, which just makes it
8:21
Speaker 1: a little bit more intricate. So that's the basic plot.
8:26
Speaker 1: Where where do you think we should go from here?
8:27
Speaker 1: As far as specific points of conversation.
8:30
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, where do we even Yikes, where do
8:34
Speaker 2: we even begin? I think so so for people who
8:39
Speaker 2: maybe watched our Morowind video right, we talked about how
8:43
Speaker 2: one of the things one of the strengths of Morowind
8:46
Speaker 2: as an open world game when it comes to the
8:48
Speaker 2: design philosophy of an open world game is that you
8:54
Speaker 2: basically you you make your character, you get off the boat,
8:59
Speaker 2: and you're instantly ready to play. You're instantly ready to
9:02
Speaker 2: kind of go wherever you want and do whatever you want. Uh.
9:05
Speaker 2: New Vegas takes a page out of this book. By
9:09
Speaker 2: after after after you getting like shot in the head
9:12
Speaker 2: for reasons you don't know why, you know, you get
9:14
Speaker 2: pulled out of the shallow grave by a robot and
9:17
Speaker 2: then Doc Mitchell like patches you up, which is a
9:21
Speaker 2: really funny way of using the character creation and you
9:24
Speaker 2: can so he can. He's like, uh, I don't know
9:27
Speaker 2: if I put your face together right, you know, and
9:30
Speaker 2: then you can make whatever face you want and he says, uh,
9:33
Speaker 2: good enough, you know. So so that that that's a
9:35
Speaker 2: really fun, diegetic way of you doing character creation and
9:38
Speaker 2: then boom, you're out in the world. You're ready to play.
9:42
Speaker 2: So that's uh So, that's definitely one of the design
9:45
Speaker 2: strengths of of New Vegas. Uh compared to say like
9:52
Speaker 2: like a well, I guess I was gonna say Oblivion,
9:55
Speaker 2: but probably more pertinent would be Fallout three, where you
9:58
Speaker 2: kind of have like a whole hours where of being
10:01
Speaker 2: in the vault almost before you're ready to actually go
10:04
Speaker 2: out in the world and do things. You do have
10:07
Speaker 2: the good spring stuff that you that that you kind
10:11
Speaker 2: of go through. It's there is an optional tutorial you
10:15
Speaker 2: can choose to leave good springs and not worry about
10:17
Speaker 2: that at all. But if you do that, that you're
10:20
Speaker 2: you're if you're playing a good person, and statistically most
10:24
Speaker 2: people do you're probably going to stay and help out
10:26
Speaker 2: good Springs with the with they're being they're being attacked
10:29
Speaker 2: by the by the by the gangs.
10:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I do appreciate that. Right at the beginning,
10:34
Speaker 1: you're presented the moral scenario. I mean, do you take
10:37
Speaker 1: what's obviously the good approach and and protect the town
10:40
Speaker 1: from the gangs, or or do you join the gang
10:42
Speaker 1: and help them take over the town? Right, That's that's
10:44
Speaker 1: an option as well.
10:45
Speaker 2: This is this is probably this is probably the first
10:50
Speaker 2: and last time in the game you will get a well, okay,
10:55
Speaker 2: that's not that's not entirely true, But I'm going to
10:57
Speaker 2: finish the thought the last time air quotes that you
11:01
Speaker 2: will get in obviously good and obviously evil choice, because
11:05
Speaker 2: from there on out, the rest of the game is
11:07
Speaker 2: presenting you with really complicated and sometimes uncomfortable scenarios where
11:15
Speaker 2: you're trying where it's leaving you the player to figure out, Okay,
11:21
Speaker 2: you know what is justice? Either you know either according
11:25
Speaker 2: to whatever character you're making and playing and role playing,
11:28
Speaker 2: or you can even ask yourself those same questions and
11:33
Speaker 2: you know, wow, what would I do in this situation,
11:36
Speaker 2: in this in this really hard, unpleasant situation, what is
11:40
Speaker 2: the right call? That's that's most of them moral conundrums
11:44
Speaker 2: in the game.
11:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, even on the large scale of you know,
11:48
Speaker 1: who's going to be in control at the end. I mean,
11:50
Speaker 1: to me, it seems like the I mean, it's very
11:53
Speaker 1: reasonable to say that, Okay, all these actors that are
11:56
Speaker 1: trying to buy for power here, like they'll have some
11:58
Speaker 1: agenda here, and you know, maybe better if we just
12:00
Speaker 1: maintain independence. But of course if you do that, then
12:02
Speaker 1: everything kind of falls into anarchy. And so, you know
12:06
Speaker 1: it in big or small, A lot of times, even
12:09
Speaker 1: the decision that seems like the right one doesn't necessarily
12:12
Speaker 1: have the consequences that you're looking for. I've just said that.
12:17
Speaker 1: Dave and I talked about this h fallout three with
12:19
Speaker 1: the tenpenny tower situation, where you think that, okay, maybe
12:24
Speaker 1: the good thing to do is get some piece between
12:26
Speaker 1: the gules and the people in the tower. But of
12:32
Speaker 1: course if you do that, then eventually the ghules just
12:33
Speaker 1: like kill our one to take over. And so there's
12:37
Speaker 1: no clear boundaries regarding like what is the right course
12:41
Speaker 1: of action by virtue as well as by practicality.
12:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like, and you know, obviously, you know, we'll
12:49
Speaker 2: get to you know, we'll get to Caesar's Legion. Everybody,
12:52
Speaker 2: don't worry. You know, obviously Caesar's Legion is. They're not great, right,
12:57
Speaker 2: But I'm the obsidian. I keep trying to say Bethesda
13:02
Speaker 2: and stopping myself obsidian. They they tried, at the very
13:08
Speaker 2: least in their marketing to kind of like paint a
13:12
Speaker 2: picture of more of a moral conundrum where where you know, okay, yeah,
13:19
Speaker 2: you know, see, you know, Caesar's Legion is this horrible dictatorship,
13:24
Speaker 2: but there is order in safety, like kind of like
13:26
Speaker 2: within their realm, within their sphere of influence. The problem
13:29
Speaker 2: with the game is that it's not actually a Caesar's
13:31
Speaker 2: Legion focus game. It's a very NCR focused game, and
13:35
Speaker 2: the Legion is barely in the game at all. And
13:37
Speaker 2: I think this is partly this is partly probably because
13:41
Speaker 2: of just you know, you know, just you know, time
13:44
Speaker 2: and limitations and things like that. But they probably made
13:47
Speaker 2: the right call ultimately in the end to focus on
13:50
Speaker 2: the NCR and the problems of the NCR. But the
13:53
Speaker 2: game itself just does not give you a whole lot
13:55
Speaker 2: in the way of actually seeing what benefits Caesar's Legion
14:02
Speaker 2: may or may not provide to its people. I lost
14:08
Speaker 2: my trade of thought.
14:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I do. I wish they'd portrayed the Legion
14:13
Speaker 1: a little bit differently. I wish they made it more
14:15
Speaker 1: morally justifiable, even if still questionable to side with them,
14:19
Speaker 1: because in the game they're pretty much just monsters, right, Yeah,
14:22
Speaker 1: they're I mean, they're they're evil. That they're the bad faction.
14:25
Speaker 2: I think it's okay that they're the bad faction. Rome
14:32
Speaker 2: itself wasn't exactly cute and cuddly either. Uh, just ask
14:36
Speaker 2: the first century Christians. Sure, but you know, or or
14:41
Speaker 2: I was listening to Dan Carlin's hardcore history, that's a
14:44
Speaker 2: favorite of mine. He was doing a series called The
14:47
Speaker 2: Celtic Holocaust, and I don't know, I don't know if
14:51
Speaker 2: you know what I'm talking about, if you've listened to
14:52
Speaker 2: that at all, or or any of that, but basically,
14:56
Speaker 2: but uh, it was basically a two part series. And
15:00
Speaker 2: I don't remember the details because it's been a hot minute,
15:03
Speaker 2: but the gist of the Celtic Holocaust was basically the
15:09
Speaker 2: Roman Empires assimilation, yes, but also largely the extermination of
15:15
Speaker 2: Celtic peoples in the British Isles. They were like they
15:19
Speaker 2: they you know, as you know, as it is, it
15:24
Speaker 2: is true that Rome brought a lot of peoples into
15:27
Speaker 2: their empire and appropriated their you know, and appropriated their cultures,
15:31
Speaker 2: their holidays, you know, their whatever. I mean, you know,
15:33
Speaker 2: we have you know, we have the historical documentation that
15:38
Speaker 2: you know that they allowed the they allowed the first
15:40
Speaker 2: century you know, Jews to continue their religious practices, you know,
15:44
Speaker 2: even though they were still there, you know, they were
15:45
Speaker 2: paying taxes and all of that stuff. But just as
15:48
Speaker 2: much as Rome was doing that stuff for the people
15:50
Speaker 2: that they incorporated into their empire, they were also brutally
15:54
Speaker 2: exterminating and committing their own genocides as well. So so
16:00
Speaker 2: there is there is a level to this where it's like, yeah,
16:03
Speaker 2: you know, it's okay that see I think it's okay
16:06
Speaker 2: that Caesar's legion aren't necessarily you know that that that
16:09
Speaker 2: that that they're not necessarily nice, you know that they're
16:12
Speaker 2: not you know that I think it's okay that they're
16:14
Speaker 2: the bad gays. But it would be nice if they
16:17
Speaker 2: had more going for them to make them an appealing option,
16:21
Speaker 2: because as it stands, they are just completely cartoonishly evil,
16:25
Speaker 2: and the only thing they have going for them is
16:30
Speaker 2: uh Caesar's phil the Caesar characters kaisar excuse me, his
16:35
Speaker 2: philosophical monologue on quote unquote Hegelian dialectics. Now, I'm sure
16:43
Speaker 2: you could probably speak to this more. Something that I
16:46
Speaker 2: kind of stumbled on within the last few months recently
16:50
Speaker 2: was that synthesis uh anti anti thesis and uh thesis
16:58
Speaker 2: anti thesis and synthesis is not something that Hagel actually
17:02
Speaker 2: does at all, and that what and his system is
17:06
Speaker 2: actually something called imin critique, which I don't know anything about.
17:09
Speaker 2: So maybe you can shed some light on that.
17:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do kind of backtrack then come back to
17:16
Speaker 1: that that I do agree that. Okay, obviously Rome, well
17:23
Speaker 1: it didn't necessarily build as empire through diplomacy first and foremost. Right,
17:27
Speaker 1: Like it is, they are violent, They are brutal people.
17:30
Speaker 1: I mean, their main patron is Mars, the god of war. Right,
17:34
Speaker 1: It's so they are a martial people.
17:37
Speaker 2: And coliseum was a pretty cool idea, right right.
17:40
Speaker 1: Like, there were obviously a brutal people. I mean the
17:43
Speaker 1: fact that you know, the their most iconic form of
17:45
Speaker 1: execution is crucifixion, Like they are not a nice people.
17:51
Speaker 1: At the same time, we do get things like the Pactumano.
17:54
Speaker 1: We get a kind of peace, we get a kind
17:56
Speaker 1: of civilization, we get it kind of flourishing that could
17:58
Speaker 1: only happen within a large, strong empire. Now that being said,
18:04
Speaker 1: is worth reminding ourselves that the legion in Fallout is
18:09
Speaker 1: not Rome. This is post apocalystic Rome, right, and so
18:13
Speaker 1: we should expect that they would be worse than Rome.
18:16
Speaker 2: This is a Larper's idea of like what he thinks
18:21
Speaker 2: Rome should be because he found like one or two
18:26
Speaker 2: burned books from the post apocalypse.
18:29
Speaker 1: Correct, and so we should expect that whatever Someonel says
18:33
Speaker 1: has to Rome, it's going to be.
18:35
Speaker 2: Well, just that these are like these are the people
18:38
Speaker 2: like if you remember from Fallout three and I loved
18:40
Speaker 2: this by the way, these are the people who like
18:43
Speaker 2: thought like you know that there's like the museum in Washington,
18:46
Speaker 2: d C. Where the robot is like, oh, you know.
18:50
Speaker 2: And then George Washington flew to Britain presumably he went
18:54
Speaker 2: to Britain presumably by plane, right, you know, and gave
18:59
Speaker 2: and gave the king the Declaration of Independent Wait you know,
19:02
Speaker 2: wait a minute, wait a minute, hold on a minute.
19:05
Speaker 1: Which it is kind of a funny commentary on the
19:07
Speaker 1: thing that we think we know of history, especially ancient history.
19:10
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh yeah, absolutely. But it's important to keep
19:13
Speaker 2: in mind that I can't remember Kaiser's real name all
19:18
Speaker 2: of a sudden, it's some really just like underwhelming, normal
19:21
Speaker 2: dude name. I can't remember what it is. But we
19:22
Speaker 2: have to remember that this character is living in that
19:25
Speaker 2: world in that context, So he does it. I mean,
19:28
Speaker 2: he does not have a have a real understanding of
19:31
Speaker 2: what Rome is at all, and apparently he doesn't know
19:36
Speaker 2: who Hagel is either. But something that's something something that
19:40
Speaker 2: somebody pointed out, like we're putting we're putting Hagel off again,
19:43
Speaker 2: something that somebody else pointed out, like to me years ago,
19:47
Speaker 2: was that you have like this weird you have this
19:50
Speaker 2: weird thing with Caesar's Legion where they're kind of weirdly
19:53
Speaker 2: anti technology in a lot of ways. But if you
19:56
Speaker 2: know anything about Rome, they loved technology. They were all
19:59
Speaker 2: about technology. They had a god of technology.
20:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's very true. I mean it's this Rome that
20:04
Speaker 1: gives us aqueducts and indoor plumbing essentially, Like, yeah, so
20:08
Speaker 1: obviously they're very technologically focused. Now for I mean, for
20:15
Speaker 1: the the Hegel move. Yeah, it is true that the
20:18
Speaker 1: thesis antithesis synthesis model is an oversimplification of Hegel. But
20:25
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not an expert on Hegel to honestly,
20:27
Speaker 1: I don't think Hegel is an expert on Hegel, like
20:29
Speaker 1: if you ever, like if you I even when I
20:33
Speaker 1: was majoring in philosophy and in undergrad even when my
20:36
Speaker 1: professors went in my post modern class, said that he
20:39
Speaker 1: doesn't think Hegel understands Hegel. And I think that's pretty
20:43
Speaker 1: so funny, so dense and obscure. And I say, that's
20:48
Speaker 1: someone who likes scarecy guard that Hegel's very dense, very obscure.
20:51
Speaker 1: But anyways, I mean, yeah, Hegel's basic view of history
20:55
Speaker 1: is that not necessarily that it takes this firm dialectical model,
20:59
Speaker 1: but that everything is progressing toward the kind of self
21:04
Speaker 1: understanding of reason. So he's a kind of like pantheist,
21:07
Speaker 1: where he believes that history is the sort of the
21:11
Speaker 1: unfolding of God or God increasingly realizing himself through the
21:15
Speaker 1: advancement of history, the advancement of society, to the point
21:19
Speaker 1: where he believed that of course, his own Prussian society
21:23
Speaker 1: was approaching kind of ultimate enlightenment of as he said,
21:28
Speaker 1: in a way that only Hegel can say, is absolute thought,
21:32
Speaker 1: thinking itself absolutely, where like divine reason is essentially coming
21:37
Speaker 1: to understand itself in Hegelian philosophy. And so you know,
21:43
Speaker 1: he has this onward march of history. This is where
21:45
Speaker 1: we get this idea of like the right side of history,
21:47
Speaker 1: that history itself is moving a definitive direction. And so well,
21:52
Speaker 1: it's an oversimplification to say that we have affirm like
21:55
Speaker 1: this is posited, this opposite is positive, and now we
21:59
Speaker 1: get something between right. This would be the synthesis model,
22:02
Speaker 1: it said. It's it's more of just you know, this
22:04
Speaker 1: is happening over here. This is happening over here, but
22:07
Speaker 1: everything is moving toward a definitive point. And so well
22:11
Speaker 1: it seems like a very modernist idea. Well yeah, I
22:14
Speaker 1: mean he was, he is a modern thinker, fair enough. Yeah,
22:18
Speaker 1: And so Hegel is I mean, what what what Kaiser
22:24
Speaker 1: does in Fallout when he's saying that, you know, n
22:27
Speaker 1: CR and the legion or thesis and antithesis, which I
22:30
Speaker 1: believe is the context. I don't remember his exact quote
22:33
Speaker 1: or exact reference. But I think that's basically what he's
22:35
Speaker 1: framing with that. With that, I mean, he's it's an oversupplification,
22:40
Speaker 1: but I think he's still making the basic Hegelian point
22:42
Speaker 1: that history is moving toward a certain point. And I
22:46
Speaker 1: am that point. It's basically the confirmation that he's making.
22:50
Speaker 2: It's it's one of those things like even even if
22:54
Speaker 2: Caesar doesn't really know what he's talking about, like he's
22:59
Speaker 2: like too, to his credit, the man is an eloquent speaker, right,
23:04
Speaker 2: And if there's one thing history has proven is that
23:07
Speaker 2: all you have to do is be a good speaker
23:10
Speaker 2: at people and and and people will just love you
23:13
Speaker 2: for it. But he but he's like, but this is
23:17
Speaker 2: kind of like the one point, kind of like the
23:19
Speaker 2: one and only meaningful point in the game where you
23:21
Speaker 2: get to engage with Caesar's legion in any kind of
23:24
Speaker 2: meaningful way. And it's really really cool that that's in
23:27
Speaker 2: the game. You don't see that sort of thing in
23:30
Speaker 2: many games at all, let alone any other Fallout, any
23:33
Speaker 2: of the other follow games. Well, I say, any other
23:35
Speaker 2: Follout games, fall Out one and two or probably you know,
23:38
Speaker 2: fall At one and two of kind of have that
23:39
Speaker 2: going on, you know, But.
23:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't think of any other game where Bagel
23:44
Speaker 1: is directly reference or or any major philosopher really, And
23:48
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's a good point that that
23:51
Speaker 1: rhetoric itself can can go a long way, right saying
23:53
Speaker 1: the right things at the right level of confidence. Ryfe
23:56
Speaker 1: of C. S. Lewis, in talking about what inspired the
23:59
Speaker 1: Screwtape Letters, he said that he had just listened to
24:02
Speaker 1: a speech on the radio by Adolf Hitler, and he
24:06
Speaker 1: said that, you know, he finds himself like, even though
24:09
Speaker 1: he knows what Hitler saying his faults, he finds himself
24:11
Speaker 1: almost believing it, just because of the power of his rhetoric,
24:15
Speaker 1: which is largely what led to him writing the screw
24:17
Speaker 1: Dape letters. Right about this the demonic voice and interesting, Yeah,
24:24
Speaker 1: and so you know, he the listening to Hitler gave
24:26
Speaker 1: him this idea for well, a kind of voice that
24:29
Speaker 1: can sound very rational, it can sound very appealing, it
24:31
Speaker 1: can sound very soothing, but ultimately is leading you to damnation.
24:36
Speaker 1: And and yeah, we definitely see that in a lot
24:39
Speaker 1: of you know, so called great men of history, and
24:41
Speaker 1: we definitely see that in in Kaiser.
24:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's it's it's a it's a shame that
24:50
Speaker 2: we don't it's it's a shame that we don't get
24:55
Speaker 2: like just like anything more than that, like even the
24:58
Speaker 2: whole Like all right, hang, hang on a second, I
25:03
Speaker 2: have to I have to check my notes here really quick.
25:06
Speaker 2: I need to see David wanted me to say something.
25:09
Speaker 2: I don't remember what it was. It was, Oh yeah,
25:14
Speaker 2: chattel slavery is bad. Hey we we we we we
25:18
Speaker 2: we ticked that box on the subject, though, can I
25:23
Speaker 2: just say that Kaiser's slavery sucks, like it's not even
25:28
Speaker 2: it's it's not it's it's it's not even like air
25:31
Speaker 2: quotes good slavery, Like he basically takes a but like
25:35
Speaker 2: all we see of it is he takes a bunch
25:37
Speaker 2: of like women, explicitly women, and he puts like huge
25:44
Speaker 2: like comically huge pacts on their backs like they're like
25:48
Speaker 2: they're ox And it's like okay, like I know, like
25:53
Speaker 2: like like I know this is supposed to be awful,
25:56
Speaker 2: but like even like if you know anything about like
26:00
Speaker 2: Roman slavery, even Roman slavery, like even Roman slaves had
26:03
Speaker 2: tools to do their jobs. That's like and it wasn't
26:06
Speaker 2: and it wasn't relegated to It wasn't relegated to like
26:10
Speaker 2: one like exclusively to one sex.
26:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seemed definitely seems like Kaiser's form of slavery
26:17
Speaker 1: is not so much to do anything rather than just
26:21
Speaker 1: to denigrate his subjects.
26:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very like. It's so like again, Caesar's Legion
26:27
Speaker 2: is just so cartoonishly awfully just bad, and it makes
26:34
Speaker 2: me wish, it makes me wish that there was more.
26:40
Speaker 2: I guess coming back to that.
26:42
Speaker 1: Right, that there should be some beneficial civilization that is
26:46
Speaker 1: coming out of the Legion to make it more of
26:48
Speaker 1: a compelling force, even if there's still fundamentally bad. Right, Yeah,
26:53
Speaker 1: I definitely agree with that. It's very cartoonish. It's if
26:56
Speaker 1: you're going to side with the Legion, you have to
26:58
Speaker 1: just say from the beginning, I'm going to be an outright.
27:01
Speaker 2: Villain, like I'm a murder hobo. I'm a murder hobo
27:04
Speaker 2: and I don't care. Yeah, exactly, like that's that, that's
27:07
Speaker 2: literally that's the only reason to join the Legion, correct, Uh,
27:13
Speaker 2: not so not not a not a fan of that.
27:17
Speaker 2: I was actually I was actually looking at some I
27:19
Speaker 2: was actually looking at some interesting stuff. Uh. This this somebody,
27:24
Speaker 2: somebody I was watching online was making, was making an
27:28
Speaker 2: interesting point that I thought was a little what's the
27:35
Speaker 2: word I'm looking for, I'm just for for for want
27:41
Speaker 2: of a better word, for now, I'm just gonna say.
27:43
Speaker 2: I thought the point at first was like a little extreme,
27:46
Speaker 2: but then I thought, well, maybe not. And they were
27:49
Speaker 2: talking about how kind of like so what the game
27:52
Speaker 2: is doing, so they like the the game, like the
27:54
Speaker 2: story of the game is very much focused on the NCR.
27:57
Speaker 2: And that's fine, uh, because this is a it's about
27:59
Speaker 2: the end, and it's about the problems, especially the problems
28:04
Speaker 2: of the NCR. You've got like dozens and dozens of
28:07
Speaker 2: characters in the game, and all these lines of dialogue
28:10
Speaker 2: all talking about, like you know, either people who are
28:13
Speaker 2: outside the NCR or people who are even inside the
28:15
Speaker 2: NCR complaining about the NCR and the New California Republic
28:21
Speaker 2: and just all of the problems that it has. And
28:25
Speaker 2: it's very much like you know, so like if if
28:28
Speaker 2: Caesar is, if kaisar is chasing his like weird goofy
28:34
Speaker 2: distorted idealized version of Rome, the NCR, it's and it's
28:40
Speaker 2: it's definitely like a far cry from what it used
28:43
Speaker 2: to be under the character Tandy in Fallouts one and two.
28:47
Speaker 2: Kind of like where the NCR is kind of born,
28:52
Speaker 2: and somebody who's played those games could probably like, you know,
28:56
Speaker 2: correct me on that and fill in the details like
29:01
Speaker 2: the the the the the NCR is kind of like
29:04
Speaker 2: this decaying beast, uh unto itself. It's stretched very very thin,
29:11
Speaker 2: and it's very very obvious they're not there for the
29:14
Speaker 2: people of the Mohave. They only care about the dam.
29:19
Speaker 2: They only care about the dam, and they only care
29:21
Speaker 2: about the revenue that uh that uh New Vegas is
29:28
Speaker 2: is is bringing in, and everybody else kind of falls
29:34
Speaker 2: to the wayside. Right. The NCR as this decaying beast.
29:39
Speaker 2: It is the you know, if if basically New Vegas
29:46
Speaker 2: is a coin, and if Caesar's Legion is on one
29:48
Speaker 2: side of the coin, then basically what this guy is saying,
29:52
Speaker 2: what this guy was saying was that the NCR is
29:54
Speaker 2: the opposite side of the coin. And there are many
29:56
Speaker 2: ways what he was saying was there are many ways
29:59
Speaker 2: in which the NCR, you know, for all of its pretense,
30:04
Speaker 2: is a lot closer in practice to Caesar's Legion than
30:10
Speaker 2: even the NCR itself would like to admit. And I
30:12
Speaker 2: thought that was kind of a I thought that was
30:13
Speaker 2: a bold take at first. But the more you look
30:16
Speaker 2: at the game and kind of like the characters in
30:18
Speaker 2: the quest and stuff that's going on in the game,
30:20
Speaker 2: the more that kind of makes its own degree of
30:23
Speaker 2: sense because you have a lot of interesting situations where like, okay,
30:30
Speaker 2: so the you know, the NCR doesn't have like you know,
30:34
Speaker 2: they don't have the order that Caesar's Legion apparently has
30:38
Speaker 2: within its lanes within its territory, with like the safety
30:40
Speaker 2: in the order that the Legion apparently provides. But what
30:44
Speaker 2: the But there are a lot of stories, a lot
30:47
Speaker 2: of quests where you will interact with NCR soldiers, and
30:51
Speaker 2: NCR soldiers are actually like oppressing Mohafi people, where like,
30:57
Speaker 2: you know, you have so like you have this, you
30:59
Speaker 2: have this, uh, this one soldier I can't remember where
31:04
Speaker 2: he asks for your help and he basically he gets
31:07
Speaker 2: into a heaty dispute with a with a with a
31:12
Speaker 2: Mojabi citizen and then he just executes the guy on
31:15
Speaker 2: the spot because he didn't like you know, because he
31:17
Speaker 2: because he didn't like screw that guy. I don't like him.
31:19
Speaker 2: You know, I'm I'm a soldier. I could do what
31:20
Speaker 2: I want. I'll just kill him. Or if you look
31:24
Speaker 2: at the if you look at the super if you
31:25
Speaker 2: look at the Supermutants and the super in Jacobstown, and
31:29
Speaker 2: the supermutants are are a lot more like the Fallout
31:32
Speaker 2: one and two supermutants. You know, they're not mindless monsters,
31:36
Speaker 2: they're not orcs. It was basically like, you know, kind
31:39
Speaker 2: of like this weapons experiment by the Master to make
31:42
Speaker 2: a super race of beings essentially as weapons. Uh, you know,
31:46
Speaker 2: there's still people. They're in they're capable of you know,
31:49
Speaker 2: they're capable of making decisions and rational thought and communication
31:53
Speaker 2: and all of that stuff. And and one of the
31:55
Speaker 2: things you have the NCR doing is the NCR is
31:57
Speaker 2: camping outside of Jacobstown And basically the NCR doesn't want
32:02
Speaker 2: the super mutants there, and they're just trying to find
32:04
Speaker 2: a way. They're trying to find the excuse to get
32:06
Speaker 2: rid of them by any means necessary, and they're trying
32:09
Speaker 2: to provoke the Supermutants who are there. They're actually trying
32:12
Speaker 2: to like live away from people and kind of live
32:15
Speaker 2: their own life and not cause any trouble, and the
32:17
Speaker 2: NCR is trying to provoke them into hostilities so that
32:21
Speaker 2: they can justify going in and wiping out all the supermutants.
32:25
Speaker 2: It's really messed up. It's actually really really really messed up.
32:29
Speaker 2: Not every single NCR soldier is like a bad guy, right,
32:32
Speaker 2: you know, there's plenty of there's you know, there's there's
32:34
Speaker 2: plenty of NCR soldiers who are good and virtuous people.
32:37
Speaker 2: You know, this is the complexity of the NCR. You know,
32:39
Speaker 2: you have soldiers that are actually being taken advantage of
32:42
Speaker 2: by their own commanding officers and their own government officials,
32:45
Speaker 2: promising them resources that they're not going to get, Promising
32:48
Speaker 2: them like you know, engagements or deployments that are going
32:52
Speaker 2: to be light and easy, and it's the exact opposite.
32:54
Speaker 2: There's like a whole series of quest lines where you
32:56
Speaker 2: have to help soldiers like go through like help them
33:01
Speaker 2: process all of their trauma, like all of just like
33:04
Speaker 2: the horrible things that they've gone through as they're trying
33:06
Speaker 2: to cope in this in this in this kind of
33:08
Speaker 2: like dark and depressing world. And uh, but but like
33:15
Speaker 2: when you look but when you when you look at
33:17
Speaker 2: like the powder gangers, right, that was a problem that
33:22
Speaker 2: the NCR created, and they're not interested in cleaning up
33:25
Speaker 2: their own mess, right, so they they gave a bunch
33:28
Speaker 2: of they gave a bunch of really dangerous criminals this
33:30
Speaker 2: this dynamite for labor work to create a railroad, and
33:34
Speaker 2: then the the powder gangers with the dynamite were able
33:37
Speaker 2: to very very easily take over the prison and then
33:40
Speaker 2: run over the area. That's a that's it. That's it.
33:43
Speaker 2: That's an NCR problem. And so but the but the
33:47
Speaker 2: powder gangers are attacking good springs, they're attacking prim and
33:51
Speaker 2: the NCR won't lift a finger to help either of
33:55
Speaker 2: those settlements because they are not within the jurisdiction of
33:59
Speaker 2: the NCR. And the powder gangers are a problem that
34:02
Speaker 2: they literally created. It's a very it's very fascinating, just
34:07
Speaker 2: like how how much the NCR is struggling, and like
34:10
Speaker 2: all of the ways and just like it's in which
34:12
Speaker 2: it's really messed up. And I've been talking way too long.
34:15
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, no, no no apology necessarity. And I think
34:18
Speaker 1: that does provid and context for kind of frame this
34:21
Speaker 1: discussion of how different is NCR from the legion I mean, obviously,
34:27
Speaker 1: on surface level, NCR seems a lot better, right, And
34:30
Speaker 1: I would say that they are still better, but yeah,
34:33
Speaker 1: they're still ruled by self interest, right, And that's kind
34:36
Speaker 1: of the point that you're making. And you know, it's
34:38
Speaker 1: a large, complicated society where you have good actors, you
34:42
Speaker 1: have bad actors, but end of the day, it's concerned
34:45
Speaker 1: with self interest, not necessarily the good of man. And
34:49
Speaker 1: you know, it kind of raises a question of what
34:54
Speaker 1: exactly gives government, because I mean, this is a kind
34:57
Speaker 1: of prod to governmental ent, like what gives government legitimacy
35:05
Speaker 1: versus a gang? In City of God, Augustine recounts the
35:09
Speaker 1: tale of a pirate who's captured by oh, I think
35:13
Speaker 1: it was Alexander the Great and and the and Alexander
35:18
Speaker 1: says to this pirate, you know, what business do you
35:21
Speaker 1: have capturing ships at sea? And the pirate responds to
35:26
Speaker 1: Alexander saying that, you know, you call me a pirate.
35:30
Speaker 1: Basically I've got a small operation. Well you've got a
35:32
Speaker 1: larger one, so people call you emperor, Like what fundamentally
35:35
Speaker 1: is the difference here? And so you know, what is
35:38
Speaker 1: the difference between the NCR and some petty gang other
35:42
Speaker 1: than size, and that both are interested in their own people,
35:46
Speaker 1: you know, potentially dividing up the spoils. You've got various
35:49
Speaker 1: levels of authority, but it all just comes down to
35:52
Speaker 1: self interest. Only the NCR has some more guns at
35:55
Speaker 1: their side. And so I mean, what what makes them
36:00
Speaker 1: more more legitimate than Caesar's Legion? I mean, I suppose
36:05
Speaker 1: that they aren't inherently evil, even if they're driven by
36:10
Speaker 1: self interest, whereas the Legion, I would say, is inherently evil,
36:14
Speaker 1: which is why you don't really have good actors in
36:16
Speaker 1: the Legion unless there's somebody else.
36:19
Speaker 2: No there there there are zero good actors in the Legion.
36:22
Speaker 2: Like again, it's just not even worth comparing the two
36:24
Speaker 2: in that way. I think. I think the only thing
36:28
Speaker 2: the game really does is like it feels. It feels
36:33
Speaker 2: like the Legion. It feels like the Legion. Is there
36:40
Speaker 2: two kind of like show like the word kind of
36:50
Speaker 2: like to contrast against the worst parts of the NCR
36:54
Speaker 2: more than it more than more than it is to
36:57
Speaker 2: show any virtues of the Legion itself.
37:01
Speaker 1: Right, because I mean, at least if you give the
37:04
Speaker 1: NCR power, you know in the end that you have
37:08
Speaker 1: recent believes that there's some stability in the land. You know,
37:12
Speaker 1: everyone isn't getting violated, right, I mean that they do
37:16
Speaker 1: to some degree just you know, incorporate. Maybe I'm I'm
37:20
Speaker 1: just remembering the ending, but I think if I correctly,
37:22
Speaker 1: they incorporate people into their midst rather than simply dominating them.
37:26
Speaker 1: But maybe I'm misremembering that.
37:28
Speaker 2: Depending on so I don't remember all of the ins
37:31
Speaker 2: and outs of the of the NCR details, but depending
37:34
Speaker 2: on how NCR heavy you go in your game, that
37:37
Speaker 2: is absolutely a direction you can do. Like you can
37:39
Speaker 2: bring Prim into the jurisdiction of the NCR for example.
37:44
Speaker 2: Now they won't like it, the people of Prim, they
37:49
Speaker 2: won't like it, but that is one way you can
37:52
Speaker 2: bring order into the city because their sheriff is dead
37:56
Speaker 2: and they need a new sheriff. So you can get
37:58
Speaker 2: you can get a U. You can get a guy
38:01
Speaker 2: from the prison who was basically like an ex sheriff.
38:06
Speaker 2: He like you know, and you know he's got his
38:09
Speaker 2: you know, his issues in baggage, like there's a reason
38:11
Speaker 2: why he's there, but he is an option. Or you
38:14
Speaker 2: could get the local robot and program him to be
38:18
Speaker 2: the sheriff. Or you could like go through all the
38:23
Speaker 2: steps of convincing the NCR why they should go into
38:26
Speaker 2: prim Okay, and then we're gonna sign here here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here,
38:30
Speaker 2: and here and here and here. All right, and now congratulations,
38:35
Speaker 2: you're part of the NCR. Give us taxes, you know.
38:38
Speaker 2: But but you've got but you've you've got a shareff now,
38:40
Speaker 2: like there are options like that across the mojave for that.
38:44
Speaker 1: We let's see what else do you have in your notes?
38:47
Speaker 2: I was thinking about so the more on the subject
38:50
Speaker 2: of the NCR, I was thinking about, uh, kind of
38:53
Speaker 2: like the the the moral ambiguity, right, the moral quandary.
38:57
Speaker 2: So we talked a lot about like horrible things that
38:59
Speaker 2: NCR does, like oh, I'm just gonna kill this guy
39:01
Speaker 2: because I don't like him. We're gonna provoke these supermutants,
39:05
Speaker 2: you know, to try and attack us so that we
39:06
Speaker 2: can justify war goal goals. You know. So we've talked
39:09
Speaker 2: about some horrible stuff. There's actually lots of juicy, wonderful,
39:15
Speaker 2: like depressing, nuanced stuff when it comes to like okay,
39:21
Speaker 2: you know, what's the what's the right answer here? And
39:23
Speaker 2: there's a really good one of the examples. That's a
39:26
Speaker 2: really good microcosm of the quests in the game. Where
39:28
Speaker 2: do my notes go? I gotta scroll up? There they
39:35
Speaker 2: are there's a water quest right okay in the for
39:41
Speaker 2: the NCR. So they have all these farms. The NCR
39:43
Speaker 2: has all these farms basically to you know, feed their operations.
39:49
Speaker 2: The farms aren't so the farms are not you know,
39:51
Speaker 2: they're not for the local people. It's NCR property. Only.
39:55
Speaker 2: All of that food, all of that water goes to
39:58
Speaker 2: NCR stuff, not to any of the people in Free
40:02
Speaker 2: Side who are literally on the other side of the wall,
40:05
Speaker 2: you know, just like scrounging their existence for one more day.
40:10
Speaker 2: Excuse me. So what happens is we have this really
40:14
Speaker 2: interesting scenario. They know, you know, the NCAR have got
40:17
Speaker 2: like all these water pipes set up to get water
40:21
Speaker 2: around for all of their farms. There are there are
40:25
Speaker 2: in Free Side. I think there are kind of like
40:29
Speaker 2: some people who have taken the initiative right to uh,
40:34
Speaker 2: you know, siphon some of that water from you know,
40:37
Speaker 2: from the pipes. You know, like you know that is
40:39
Speaker 2: you know, that's not their property, you know, like strictly speaking,
40:43
Speaker 2: as the NCR sees it. Uh. They so like, we've
40:46
Speaker 2: got some free side people who are siphoning some of
40:48
Speaker 2: that water for their own kind of little farm so
40:51
Speaker 2: that they can have some food and they can have
40:53
Speaker 2: some water. So we've got so we've got kind of
40:58
Speaker 2: we've got like a moral conundrum here. We have these
41:00
Speaker 2: people who are obviously in need, who don't have any
41:04
Speaker 2: do who don't have, you know, any other easy means
41:07
Speaker 2: of supporting themselves, and they're taking they're you know, they're
41:11
Speaker 2: they're they're taking water. You know, it's not theirs. They're stealing.
41:15
Speaker 2: That's you know, like you know, there's you know, there's
41:16
Speaker 2: you know, there's really no two ways about it. They're
41:18
Speaker 2: stealing the water right for you know, for a farm
41:21
Speaker 2: that they need that they're trying to maintain. So what
41:25
Speaker 2: do you do? What do you do in that situation?
41:28
Speaker 2: Do you, like, you know, do you show mercy to
41:32
Speaker 2: these people? Do you show and just like you know,
41:35
Speaker 2: and let them keep siphoning that water from the NCR farms.
41:40
Speaker 2: But it's more complicated than that, okay, because there was
41:44
Speaker 2: an NCR soldier, you know, just an average joe, you know,
41:47
Speaker 2: who was like, hey, you know, I've noticed that we're
41:52
Speaker 2: not getting as much water to our farms as we're
41:54
Speaker 2: supposed to. I'm gonna go see what's going on with this.
41:57
Speaker 2: He disappears. You do the quest. Do you find out
42:01
Speaker 2: in the midst of this this water quest? You find
42:04
Speaker 2: out that that soldier turned up dead and it was
42:07
Speaker 2: one of the free Siders who's trying to run this
42:09
Speaker 2: farm that did it. And now it's gotten. Now it's
42:14
Speaker 2: gotten like really hairy, hasn't it? Right? Do we still
42:17
Speaker 2: show mercy to these Do we show mercy still to
42:21
Speaker 2: the freesiders and cover up a murder so that they
42:26
Speaker 2: can have their own little farm and their own little
42:28
Speaker 2: means of supporting themselves, you know now, because you know
42:31
Speaker 2: we're not We're not just we're not just looking the
42:32
Speaker 2: other way for water. We're looking for the other way
42:34
Speaker 2: for murder. If you do that, If you do that,
42:39
Speaker 2: the NCR farms struggle because they're not getting all of
42:42
Speaker 2: the water that they were promised. And all of the
42:46
Speaker 2: NCR farmers, like you know, they they you know, by
42:50
Speaker 2: the end of the game, they will start packing up
42:52
Speaker 2: and leaving because either they're getting fired or the prospect
42:55
Speaker 2: of getting fired because they're not meeting quota because they're
42:59
Speaker 2: not getting the water that they were promised to begin
43:01
Speaker 2: with to grow all the crops that they need for
43:04
Speaker 2: the NCR operations. So no matter what you choose, someone
43:10
Speaker 2: is going to suffer, like you know, some like someone
43:14
Speaker 2: is not getting the water they need, someone is not
43:16
Speaker 2: getting the food they need. And the question is is
43:19
Speaker 2: it the NCR people and it's not their fault, you know,
43:25
Speaker 2: or are you gonna or you know, are you gonna, like,
43:27
Speaker 2: you know, stick it to the Freeesiders because you know,
43:31
Speaker 2: they are stealing the water and they did murder that guy,
43:34
Speaker 2: but then now they don't have that farm or that
43:38
Speaker 2: water and they're in a really tight spot and that's
43:42
Speaker 2: not really fair to the people on in Freeside who
43:46
Speaker 2: are depending on that farm. And that's and that's like
43:49
Speaker 2: a microcosm of the moral conundrum in all of the
43:54
Speaker 2: quests of New Vegas. And that's one of the things
43:56
Speaker 2: that makes this game just like kind of like so
43:58
Speaker 2: deep and so great. You have really uncomfortable quandary and
44:02
Speaker 2: it's like, you know, and you know, every everybody can
44:05
Speaker 2: come to that and they will have a different answer
44:08
Speaker 2: on what they think justice is.
44:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's a great scenario to consider. And
44:15
Speaker 1: you know, at first, as you're telling me this, the
44:18
Speaker 1: I mean the part of me that very much affirms
44:21
Speaker 1: and celebrates property rights, right, the free market capital asidemy.
44:25
Speaker 1: You know, once you say that, yeah, stealing is bad.
44:27
Speaker 1: But at the same time a Quinnas even said, Thomas
44:32
Speaker 1: Aquinas says that when it comes to like basic needs
44:36
Speaker 1: for survival in this case, he would say that we
44:40
Speaker 1: siphoning the water might not actually be stealing because the
44:45
Speaker 1: the value, like the basic value of human life. Trump's
44:48
Speaker 1: property rights is his position. Yeah, And so you know,
44:51
Speaker 1: at that point, if you are starving, like literally starving,
44:55
Speaker 1: then taking food that otherwise wouldn't belong to you, well,
44:57
Speaker 1: in this case, it does belong to you, because like
45:00
Speaker 1: your basic human dignity, your value stands above property rights.
45:05
Speaker 1: At the same time, well, once we throw murder in there,
45:08
Speaker 1: well that that changes the calculus a little bit, because
45:11
Speaker 1: now like we're what we're siphoning water, I mean to
45:15
Speaker 1: people who don't value human life to the point where
45:19
Speaker 1: you know, they are elevating their needs even above the
45:22
Speaker 1: basic human life of this n CR guy. Uh, And
45:26
Speaker 1: so that that does complicate things a little bit. And
45:28
Speaker 1: like you said, like, now that's going to put a
45:30
Speaker 1: undue strain on the n CR farmers. And so it's
45:34
Speaker 1: a difficult situation there. I mean, take take the the
45:38
Speaker 1: murder out of it. I might side with the free siders,
45:41
Speaker 1: right ad the murder dynamic and well, I don't know,
45:44
Speaker 1: it's not quite so easy.
45:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's it's very like I think, I think
45:50
Speaker 2: of the and and as you were you were talking
45:53
Speaker 2: like about UH as you were talking about Quinas, I
45:58
Speaker 2: was thinking about the passage in UH levitiguous where like
46:04
Speaker 2: it like kind of like the moral like the moral
46:07
Speaker 2: law section where it's like that there's there is provision
46:11
Speaker 2: for the poor where you know, when you're gathering, when
46:14
Speaker 2: you're gathering in your fields any like, you know, don't
46:17
Speaker 2: gather around the edges and anything that falls to the
46:20
Speaker 2: ground also during gathering you leave that there as well.
46:23
Speaker 2: And the reason and the reason why that's there is
46:27
Speaker 2: because within within the lividal, within the levitical law, within
46:31
Speaker 2: the law that God gave to his people, this was
46:33
Speaker 2: the provision and the safety net for the poor and
46:37
Speaker 2: the disenfranchised. You know, the people who didn't you know,
46:40
Speaker 2: the people who didn't have you know, means to support
46:42
Speaker 2: themselves the people who like you know, you know, for
46:45
Speaker 2: the people who were hungry, you know, for the people
46:48
Speaker 2: you know, whoo who didn't have enough. You had this
46:51
Speaker 2: law to basically like hey, you like you know, you know,
46:56
Speaker 2: save you know, save some of this for say some
47:00
Speaker 2: of this for the poor, you know, like you know,
47:03
Speaker 2: and you know, and especially to our modern sensibilities, there's
47:06
Speaker 2: a certain offense to that because if you you if
47:08
Speaker 2: you if you were to calculate, like you know, not
47:11
Speaker 2: harvesting the edges of your farm field, right, you know,
47:13
Speaker 2: and you do the percentages, you know whatever, you know,
47:15
Speaker 2: that's a that's a pretty hefty percentage that you're that
47:18
Speaker 2: you're sacrificing every single year. You know. But like you know,
47:22
Speaker 2: here kind of like the letter in the spirit of
47:23
Speaker 2: the law is you know, this is to help the poor,
47:27
Speaker 2: because I want you to help the poor, you know.
47:29
Speaker 2: The end Now, the NCR is obviously the NCR is
47:34
Speaker 2: obviously not doing that. They and they have you know,
47:37
Speaker 2: they have no they have no interest in doing that.
47:40
Speaker 2: You know, we can say, you know, we can say
47:41
Speaker 2: that is you know, an indictment against them, you know
47:45
Speaker 2: on you know, on the uh you know, and on
47:49
Speaker 2: the other hand, again, you know, we have like you know,
47:53
Speaker 2: we have the murder situation that instantly just kind of like,
47:57
Speaker 2: you know, that's kind of you know, that's kind of
47:58
Speaker 2: like you know, the fly and the soup right there.
48:00
Speaker 2: But like at the same time, you're still gonna have like,
48:03
Speaker 2: you know, all the freeze. You know, you're gonna because
48:05
Speaker 2: it's kind of the fault of this one guy, and
48:07
Speaker 2: all the other freesliders are going to suffer, you know,
48:12
Speaker 2: because you know, because of this consequence, and they're gonna
48:15
Speaker 2: be they're gonna be right back where they started. It's
48:18
Speaker 2: just there's there's nothing about there's nothing about this situation
48:23
Speaker 2: that is that is nice. In the slightest you can,
48:27
Speaker 2: you can also make the case that, you know, the
48:30
Speaker 2: NCR shouldn't even be here in the first place. The
48:32
Speaker 2: only reason they are there is because they want the
48:35
Speaker 2: energy from the dam. But they are spread so thin
48:39
Speaker 2: they can barely afford to fund their their operations, including
48:46
Speaker 2: their farming, and that's a punishment to the NCR farmers itself.
48:53
Speaker 2: I just that's something that's really just really fascinating to
48:55
Speaker 2: me about the game.
48:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great point that there is no clear
49:02
Speaker 1: moral answer. It's you can justify either position, but end
49:05
Speaker 1: of the day, that some evil is going to be
49:07
Speaker 1: committed against somebody or some group of people right through
49:10
Speaker 1: no fault of their own, necessarily, and some good will
49:14
Speaker 1: provided on the other side. And and as you said that,
49:16
Speaker 1: that is a pretty good microcosm of the kinds of
49:18
Speaker 1: decisions that you make throughout this game that you know,
49:21
Speaker 1: setting aside like the the moral extremes of the Caesars
49:25
Speaker 1: legions stuff, right, Yes, for for the most part, that
49:28
Speaker 1: you are navigating these very kind of real world type
49:32
Speaker 1: of political situations of how are we going to balance
49:34
Speaker 1: out resources amidst scarcity or you know, how do we uh,
49:39
Speaker 1: what kind of ethical principles we're going to bring to
49:41
Speaker 1: bear here? But end of the day, it's it's not
49:44
Speaker 1: super clear what the right course of action is, which
49:47
Speaker 1: is exactly what makes this game so compelling.
49:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for oh for sure, for sure, what else
50:02
Speaker 2: do we have here? So we talked, so we talked
50:08
Speaker 2: about kind of the moral conundrums of the game. We
50:11
Speaker 2: talked about kind of the NCR is chasing kind of
50:14
Speaker 2: like their kind of idealized image of an America gone
50:18
Speaker 2: by Kaiser is chasing kind of like the idol of
50:22
Speaker 2: his perception of like a rome that's gone by. We
50:26
Speaker 2: talked about the agriculture issue. I like, I absolutely loved
50:32
Speaker 2: that there is this uh oh like there there actually
50:38
Speaker 2: there actually is kind of like an adjacent ish quest
50:41
Speaker 2: where you have to get agricultural data, like research data
50:46
Speaker 2: from from a vault for for growing more food faster.
50:52
Speaker 2: Do you you know that question that I'm talking.
50:53
Speaker 1: About, Is that the one with the plant people.
50:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the that's the one that's the one with
50:58
Speaker 2: the plant people and the giant bugs. And it's like
51:00
Speaker 2: it's like one of those it's like one of those
51:02
Speaker 2: things where yeah, the research went horribly horribly wrong, and
51:06
Speaker 2: you can choose to destroy the information or you can
51:10
Speaker 2: choose to keep the information and give it to the NCR.
51:13
Speaker 2: You know, and when you give it, when you give
51:14
Speaker 2: it to the NCR, you know, you have like that
51:17
Speaker 2: hilarious line from the guy who's heading the project. He's
51:20
Speaker 2: this doctor who's this obviously this very self interested man,
51:25
Speaker 2: you know, who's trying to just like climb up the
51:27
Speaker 2: ladder the rungs of the ladder within the NCR. And
51:31
Speaker 2: uh when you when you when you bring up any
51:34
Speaker 2: concerns over the project, he says, like the juiciest line,
51:37
Speaker 2: which is where the government like have faith right, uh,
51:41
Speaker 2: you know, and it's like, oh, do I really trust
51:43
Speaker 2: this guy, Like, you know, do I really trust this
51:46
Speaker 2: guy to uh to actually like make good with this information,
51:51
Speaker 2: you know, and like cause, in the best of all
51:53
Speaker 2: possible worlds, somebody looks at the research data and says, oh,
51:57
Speaker 2: this is how it went wrong, So this is how
51:58
Speaker 2: we could do it better and hope not do that again.
52:01
Speaker 2: Or is the guy just gonna pass it along for
52:04
Speaker 2: somebody to make the same mistake again just so that
52:06
Speaker 2: he can get his brownie points, like his like his
52:11
Speaker 2: political brownie points. That you know, that that's just kind
52:16
Speaker 2: of a that's another example of just kind of that,
52:19
Speaker 2: you know, that's sort of that sort of a you know,
52:21
Speaker 2: conundrum going on in the game. There's a really hilarious
52:24
Speaker 2: guy in the labs who's just as an aside where
52:28
Speaker 2: he's talking about his interview process forgetting his job. They
52:31
Speaker 2: asked him if he had a degree in theoretical physics,
52:34
Speaker 2: and he said he had a theoretical degree in physics,
52:37
Speaker 2: and that's how he got the job. That's super funny.
52:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's funny. Yeah. I don't have a whole lot
52:43
Speaker 1: to philosophically comment on that, but I will say that
52:46
Speaker 1: I just appreciate all the zany stuff we get, especially
52:48
Speaker 1: through the vaults, regarding oh yeah, fish experiments and whatnot.
52:53
Speaker 2: The vaults are one of the most memorable parts of
52:55
Speaker 2: the game. I have more I remember. I'll lot of
53:00
Speaker 2: the Fallout three vaults more clearly than I do the
53:04
Speaker 2: New Vegas vaults at the moment, because it's been a
53:07
Speaker 2: hot minute. I definitely remember. I definitely remember the plant
53:11
Speaker 2: Man vault for sure. There was there was a There
53:16
Speaker 2: was another one. It may have been part of the
53:18
Speaker 2: water Quest. I don't remember. There was another vault where
53:21
Speaker 2: some guys. Some guys got trapped inside a vault in
53:25
Speaker 2: New Vegas and you could either uh, you could either
53:30
Speaker 2: let them. You could either like free them, and if
53:32
Speaker 2: you freed them, it would like irradiate the water, or
53:35
Speaker 2: if you left them to die and they're pleading with
53:37
Speaker 2: you over the intercomp which just makes it rough and
53:40
Speaker 2: awful and just not pleasant. But if you if you
53:42
Speaker 2: if you leave them to die, then the water stays clean.
53:45
Speaker 2: But if you let them go. Then you're going to
53:47
Speaker 2: contaminate all the water and kill the farms. That's that's another.
53:50
Speaker 2: That's another not feel good just like at all?
53:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, Yeah, Mitch, have you watched the show
54:00
Speaker 1: at all?
54:01
Speaker 2: I did watch the show. Have you watched the show?
54:06
Speaker 1: I have watched the show. Okay, this is a side
54:08
Speaker 1: and we won't spend too long on this, but sure, sure,
54:11
Speaker 1: what are your thoughts based off here? At your face? There?
54:14
Speaker 2: I enjoy I enjoyed the show. Okay, there's a I
54:19
Speaker 2: enjoyed the show. There's a good show in there. There
54:24
Speaker 2: really is. It's not as good as people say it is.
54:29
Speaker 2: It mostly has to do. It's got it's got a
54:32
Speaker 2: lot of writing problems. It's gotta it's got a it's
54:35
Speaker 2: got a lot of stuff that's just kind of like
54:37
Speaker 2: weirdly written or poorly written. Or there are some characters
54:41
Speaker 2: that I that some people like, there are characters that
54:43
Speaker 2: people adore that I don't like and think are poorly written.
54:48
Speaker 2: That's just that that's just kind of too. That's just
54:51
Speaker 2: kind of to sum it up on the whole, it's
54:53
Speaker 2: a fun show to watch, it's got it's got problems. Uh,
55:00
Speaker 2: but it was it was a lot of fun. There's
55:02
Speaker 2: all there's a there's a there's a lot of fun, kooky, uh,
55:06
Speaker 2: spirit of you know, the spirit of Fallout is very
55:08
Speaker 2: much present in the show.
55:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that later on after we get to four.
55:14
Speaker 1: I do want to have an episode on the show
55:15
Speaker 1: in particular, which I agree it's necessarily a great piece
55:19
Speaker 1: of art per se, but as you said, I feel
55:21
Speaker 1: like it does a good job of capturing the spirit
55:24
Speaker 1: of Fallout, conveying that the world of Fallout. I feel
55:26
Speaker 1: like that's kind of that's where it really excels for me.
55:28
Speaker 1: But in particular, what maybe just think of the show
55:31
Speaker 1: and throw that in here, is that that one scene
55:34
Speaker 1: where you know, all the different corporations or whatnot, or
55:36
Speaker 1: throwing out that different ideas for the vaults. I just
55:39
Speaker 1: found that scene kind of.
55:40
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that was really that was really that was
55:42
Speaker 2: that was yeah, yeah, I remember that. That was great.
55:46
Speaker 2: I And that's what that's that that's kind of that's
55:49
Speaker 2: that's that's kind of like one of the examples of
55:52
Speaker 2: just kind of you have kind of like just like
55:54
Speaker 2: these really greedy, self serving you know, uh, you know, corporations.
55:59
Speaker 2: They're not just selling a they're not just selling a
56:02
Speaker 2: like you know, like a like a like a post
56:04
Speaker 2: apocalyptic service for the survival of the human race. They
56:07
Speaker 2: want to turn everything into a social experiment, and that's like,
56:10
Speaker 2: you know, it's just it's so it's it's so messed
56:14
Speaker 2: up now. And now the social experiments themselves, like you know,
56:17
Speaker 2: the Fallout series, they always have fun with it. They
56:20
Speaker 2: always have like they always have like the kookiest, goofyest
56:25
Speaker 2: fun ideas for kind of like the social experiments for
56:28
Speaker 2: these vaults. But when you actually sit down and seriously
56:31
Speaker 2: look at what's going on, it's so messed up, like
56:35
Speaker 2: just what they're doing to these people.
56:37
Speaker 1: And love of just nonsensical, like sometimes you wonder what
56:40
Speaker 1: is the good that could have come out of this?
56:43
Speaker 1: But well maybe that kind of brings us to a
56:48
Speaker 1: broader question of if you had to narrow it, what
56:53
Speaker 1: would you say, is the message a Fallout.
56:57
Speaker 2: Oh boy, oh boy? Like we might keep we like
57:04
Speaker 2: I don't know, like you know, uh we like I
57:09
Speaker 2: don't know, we we we might be we might be
57:10
Speaker 2: getting into the spicy territory here. I think there is
57:15
Speaker 2: no I think there's and like you know, we can
57:19
Speaker 2: we can also like you know, like ever, everyone's like
57:22
Speaker 2: everyone's got their own opinions on this. I certainly have
57:25
Speaker 2: my opinions. I think, however, I think however you view it,
57:33
Speaker 2: there's no getting around like Fallout in general is itself
57:38
Speaker 2: very much a satire of of basically like American jingoism
57:49
Speaker 2: kind of like like very it's it's very it's it's
57:51
Speaker 2: very much satire. It's it's very much satirizing. Uh, it's
57:55
Speaker 2: satirizing patriotism, it's sapur it's satirizing American capitalism. Uh uh.
58:03
Speaker 2: There's like, there's there, there's there's there's definitely a lot
58:06
Speaker 2: of jinguistic stuff which is kind of like played for laughs,
58:10
Speaker 2: like when you like when you like when you have
58:12
Speaker 2: when you have like in the in the opening cut
58:14
Speaker 2: scene for Fallout one, where you have like the the
58:16
Speaker 2: news TV it's like a US annexes Canada and you
58:20
Speaker 2: have the American soldier like execute the Canadian civilian in
58:23
Speaker 2: the street and then he looks at the camera any
58:25
Speaker 2: waves like you know, so like they're like they they
58:28
Speaker 2: they they do it. They do it in a very
58:30
Speaker 2: like tongue in cheek way. But there's all there's there's
58:34
Speaker 2: a lot of commentary on like like American culture and
58:40
Speaker 2: kind of like the red scare and kind of like
58:43
Speaker 2: the the like the the seriousness, like like the the
58:47
Speaker 2: the or the the degree, the extreme degree to which
58:51
Speaker 2: we we took that to kind of like you know,
58:57
Speaker 2: kind of protect uh are, like our ideas, our values,
59:03
Speaker 2: our interests from threats both real and also perceived.
59:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's obviously that strong focus on propaganda, and to
59:19
Speaker 1: be fair that in the Fallout alternate timeline, communist China
59:24
Speaker 1: provides a very real threat, right They even yea invade Alaska,
59:28
Speaker 1: and you know, they're a very real threat. But a
59:33
Speaker 1: lot of times in you know, the reddit forms or wherever,
59:37
Speaker 1: you know, people say that Fallout is primarily a critique
59:41
Speaker 1: of Americanism or maybe even capitalism, and that that may
59:45
Speaker 1: be there, But the way I see it.
59:47
Speaker 2: Definitely like it definitely kind of like an extreme Americanism.
59:50
Speaker 1: Right, it's really I would say it's a critique of
59:53
Speaker 1: this fundamental like idealism or like exuberant optimism about the
59:59
Speaker 1: future in our unbridled potential, and you know, well that
1:00:03
Speaker 1: does get manifested through nationalism. And it's worth noting that
1:00:06
Speaker 1: these games, yeah take place in America, so we only
1:00:09
Speaker 1: really see the American perspective at least primarily.
1:00:12
Speaker 2: But that and that was the point of the creators,
1:00:14
Speaker 2: like the point like they weren't interested in looking at
1:00:17
Speaker 2: the rest of the world. It was all through They
1:00:20
Speaker 2: weren't interested in world building in that sense, like literally
1:00:23
Speaker 2: world building. It was like, you know, their intention was
1:00:26
Speaker 2: like we are we are looking at like a very
1:00:29
Speaker 2: where we are looking kind of like America at through
1:00:31
Speaker 2: this lens in a very specific place, in a very
1:00:33
Speaker 2: specific time. And like the idea that that kind of
1:00:39
Speaker 2: jingoistic nationalism and a like kind of like leads to
1:00:45
Speaker 2: kind of like this outcome basically.
1:00:47
Speaker 1: Right and in fact, maybe to bring us back to
1:00:49
Speaker 1: Hegel it's kind of a critique of the Segelian nationalism
1:00:52
Speaker 1: that we are the definitive future, right, that we are
1:00:56
Speaker 1: what progress means. It's the progression of us as we
1:00:59
Speaker 1: reflect upon ourselves. Like that's what progress is. That's where
1:01:02
Speaker 1: world history is moving toward. And you know, I think
1:01:06
Speaker 1: that it's worth focusing in on that that slogan or
1:01:10
Speaker 1: that that tagline associated with the fallout the you know,
1:01:12
Speaker 1: war never changes. It's this idea that no matter what
1:01:16
Speaker 1: we get, what kind of nice stuff we get with technology,
1:01:19
Speaker 1: with unbridled capitalism, like that can produce a lot of
1:01:21
Speaker 1: stuff that maybe even is good. It's not going to
1:01:24
Speaker 1: change fundamental human nature. No, it's just going to give
1:01:27
Speaker 1: us bigger and more powerful weapons to smack each other with.
1:01:32
Speaker 1: And that becomes increasingly dangerous as technology increases, as we
1:01:37
Speaker 1: move forward into and maybe even beyond the atomic age, like,
1:01:41
Speaker 1: they can just become more dangerous. And so while we
1:01:44
Speaker 1: have all these visions of utopia in unbridled progress and
1:01:48
Speaker 1: the inevitability of the Golden age that you know, the
1:01:51
Speaker 1: the descendants of the scientific revolution will usher in end
1:01:55
Speaker 1: of the day, people are people Like we're still the
1:01:58
Speaker 1: same basic people that smack each other with rocks and clubs.
1:02:02
Speaker 1: We just now have much bigger rocks and clubs. And
1:02:04
Speaker 1: so I think on a more sophisticated level, I think
1:02:07
Speaker 1: that what Fallout is is it's a reminder of this
1:02:10
Speaker 1: basic human nature that doesn't change, and I think that
1:02:16
Speaker 1: that is good. In fact, I would argue it's a
1:02:18
Speaker 1: very conservative idea. I mean, I don't know exactly what
1:02:21
Speaker 1: the you know, philosophies or the ideologies are of the
1:02:25
Speaker 1: writers of these games. I venture to say that I
1:02:29
Speaker 1: probably differ with them on a great number of topics,
1:02:31
Speaker 1: but end of the day, I think it's a very
1:02:32
Speaker 1: conservative idea to remind us that there is a basic
1:02:35
Speaker 1: human nature that the progress of society technology is not
1:02:38
Speaker 1: going to fully overcome.
1:02:40
Speaker 2: There is absolutely a lot of like however you look
1:02:43
Speaker 2: at it, there's absolutely a lot of themes and ideas
1:02:47
Speaker 2: that are themselves very universal and everybody can take something
1:02:52
Speaker 2: away from it when it comes to when it comes
1:02:55
Speaker 2: to like, you know, this story as a commentary on
1:02:59
Speaker 2: the human condition. And I think that is and I
1:03:03
Speaker 2: think that is something that is definitely, absolutely absolutely present.
1:03:10
Speaker 2: I was, I was actually thinking about like I had
1:03:13
Speaker 2: I had. I had two thoughts you mentioned like scientific process,
1:03:16
Speaker 2: I want to put I want to put a pin
1:03:18
Speaker 2: in that because we can we can talk about that
1:03:20
Speaker 2: a little bit for uh, for old old world blues.
1:03:24
Speaker 2: The other thing I wanted to mention as kind of
1:03:26
Speaker 2: like you were talking about like human nature, which was
1:03:29
Speaker 2: I see, I see a lot you know, like so
1:03:33
Speaker 2: a lot a lot of the a lot of the
1:03:34
Speaker 2: old historians from like the last century or so, there
1:03:37
Speaker 2: was always this very very big idea about like the
1:03:40
Speaker 2: fall of civilizations comes from uh, stems from kind of
1:03:46
Speaker 2: like a moral deficiency. Right now, I've seen I've seen
1:03:51
Speaker 2: like you know, like you know, some people, like some people,
1:03:55
Speaker 2: some scholars, some thinkers, depending on who you talk to,
1:03:57
Speaker 2: depending on who you ask, they kind of like scoff
1:04:00
Speaker 2: at that ideal a little bit that that kind of
1:04:03
Speaker 2: like you know, moral kind of like moral failing doesn't
1:04:06
Speaker 2: necessarily have anything to do with the fall of with
1:04:09
Speaker 2: the falls of of a like civilizations necessarily per se.
1:04:14
Speaker 2: I think there's a whole conversation that you could have
1:04:17
Speaker 2: there that could you know, you could just like go
1:04:19
Speaker 2: back and forth all day. That's not really what I'm
1:04:21
Speaker 2: here to talk about. What is interesting to me is
1:04:25
Speaker 2: that And this was something that struck out to me
1:04:27
Speaker 2: because I was listening to a soundtrack about a year
1:04:31
Speaker 2: ago of like all of the songs that they haven't
1:04:35
Speaker 2: Fallout three, And an interesting thing I noticed about Fallout three,
1:04:39
Speaker 2: so like one of the things about one of the
1:04:41
Speaker 2: things about like Fallout as a whole, like as a
1:04:43
Speaker 2: whole at the very least from at the very least
1:04:46
Speaker 2: from three onward, one and two, I think it's a
1:04:48
Speaker 2: little different, but at the very least from three onward,
1:04:52
Speaker 2: if one and two were not included in that is
1:04:55
Speaker 2: there there's kind of like this, you know, you know,
1:04:59
Speaker 2: regardless of what a whatever messages or themes that fall
1:05:02
Speaker 2: Out is trying to say about America itself, there is this,
1:05:05
Speaker 2: uh there, there's kind of this interesting thing going on
1:05:10
Speaker 2: where you have nevertheless, the people of the modern wasteland
1:05:14
Speaker 2: have a nostalgia for a day gone, you know, for
1:05:17
Speaker 2: for for a golden age long gone, right, you know,
1:05:20
Speaker 2: I always like you know I I you know, like
1:05:22
Speaker 2: nostalgia is just like a very powerful force. It's a
1:05:25
Speaker 2: very powerful theme in Fallout. Again, the NCR is chasing
1:05:29
Speaker 2: that nostalgia, even kaisers changed, you know, chasing that nostalgia.
1:05:32
Speaker 2: He's chasing a different kind of nostalgia, but he's chasing,
1:05:35
Speaker 2: you know, kind of like you know that he's chasing
1:05:37
Speaker 2: the golden age of Rome. You know, NCR is chasing
1:05:39
Speaker 2: the golden age of America. And all of the songs
1:05:42
Speaker 2: that they play on the radio are from you know,
1:05:46
Speaker 2: you know, are kind of from the time when people
1:05:48
Speaker 2: you know, like you know, when America was you know,
1:05:51
Speaker 2: very much considered like a peak in its world power,
1:05:53
Speaker 2: like you know, in the you know, like in the
1:05:54
Speaker 2: you know, in the fifties, in the you know, in
1:05:56
Speaker 2: the sixties, you know, in the you know, you know,
1:05:58
Speaker 2: you know, you know, I would you know, you know,
1:06:01
Speaker 2: I would say even like, you know, the nineties, although
1:06:02
Speaker 2: there's nothing there there there's there's there's no nineties themes particularly,
1:06:08
Speaker 2: it's definitely like, you know, but you've got all these
1:06:10
Speaker 2: all this music from like the forties and fifties and
1:06:12
Speaker 2: the sixties and so so that's kind of like one
1:06:16
Speaker 2: way in which that nostalgia presents itself in the world
1:06:19
Speaker 2: of Fallout. But all of these songs in Fallout three,
1:06:21
Speaker 2: I noticed a lot of them, and it's really funny.
1:06:24
Speaker 2: A lot of them were kind of like, you know,
1:06:26
Speaker 2: celebrating in one form or another, you know what you know,
1:06:30
Speaker 2: people would call a moral degeneracy. Actually, and I thought,
1:06:34
Speaker 2: and that actually struck you know when I when you
1:06:36
Speaker 2: put all of the songs in a line and listen
1:06:38
Speaker 2: to them one after the other without them being like
1:06:40
Speaker 2: on a mix, I found that really really interesting, where
1:06:43
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, you know this, you know this, you
1:06:45
Speaker 2: know that this guy is you know, this guy is
1:06:47
Speaker 2: celebrating his uh, you know, his his proclivities, and you
1:06:52
Speaker 2: know in this song and then this other song is like,
1:06:54
Speaker 2: you know, this guy is kind of you know, uh,
1:06:57
Speaker 2: you know, the the is celebrating you know, his vices
1:07:01
Speaker 2: and this you know, there's there's a there's a lot
1:07:03
Speaker 2: of songs that are that are kind of singing and
1:07:05
Speaker 2: celebrating vice, like actually in Fallout three, and I thought
1:07:09
Speaker 2: that was really I thought that was really interesting. I
1:07:11
Speaker 2: don't know how intentional that was or not, but there's
1:07:15
Speaker 2: in either case, there's definitely like a theme there. Hey,
1:07:17
Speaker 2: you know, this golden age that we're pining for, you know,
1:07:21
Speaker 2: like you know in the Ashes of the Civilization is
1:07:24
Speaker 2: a celebration of vice.
1:07:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really interesting. I didn't really consider that, but
1:07:30
Speaker 1: I mean thinking over some of the songs that show
1:07:32
Speaker 1: up on the radio and that that definitely seems like
1:07:34
Speaker 1: a plausible theory or framing that we're looking for this
1:07:40
Speaker 1: golden age provided for us, despite the fact that we
1:07:43
Speaker 1: are not a Golden age kind of people, right, and
1:07:46
Speaker 1: and you can't really achieve the external without the internal,
1:07:51
Speaker 1: at least any kind of really stable sort of way,
1:07:53
Speaker 1: and so you know, we want stability while we're living
1:07:55
Speaker 1: pretty chaotic lives. That this is interesting. I should think
1:07:58
Speaker 1: more about that.
1:08:00
Speaker 2: The other thing that I was thinking about. So we're
1:08:02
Speaker 2: coming back to so Old World Blues, right, where's my finger?
1:08:05
Speaker 2: I was trying to do a circle Old World Blues
1:08:08
Speaker 2: you were talking about like the scientific stuff, you know,
1:08:10
Speaker 2: Old World Blues like poses a very very poignant question
1:08:16
Speaker 2: about so like I guess very very quickly. I guess
1:08:19
Speaker 2: for the for the benefit of listeners who don't know
1:08:22
Speaker 2: or don't remember, they need a refresher. So, like Old
1:08:26
Speaker 2: World Blues is the you know, the courier goes on
1:08:30
Speaker 2: an adventure. He winds up in this area called Big Mountain,
1:08:33
Speaker 2: which was abbreviated you know empty, So it's called Big Empty,
1:08:37
Speaker 2: the Big Empty, and it's basically it was the Big Empty.
1:08:43
Speaker 2: Was this basically this think take where the most brilliant
1:08:46
Speaker 2: minds in the world could you know, do their scientific experiments.
1:08:50
Speaker 2: The scientific experiments of these people got super duper out
1:08:53
Speaker 2: of hand, and they're one of the doctors basically, like,
1:08:57
Speaker 2: you know, one of the doctors thought of his thought
1:08:59
Speaker 2: his were so morally repugnant that like, Okay, if these
1:09:04
Speaker 2: people live, leave the Big Empty, they are going to
1:09:07
Speaker 2: unleash untold devastation on the world in the name of progress.
1:09:12
Speaker 2: I've got to devise a way to trap them in
1:09:16
Speaker 2: here and keep them from leaving. Now, hilariously enough, his
1:09:21
Speaker 2: fears are his fears are well founded. But it doesn't
1:09:26
Speaker 2: come from his colleagues. It came from everybody else when
1:09:29
Speaker 2: the bombs fell. You know, ironically, they all these now,
1:09:32
Speaker 2: all these characters survive as brains in a jar, as
1:09:35
Speaker 2: brains and jars, and they and there's this whole theme
1:09:38
Speaker 2: about how they've kind of like lost their humanity. And
1:09:40
Speaker 2: you can actually talk to all of these very like
1:09:42
Speaker 2: you know, crazy characters, and you help them in various ways,
1:09:46
Speaker 2: whether it's good or you know, whether it's for good
1:09:48
Speaker 2: or not. You are helping each of these characters try
1:09:52
Speaker 2: to connect with their humanity that has been stripped from
1:09:54
Speaker 2: them over the last two hundred years. But like the like, uh,
1:09:59
Speaker 2: the the character that you are opposed to in the beginning,
1:10:03
Speaker 2: this doctor, this doctor Mobius guy, he's kind of passed
1:10:06
Speaker 2: off as your antagonist, but you get to the end
1:10:09
Speaker 2: and you find out that, you know, he was the
1:10:10
Speaker 2: guy who was trying to stop all of this horrible
1:10:12
Speaker 2: stuff from happening. And they do like they do like
1:10:15
Speaker 2: this this is basically the moment where your character goes
1:10:17
Speaker 2: full overpowered. You turn into a cyborg. They rip out
1:10:20
Speaker 2: your brain, they rip out your spine, they rip out
1:10:22
Speaker 2: your heart, and they replace it with like this technology
1:10:25
Speaker 2: that kind of keeps you going, and you can you
1:10:28
Speaker 2: can get all these body parts back. One of the
1:10:30
Speaker 2: hilarious things when you taught, when you actually confront this
1:10:32
Speaker 2: doctor Mobius guy, you know, who was trying to save
1:10:35
Speaker 2: the world from his colleagues. He's like, well, yeah you can.
1:10:38
Speaker 2: You can have your brain back, but it's probably it's
1:10:43
Speaker 2: probably gonna not wanna. It's probably gonna not want to
1:10:49
Speaker 2: come back to you. It's like, what, what the heck
1:10:51
Speaker 2: are you talking about? One of the hilarious I completely
1:10:54
Speaker 2: I completely forgot about this. You have an argument with
1:10:58
Speaker 2: your own brain to get it back inside your head,
1:11:01
Speaker 2: and your brain is blaming you for everything that's ever
1:11:04
Speaker 2: happened to it, like, man, if it wasn't for the
1:11:06
Speaker 2: decisions that you made, then we wouldn't have gotten shot
1:11:09
Speaker 2: in the head, like I like, and then you can
1:11:12
Speaker 2: argue back with your brain and say like look like listen, brain,
1:11:17
Speaker 2: like you know you're like you know, you're you're a
1:11:19
Speaker 2: non trivial reason why I make decisions in the first place,
1:11:22
Speaker 2: Like you know, this is like the fact that I
1:11:24
Speaker 2: got shot in the head. It's not my fault. It's
1:11:26
Speaker 2: so funny. But the thing that Old World Blues, that
1:11:31
Speaker 2: the poignant question that Old World Blues is asking is
1:11:36
Speaker 2: like when is scientific progress good? Like when has it
1:11:40
Speaker 2: gone too far? Like that is like like that that
1:11:45
Speaker 2: is like that is the theme of Old World Blues
1:11:48
Speaker 2: there for New Vegas and they they they they have
1:11:52
Speaker 2: they have a lot of fun with it, but they're
1:11:53
Speaker 2: also posing a really interesting progress, interesting question about the
1:11:58
Speaker 2: nature of progress. When is progres resk good? When is
1:12:01
Speaker 2: it not? When have we crossed the line?
1:12:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's it. It's a good question. And yeah, I've
1:12:07
Speaker 1: forgot about much of this scenario. I really can't wait
1:12:10
Speaker 1: to go back and play it again. It's just so's
1:12:12
Speaker 1: aany but but yes, this question of okay, when does
1:12:15
Speaker 1: science go too far? I mean, my principal source for
1:12:19
Speaker 1: this would be C. S. Lewis is The Abolition of Man,
1:12:22
Speaker 1: where he talks about men without chess, which in this
1:12:25
Speaker 1: case would be brain in a jar. Right, this quite
1:12:28
Speaker 1: literally you're missing a chest or or in that hideous
1:12:31
Speaker 1: strength in to something similar and you know, really what
1:12:34
Speaker 1: it comes down to is is our technology helping us
1:12:37
Speaker 1: to operate more in line with our nature or less
1:12:42
Speaker 1: in line with our nature? But even that isn't necessarily
1:12:45
Speaker 1: easy to answer. I mean, we could say that good
1:12:48
Speaker 1: medicine helps us to operate more in line with human
1:12:52
Speaker 1: nature by by curing the things that would cause deformation,
1:12:57
Speaker 1: things that cause corruption. Right, we heal diseases, we fix injuries.
1:13:02
Speaker 1: But I guess the question is at what point are
1:13:06
Speaker 1: we stepping beyond nature? And that is not necessarily an
1:13:10
Speaker 1: easy question to answer. I mean, think, for example, like
1:13:13
Speaker 1: you know, elon Musk neuralink stuff like I mean, I
1:13:18
Speaker 1: see people talking about how they literally couldn't do anything
1:13:23
Speaker 1: in life and now they can. And is that restoration
1:13:27
Speaker 1: of something like basic human functioning, basic bodily functioning. Is
1:13:32
Speaker 1: that a good thing? Well, it's hard to say that
1:13:34
Speaker 1: it's not. But at the same time, we can readily
1:13:37
Speaker 1: recognize the totally dystopian ways that this technology can go,
1:13:42
Speaker 1: and then the question can be asked, like is it
1:13:45
Speaker 1: technology itself a good thing or not?
1:13:47
Speaker 2: I mean, it's already kind of there, like I don't know,
1:13:49
Speaker 2: like I don't know, I don't know every single use
1:13:52
Speaker 2: case for like his neural chip stuff. But I do
1:13:54
Speaker 2: know it's ended. Actually it's ended badly for some of
1:13:57
Speaker 2: his for some of his human test subjects where either
1:14:00
Speaker 2: either like it stops working or they have to take
1:14:03
Speaker 2: it out, they have to take the chip out of
1:14:04
Speaker 2: the guy, out of the person for one reason or another,
1:14:07
Speaker 2: and then they end up. And then they they ended
1:14:12
Speaker 2: for at least one of these people. They they were
1:14:15
Speaker 2: they they weren't just right back where they started. They
1:14:17
Speaker 2: were worse. Yeah, like like there is like there has
1:14:21
Speaker 2: been like there there has been like some there's been
1:14:24
Speaker 2: like some really unfortunate stuff that's come out of it too.
1:14:27
Speaker 2: Like so like on theory on on paper, right, the
1:14:31
Speaker 2: idea that we can use this technology to help people
1:14:33
Speaker 2: and restore people like you know, yeah, we can see
1:14:36
Speaker 2: like you know, that's you know, that's all. That's always
1:14:39
Speaker 2: a wonderful idea on paper like that you want to see,
1:14:43
Speaker 2: you know, and then then of course you know, but
1:14:45
Speaker 2: then of course you are instantly on that tightrope. You
1:14:48
Speaker 2: were opening the floodgate to like all sorts of problems,
1:14:53
Speaker 2: and okay, where is the you know, where you know,
1:14:56
Speaker 2: where is the line? When have we crossed it. When
1:14:58
Speaker 2: does it become when does it become problematic in the
1:15:01
Speaker 2: hear and now it's in the here and now it's
1:15:04
Speaker 2: problematic because like you know, some of these people that
1:15:07
Speaker 2: he has help that you know that he was a
1:15:09
Speaker 2: helping initially you know now like you know, you know
1:15:12
Speaker 2: now they're hurting or you know they're worse or you
1:15:15
Speaker 2: know whatever. And uh And as far as the rest
1:15:21
Speaker 2: of the chips though, like keep it away from my brain.
1:15:23
Speaker 2: If it goes in my head, I don't want it.
1:15:26
Speaker 1: And and I mean inevitably that has to be where
1:15:29
Speaker 1: things are headed. Where it begins with how do we
1:15:32
Speaker 1: restore what isn't working to now? What do we how
1:15:34
Speaker 1: do we enhance what is working right? How do we
1:15:37
Speaker 1: enhance healthy subjects? And like I just I feel like
1:15:41
Speaker 1: that sort of thing that's sort of technology is only
1:15:44
Speaker 1: a matter of time, right, And the most we can
1:15:47
Speaker 1: do is put on the brakes a little bit and say,
1:15:50
Speaker 1: like you know, watch out by Rick, reminding people of
1:15:54
Speaker 1: what it actually means to be human, that we are
1:15:56
Speaker 1: more than simply functionality. There's a deeper center to us.
1:16:01
Speaker 1: But I mean it's inevitably this is where technology is
1:16:05
Speaker 1: going to go and of course every once in a while,
1:16:08
Speaker 1: just recently Musk, and obviously Musk is one of the
1:16:11
Speaker 1: central figures in this whole conversation, at least at this
1:16:14
Speaker 1: point in history. Yes, he said something about how, you know,
1:16:18
Speaker 1: what if our primary purpose is to give the sun consciousness,
1:16:23
Speaker 1: which I don't even know what that means, but.
1:16:25
Speaker 2: I think I remember you quoting that it.
1:16:27
Speaker 1: Sounds terribly dystopian.
1:16:30
Speaker 2: It's yeah, it's sounds it sounds really weird. I think
1:16:32
Speaker 2: we would have, like, I think we would have like
1:16:34
Speaker 2: a really good conversation on the cyberpunk genre. I love
1:16:37
Speaker 2: the cyberpunk genre. The cyberpunk genre is the epitome of like,
1:16:42
Speaker 2: you know, the apple of Eden as technology, you know,
1:16:46
Speaker 2: or not the app you we all know it's not
1:16:48
Speaker 2: really an apple, right, but like the fruit of eden
1:16:51
Speaker 2: as like you know, as as technology you know, that
1:16:54
Speaker 2: is you know, that is the that is at the
1:16:56
Speaker 2: heart of of cyberpunk. That that's we're kind of getting
1:17:01
Speaker 2: off topic here with that though, but that is that
1:17:04
Speaker 2: would be like that would be uh, that would be
1:17:07
Speaker 2: a good conversation.
1:17:08
Speaker 1: Right, But I guess it's still kind of within the
1:17:10
Speaker 1: domain that we're started with. Of Yes, of of how
1:17:15
Speaker 1: do we use technology to advance human nature versus how
1:17:18
Speaker 1: do we use technology to create human nature? Which which
1:17:21
Speaker 1: can bring us back to some you know, older conversations
1:17:25
Speaker 1: of like is there such a thing as a human essence? Which,
1:17:27
Speaker 1: of course I would say there is, but go to
1:17:30
Speaker 1: postmodern leaders like Jean Paul Sart who says, well, no,
1:17:35
Speaker 1: we exist and then we create our essence out of
1:17:37
Speaker 1: the decisions that we make. And so these are two
1:17:39
Speaker 1: fundamentally different ways of viewing what human what humanity is.
1:17:46
Speaker 2: Well, I think we here at mythic mind are right
1:17:49
Speaker 2: and those other people are silly wrong due to heads.
1:17:53
Speaker 2: Well that is my and that is my disc you know,
1:17:55
Speaker 2: that is my discourse. Thank you for coming to my
1:17:58
Speaker 2: ted talk.
1:17:58
Speaker 1: Yes, and obviously that is correct.
1:18:03
Speaker 2: But there is a conversation to be had there, like
1:18:06
Speaker 2: if only for the sake of the conversation itself.
1:18:10
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, And and I mean really that's it's a
1:18:15
Speaker 1: it's a dangerous position. And Lewis talked about this an
1:18:17
Speaker 1: abolition of man, that that if we say there's no
1:18:19
Speaker 1: such a thing as human essence, there's just functionality, then
1:18:23
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, what we're getting to
1:18:24
Speaker 1: get is not more freedom. Right. We tend to think
1:18:28
Speaker 1: that as technology advances, well, more people will be free
1:18:32
Speaker 1: because more people will have limitations of disease and handicap
1:18:36
Speaker 1: and whatever. More these things will be cured and done
1:18:39
Speaker 1: away with. But in reality, more and more people will
1:18:43
Speaker 1: become dependent on the fewer and fewer people who happen
1:18:46
Speaker 1: to be in power, who happen to hold the reins
1:18:49
Speaker 1: on such technology. Right, it's just like smartphones, Like, you know,
1:18:53
Speaker 1: we we give away a great deal of freedom the
1:18:56
Speaker 1: more that we depend on those who provide us with smartphones, right,
1:19:00
Speaker 1: And so it's actually fewer and fewer people who end
1:19:03
Speaker 1: up with more and more power. Over time, well, more
1:19:06
Speaker 1: and more people become dependent, and so's it's not that
1:19:10
Speaker 1: the proliferation of technology makes more people free. It actually,
1:19:14
Speaker 1: in the long run makes more people dependent. Yes, yeah,
1:19:23
Speaker 1: I don't. You don't have to come out on amore.
1:19:26
Speaker 2: I I wish no, no, I I wish I I
1:19:29
Speaker 2: I I wish I was, I wish I was, like
1:19:32
Speaker 2: uh more more prepared to engage with that thought.
1:19:37
Speaker 1: A little bit bey on fallout at this point.
1:19:39
Speaker 2: No, it's no, no, yeah, it's it's yeah, yeah, it's
1:19:42
Speaker 2: it's fine, there's a Yeah, there's a there's a there's
1:19:44
Speaker 2: a lot of good stuff to talk about. I have
1:19:46
Speaker 2: I have a couple other things here if you're willing,
1:19:49
Speaker 2: if we still have the.
1:19:49
Speaker 1: Time, sure, sure.
1:19:51
Speaker 2: Uh Like, I feel like we are doing a horrible,
1:19:55
Speaker 2: horrendous disservice to followut New Vegas. And I'm sure people
1:19:59
Speaker 2: have been screaming at us all this time with talking
1:20:01
Speaker 2: about the NCR and Nuvey and the Legion and blah
1:20:04
Speaker 2: blah blah blah blah. We have barely brought up mister
1:20:07
Speaker 2: House himself.
1:20:08
Speaker 1: Correct.
1:20:09
Speaker 2: All right, So what do you think, mister Andrew Snyder
1:20:17
Speaker 2: about mister Howes. I mean the wizard in the Tower,
1:20:21
Speaker 2: the wizard in the Wizard of Oz. You know, don't
1:20:24
Speaker 2: look don't like you know, he's got the big green
1:20:27
Speaker 2: head on the screen, don't pay attention to the little
1:20:30
Speaker 2: little shriveled man in the coffin.
1:20:33
Speaker 1: Well you can get I think, some kind of achievement
1:20:36
Speaker 1: or bonus if you eat him.
1:20:38
Speaker 2: Oh my god, you know what. The cannibalism. Cannibalism perk
1:20:42
Speaker 2: is the thing. I shouldn't be surprised.
1:20:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, you get a bonus if you eat him or
1:20:48
Speaker 1: or if you eat Kaiser or some of the others.
1:20:51
Speaker 1: But anyways, that's hilarious. That's a little bit beside the
1:20:53
Speaker 1: point that, Yeah, I I actually, from what I can remember,
1:20:59
Speaker 1: I tend to prefer House over the alternatives. If for
1:21:04
Speaker 1: no other reason then the conservative in me wants to
1:21:08
Speaker 1: preserve something of the old world, which he definitely represents
1:21:12
Speaker 1: and sort of brings into the wasteland. Now, that's not
1:21:19
Speaker 1: a very nuanced view, and I don't remember a lot
1:21:21
Speaker 1: of particularities here, so maybe maybe you can provide some
1:21:23
Speaker 1: direction or some thoughts here.
1:21:28
Speaker 2: So I am so I remember my very first playthrough,
1:21:33
Speaker 2: and again I'm like twenty years like I was like
1:21:35
Speaker 2: twenty years old. Yeah, you know, so this was like
1:21:37
Speaker 2: you know, this was this was a while ago. I
1:21:41
Speaker 2: am definitely not that age now, But I remember siding
1:21:47
Speaker 2: with mister House on the first play through, and the
1:21:52
Speaker 2: more I got to the conclusion of the main quest,
1:21:57
Speaker 2: the more I didn't enjoy it. And just like, you know,
1:22:02
Speaker 2: just like just like like personally, like you know, like
1:22:08
Speaker 2: you know, you know, gay, you know, game you know,
1:22:11
Speaker 2: gameplay is one thing, right, you know, we all do
1:22:13
Speaker 2: various whatever in these games, and that's all fun. And
1:22:15
Speaker 2: awesome and dandy. Personally, I was not enjoying mister House
1:22:19
Speaker 2: very much by the end. He he was, He's very much.
1:22:26
Speaker 2: He's really not much different from anybody else in the wasteland.
1:22:30
Speaker 2: He is like, you know, he is his own dictator,
1:22:32
Speaker 2: you know. He he does if you are going to
1:22:35
Speaker 2: go along with his planned he insists that there are
1:22:39
Speaker 2: you know, there are people groups that you know, you
1:22:44
Speaker 2: that you must wipe out that you may not necessarily
1:22:47
Speaker 2: want to wipe out the way he kind of like
1:22:50
Speaker 2: the way he kind of like treats his own people.
1:22:53
Speaker 2: Uh Like he he like one of the one of
1:22:56
Speaker 2: the vaults that's actually within New Vegas itself, Like keyes
1:23:00
Speaker 2: he basically like evicted the entire population and filled the
1:23:05
Speaker 2: vault with concrete, you know, like like completely flooded it
1:23:09
Speaker 2: with you know, with like solid with concrete so that
1:23:11
Speaker 2: they couldn't go back in the vault. Now, like there
1:23:13
Speaker 2: is some I don't know, I don't remember all the
1:23:15
Speaker 2: history about mister House Apparently, like there's some lore that
1:23:19
Speaker 2: that was his vault that that he you know, that
1:23:24
Speaker 2: that he himself was in when the whole thing, you know,
1:23:26
Speaker 2: when everything went down. It was a I do remember
1:23:31
Speaker 2: it was a gambling vault. The interesting thing about mister
1:23:34
Speaker 2: House is that he tolerates the vice of gambling within
1:23:39
Speaker 2: New Vegas. He sees it as a means to an end.
1:23:41
Speaker 2: But he himself, he's got the long term goal of
1:23:43
Speaker 2: wanting to abolish gambling, which I think in and of
1:23:46
Speaker 2: itself is not a bad thing. But everything that he
1:23:51
Speaker 2: does to kind of achieve his own ends is itself
1:23:54
Speaker 2: very like uh uh dictatorial? Is that how you say that?
1:24:00
Speaker 2: Like the dictatorial oppressive? He's you know, he's so like
1:24:06
Speaker 2: in that sense. He is very much kind of like
1:24:08
Speaker 2: the the the the unchecked, kind of like power hungry,
1:24:14
Speaker 2: kind of libertarian tech bro that I personally find very distasteful.
1:24:21
Speaker 2: He's got some lovely ideas on paper, in practice, I
1:24:28
Speaker 2: don't think he's I don't think he's a particularly lovely
1:24:31
Speaker 2: person or a beneficent ruler in any way, shape or form.
1:24:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's definitely not a hero. But he does provide,
1:24:39
Speaker 1: at least arguably provides the kind of law and order
1:24:42
Speaker 1: that we said was largely missing from the legion that
1:24:44
Speaker 1: potentially could have been there.
1:24:46
Speaker 2: There is, Yeah, go ahead, I'm sorry, No.
1:24:48
Speaker 1: No, that that's basically it. That that he is the
1:24:50
Speaker 1: he's the law and order candidate, which you know, all
1:24:53
Speaker 1: things considered might not be good, but that itself could
1:24:55
Speaker 1: potentially be a good thing and otherwise chaotic scenario, there.
1:25:00
Speaker 2: Is an argument to be made, like you know, and
1:25:03
Speaker 2: people like one of the Again, one of the fun
1:25:05
Speaker 2: things about New Vegas is that you know, people have
1:25:07
Speaker 2: been you know, just just as people have been spending
1:25:11
Speaker 2: the last ten years passionately arguing Storm Cloaker Empire, people
1:25:18
Speaker 2: have been spending the last ten, you know, fifteen years
1:25:21
Speaker 2: actually passionately arguing NCR, or like, no one's really arguing legion.
1:25:27
Speaker 2: You know, some people are are some people are on
1:25:30
Speaker 2: ironically arguing legion. I love you, I love you all.
1:25:34
Speaker 2: I just I just want to preface that. But that's
1:25:36
Speaker 2: just weird. I don't understand it, you know, so like
1:25:40
Speaker 2: so realistically people are saying NCR versus house versus independent
1:25:48
Speaker 2: or you know or independent you know, like house is
1:25:51
Speaker 2: technically independent, but like independent where the courier is calling
1:25:54
Speaker 2: the shots, right, you know, those are realistically kind of
1:25:57
Speaker 2: like the three things that everyone's arguing, and like they've
1:26:00
Speaker 2: been doing it for years. No one's come out on
1:26:02
Speaker 2: top when it comes to that argument, and it's a
1:26:05
Speaker 2: testament to the writing of the game itself that it
1:26:09
Speaker 2: presents us with just kind of actually like these really
1:26:12
Speaker 2: interesting like moral quandrums and socratic exercises for kind of
1:26:19
Speaker 2: like you know, like this situation like you know, how
1:26:21
Speaker 2: like what is what is the best situation going forward?
1:26:24
Speaker 2: Kind of like for like the stability and the well
1:26:27
Speaker 2: being of the people in this region in a post
1:26:29
Speaker 2: apocalyptic world. And the fact that and the fact that
1:26:34
Speaker 2: people feel so strongly about these topics, like you know,
1:26:37
Speaker 2: shows that there is just kind of there's there's there's
1:26:39
Speaker 2: kind of a relevance to these ideas that kind of
1:26:42
Speaker 2: like that kind of like touches our souls almost And
1:26:45
Speaker 2: that's and that's that is too New Vegas's credit that
1:26:49
Speaker 2: you can that we can have these conversations at all,
1:26:52
Speaker 2: Like that's one of the that that's kind of like
1:26:54
Speaker 2: one of the strengths as you know, like you know,
1:26:58
Speaker 2: as you know art as a medium, as video games
1:27:00
Speaker 2: as a medium, and especially as Fall like in particular,
1:27:03
Speaker 2: you know, as followed New Vegas as as a as
1:27:06
Speaker 2: a piece of interactive art and storytelling.
1:27:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, And uh so, so where do you land
1:27:14
Speaker 1: who should control Vegas.
1:27:16
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh. It's one of those things where I
1:27:19
Speaker 2: don't think there is a right answer. Once upon of well,
1:27:23
Speaker 2: you know, once upon a time, like a very young
1:27:25
Speaker 2: me would have said, like, oh maybe House, But then
1:27:28
Speaker 2: I very quickly like I like I was, I was,
1:27:32
Speaker 2: I was very quickly housepilled, until I was very quickly
1:27:35
Speaker 2: not housepilled, like within the same playthrough. I feel like
1:27:40
Speaker 2: independence is a is a lovely idea on paper, assuming
1:27:47
Speaker 2: you can maintain your own order instability, because like even
1:27:51
Speaker 2: if it's just you, like like you like, even if
1:27:53
Speaker 2: it's just you, you are still like you are still
1:27:57
Speaker 2: kind of like dispensing order because you take control of
1:28:00
Speaker 2: House's robot army. You know that he uses for the
1:28:03
Speaker 2: you know that he uses for like protection and defense
1:28:07
Speaker 2: and the like dispensing and maintaining and maintaining of order
1:28:10
Speaker 2: and justice. So it's not like there's like a there's
1:28:13
Speaker 2: it's not like there's a big you know, it's not
1:28:15
Speaker 2: like there's a big change there in that regard. You
1:28:17
Speaker 2: have the resources, you are holding, the resources, you are
1:28:20
Speaker 2: holding the cards. The question is can you play the
1:28:22
Speaker 2: cards right? And I think that answer is up to
1:28:26
Speaker 2: the individual player. But from a from a realistic standpoint,
1:28:33
Speaker 2: I think the answer to that question is almost beyond
1:28:36
Speaker 2: the scope of the game to to fully answer. And
1:28:40
Speaker 2: kind of like with any kind of justified or with
1:28:44
Speaker 2: any kind of justification or satisfaction, there is you know,
1:28:48
Speaker 2: that there is a case to be made that there
1:28:51
Speaker 2: is no long term stability to be had in independence,
1:28:57
Speaker 2: and that includes even with house because of what the
1:29:00
Speaker 2: Hoover Dam itself provides in a post apocalyptic world where
1:29:04
Speaker 2: resources are so scarce. The fact of the matter is that,
1:29:07
Speaker 2: like you know, whether you push people out, even if
1:29:10
Speaker 2: it's just for a little bit, they want the dam,
1:29:13
Speaker 2: They're going to come back, like you know, if it
1:29:16
Speaker 2: you know, even you know, it may not be today,
1:29:18
Speaker 2: it may not be tomorrow, you know, But what happens when,
1:29:23
Speaker 2: like you know, in the next you know, ten or fifteen,
1:29:25
Speaker 2: twenty years, you know, NCR decides you know, round two
1:29:29
Speaker 2: for the damn here we are. You know, what if
1:29:32
Speaker 2: Caesar's legion comes back or you know, some other huge
1:29:36
Speaker 2: tribal power you know, or some other you know, some
1:29:38
Speaker 2: other power within the game, what happens when they come
1:29:41
Speaker 2: back and then we're right back where we started, Like
1:29:44
Speaker 2: New Vegas in Fallout is just kind of in the
1:29:47
Speaker 2: undesirable situation of being like the piece that everybody wants
1:29:57
Speaker 2: on the board. And I think that to that end,
1:30:03
Speaker 2: I don't think the NCR is like and like, you know, again,
1:30:12
Speaker 2: not not even not even bringing any real world analogs
1:30:15
Speaker 2: into it, Okay, like you know, not not even bringing
1:30:18
Speaker 2: real world stuff, real world politics, real world America into it,
1:30:22
Speaker 2: just judging on judging the game and the and the
1:30:25
Speaker 2: and the and the and the the the the the
1:30:28
Speaker 2: the political powers and and all the characters in the
1:30:31
Speaker 2: story on their own merits, which can be done because
1:30:34
Speaker 2: this game is well written enough that this story stands
1:30:37
Speaker 2: on its own merits without necessarily those outside influences. Like
1:30:43
Speaker 2: the NCR is not great, but there is a case
1:30:48
Speaker 2: to be made that if anyone's going to have the
1:30:53
Speaker 2: damn we're probably better off with it being the NCR
1:30:59
Speaker 2: than some other power, certainly Caesar's Legion.
1:31:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, obviously NCR is preferable to the Legion.
1:31:08
Speaker 2: I think that's that's a low bar though.
1:31:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the obvious one. I mean, I feel like
1:31:14
Speaker 1: in this sort of chaotic environment, I mean, this is
1:31:17
Speaker 1: when you need a strong leader, and it seems like
1:31:21
Speaker 1: the NCR is just not capable of providing that any
1:31:26
Speaker 1: kind of stable long term scenario. Yeah, and so that's
1:31:30
Speaker 1: why I would say either house or kind of courier
1:31:35
Speaker 1: led Vegas that you just you need. You need a
1:31:40
Speaker 1: strong force, You need a strong central leader to provide
1:31:44
Speaker 1: that kind of order in a time of chaos and
1:31:48
Speaker 1: widespread violence.
1:31:49
Speaker 2: You do have a giant robot army that is very
1:31:53
Speaker 2: like nobody else, like you know, like nobody else has
1:31:55
Speaker 2: that robot army. And it's a pretty good robot army.
1:31:58
Speaker 2: So I mean, you know, oh, like I feel like
1:32:02
Speaker 2: you know, I I I think, you know, I think
1:32:04
Speaker 2: most factions would think twice before fighting that robot army.
1:32:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And so uh, moral as story is, if
1:32:12
Speaker 1: you want security, well you should get a giant robot army.
1:32:16
Speaker 2: There you go. That's you know, that's our new Vegas tag.
1:32:19
Speaker 2: Talk ted talk, get yourself a giant robot army. Thank
1:32:21
Speaker 2: you everybody. Do we do we have time for one more?
1:32:26
Speaker 2: Or do we want to call it? All right?
1:32:28
Speaker 1: We can do one more. We'll call it.
1:32:30
Speaker 2: One more, all right. So one of the interesting things
1:32:33
Speaker 2: about like this, what a what a bummer, you know,
1:32:36
Speaker 2: it's fine. So the Lonesome Road DLC, What do you
1:32:44
Speaker 2: remember about that?
1:32:47
Speaker 1: Not a whole lot. I remember appreciate it at the time,
1:32:51
Speaker 1: but I just don't remember a whole lot about it.
1:32:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't remember all the ins and outs of it,
1:32:56
Speaker 2: like I wish I did. The gist of Lonesome Road
1:32:59
Speaker 2: is is the final DLC for the game, and it's
1:33:01
Speaker 2: supposed to be kind of like the culmination in a
1:33:04
Speaker 2: lot of ways. It's the culmination of the story, and
1:33:07
Speaker 2: it's the culmination of all the other DLCs as well.
1:33:09
Speaker 2: One of the things that New Vegas did really really well,
1:33:12
Speaker 2: you know, with just like incredible writing, incredible in depth
1:33:14
Speaker 2: faction system, but also just like incredible like attention to
1:33:20
Speaker 2: detail and connecting all these little threads and stories together.
1:33:24
Speaker 2: All throughout the main story of New Vegas. You have
1:33:29
Speaker 2: hints here and there of like this rival that apparently
1:33:34
Speaker 2: your character has that's kind of stalking you in the
1:33:37
Speaker 2: shadows a little bit but never really comes into the light.
1:33:39
Speaker 2: And the rival kind of like you know, like all
1:33:42
Speaker 2: all of the characters across you know, dead money, honest hearts, ooh,
1:33:47
Speaker 2: honest hearts. Darn you know, what It's fine, Sorry, Joshua Graham.
1:33:51
Speaker 2: Maybe next time. But like across all of the DLC's,
1:33:56
Speaker 2: there's actually a lot of overlap between all of those
1:33:58
Speaker 2: characters and all of the events that happen in the
1:34:02
Speaker 2: game that you just don't really see in a lot
1:34:05
Speaker 2: of stories. But Lonesome Road tries to tie all of
1:34:08
Speaker 2: that together. You have you have this character who is
1:34:12
Speaker 2: your who is your arrival, and his name is Ulysses.
1:34:15
Speaker 2: And this is the part where it's kind of weird.
1:34:19
Speaker 2: Lonesome Road basically tries to give the Courier a backstory,
1:34:22
Speaker 2: and the backstory basically comes down to, well, uh Ulysses
1:34:27
Speaker 2: is basically calling to your character to come and have
1:34:30
Speaker 2: like a final confrontation with him, and he's really mad
1:34:33
Speaker 2: at you for some reason. He's mad at something. He's
1:34:35
Speaker 2: mad at you for something that you apparently did. But
1:34:38
Speaker 2: the long story short is that back in your Courier days,
1:34:43
Speaker 2: you delivered a package for the by by order of
1:34:48
Speaker 2: the NCR, and it had the package had some old
1:34:53
Speaker 2: world symbols on it, and it's implied that these are
1:34:57
Speaker 2: maybe like nuclear codes or something. They have these old
1:35:00
Speaker 2: world symbols on it. They didn't really know what they were,
1:35:02
Speaker 2: but they were trying to decipher them. They wanted to
1:35:05
Speaker 2: control it. They didn't want the Legion to have it. Yea, YadA, YadA, YadA.
1:35:08
Speaker 2: You delivered you delivered this package to this place called
1:35:12
Speaker 2: the Divide. It was this, it was this town, this village,
1:35:16
Speaker 2: the city called the Divide. And your character apparent like
1:35:22
Speaker 2: it's hard to say how much your character knew. Apparently
1:35:24
Speaker 2: they didn't know a whole lot. But essentially what happened
1:35:28
Speaker 2: was when your character delivered this package to this NCR
1:35:32
Speaker 2: research facility at the Divide, it activated. Uh there was
1:35:36
Speaker 2: a bunch of missile silos at the Divide. This package
1:35:39
Speaker 2: activated all of the missiles in the missile silos, and
1:35:42
Speaker 2: the missiles detonated inside the silos and destroyed the city
1:35:47
Speaker 2: and then also created an earthquake. Because I think it's
1:35:50
Speaker 2: I think that I think the reason why it's called
1:35:51
Speaker 2: the Divide is because it's on the fault line. Uh
1:35:55
Speaker 2: So basically, you you, you inadvertently destroyed this town ulysses
1:36:01
Speaker 2: Is And I wish we had more time for this.
1:36:05
Speaker 2: I wish we could do this more justice. So this
1:36:08
Speaker 2: might be better off for your Ballout series. This might
1:36:11
Speaker 2: be a better question to ask for your fallout series,
1:36:13
Speaker 2: but I'm going to do it now anyway, and we
1:36:15
Speaker 2: can come back to that. We can come back to
1:36:17
Speaker 2: it later. But because there's a lot of the final
1:36:22
Speaker 2: boss of Lonesome Road is you basically having a big
1:36:27
Speaker 2: fat philosophical debate with Ulysses and one of the things,
1:36:32
Speaker 2: and he talks about a lot of things, but one
1:36:33
Speaker 2: of the things he does is that he holds you
1:36:37
Speaker 2: personally responsible for delivering that package, even though nobody really
1:36:43
Speaker 2: seems to know what the package was or what it did.
1:36:48
Speaker 2: So one of the I guess one of the questions
1:36:51
Speaker 2: that I was going to ask you, basically from a
1:36:54
Speaker 2: point of philosophy, when it comes to blame in a situation,
1:36:58
Speaker 2: when it comes to blame, when it comes to fault,
1:37:00
Speaker 2: like in a situation like that. You know, we're arguing
1:37:03
Speaker 2: butterfly effect here, right, you know. So I guess my
1:37:06
Speaker 2: question was to you, as a teacher of philosophy, you know,
1:37:11
Speaker 2: what would how would the Greek how would the various
1:37:15
Speaker 2: Greek philosophers, how might they like address the that that
1:37:20
Speaker 2: issue of who's at fault, who is to blame? You know,
1:37:24
Speaker 2: or or maybe you know, maybe one of your favorites,
1:37:26
Speaker 2: like you know, Lewis or Kirkagard or somebody like what
1:37:29
Speaker 2: would these various philosophers have to say on the issue
1:37:32
Speaker 2: of the butterfly effect and who's at fault in a
1:37:35
Speaker 2: situation like this?
1:37:37
Speaker 1: I mean, the reality is that in any particular situation,
1:37:40
Speaker 1: all you can do is act in virtue in accordance
1:37:44
Speaker 1: to the knowledge that you have, yes or that you
1:37:47
Speaker 1: can reasonably have, right, I mean, ignorance itself is sometimes culpable,
1:37:52
Speaker 1: But as far as what is reasonable for you to
1:37:55
Speaker 1: know in that occasion, will you act within those parameters
1:37:58
Speaker 1: to decide what is most likely the the good course
1:38:03
Speaker 1: of action here? And you know, the Aristotle would would
1:38:08
Speaker 1: say that ultimately virtue comes down to figuring out, like
1:38:12
Speaker 1: what is the right action in this particular situation. And
1:38:16
Speaker 1: you know, for the courier in this case, I mean,
1:38:18
Speaker 1: if he doesn't really know what's happening, then he ultimately
1:38:22
Speaker 1: is not culpable for whatever transpire.
1:38:25
Speaker 2: Right.
1:38:26
Speaker 1: And so now remind me where does this detonator or
1:38:31
Speaker 1: this package, where does it originally come from?
1:38:34
Speaker 2: It's not I I don't remember the details. It's not clear.
1:38:39
Speaker 2: It's it's it's not clear like you you like and
1:38:44
Speaker 2: the and the like. There's a whole debate that goes
1:38:46
Speaker 2: with it. Ulysses is making the argument that you are
1:38:50
Speaker 2: that the courier was culpable in his ignorance, but you
1:38:54
Speaker 2: can also make you can also like one of the
1:38:57
Speaker 2: arguments that you can make to him, if I remember correctly,
1:38:59
Speaker 2: am I getting something wrong? But if I remember correctly,
1:39:02
Speaker 2: one of the arguments that you can give to Ulysses
1:39:05
Speaker 2: is that if anything like the NCR is at fault
1:39:09
Speaker 2: for the negligence, you know or like that they they
1:39:13
Speaker 2: they they they have they they share more of the
1:39:15
Speaker 2: blame for negligence for dealing with such a for dealing
1:39:18
Speaker 2: with such a dangerous package, you know that they just
1:39:21
Speaker 2: so desperately had to have, you know, and and maybe
1:39:25
Speaker 2: not necessarily you so much. It's one of those It's
1:39:28
Speaker 2: one of those things where like, you know, uh, we
1:39:33
Speaker 2: could probably we would probably do more justice to this
1:39:36
Speaker 2: conversation playing the DLC and also like having kind of
1:39:41
Speaker 2: like the the like the tech the text document of
1:39:46
Speaker 2: ulysses monologue basically his big long monologue and kind of
1:39:50
Speaker 2: analyzing kind of like his arguments and what he is saying.
1:39:54
Speaker 2: But I thought I would just uh, I thought I
1:39:56
Speaker 2: would just like throw it out there and say like, oh,
1:39:59
Speaker 2: you know, like what would you know, what would what
1:40:01
Speaker 2: would Socrates say in this situation? What would Aristotle think
1:40:04
Speaker 2: about this in this situation? You know, what would you know? Whatever?
1:40:07
Speaker 2: And I just I just wanted to see what you
1:40:08
Speaker 2: would say.
1:40:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so based off yeah, how it's been framed
1:40:13
Speaker 1: and what I remember, it really just comes down.
1:40:15
Speaker 2: I haven't given you much to go on. I do apologize.
1:40:18
Speaker 2: What happens. This is what happens when you're like, you know,
1:40:21
Speaker 2: you're you're coming to the end and you're trying to
1:40:23
Speaker 2: like scramble to fill out your little notepad.
1:40:26
Speaker 1: No, no, yeah, I'm sure that there's more nuanced than
1:40:29
Speaker 1: we're providing it here. Sure, And so yeah, maybe probably speaking.
1:40:34
Speaker 2: You and I are in agreement, like basically like as
1:40:37
Speaker 2: to the issue I was, which is why I was
1:40:39
Speaker 2: trying to frame it with oh what would what? What
1:40:41
Speaker 2: would the Greeks have said? Right?
1:40:44
Speaker 1: And it still really comes down to the same basic
1:40:47
Speaker 1: issue of you can only act in accordance with the
1:40:49
Speaker 1: knowledge that you have, and so you can be virtuous
1:40:54
Speaker 1: even if your active virtue leads to bad consequences because
1:40:58
Speaker 1: you don't have access to, you know, the broader scope
1:41:01
Speaker 1: of history and you know where the dominans are going
1:41:04
Speaker 1: to lead eventually, all you know is well, I mean,
1:41:07
Speaker 1: maybe I'll quote one of the great philosophers Gandolf and say.
1:41:11
Speaker 2: There you go.
1:41:12
Speaker 1: You can only you know, you can only deal with
1:41:15
Speaker 1: the time that's provided to you.
1:41:16
Speaker 2: Right, we're cooking with gas now exactly.
1:41:20
Speaker 1: And so that that is what it is. But yeah,
1:41:22
Speaker 1: I definitely look forward to getting into this and various
1:41:25
Speaker 1: other issues related to New Vegas once I refresh myself
1:41:29
Speaker 1: with a full play through, with the intention of doing
1:41:32
Speaker 1: this sort of analysis along the way. I think there's
1:41:35
Speaker 1: a lot there, just need to need a refresh.
1:41:37
Speaker 2: Her mm hmm.
1:41:39
Speaker 1: All right, well we have for almost a couple of
1:41:42
Speaker 1: hours now. I'm very impressed. I appreciate all the notes
1:41:47
Speaker 1: and questions and framings that you've brought into this. I
1:41:50
Speaker 1: definitely would not have been able to go that long
1:41:51
Speaker 1: off the top of my head without that. So I
1:41:53
Speaker 1: definitely appreciate.
1:41:54
Speaker 2: That My intention is to is to bring value to
1:42:00
Speaker 2: this like what like you know, I mean, you know,
1:42:03
Speaker 2: now whether whether whether or not are whether or not
1:42:07
Speaker 2: our viewers, our listeners or our partners on the show
1:42:10
Speaker 2: agree with that. I'm doing my best.
1:42:12
Speaker 1: Guys. Hey, anyone who's still listening by this point will
1:42:16
Speaker 1: recognize some value in the conversation. So good. I appreciate it.
1:42:20
Speaker 1: And next time we will get into Fallout four. But
1:42:25
Speaker 1: I think this is a good place to go ahead
1:42:26
Speaker 1: and wrap it for now. So thanks again and I'll
1:42:28
Speaker 1: see you next time.
1:42:29
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Thank you.
1:42:35
Speaker 1: All right, partners, thank you for listening or watching over
1:42:38
Speaker 1: on YouTube. If you enjoy this, make sure that you
1:42:40
Speaker 1: do subscribe to my channel. My YouTube channel, make sure
1:42:43
Speaker 1: you subscribe to the Mythic Mind Games podcast so you
1:42:46
Speaker 1: can listen on the go. And I also welcome your
1:42:48
Speaker 1: support over on Patreon at patreon dot com slash mythic Mind.
1:42:52
Speaker 1: If you want to participate in this community, you want
1:42:54
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Speaker 1: you just want to support what it is that we're doing.
1:43:02
Speaker 1: Patreon dot com, slash mythic Mind. Any level of support
1:43:05
Speaker 1: is helpful, but obviously higher levels will get you some
1:43:07
Speaker 1: more perks. Next week over here, we'll be coming to
1:43:10
Speaker 1: you with Fallout four. But the next thing to come
1:43:12
Speaker 1: out from Mythic Mind will be over on the main
1:43:14
Speaker 1: Mythic Mind podcast as we continue through our Narnia series.
1:43:19
Speaker 1: But that's it for now until next time. God speaking
1:43:26
Speaker 1: to the town of our Free Road is strange you
1:43:29
Speaker 1: want find a hardly spoke to folks around him, didn't
1:43:35
Speaker 1: have too much to say.