Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Mythic Mind.
Speaker 2: We pursue wisdom in the past between primary and.
Speaker 1: Second day World. Andrew Snyder, and I'm glad that you're here.
Speaker 2: I've originally been thinking about video games as a medium.
Speaker 2: As I discussed a little bit later in the show,
Speaker 2: I don't play a lot of video games anymore at
Speaker 2: this point in my life. It really dropped off when
Speaker 2: I got married and then especially when I had kids. However,
Speaker 2: I did play a lot as a kid and as
Speaker 2: a teenager of young adult. But as I look back
Speaker 2: at that time, then, on one hand, yeah, I think
Speaker 2: I probably played a little too much video games. I
Speaker 2: wish I read more books when I was younger. But
Speaker 2: at the same time, looking back through the lens of
Speaker 2: where I've come in my literary renaissance over the last
Speaker 2: few years, and I've been spending some time thinking about
Speaker 2: what stories are just to different avenues of pursuing wisdom,
Speaker 2: I think that there is actually a lot of potential
Speaker 2: here in using games in the.
Speaker 1: Right way to gain a level of.
Speaker 2: Enchantment, to sort of expand and to enricher imagination, to
Speaker 2: improve even like technical skills and focus and that sort
Speaker 2: of thing.
Speaker 3: But these ideas are.
Speaker 2: Still very early on in my mind in trying to
Speaker 2: figure out like exactly what is this medium, what is
Speaker 2: its place as an art form, how can it relate
Speaker 2: to literature or other avenues of the creative endeavors? And
Speaker 2: of course for later this year, I'm working on putting
Speaker 2: together a course on the Elder Scrolls and philosophy, really
Speaker 2: focusing in on specifically Morow and Oblivion and Skyrim, titles
Speaker 2: that are near and dear to me and obviously to
Speaker 2: many others as well. And as I start to put
Speaker 2: these ideas together, I wanted to talk with some people
Speaker 2: who have spent probably a little bit more time than
Speaker 2: I have at this point thinking about just video games
Speaker 2: like as a medium and what they are and what
Speaker 2: potential benefits they can have as well as of course
Speaker 2: you know where they can help us and going wrong.
Speaker 2: And so with that in mind, today I'm talking with
Speaker 2: Master Sam Wise, who was on the show a little
Speaker 2: while ago when we talked about the War of the Row.
Speaker 2: Herem and are joined by Josh Traylor, who is a
Speaker 2: Mythic Mind patron and you'll know him from most of
Speaker 2: the chats on the Poetic get Up. But before we
Speaker 2: jump into that conversation. I do want to thank all
Speaker 2: my patrons for making this and all the various things
Speaker 2: that I do possible. In the last episode, I detailed
Speaker 2: some of where I want to see this going, and
Speaker 2: every patron helps in bringing us in that direction. By name,
Speaker 2: I would like to specifically thank all Tier three patrons
Speaker 2: and higher, and so that's Mark, Chaz Clinton, Aaron Evy,
Speaker 2: Justin who just upgraded, Kyle, Mariah, Paul Tyler William, and
Speaker 2: Chase who just joined on as a patron. Although he
Speaker 2: has been in I think all my courses up to
Speaker 2: this point, and you know him already from the EDA chats.
Speaker 2: Big things are happening in my mind and I would
Speaker 2: love for you to be a part of that, from
Speaker 2: the courses that are already on the schedule to new
Speaker 2: course ideas that are percolating, both from me as well
Speaker 2: as from some other potential creators. We've got some new
Speaker 2: podcast series on the horizons, We've got some new patron
Speaker 2: chat series coming up. There's just a lot of room
Speaker 2: for participation all around. And we just recently announced our
Speaker 2: next several months of patron chats, and so for March
Speaker 2: and April, we assuming no scheduling upsets, we should be
Speaker 2: finishing up the poetic Adam, and then for May and
Speaker 2: June we're actually going to be getting into the Nights
Speaker 2: of the Old Republic one and two, which are most
Speaker 2: certainly the best Star Wars games ever made, some of
Speaker 2: the best Star Wars media easily brought up to potentially
Speaker 2: even arrival the original trilogy. But as I say later
Speaker 2: in the conversation, I'm wtllle hesitant to make that claim,
Speaker 2: but we definitely, I think, better than just about anything
Speaker 2: else that's come out since then, and so we'll be
Speaker 2: talking about that, and then after that, I'm pretty sure
Speaker 2: we're going to be getting into Tolkien's Children of Huron,
Speaker 2: which provides some good connections to some of the things
Speaker 2: we've been discussing with the etic text. And if you'd
Speaker 2: like to take a part in the things that are happening,
Speaker 2: then you can go to patreon dot com slash Mythic Mind,
Speaker 2: sign on at any level to get engaged, become part
Speaker 2: of the patron chats, and just be aware of some
Speaker 2: of the things that are happening. You can participate in
Speaker 2: our brainstorming channel about new ideas, and so that's open
Speaker 2: to anybody, any patrons, but again as a reminder, if
Speaker 2: you sign on as a Tier three annual patron, you
Speaker 2: will also get access to all of my courses, the
Speaker 2: ones that have already been completed, as well as those
Speaker 2: that are coming up ahead. And so again that's patreon
Speaker 2: dot com slash Mythic Mind, and I hope to see
Speaker 2: you there. But for now, let's go ahead and jump
Speaker 2: into our main conversation for today. All right, welcome back
Speaker 2: to Mythic Mind, where today we're gonna do something we
Speaker 2: haven't done so far on the show, and that's gonna
Speaker 2: talk about video games. I'm sure we'll get into some
Speaker 2: specific titles, but you know, really just I want us
Speaker 2: to have a broad level conversation of like what even
Speaker 2: our video games? You know, is it just a waste
Speaker 2: of time? Or is there some value to be had there?
Speaker 2: And given that we're having this conversation, I guess it's
Speaker 2: kind of obvious where we're going to come down on that,
Speaker 2: but you know, it might be helpful to start off
Speaker 2: just by talking a little bit about like like some
Speaker 2: of some of our background or experience with games as
Speaker 2: a medium and as a kid, as a teenager, I
Speaker 2: played a good bit, probably more than I should have.
Speaker 2: Kind of wish I read a few more books, but nonetheless,
Speaker 2: in many ways kind of having not having much of
Speaker 2: a literary focus as a kid, aside from what I
Speaker 2: picked up in school here and there, I do kind
Speaker 2: of feel like looking back, games did kind of fulfill
Speaker 2: some of that innate human desire for stories for you know,
Speaker 2: entering into other worlds that that's sort of been chanting,
Speaker 2: and so I think there's something there that can see
Speaker 2: looking back. You know, once I went out on my own,
Speaker 2: once I got married, a lot of that sort of
Speaker 2: dropped off quite a bit. Once I had kids, dropped
Speaker 2: off a lot more to the point where now, I mean,
Speaker 2: every once in a while I'll pick up something, but
Speaker 2: it's it's usually the same something I've been playing for
Speaker 2: ten or more years, because you know, even though I
Speaker 2: picked up a couple of things during a Steam sales
Speaker 2: not too long ago, the reality is, if I have
Speaker 2: a few minutes to pick up a game these days,
Speaker 2: I tend to go for familiarity. But I do think
Speaker 2: that there's something to this question, like.
Speaker 3: What are games? What are their value?
Speaker 2: Does it make sense to bring them to conversation as
Speaker 2: a medium with something like literature. It's what's inspired the
Speaker 2: fact that you know, later on this year, I'm doing
Speaker 2: that Elder Scrolls and philosophy. Course, I'm inclined to have
Speaker 2: this conversation and I'm interested to hear what you all.
Speaker 3: Have to say.
Speaker 2: Sam, I wanted you to tell us a little bit
Speaker 2: about yourself, about specifically your relationship with games.
Speaker 4: Sure, so, yeah, I have, honestly I have. For you know,
Speaker 4: I'm in my early thirties. I have a relatively short
Speaker 4: relationship with video games as a medium. Not that I
Speaker 4: haven't played video games for long. I have played video
Speaker 4: since I was probably six seven years old, maybe a
Speaker 4: little bit older, but it started out and for probably
Speaker 4: the vast majority of my childhood from about you know,
Speaker 4: seven or eight up till sixteen, I probably played backyard
Speaker 4: baseball or backyard soccer. I'm familiar with those old, old
Speaker 4: titles that most likely came in the bottom of cereal box.
Speaker 4: Or I played something like Roller Coaster Tycoon, where you're
Speaker 4: just building and maintaining a theme park, you know. Lego
Speaker 4: Star Wars also came in a little bit later. So yeah,
Speaker 4: once the family computer was up to the task, so
Speaker 4: it didn't I didn't really start playing games more extensively
Speaker 4: till I was later in high school, and then I
Speaker 4: got I was into things like Call of Duty and
Speaker 4: Star Wars Battlefront and a lot of first person shooters,
Speaker 4: ones that may may may be are not completely devoted value,
Speaker 4: but certainly just have kind of a more entertainment casual nature. Again,
Speaker 4: you can find value in most anything that isn't just
Speaker 4: a complete trash, but in those games are are were
Speaker 4: anyway generally made with with love and care, and they
Speaker 4: the stories they told were were somewhat solid, but nearly
Speaker 4: most of the time was just spent in multiplayer shooting
Speaker 4: other people who are also shooting back at me. So
Speaker 4: it wasn't, honestly until probably after college the last gosh,
Speaker 4: how long will be graduated less than a decade that
Speaker 4: I really started diving into more of the deeper world
Speaker 4: of video games.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: So I've played you know, Elder Ring after that came out,
Speaker 4: which is a huge, vast and dark fantasy world, and
Speaker 4: you know the makers all the Dark Souls games, and
Speaker 4: the last few years I've played the God of War
Speaker 4: all the God of War games, and I think the
Speaker 4: second one which were are generally absolutely phenomenal games, and
Speaker 4: they tell a fantastic story. I finally played Red Dead
Speaker 4: Redemption two this last year, which is hard to beat
Speaker 4: when it comes to just the depth of the story
Speaker 4: and the character development. And I think, what what games
Speaker 4: have an advantage over something like, you know, even literature,
Speaker 4: but certainly over television and movies is the depth to
Speaker 4: which they can go because it just because they are
Speaker 4: able to take all this time. Because television, even television
Speaker 4: movies especially, but even TV shows are limited, right, and
Speaker 4: there is kind of a set limit on how long
Speaker 4: they can be. Even in the age of streaming, where
Speaker 4: you can really only be so long, you can only
Speaker 4: do so much. Games don't really have that problem. If
Speaker 4: you look on my channel, you know, the longest my
Speaker 4: longest videos are all about video game characters because they
Speaker 4: you spend so much more time with them. If you
Speaker 4: spend twenty hours or fifty or sixty hours playing through
Speaker 4: a game, you spend so much time with this character,
Speaker 4: you're able to absorb these little details and then you
Speaker 4: get a lot more out of it. So yeah, I
Speaker 4: think basically that's kind of my journey with games is
Speaker 4: it's just in the last less than ten years or
Speaker 4: so where I really come to absorb the value that
Speaker 4: they can have in their ability to tell stories. But
Speaker 4: then there's more to it than that, And there's a
Speaker 4: video I'm planning to do and probably in the distant
Speaker 4: future at this point. And how video games cultivate virtue
Speaker 4: and storytelling is certainly one way, and the ways in
Speaker 4: which they can tell stories that are distinct from books
Speaker 4: and movies are good and definitely to be measured. But
Speaker 4: there are other ways and that they can teach perseverance.
Speaker 4: They can teach, you know, explore and they need to
Speaker 4: the desire to explore and wonder. They can even teach
Speaker 4: the logistical thinking and planning and you know, thinking ahead.
Speaker 4: And if you take up games like factory games where
Speaker 4: you're planning and building you know, a factory, you're collecting resource.
Speaker 4: Theyre all sorts of ways which games can build us.
Speaker 4: It's they're fascinating, basically.
Speaker 3: Good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you said a lot that I have got a
Speaker 2: lot of follow up questions, but first let's let's stop
Speaker 2: over to Josh. Tell us a little bit about your
Speaker 2: experience with video games.
Speaker 5: Oh man, Yeah, I think I'm a little bit more
Speaker 5: in European Andrew, where you said that you feel like
Speaker 5: you played a lot of video games and maybe even
Speaker 5: a little bit too much at times and wish you
Speaker 5: would have read more. That's like in the exact summary
Speaker 5: of like the first like twenty something odd years of
Speaker 5: my life. So yeah, for me, I actually like pretty
Speaker 5: much have played since basically as long as I can
Speaker 5: remember before because my dad was like in his twenties
Speaker 5: when like the og like Nintendo and all that came
Speaker 5: out in the eighties, and so when I was born
Speaker 5: in the mid nineties, like he already had like Sega
Speaker 5: Genesis and was a Super Nintendo eventually Nintendo sixty four
Speaker 5: PS one Dreamcast. So I really like cut my teeth
Speaker 5: on all of that stuff like that nineties gaming, even
Speaker 5: though I was extremely little in the second half of
Speaker 5: the nineties when I was a toddler, but really from
Speaker 5: there kind of like got more. I definitely like stuck
Speaker 5: with like the Nintendo a lot and wasn't really allowed
Speaker 5: to play like a lot of like the emerated games
Speaker 5: at the time. So I would probably good good decisions
Speaker 5: on my parents probably for that one. So played like
Speaker 5: a lot, played like a lot of game game played
Speaker 5: like a lot of them. Sixty four eventually I got
Speaker 5: like more into like the Microsoft like Xbox three sixty
Speaker 5: stuff when I was in middle school in high school,
Speaker 5: eventually kind of like got into uh I was super
Speaker 5: into Halo at one point, Like those games were great,
Speaker 5: and I thought that they had exceptional writing as well.
Speaker 5: I mean, I really, I mean I've played a lot
Speaker 5: of different stuff, probably all the way up until my
Speaker 5: early twenties and then just it's not like I never
Speaker 5: like lost interest or like saw there as like I
Speaker 5: never really really with a phase where even where I
Speaker 5: thought like video games were like stupid or pointless or
Speaker 5: a waste of time, I would say, and I would
Speaker 5: certainly still argue against all of those claims to this day.
Speaker 5: I think I just like I started to find interest
Speaker 5: in other things more probably that and spend time on
Speaker 5: growing up like you know, music and eventually like reading
Speaker 5: as well, So probably like distanced myself a little bit
Speaker 5: more so when I my knowledge of gaming rely spans
Speaker 5: from stuff from like the late nineties, probably too roughly
Speaker 5: like the mid twenty teens. So I'm pretty I'm I'm
Speaker 5: a good like decade out of the loop, I would say,
Speaker 5: with a lot of things. The only one of the
Speaker 5: only early RPG games I played in the past ten
Speaker 5: years is Cyberpunk twenty seventy seven, which I definitely have
Speaker 5: things to say if it comes up. But yeah, pretty
Speaker 5: much like a long story short that's like kind of
Speaker 5: like the broad kind of like the broad sweeping overview
Speaker 5: of really my experiences.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, like you said, we have some similar
Speaker 2: stories there. I feel like the newest game that I
Speaker 2: still play on a somewhat regular basis is probably like
Speaker 2: Fallout four something like it goes goes back a little
Speaker 2: bit at this point. You know, one thing that I've
Speaker 2: been thinking about because you know, I've over the last
Speaker 2: few years, I've really been going through a renaissance as
Speaker 2: I've really discovered literature for the first time. It took
Speaker 2: me to almost finishing my PhD before I recognized the
Speaker 2: value of reading fiction. And at that point it just
Speaker 2: I just started reading everything I keep my hands on,
Speaker 2: and it really reshaped the way that I view just
Speaker 2: about everything really, especially you know, it really started with
Speaker 2: with Tolkien and the you know, getting into his unfairy
Speaker 2: stories and sort of his philosophy of myths and that
Speaker 2: sort of thing, and you know that that's allowed me
Speaker 2: to look back on some of the games that really
Speaker 2: stood out to me, especially in my youth, and recognized
Speaker 2: that maybe they're not just a waste of time. I
Speaker 2: definitely went through that phase where I felt like, you know,
Speaker 2: its just escape, But as Tolkien says, escape is part
Speaker 2: of the process of recovery, and so I do believe
Speaker 2: there's some value there. But at the same time I'm
Speaker 2: working through this in real time. I I wonder how
Speaker 2: much the games are just fun or there's an amusement factor,
Speaker 2: and then I want to justify value into it, into
Speaker 2: the story. I don't know, is that a do you
Speaker 2: think that's a temptation when we talk about like, you know, Sam,
Speaker 2: you're talking about how we can discover virtue and video
Speaker 2: games and you know different positive lessons, like do you
Speaker 2: have any comment on that, like how much is that real?
Speaker 2: And how much are we trying to justify something?
Speaker 4: Well, I would say that if you are finding value
Speaker 4: in something, then the value exists, right, And I've done
Speaker 4: this with an any number of things. I can you
Speaker 4: know you can read value into most anything, right, I
Speaker 4: would say, it's how does it actually change you?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: If you know if I am playing you know, Dark
Speaker 4: Souls and I'm like, oh, this is this is teaching
Speaker 4: me persistence. But you know then I don't actually persist
Speaker 4: in my my life when it matters. It's not really
Speaker 4: teaching me persistence. It's not really changing, it's not really
Speaker 4: enriching that virtue in me. It's just me. That is
Speaker 4: just me justifying it absolutely. But I have seen multiple
Speaker 4: testimonies on that game, specifically about people saying like this
Speaker 4: saved my life. Right where people if you go on
Speaker 4: if you go on YouTube and search you know, dark Souls,
Speaker 4: search Dark Souls saved my life, you will find I'm
Speaker 4: sure no shortage of of videos of people saying that
Speaker 4: they were in a dark place. They felt hopeless and helpless,
Speaker 4: right they they had felt like they had no no,
Speaker 4: no power, right they couldn't do anything. And then they
Speaker 4: picked up Dark Souls and the game if you haven't
Speaker 4: played it, and it beats you over the head, quite literally.
Speaker 4: It beats you down repeatedly, over and over and over again.
Speaker 4: The game is designed unless you, you know, really go
Speaker 4: out of your way to make it easy for yourself,
Speaker 4: which you can do, but it is designed to kill
Speaker 4: you repeatedly. The one of the versions that came out
Speaker 4: on PC anyway, I'm not sure if this original version
Speaker 4: is called Dark Souls Prepared to Die and the game
Speaker 4: tells you right away like you're going to die, and
Speaker 4: you're going to die a lot, and all you can
Speaker 4: do is get better. I mean that's it. You can yeah,
Speaker 4: sure you can do various things to do that, right,
Speaker 4: but the main thing is simply getting better at the game,
Speaker 4: learning the boss's attack patterns, learning when to attack, when
Speaker 4: not to attack, learning when it's time to change your
Speaker 4: your own weapon or your build your strategy. And it
Speaker 4: teaches people to have an internal attribution where they say, Okay,
Speaker 4: this failure is clearly just my fault, right, and the
Speaker 4: only thing I can do about it is change because
Speaker 4: the game's not going to change.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: When we think about this in the in the wider world,
Speaker 4: I think people people want society to change. They want
Speaker 4: other people to change for them, right. This is a
Speaker 4: huge problem in culture today where everyone has an external attribution, Right,
Speaker 4: the things that have happened to me aren't my fault.
Speaker 4: You might be right about that, but what are you
Speaker 4: going to do about it?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: So we need to have more of like an internal aggy.
Speaker 4: That's what Dark Souls teaches through repeatedly crushing your skull
Speaker 4: in It teaches you to look inward and say, okay,
Speaker 4: where am I failing? What do I need to do
Speaker 4: to get out of this? To get past this boss.
Speaker 4: It's again, it's a very small thing. Where it is
Speaker 4: that you could just it can be contained within the
Speaker 4: world of the game. Right, if you learn that lesson
Speaker 4: in Dark Souls and you don't apply it to your life,
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, that's that's what most people might very
Speaker 4: well do. But for these people right who actually let
Speaker 4: it change them, I mean, then it changed them, it
Speaker 4: did something meaningful. So yeah, again it is it is
Speaker 4: with most mediums. Video games are simply about how you
Speaker 4: approach them right. Intentionality is huge. I can watch the
Speaker 4: most prof I could read the most profoundly philosophical book
Speaker 4: on the planet. But if I do it just because
Speaker 4: I want to say that I've read the most profoundly
Speaker 4: philosophical book on the planet, who cares? What good is that?
Speaker 4: What it has that changed me?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: So I think that's you know, that's the big piece
Speaker 4: when it comes to games. And I know you've pointed
Speaker 4: this out. Andrew, in a situit of yours said thank you.
Speaker 4: How we approach them, our intentionality, that's what matters. So
Speaker 4: if you find good in something, sorry I've ranally anchelong,
Speaker 4: I'll stop myself here. If you find good in something,
Speaker 4: you actually let that good affect you, then it's real.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think that's very well said. I mean, it is
Speaker 2: just like anything that if you are pursuing it for
Speaker 2: the sake of discovering wisdom, then you're likely to find it.
Speaker 2: Whereas if you are pursuing it just for the sake
Speaker 2: of justifying the wrong kind of escape that obviously at
Speaker 2: that point it's a vice. But then it's not necessarily
Speaker 2: the fault of the medium. It's the fault of the player,
Speaker 2: the one participating in it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think that's that's very very well said.
Speaker 3: Josh.
Speaker 2: You do you have any thoughts on that, on you know,
Speaker 2: discovering wisdom, on you know, how video games can potentially
Speaker 2: serve you know, a posit, the role, what kind of
Speaker 2: wherever you want.
Speaker 3: To go with that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and absolutely, I mean I certainly agree with everything
Speaker 5: you just said, and I appreciate the uh the nods
Speaker 5: and mentions to dark Souls because that was certainly, you know,
Speaker 5: one of the series that's certainly like one of the
Speaker 5: only series that really played a lot in like my
Speaker 5: adult life, and that's like one of my I always
Speaker 5: go back to this kind of game, certainly not always
Speaker 5: for relaxation, because it's hard to relax and play Dark
Speaker 5: Souls even if your experience sometimes it's still challenging and
Speaker 5: frustrating even when you when you fail. But another thing
Speaker 5: I want to like say with Dark Souls specifically is
Speaker 5: there was what actually drew me into that game. It was, Yes,
Speaker 5: it was the challenge, it was the difficulty. But the
Speaker 5: best word I could use kind of describe the world
Speaker 5: and the lore and the aesthetics of Dark Souls is enchanting,
Speaker 5: to be honest. And it's the same thing that I
Speaker 5: think any one of us could find enchanting about the
Speaker 5: best of like the fantasy genre. Right, whether you're talking
Speaker 5: about the great works of the Middle Ages or you're
Speaker 5: talking about Tolkien or maybe even some of the the
Speaker 5: contemporary later modern works that uh that came after Tolkien, Right,
Speaker 5: there's something enchanting about these worlds that are that we
Speaker 5: don't see around us necessarily, but there is there is
Speaker 5: there is an enchanging reality within the world, and it
Speaker 5: awakens and illuminates our imaginations in this this special way
Speaker 5: that we can't maybe you can't even always fully explain
Speaker 5: in a sense, and that was that was really stood
Speaker 5: out for me. And one thing I'd describe myself as
Speaker 5: is so like I always I've thought about this a lot,
Speaker 5: and sometimes I knew a lot of guys that were
Speaker 5: like into like army men growing up, right, Like they
Speaker 5: like were like we're obsessed with like World War two
Speaker 5: and stuff like that, and there's like nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 5: I think that's great, and there's a lot of wonder
Speaker 5: to that as well. But I always describe myself as
Speaker 5: a kid who was more into like knights and swords
Speaker 5: than like army men and like rifles. Not I'm not
Speaker 5: gonna say one is better than the other, but that
Speaker 5: was just like my draw So I think something like
Speaker 5: Dark Souls was enchanting, but it was almost like enchanting
Speaker 5: in an adult way, whereas when I was in a kid,
Speaker 5: the world and war and mythos of the Legend of
Speaker 5: Zelda was super enchanting to me as a kid. I
Speaker 5: still think it's interesting and enchanting as as a thirty
Speaker 5: year old. By the way, so I'm not gonna say
Speaker 5: it's it's child it's CS Lewis right. It's like you
Speaker 5: you love childish things, then you don't love childish things,
Speaker 5: and you grow up and you will love childish things again, right,
Speaker 5: Like it's like that's like kind of like how I
Speaker 5: would think of like Legend of Zelda. But Dark Souls
Speaker 5: is not for kids. It is for adults. But it's
Speaker 5: it's enchanting. It's a totally different way. And I mean
Speaker 5: you just want to talk about like how like I've
Speaker 5: never seen outside of like a fantasy book series or
Speaker 5: like some of the old Icelandic or you know ar
Speaker 5: Thury in English tales. It's like outside of some of that,
Speaker 5: I haven't really seen anything else with such a rich
Speaker 5: war and uh just like story behind it, but the
Speaker 5: story is not on the nose, you know, it's not
Speaker 5: explicit like you get to learn it, don't get to
Speaker 5: kill things and read artifacts and put the pieces together,
Speaker 5: and honestly, then watch hours and hours and hours of
Speaker 5: basically Dark Soul scholars on YouTube to really actually understand
Speaker 5: what's going on. And there's a lot of meaning there,
Speaker 5: like long story short, like it's it's it's profound right,
Speaker 5: And I think sometimes people can even play dark like
Speaker 5: the Dark Soul series just for the challenge, and that's great,
Speaker 5: and maybe they subconsciously reap some of the imaginative and
Speaker 5: philosophical aspects of that in a way. But I think,
Speaker 5: like even just to play it for the challenge of
Speaker 5: supreme refined melee combat is still like missing out on
Speaker 5: all like the richness of meaning written into those games
Speaker 5: and designed into those games.
Speaker 2: So you've both talked about Dark Souls a good bit,
Speaker 2: which I've actually never played Dark Souls. I'm not super
Speaker 2: familiar other than just seeing, you know, glimpses here and there.
Speaker 2: So I mean it might provide a good case study here,
Speaker 2: like what in particular is so enchanting about it?
Speaker 3: And neither of you can take that up.
Speaker 4: So I'm not I haven't really gotten deep into the
Speaker 4: lore yet of Dark Souls. I'm still on my first
Speaker 4: play through of the original game. I've played a couple
Speaker 4: of other from software same to all other titles, one
Speaker 4: being Eldering. There's just the most recent release, well the
Speaker 4: most recent Souls like release anyway, I almost come back
Speaker 4: and came out twenty twenty two. It has a similar
Speaker 4: sort of Gene where it's this dark fantasy setting, the
Speaker 4: world's kind of trapped in this cyclical cycle where no
Speaker 4: one really dies, and it was like the Tarnished and
Speaker 4: eld Ring of the Undead, And in Dark Souls, we're
Speaker 4: kind of just kind of this cyclical cycle to life
Speaker 4: which you're a little bit seeking to break. So there's
Speaker 4: you know, so that you could go into. You could
Speaker 4: probably teach a whole course just on that concept right
Speaker 4: where it's just like you've basically created immortality and you're
Speaker 4: realizing how awful it truly is. But even without having
Speaker 4: you know, it's like, as we're having this conversation, like, oh,
Speaker 4: that's right, I keep meaning to go on YouTube and
Speaker 4: like Josh said, find the you know, watch a Foddy
Speaker 4: video or whoever else is doing the videos on all
Speaker 4: the Dark Soul, the Dark Soul's lower Deep dives. But
Speaker 4: one of the things that really stands out to me
Speaker 4: that is most enchanting in Dark Souls, you spend a
Speaker 4: good amount of time underground or at least in very
Speaker 4: dark places, and there are moments where you see sunlight,
Speaker 4: Like there's there's a whole long section of the game
Speaker 4: where you're going through is essentially the sewers, and it's
Speaker 4: fairly early on and then you you finally end up
Speaker 4: in the Boss room and there's this big crack in
Speaker 4: the ceiling essentially where sunlight shining through. And it makes
Speaker 4: me think of the scene of the Two Towers and
Speaker 4: in Aderas where they see the described in the book,
Speaker 4: as you know, the single high window through, you know,
Speaker 4: sunlight shining through. And then that same theme comes back
Speaker 4: with a single star that Sam seeds as he's on
Speaker 4: the I think it's the planes of Gorgoroth, And you know,
Speaker 4: it's just kind of this message like not all is dark. Right,
Speaker 4: You've been going through this incredibly dark, depressing area, and
Speaker 4: even as you're about to take on this giant you know,
Speaker 4: dragon like boss, right, you still see this this beam
Speaker 4: of light coming in that kind of tells you there
Speaker 4: there is hope here, there is an end.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: You're you know, you're about to take on a very
Speaker 4: difficult fight, but you know you have something to look towards.
Speaker 4: And that's you know, just I love being able to
Speaker 4: kind of imburse myself in that world and even not
Speaker 4: knowing much yet, you know, not having read every item description,
Speaker 4: and you know, I ever looked up every enemy on
Speaker 4: the wiki. Just seeing this and seeing what it's I
Speaker 4: think it's trying to tell me. Yeah, it's super super cool.
Speaker 3: Cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I definitely appreciate those themes, the immortality as well
Speaker 2: as the light. It definitely makes you think of Tolkien
Speaker 2: a lot of the stuff that he deals with, which
Speaker 2: I mean naturally anything fantasy I'm gonna read talking into it. Oh,
Speaker 2: that's gonna makes sense, not not without merit on that.
Speaker 3: Okay. Cool. So yeah, my.
Speaker 2: Expansive fantasy that that I've lived in for years now,
Speaker 2: regarding video games at least, really goes to Elder Scrolls,
Speaker 2: which I know, Sam, you just recently started Skyrim for
Speaker 2: the first time, right, which I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't know how to dange that.
Speaker 4: I mean, I've heard of Skyri. I think I heard
Speaker 4: about Skyrim the year it came out, because I would
Speaker 4: have been right along when I started college, and thank goodness,
Speaker 4: I didn't play it playing it then because I don't
Speaker 4: think I would have graduated, and i've I've not, I've
Speaker 4: barely dipped my toes in because I I was staying
Speaker 4: up with with our newborn, and I find I bought
Speaker 4: it recently when it was finally bought it when it's
Speaker 4: like four dollars on Steam, and I was like, okay,
Speaker 4: I hooked my my laptop that I have for gaming
Speaker 4: on up to our TV. I'm sitting there with my
Speaker 4: my sleeping newborn on a lap at two in the
Speaker 4: morning or whatever, and like, all right, I'll start playing Skyrim.
Speaker 4: And so I mean, I, like I said, I barely
Speaker 4: dipped my toes in. There's not even much I can
Speaker 4: formulate about, you know, my thoughts about the world yet, unfortunately,
Speaker 4: because it's like okay, you know, I'm just starting to
Speaker 4: you understand kind of the the world building that that's
Speaker 4: going on here. So I wish, I wish I could
Speaker 4: tell talk more about it, but unfortunately, just not much.
Speaker 3: Yes, fair enough. I had to ask.
Speaker 2: It's it's unusual you find somebody today who's playing Skyrim
Speaker 2: for the first time. Uh, it's such a you know,
Speaker 2: it's such a major title.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I started with the Elder Scrolls all the way
Speaker 2: back with morrowind which was I mean a little bit
Speaker 2: of answer from you, you know, when it first came
Speaker 2: out that given you know, my age at the time,
Speaker 2: but I had older brothers since I was always playing
Speaker 2: a little bit ahead of most people my age of
Speaker 2: the time, but I mean speaking of just vast enchanting worlds,
Speaker 2: I mean, it still boggles my mind that, you know,
Speaker 2: within each of these major Elder Scrolls titles, I mean,
Speaker 2: they have literally entire books, like libraries of books written
Speaker 2: within the games. And so the fact that you know
Speaker 2: they are willing to, you know, invest the time in
Speaker 2: writers to literally write books in the game, most of
Speaker 2: which are going to go unread by you know, those
Speaker 2: are those who are buying the titles. It just I
Speaker 2: think shows a level of detail which you know, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: moving forward, I imagine all such things will just be
Speaker 2: AI generated. But at least once upon a time, you know,
Speaker 2: that really took the time to you know, invest in
Speaker 2: such little storytelling d details that you know, it's easy
Speaker 2: for me to look at a title like that as
Speaker 2: well as whatever comparable fantasy series are out there, Dark Souls, whatever,
Speaker 2: and it's easy for me to look at that and
Speaker 2: recognize the potential for enchantment, the potential for kind of
Speaker 2: expanding your engagement with kind of with ideas, with philosophy,
Speaker 2: with with kind of what could be. I do think
Speaker 2: that there's a lot of inherent value in that well,
Speaker 2: I guess, I mean from here it it'd be interesting
Speaker 2: to hear about, you know, some other titles that have
Speaker 2: sort of captured your imagination, that have captured your time,
Speaker 2: and uh, just to dig into a little bit about
Speaker 2: what it is about these particular titles that stand out
Speaker 2: to you. So I mean, Josh, what's something else that
Speaker 2: has been uh, you know, near and dear to you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'll run with this one first, just because I
Speaker 5: mentioned it earlier, and I think it really is like
Speaker 5: the only besides Okay, if it's a lie, I did
Speaker 5: play elden Ring. I was gonna say this is the
Speaker 5: only game I've played that's come out since twenty twenty,
Speaker 5: but not elden Ring, but Cyberpunk twenty seventy seven. I
Speaker 5: wanted to talk about that, and I don't know if
Speaker 5: i'd I definitely wouldn't exactly use the word enchanting to
Speaker 5: describe it. But I also think that's kind of the point.
Speaker 5: And what I like about cyberhok twenty seventy seven. I mean,
Speaker 5: first of all, like the writing is an incredible, great
Speaker 5: character arcs, great dialogue back and forth between like your
Speaker 5: the protagonists in which you play, and the various recurring
Speaker 5: like side quest characters that he encounters in Knight City,
Speaker 5: in the outskirts of Night City, which is the setting
Speaker 5: of the game. But I think what's really, uh, what's
Speaker 5: really profound about that game is that it almost, to me,
Speaker 5: it almost captures, it almost captures like a fairly realistic
Speaker 5: version of like what the future could be in a sense,
Speaker 5: because grow I liked I liked Star Trek growing up,
Speaker 5: and I guess like to some extent, I still do
Speaker 5: like the next generation and even like Deep Space nine
Speaker 5: to some extent. But one thing I kind of like
Speaker 5: abandoned when I got older is I found out like
Speaker 5: Gene rodden Berry's kind of like conception of the future
Speaker 5: just super like utopian, and it's like everything's going to
Speaker 5: be super diplomatic with all these aliens, and like everything
Speaker 5: looks crisp all the time, like their uniforms are always
Speaker 5: perfectly uh, you know, perfectly like steamed and pressed and
Speaker 5: all that. But the ship is like the ship is
Speaker 5: beautiful and there's nothing. It's a very like glorified depiction
Speaker 5: of like the progression of science beyond the time that
Speaker 5: will probably all, you know, beyond the time that we'll
Speaker 5: probably all live up to right like like hundreds of
Speaker 5: years in the future, whereas with cyberpunk, the future looks
Speaker 5: it looks kind of it looks kind of gross, right Like,
Speaker 5: I don't know if it either of you ever been
Speaker 5: to like Times Square in New York City And I
Speaker 5: always heard about it and thought it would sounded cool
Speaker 5: as a kid, and I went for the first time
Speaker 5: a couple of years ago, and I thought it was
Speaker 5: kind of gross. It's like there's just a bunch of
Speaker 5: weird characters walking around in the middle of the day
Speaker 5: and there's just big giant screens with not beautiful images
Speaker 5: on them in any sense, And that's that's kind of
Speaker 5: like what side like the vibe of cyberpunk twenty seventy
Speaker 5: seven is. And people are people are kind of gross
Speaker 5: in it in a sense too. But I think what
Speaker 5: it really captures more than anything is kind of like
Speaker 5: the ramifications of one like taking like technology and science
Speaker 5: too far as humans. Probably the over alliance on science
Speaker 5: and technology and the way in which are kind of
Speaker 5: like just our human condition is kind of put on
Speaker 5: display even more so because of technology and how the
Speaker 5: things that I've always been there for all of human history,
Speaker 5: like since the Fall especially, have been have been prevalent
Speaker 5: and real, but there's a way in which technology and
Speaker 5: the evolution of science and like the data network and
Speaker 5: the rapidness of communication puts that on like full display,
Speaker 5: and the way that that's even modified as people are basically,
Speaker 5: you know, at this point, like half robot and like
Speaker 5: you know, part human, part robot, having implants and all
Speaker 5: these things asking the questions even like basically anthropological questions
Speaker 5: regarding like what actually is a human? And are you
Speaker 5: still human or fully human if you have these implants.
Speaker 5: It really deals with all of those things really wonderfully.
Speaker 5: And I'm I'm trying to hit it all here, so
Speaker 5: I'm kind of randing and speed talking through it a
Speaker 5: little bit just to hit the high points. But I
Speaker 5: can't recommend that game enough because it's not necessarily beautiful,
Speaker 5: but it's meaningful and it really I think, asks a
Speaker 5: lot of thought provoking questions and explores them quite nicely.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that one's been on my Steam wish list for sure.
Speaker 4: I'm like waiting for it to go and sale or something,
Speaker 4: just waiting to find the time. But yeah, whenever I
Speaker 4: you know, I see people or I see like ads
Speaker 4: or people YouTube videos, whatever, people at the whatever apples
Speaker 4: apples headset, you know, ar VR headset that's like just
Speaker 4: wear this while you're cooking dinner and it's stuff or whatever.
Speaker 4: Interact with your family with a yes, I see cyberpocket.
Speaker 4: I think of that, and yeah, okay, that's definitely a
Speaker 4: future where we feel like we're creeping closer towards Also.
Speaker 5: If you like, if you have any like affinity for
Speaker 5: Kean or Reuse whatsoever. His likeness is like one of
Speaker 5: the main characters in the game and he's a huge jerk,
Speaker 5: so it's really funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I really appreciate what sci fi can do in
Speaker 2: presenting just the warnings against science right progress and technology.
Speaker 2: You know, I mean, I've I've always felt that anybody
Speaker 2: with any kind of sense of things recognizes where technology
Speaker 2: can go amiss. But I mean, after reading you know,
Speaker 2: Lewis's Ransom series, that that really put me on you know,
Speaker 2: the scientists or the demon possessed villains behind closed doors here.
Speaker 2: One of my favorite things about those books is the
Speaker 2: the ending, especially that the epilogues of like Out of
Speaker 2: the Silent Planet, for example, where you know, at the end,
Speaker 2: Lewis basically comes out and says, oh, by the way,
Speaker 2: this stuff is real. Now, now go cast down the
Speaker 2: demonic scientists. And you know that I saw that article
Speaker 2: coming out a few years ago about how Lord of
Speaker 2: the Rings is radicalizing. But nothing is as straightforward as
Speaker 2: Lewis's epilogues in those books against science.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean, my my go.
Speaker 2: To dystopian look at the future is definitely Fallout and
Speaker 2: I know, the super mainstream, but you know, I've been
Speaker 2: on board since Fallout three. New Vegas especially played a
Speaker 2: lot of Fallout four. All the New Vegas is definitely
Speaker 2: the best game objectively, but and even the show I
Speaker 2: think was done really well in tune with the spirit
Speaker 2: of the games, where you know it is, we're obviously
Speaker 2: in this disaster scenario. You know, civilization has been destroyed.
Speaker 2: We're dealing with the remnants that are left, and everything
Speaker 2: is just gross and mean and dirty, but you know,
Speaker 2: there's still these glimmers of goodness, glimmers of hope, this
Speaker 2: reminder that life does go on, life can go on
Speaker 2: even when everything externally is stripped away. And I actually
Speaker 2: think thats as much as you can expect Amazon to
Speaker 2: do I felt like they decently maintained this with the
Speaker 2: show in that you know, like Lucy, the main character
Speaker 2: part of her story is you know, she's like the
Speaker 2: bright character in the Wasteland. You know, she always has
Speaker 2: this positive attitude. She even you know, maintains fidelity to
Speaker 2: the Golden Rule. You know, that's a kind of an
Speaker 2: ongoing theme here, even you know too well people who
Speaker 2: aren't very nice to her. It's a Again, is it
Speaker 2: like a Christian franchise. No, certainly not. However, I do
Speaker 2: think that there is just some of that resilience of life,
Speaker 2: resilience of goodness that can be found through I mean this,
Speaker 2: you know, post apocalyptic, retro future look at things. And
Speaker 2: so that's that's that's my go to, you know, dystopian
Speaker 2: franchise of choice, Sam tell us about. You can either
Speaker 2: comment on any of that or just go off on
Speaker 2: something else.
Speaker 4: Army, I need to both play Fallout. I have New
Speaker 4: Vegas in my library, but I need to. And then
Speaker 4: I actually want to want to watch the show because
Speaker 4: I wanted to. I probably wouldn't wanted to include in
Speaker 4: a video that I'm gonna make in the future. But
Speaker 4: so again, that's another series that I'd like to explore.
Speaker 4: And yeah, when you talk about you know, franchisees that
Speaker 4: most any franchise is not going to be a Christian
Speaker 4: franchise or a Christian story. You know, even Lord of
Speaker 4: the Rings is not. It is it is very much Christian,
Speaker 4: but it is not. It is not a sermon, it
Speaker 4: is not a homily, right, And that's I've said this
Speaker 4: many times. I will say it many more times. Christian
Speaker 4: movies generally suck because they don't care enough about the
Speaker 4: movie part, right, They're trying to communicate their message to
Speaker 4: a to a broader audience by making a movie. This
Speaker 4: is what Hollywood has been doing, just from the opposite
Speaker 4: end of the faith spectrum, where they don't really have
Speaker 4: much faith. They don't really have much morals for the
Speaker 4: most part. They just kind of have a vague sense.
Speaker 4: I mean it's like Marxist morals basically, where it's like, yeah,
Speaker 4: these people are pressed, we're gonna need to make sure
Speaker 4: we support them until they become the present. And it's like, anyhow,
Speaker 4: this is what Hollywood's done. They've they've forgotten a lot
Speaker 4: about you know, especially big mainstream Disney forgotten about the
Speaker 4: movie part. The art right, the telling a story in
Speaker 4: a way that no one else can, and they just
Speaker 4: want to tell people things just doesn't work anyhow. That's
Speaker 4: that's my little self buck. So when you talk about
Speaker 4: you know, movie or movies, franchises, games, whatever, being Christian,
Speaker 4: most of them are not going to be. But there
Speaker 4: Peter Criefton Is in Philosophy of Tolkien repeats this phrase
Speaker 4: from one of Tolkien's letters at least twice. I'm halfway
Speaker 4: through the book and he's repeated it at least twice,
Speaker 4: where Tolkien says, you know that you know more important,
Speaker 4: or at least the objective of you know, something like
Speaker 4: Lord of the Rings is the elucidation of truth, right,
Speaker 4: the encouragement of good morals by showing them in these
Speaker 4: you know, real but fantastic ways, right with these characters.
Speaker 4: So that's, you know, whenever I'm approaching and analyzing some media,
Speaker 4: which is what I do on the channel, right, I
Speaker 4: analyze it from a Christian perspective, but from the more
Speaker 4: from the lens of virtue and you know, growing to
Speaker 4: you know, growing in virtue, growing in love of others. Anyhow,
Speaker 4: So I ended talking about actual games that I actually
Speaker 4: care about, were about to say something, Andrew, Yeah.
Speaker 3: I just can say that.
Speaker 2: I mean, the Christian way of viewing anything is to
Speaker 2: find truth wherever it is and to recognize it as such.
Speaker 2: You know, it goes only back to Justin Martyr, right,
Speaker 2: I have an old truth is God's truth wherever it
Speaker 2: can be found, and so I definitely agree with you
Speaker 2: on that. I mean, the way that Tolkien goes about
Speaker 2: writing his story is he told the story he had
Speaker 2: to tell, then he looked back and said, oh, I
Speaker 2: wrote a Christian story. That's what he basically says to
Speaker 2: one of his letters.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I'm just echoing what you've said.
Speaker 1: You can continue.
Speaker 4: So tying into that, it would be the games that
Speaker 4: have Two of the games that have captured my attention
Speaker 4: in the last few years are the God of War games,
Speaker 4: so specifically the more recent too so one came out
Speaker 4: twenty eighteen, which just called God of War even though
Speaker 4: it is really God of War four, and then God
Speaker 4: of War Ragnak, which came out twenty twenty two. I believe,
Speaker 4: so their continuation of the original God of War PlayStation games,
Speaker 4: you know, one, two, and three and a couple in between,
Speaker 4: which followed the tale if you're not familiar of Krados,
Speaker 4: who is a character. He's a son of He's a
Speaker 4: son of Zeus, because who in Greek tales isn't a
Speaker 4: son of Zeus? Who basically who's a wife and who
Speaker 4: is tricked into killing his own wife and child in
Speaker 4: his battle lost by Aries, and in revenge she ends
Speaker 4: up tearing down all of Olympus and throwing all of
Speaker 4: Grease into chaos. And then he attempts to what's the
Speaker 4: word that you have to use to be algorithmically collect,
Speaker 4: he attempts to unlive himself, and that's where God of
Speaker 4: War three ends. Follow up, you catch up with him
Speaker 4: a decade plus later in God of War four in
Speaker 4: the in the reboot, and he's now it's now he's
Speaker 4: now in Norse mythology, so he is has found a
Speaker 4: new life. He is, you know, married a Nordic woman,
Speaker 4: a giant as we found out find out, and had
Speaker 4: a son who's I think about nine, nine, ten eleven
Speaker 4: years old in the first game, and the first game
Speaker 4: begins with his wife's funeral and him have to figure
Speaker 4: out how to raise this kid to be a father,
Speaker 4: to be a good father when he never really had
Speaker 4: that example, and his struggles with his past, right, his
Speaker 4: struggle with forgiving himself right, finding you know, redemption just
Speaker 4: for himself, right, That is a huge, huge theme, right, obviously,
Speaker 4: someone who's who's done horrible, horrible deeds in the past
Speaker 4: finding for self, forgiveness and redemption. That remains a theme
Speaker 4: throughout both of the reboot games. And so those stories
Speaker 4: absolutely captured my attention because especially as a father myself,
Speaker 4: even though my kids are a bit younger, just struggling
Speaker 4: with you know, whatever struggles I may have, and how
Speaker 4: I really do not want to pass on my own
Speaker 4: faults and flaws to my kids, you know, seeing him,
Speaker 4: you know, grow in humility, right and meaning that in
Speaker 4: the very truest way where he learns to know himself
Speaker 4: in his place. Right. But yeah, forgiveness and redemption by
Speaker 4: far the largest largest themes in those stories. And that's
Speaker 4: again it's a very Christian message, even if the developers
Speaker 4: are probably partly not Christian. Certainly the studio as a
Speaker 4: whole is not explicitly Christian, but that's kind of Christianity's
Speaker 4: whole thing. So and it's but it is beautiful and
Speaker 4: it's one of the one of the things that even
Speaker 4: people who aren't Christian, they can realize that, right, because
Speaker 4: it is just an obvious truth. If you just tell
Speaker 4: people that, yeah, you can't change what's done, right, you
Speaker 4: have to move on. At the near the end of
Speaker 4: one of the last games, not to spoil it too much,
Speaker 4: but one of the one of the characters says to Credos,
Speaker 4: don't you know what I've done? And Creatos responds responds, yes,
Speaker 4: but what will you do now? And that plays over
Speaker 4: and over and over in my head because that's it, right,
Speaker 4: because I certainly have the temptation to look back on
Speaker 4: what I've done, whether we're five minutes ago or a
Speaker 4: year ago, and go, what was I thinking? What's wrong
Speaker 4: with me? And you know the answer is who cares?
Speaker 4: What are you going to do now? Oh? That's definitely
Speaker 4: on the more story spectrum of the you know, the
Speaker 4: games that have really captured my attention. There's lots of others,
Speaker 4: many far less story driven, but yeah, for the sake
Speaker 4: of brevity, all kind of there for now?
Speaker 3: Well good?
Speaker 2: I mean that you know, final thought that you left
Speaker 2: off with there, I mean, it reminds you what you
Speaker 2: said at the beginning of the conversation regarding the you know,
Speaker 2: persistency of dark souls, and that you know, it presents
Speaker 2: the scenario of Okay, get to deal with what's in
Speaker 2: front of you and you know figured out.
Speaker 3: Essentially, you know.
Speaker 2: In one of my one of my philosophy classes, my
Speaker 2: students recently read Victor Frenkle's Man Search for Meaning, in
Speaker 2: which you know Frankel was a psychiatrist Holocaust survivor comes
Speaker 2: out writing the book on how he maintained a life
Speaker 2: of meaning even in the camps, and he makes the
Speaker 2: point that a lot of times we asked the question
Speaker 2: of like, what is the meaning of life? And I mean,
Speaker 2: I think that's a perfectly valid question. However, he reframes
Speaker 2: that and says, what we also need to be asking
Speaker 2: ourselves is what is life demanding of me? That's a
Speaker 2: different kind of question. A lot of times we asked
Speaker 2: the question what is the meaning of life? We even
Speaker 2: though again as a Christian like I have answers to that,
Speaker 2: but I feel like a lot of time when we
Speaker 2: ask that question, we make it so abstract as to
Speaker 2: hide from any responsibility that might come from the answer,
Speaker 2: Whereas if we asked the question, like what do I
Speaker 2: actually need to do today? What are my responsibilities today?
Speaker 2: What do I do in light of the things that
Speaker 2: I've done yesterday, Like, given the facticity of what's before me,
Speaker 2: what do I.
Speaker 1: Do with that?
Speaker 2: And I think that's the least tangentially related to you know,
Speaker 2: some of what you brought up.
Speaker 3: There, Josh, Do you have any experience with those games?
Speaker 5: I do not. Those are games that when they first
Speaker 5: came out, I was a little bit younger and I
Speaker 5: wasn't a lot to play them. Again, probably a good
Speaker 5: decision by my parents at the time two thousands, I
Speaker 5: think so. But I have been recommended those most those
Speaker 5: two most recent God of Horror games, not just by
Speaker 5: one friends, not just by two, but probably at least
Speaker 5: three or four friends now. So that's probably a sign that, uh,
Speaker 5: I do need to visit those next time I play
Speaker 5: a new game.
Speaker 3: So what are you guys say something like I.
Speaker 4: Shifted no no, the original God of War games, which
Speaker 4: I played when I was making my first video on Kraados.
Speaker 4: I played the I played God Got of War one
Speaker 4: and three, and they were they are very very violent,
Speaker 4: and the latter games are too. Honestly, so, I mean
Speaker 4: credos is it's it's very much fantasy violence. So you know,
Speaker 4: the enemies are largely you know, fantasy characters. Uh, you
Speaker 4: know fantasy monsters, so you know Drogger, right, undead, you
Speaker 4: know undead, you know form you know zombies basically or
Speaker 4: you know, wear wolf like creatures or whatever. You know,
Speaker 4: one of which you know, Kratos is you know finishing move,
Speaker 4: will grab the things jaw and rip it in half.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: Just there's a character who exclaims that'll hot my dreams
Speaker 4: when he does that, and it makes for some funny moments,
Speaker 4: but it's they're rather brutal, right, They're they're umbrated games,
Speaker 4: and they they treat Creatos as the hulking spartan you know,
Speaker 4: you know god that he is. So yeah, not not
Speaker 4: good game for cure kids. They're a little they get
Speaker 4: a little rough, for sure. But yeah, I add me
Speaker 4: to the list of people who wholeheartedly recommends them. In
Speaker 4: terms of scope, for you know a lot of modern games,
Speaker 4: they're not horribly long. The first one is maybe twenty hours,
Speaker 4: the second is. I think I finished it at under thirty,
Speaker 4: especially because I don't I didn't bother playing in a
Speaker 4: higher difficulty because I wanted to experience the story. Those
Speaker 4: are very very good, very well done games. The right
Speaker 4: eating is excellent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just now that you brought up violence, I
Speaker 2: should say that, you know, I don't. I don't know
Speaker 2: all of you know who's watching and listening to this,
Speaker 2: and so don't uh well, you know, I endorse fall
Speaker 2: Out a little bit ago. Speaking of violence, the show
Speaker 2: games grossly violent, like over the top, campy level of violence,
Speaker 2: which doesn't really bother me because it's like so over
Speaker 2: the top, but that's definitely something you have to be
Speaker 2: okay with if you're going to engage at all with
Speaker 2: anything related to that franchise. Now, as far as okay,
Speaker 2: another game of choice that I can bring up here,
Speaker 2: you know, in addition to Elder Scrolls, Fallout one that
Speaker 2: I find myself returning to on a fairly regular basis,
Speaker 2: even still at least every couple of years or so.
Speaker 2: Knights of the Old Republic Right definitely top tier Star
Speaker 2: Wars games, top tier RPGs in general. I think that
Speaker 2: this is just an era of Star Wars history lore
Speaker 2: that's so rich for storytelling. It's back when Star Wars
Speaker 2: maintained obvious differences between.
Speaker 3: Good and evil.
Speaker 2: The Jedi are good, the Sith or evil, and I
Speaker 2: think that that is just so so much more compelling
Speaker 2: from a story level as well as accurate philosophically. And
Speaker 2: you know, I well, like most things, you know, you
Speaker 2: go back in history and there's a lot more to
Speaker 2: deal with and well, the modern storytelling, I'll put it
Speaker 2: that way.
Speaker 5: I'm really glad you mentioned this because there's like, I
Speaker 5: don't know enough people who have played those games, and
Speaker 5: it kind of it bothers me. Sometimes nothing against people
Speaker 5: who haven't played them, but I want more people to
Speaker 5: play those games, especially people who are, you know, fans
Speaker 5: of Star Wars, people who are you know, maybe a
Speaker 5: controversy a little bit real into Star Wars, you know,
Speaker 5: people who respect the original trilogy and you know, hate
Speaker 5: the sequels and such things. Right, But that I always
Speaker 5: what I like wanted what I wanted when like they
Speaker 5: like announced the Force Awakens, right, episode seven, Force Awakens,
Speaker 5: that's what it was called whatever it was like ten
Speaker 5: ten eleven years ago when they announced that, when they
Speaker 5: were like saying they were making a sequel trilogy to
Speaker 5: Star Wars, it's like going in the direction that like
Speaker 5: Kotor was, is like what I wanted them to do right,
Speaker 5: especially like the second game where it's like you really
Speaker 5: have like kray As almost like this like Nietzschean like
Speaker 5: Zara thirstraw like type of figure who's kind of like
Speaker 5: challenging you to It's almost like they could be like
Speaker 5: taken as like deconstructionists in some way, of like the
Speaker 5: Jedi in the Sith and I guess it kind of
Speaker 5: is in some ways, but in some ways she presents
Speaker 5: like this this via media, like really like gray path
Speaker 5: between the two, and some sense she's like kind of
Speaker 5: just like hates the Force all together and wants it
Speaker 5: to die. But all those are really interesting ideas to
Speaker 5: explore in Star Wars, right.
Speaker 4: And.
Speaker 5: One of my I've been I've been watching the Star
Speaker 5: Wars original trilogy since like before I can even remember, right,
Speaker 5: So I'm talking to somebody who has been a fan
Speaker 5: of those movies my entire life, and I think, like
Speaker 5: the thing I noticed, like when I got when I
Speaker 5: grew older and got a little more mature with Star
Speaker 5: Wars is like I like the writing and the original trilogies.
Speaker 5: I like the stories, I like all the character arcs,
Speaker 5: and I more than like, I love the world of
Speaker 5: Star Wars, like the original Star Wars just a really
Speaker 5: cool world, like a lot of the design of you know,
Speaker 5: the different characters, the different races, the different planets, like
Speaker 5: the the the escapes of like the cities and the
Speaker 5: deserts and the jungles like all of that, Like it's
Speaker 5: it's a really cool world. The Jedi is a really
Speaker 5: cool idea, you know, basically these kind of like monastic
Speaker 5: nights with laser swords in a sense like that's that's
Speaker 5: that's a really cool idea, right, And it was in
Speaker 5: a sense like probably in some ways really original in
Speaker 5: its time. But the problem I've always seen with Star
Speaker 5: Wars until like besides like really with Kotor, is that
Speaker 5: they have a great foundation that they never really built
Speaker 5: off of. The original trilogy set up so much there
Speaker 5: that could be explored with literature, with philosophy, with a
Speaker 5: lot of interesting ideas and dynamics and character arcs, and
Speaker 5: then you know, I'm not going to really talk about
Speaker 5: the prequels because we could just talk about all the
Speaker 5: memes and the acting and the script and all of that.
Speaker 5: But with the sequels, I feel like there was a
Speaker 5: real opportunity there with honestly, some quality actors, some big
Speaker 5: name Hollywood directors. Maybe you know, jaj Abrams could have
Speaker 5: done better. Maybe he could have I don't know, but
Speaker 5: those ideas, like I wanted them to explored so bad
Speaker 5: in episode eight. It really seemed like with the trailer
Speaker 5: and like the hype up to that it could they
Speaker 5: could have explored some of these ideas from like Kotor
Speaker 5: one or Kotor two in it, and then it was
Speaker 5: just kind of a schlockfest, to be honest, I'm just
Speaker 5: gonna say it, like it just it just was. And
Speaker 5: they didn't do any of that with with like Luke,
Speaker 5: they didn't do any of that with with Ray or
Speaker 5: Kylo Red or any of these people, and it was
Speaker 5: it was a huge disappointment. But well, all that to
Speaker 5: say that, like Kotar one and two are the Star
Speaker 5: Wars story that like I always dreamed of but has
Speaker 5: never been told on a screen or even in a book. Necessarily,
Speaker 5: it's in these semi obscure video games from the original
Speaker 5: Xbox which a lot of people didn't even really play
Speaker 5: in the early mid two thousands, and they're just kind
Speaker 5: of you know, for instance, it was gonna be like
Speaker 5: lost in history, and I'm like this, this is the
Speaker 5: greatest Star Wars story ever told, and few and far
Speaker 5: between people have experienced this or even know that it exists.
Speaker 5: And like, there's my plug. Buy therefore you to play
Speaker 5: those games. It's like if you'll give for something rich
Speaker 5: in the Star Wars universe, it's like, there's your story.
Speaker 5: Play the code our games, especially Kotor two especially.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely second that I'm not gonna go too deep
Speaker 2: in it because we'll be having some chats on it
Speaker 2: in a couple of months. We're doing some patron chats
Speaker 2: on it. But you know, you brought up how in
Speaker 2: the second one, Kreya like basically tries to deconstruct the Force,
Speaker 2: essentially deconstruct the lines between good and evil, the Jedi
Speaker 2: and the Sith. But what makes that different than what
Speaker 2: happens in the newer movies is that she's the obvious villain,
Speaker 2: like she does something wrong, which just shows that the
Speaker 2: start contrasts in storytelling, whereas so much of I mean,
Speaker 2: I know that we could it'd be easy to spend
Speaker 2: the rest of this conversation just hating on the new movies,
Speaker 2: but you know, so much of those movies are just
Speaker 2: they're deconstructing in the wrong way, which is the spirit
Speaker 2: of the age I suppose, where all the heroes get
Speaker 2: ripped apart. You know that Han Solo, obviously one of
Speaker 2: the coolest characters in the franchise, is now this like
Speaker 2: deadbeat divorcee who's just like not really doing anything significant anymore,
Speaker 2: you know, every Luke, I mean, he's obviously a lesser
Speaker 2: form of what he really should have been. By this
Speaker 2: point in his story. All the heroes are getting torn down.
Speaker 2: The institution of the Jedi gets torn down as just
Speaker 2: this artifice of raw power. You know, it's all about deconstruction,
Speaker 2: as if that's somehow spirit of nobility. I don't know,
Speaker 2: but Kotor is Star Wars as it should have been,
Speaker 2: And you know, honestly, I can't elevate it above the
Speaker 2: original trilogy simply because that's that's the original. But I
Speaker 2: think a case can be made that it is an
Speaker 2: even better story. But again, I that's hard to say
Speaker 2: looking back. I same, do you have any experience of
Speaker 2: those games.
Speaker 4: I've played the first one, I've yet to play the
Speaker 4: second one. I played the first one last year for
Speaker 4: the first time. I I I set a deadline for
Speaker 4: myself said I'm gonna play this game and I make
Speaker 4: a video about it by this deadline, and I kind
Speaker 4: of and then that was right before I was finishing
Speaker 4: another very long video, so I was a little bit
Speaker 4: rushed in that, and I didn't do as good of
Speaker 4: a job as I would have liked. And I admit
Speaker 4: I played the game under like a little bit of
Speaker 4: time crunch, so I probably didn't enjoy it as much
Speaker 4: I would as I would have liked. I also played
Speaker 4: it twenty years after it came out, and I went,
Speaker 4: I would have enjoyed this a lot more eighteen years
Speaker 4: ago if I had played it before. I had the
Speaker 4: expectations of what modern RPGs look like, just in their combat,
Speaker 4: in their dialogue, not not the quality of the dialogue,
Speaker 4: but just how it's visually portrayed. Where all the dialogue
Speaker 4: and Kotor is just a talking head, which is not
Speaker 4: as interesting as seeing an actual dynamic cutscene such as technology,
Speaker 4: that's how it goes. I found the philosophy of that
Speaker 4: game to be wonderful. Again, it is very very much
Speaker 4: a story of redemption, assuming you make light size choices.
Speaker 4: And I mean but even even at the end there
Speaker 4: right like Revan offers redemption to Malick. It's Malick, right,
Speaker 4: that's it. Yeah, you know, even saying that, like I
Speaker 4: found it, you can find it too, despite him, you know,
Speaker 4: persisting in in his errors till till that end. And yeah,
Speaker 4: and you find that message, you look for that message,
Speaker 4: you find that message.
Speaker 3: Ever, what can we do? Move on?
Speaker 4: You move forward. You can't change what's done. You can
Speaker 4: only move on. That's that's the Darret quote from Dead
Speaker 4: Redemption too. Yeah, so it's I find I find it
Speaker 4: fascinating and wonderful that that theme runs through so many
Speaker 4: incredible stories. And yeah, absolutely, the storytelling and you know,
Speaker 4: just the character dynamics of of Kotor are something that
Speaker 4: don't really exist in Star Wars anymore. Absolutely, I will
Speaker 4: frame from bashing the sequels any further. You guys have
Speaker 4: done a fantastic job. I'm not going to do that.
Speaker 4: That's not what we're talking about. I will say one thing.
Speaker 4: It's fine for us, as human beings living on a
Speaker 4: planet Earth to say laser swords, because that is our
Speaker 4: conceptual knowledge of a lightsaber, right, it's the sword made
Speaker 4: out of a laser. Luke says, laser sword. In the
Speaker 4: last Jedi, and that drives me nuts because it's a lightsaber.
Speaker 4: He knows it as a lightsaber. They don't know what
Speaker 4: swords are. All they know are lightsabers. I mean, I
Speaker 4: suppose there could be other some sort of swords or whatever,
Speaker 4: but it's it's a lightsaber, he says it in this
Speaker 4: you know, just again it's deconstructing, right, like he's tearing
Speaker 4: down the idea of a very lights heaer by calling
Speaker 4: it a derogatory name. Drives me insane. Anyhow, the others,
Speaker 4: the other Star Wars game.
Speaker 5: What je so this is one of those Ryan John
Speaker 5: citizens that was thrown Yeah.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, the other Star Wars game that I love to death.
Speaker 4: It's a very simple game. It takes maybe six hours
Speaker 4: to play through. Is Star Wars Republic Commando the original
Speaker 4: Xbox game? I think it came out around the same
Speaker 4: year's Kodere two thosand and four two thousand and five.
Speaker 4: I think it was like co Tor, Star Wars Battle
Speaker 4: Friend B. It's probably command All came out right around
Speaker 4: the same time. Uh so, what a year for Star
Speaker 4: Wars video games. And it is if you haven't played it,
Speaker 4: which you probably haven't because it's very It really got buried.
Speaker 4: It's a story about a commando squad Clone Commandos during
Speaker 4: the initially like the Battle of Genosis, and then a
Speaker 4: couple of later missions including Battle and Kshik Battle on
Speaker 4: Kashik which is seen in episode three of the prequels,
Speaker 4: and basically they were kind of behind enemy lines missions. Uh,
Speaker 4: and it is fantastic. It's you know, it's again. It's
Speaker 4: a short first person shooter where you're just going through.
Speaker 4: You're fighting you know, droids and gen oceans and you know,
Speaker 4: raw mercenaries hired by the separatists. But what forms the
Speaker 4: core of the game is the bond that these four
Speaker 4: Clone Commandos share, right, they all have their initial individual
Speaker 4: distinct personalities, because otherwise it would just be kind of
Speaker 4: weird if they were in fact just the same person,
Speaker 4: even though they are the same person, and they have
Speaker 4: this incredible bond of brotherhood. My favorite thing to ever
Speaker 4: appear on a screen as Band of Brothers, the story
Speaker 4: about the one hundred and first Airborne at one of
Speaker 4: their companies right in the in the war in Europe
Speaker 4: in World War Two, because it shows this just how
Speaker 4: war forges this bond of brotherhood and how like that
Speaker 4: can be found like nowhere else.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: War is a horrible, horrible, terrible thing, one of the
Speaker 4: worst blights on humanity, but it forges some of the
Speaker 4: most incredible love. And I think that's I mean that
Speaker 4: you talk about like the beauty of God's creation, like
Speaker 4: God's ability to you know, reshape, to make all things
Speaker 4: new right into sense, right where he takes this horrible
Speaker 4: thing and he creates something incredible, incredibly beautiful out of it,
Speaker 4: even if, like you know, on Earth, you know, may
Speaker 4: last a short time because men get killed in war,
Speaker 4: but they had they found this love that they couldn't
Speaker 4: find anywhere else. And that you find that distinctly in
Speaker 4: Republic Commando right where these you know, these these four
Speaker 4: clones right they are they consider each other brothers. They
Speaker 4: would happily and immediately die, you know, rather than see
Speaker 4: one of their comrades fall. And it's a phenomenally phenomenally
Speaker 4: done story. It's something I made a video about it
Speaker 4: a long time ago, and like I need to revisit
Speaker 4: that and talk about that more in depth. You know,
Speaker 4: it makes me think of like Halo Reach to some
Speaker 4: extent too, where you know it is kind of you know,
Speaker 4: they're doomed in a sense that it's not quite the
Speaker 4: same as Halo Reach, where you know they all are doomed,
Speaker 4: but you know, you kind of you kind of know
Speaker 4: this can't really be a happy ending, but you're there
Speaker 4: for you know, the bonds that are forged. And yeah,
Speaker 4: it's it's very very good. There's another one, just if
Speaker 4: you can find it on Steam for cheap, which it
Speaker 4: always is, and uh, yeah, definitely want to check out.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think that your description just shows how rich Star
Speaker 2: Wars is for good storytelling, because you know, it's a
Speaker 2: lot of times it's categorized as sci fi, but it's not.
Speaker 2: It's fantasy that happens to be in space. It's not
Speaker 2: technologically driven, it's it is a fantasy story. I mean,
Speaker 2: the the Jedi are essentially wizards with with swords too,
Speaker 2: I guess use a derogatory term, but you know, I
Speaker 2: mean another well we're on on this theme. I mean
Speaker 2: another title the Well, I'm guess I'm going back to
Speaker 2: the Old Republic, but the the MMO is actually really good.
Speaker 2: The start the Old Republic MMO and I I haven't
Speaker 2: I don't play a lot of MMOs. I played Wow
Speaker 2: for a while when it first came out. I went
Speaker 2: from from the beta up through Burning Crusade. But the
Speaker 2: The Old Republic MMO really takes that basic model. It's
Speaker 2: kind of a wild skin, Like I guess, a lot
Speaker 2: of things are more or less, but you know, each
Speaker 2: of the classes gets its own character story. That's basic.
Speaker 2: The KO tore length at least nearly, which you know,
Speaker 2: I hadn't really seen before to have that much replay value,
Speaker 2: that much variability, that much storytelling built into this one game,
Speaker 2: and it's, uh, yeah, so that's just I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't have a who lot else to build on that,
Speaker 2: because again, it's like eight different games essentially built into
Speaker 2: one as far as the storytelling goes.
Speaker 3: Josh, we are you going to say something?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't. I definitely don't know about The Old
Speaker 5: Republic MMO because I've never played it, But I was
Speaker 5: just gonna, like, I was gonna second his h his recommendation,
Speaker 5: everything he said about Republic Commando and also offer since
Speaker 5: like you said, we're on the topic now, yeah, now
Speaker 5: you're saying it. There's like there was a lot of
Speaker 5: Star Wars gems and from like two thousand, two thousand
Speaker 5: and five, and Jedi Outcast and then Jedi Jedi Academy.
Speaker 5: I'm getting them in the right, I think, but they
Speaker 5: were basically like the stories of Luke Skywalker after Return
Speaker 5: of the Jedi and him like he's like the new
Speaker 5: like Jedi Master, he's like the Yoda. Now he's not
Speaker 5: like super old or anything. He's still kind of looks
Speaker 5: like you know, Mark Hamill looks like in like the
Speaker 5: mid eighties, but he's like that.
Speaker 3: He's not drinking blue milk on Island yet.
Speaker 5: No, he's not drinking some like aliens utter or something
Speaker 5: like that. By me means no. And this never happens
Speaker 5: in that story out Oft think thankfully because they didn't
Speaker 5: you know, bastardize his character in any way. But it's
Speaker 5: it's really Luke like right after it's like a little
Speaker 5: bit after Return of the Jedi, and he's he's rebuilding
Speaker 5: like the Jedi. He's building the Jedi Academy as is
Speaker 5: in the name of in the name of the game title,
Speaker 5: and like it's it's that story, and like your your
Speaker 5: character is basically one of his, like the apprentices and
Speaker 5: padawans there, and he's got this Jedi night named Kyle Kataran,
Speaker 5: who's like one of the most underrated Star Wars characters
Speaker 5: of all time. He's almost like Han Solo if you
Speaker 5: became a Jedi. He's got that like like aristhmatictic, like
Speaker 5: rogue smoke order, sarcastic personality type. But he's great. Those
Speaker 5: games are awesome too. I couldn't recommend them enough as well.
Speaker 4: There's something I was going to say, but it slipped
Speaker 4: my mind. But yeah, okay, glad I found another the
Speaker 4: Commando fan the game is has captured my heart forever.
Speaker 4: My wife's too, but she doesn't play a whole lot
Speaker 4: of games. Lack of time and you know, just not
Speaker 4: not her favorite way to relax. But uh, she she
Speaker 4: bought me off off Etsy a couple a couple of
Speaker 4: different Christmases, like two of the helmets from from the game,
Speaker 4: so I had those are on like on my bookshelf
Speaker 4: that stands behind me when I when I filmed videos. Yeah,
Speaker 4: phenomenal story, that's super awesome.
Speaker 5: I have a friend that like makes uh he like
Speaker 5: made like Mandalorian helmets for fun. He's made like a
Speaker 5: helmet from Fallout and stuff like that too, But super
Speaker 5: cool stuff. When people do that.
Speaker 2: Cool and I feel like we could probably go around
Speaker 2: all night, just different games laid. But I mean me,
Speaker 2: I'll throw one more at least from my side. And
Speaker 2: really it's I mean, originally it's built off the same
Speaker 2: model of Kotor, and that, of course is dragon Age,
Speaker 2: which I've played.
Speaker 3: I played a lot of.
Speaker 2: I mean I played one and two and sometimes three
Speaker 2: on a fairly regular rotation for a while. Just another
Speaker 2: rich fantasy series, you know, because I was there in
Speaker 2: the beginning that the clunky elements of dragon Age origins,
Speaker 2: you know, never really bothered me, just as with Kotor,
Speaker 2: because I definitely recognize that Sam says that getting into
Speaker 2: those games can be difficult jumping in now without having that,
Speaker 2: you know, without being there three thousand years ago, as
Speaker 2: Alrod would say.
Speaker 4: That.
Speaker 2: Well though, by the way, you know, there is supposedly
Speaker 2: a Kotor rebake in the works. There there's been one
Speaker 2: off and on studio problems, but for everything I can tell,
Speaker 2: it's still happening at some point. But yeah, but dragon Age,
Speaker 2: of course, is another one of those franchises that has
Speaker 2: just tanked to postmodern ideology. Everything that I've seen from
Speaker 2: the latest installation that's come out had just ruined it
Speaker 2: for me. It's it's it's so easy I think for creators,
Speaker 2: for studios to move away from how do I tell
Speaker 2: a story? To how do I tell the story that
Speaker 2: people not even just that they want to hear? How
Speaker 2: do I tell the story that people should hear?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: And that's when you get into propaganda. That's that same
Speaker 2: was saying, it's the other side of the I'm going
Speaker 2: to tell a Christian story, but I'm gonna tell some
Speaker 2: postmodern Marxist deconstruction of story.
Speaker 3: And so it's just it's just kind of a shame
Speaker 3: where things go with it.
Speaker 4: I remember what I was about to say. I've not
Speaker 4: played I've never Touched the Old Republic. I've not played
Speaker 4: a second of it, simply due to lack of time.
Speaker 4: And also I've never played an MMO, so I just
Speaker 4: haven't really depped my toes in. But the cinematic trailers
Speaker 4: for that game are incredible. I will go and rewatch
Speaker 4: them from time to time on YouTube. They are some
Speaker 4: of the best storytelling like in the Star Wars universe.
Speaker 2: And I'm not being hyperbolic, Yes, yes, I mean those
Speaker 2: games are incredible for storytelling. As far as the end
Speaker 2: game as well as the cut scenes. I mean as
Speaker 2: far it's I mean, I have not played many momos,
Speaker 2: like I said, I've played Wow, I've played a good
Speaker 2: bit of The Old Republic. I did my toes a
Speaker 2: little bit in the Elder Schools online, but that just
Speaker 2: didn't last more than a few hours before I just
Speaker 2: decided that wasn't for me. But Star Wars the Old Republic,
Speaker 2: it's it's a fantastic game. And even if you're not
Speaker 2: into the MMO elements of it, which you know, I
Speaker 2: I need to just play by myself. I'm an independent
Speaker 2: gamer for the most part. You know, you can go
Speaker 2: through those play essentially like single player games with just
Speaker 2: very rich storytelling. Well, I mean, is there anything else?
Speaker 2: And I said, we could go on all night.
Speaker 3: We won't do.
Speaker 2: That's anything on Stammer or Josh that you wanted to
Speaker 2: bring up.
Speaker 4: We've talked a lot about like kind of story during games,
Speaker 4: but I think one of the games one of the
Speaker 4: aspects that makes games so good is that you can
Speaker 4: tell your own story, right, like just your progress through
Speaker 4: the game is is itself often a story. So some
Speaker 4: of my two of my favorite games that are both
Speaker 4: of my top ten hours on Steam are the Xcom games,
Speaker 4: not the original ones from like the early nineties, but
Speaker 4: the reboot from twenty twelve and then the Xcom two
Speaker 4: from twenty sixteen, And so basically it's an alien invasion.
Speaker 4: Xcom is the you know, multinational agency that comes together
Speaker 4: and unlike all other multi national agencies or created, is
Speaker 4: actually effective. So right, so you're fighting back against the
Speaker 4: aliens and you know, progressing your technology tree, you know,
Speaker 4: doing various research, building out your base, et cetera, all
Speaker 4: those you know, good kind of RPG like elements. But
Speaker 4: you are controlling a you know, kind of a top
Speaker 4: down almost like you know, almost like a table talp game,
Speaker 4: squad of soldiers that you you know, on take turns,
Speaker 4: you know, moving around the maps, the tactical turn based game.
Speaker 4: You move around the map, you shoot the anlyats, you
Speaker 4: throw the grenades. You know, you win the mission and
Speaker 4: the story. This game would not be half as good
Speaker 4: if it didn't let you name your characters, but it does,
Speaker 4: and so you can name them Ao and are Eric,
Speaker 4: orn Almer and so forth, or you can give them
Speaker 4: names from Star Wars or pick your favorite fantasy you
Speaker 4: know series, or name them after your friends and family whatever,
Speaker 4: all right, but then you have because you have characters, right,
Speaker 4: because you have people, this is now a story, right,
Speaker 4: These characters now have arcs almost right where they get wounded,
Speaker 4: you know, they're severely you know, wounded by a place
Speaker 4: asthma bolt from from an alien. But they come back
Speaker 4: and you know they rise, you know, the top rank
Speaker 4: they have the most kills of the whole mission, right,
Speaker 4: or you know someone who's your star throughout the whole
Speaker 4: whole mission. You know, it gets the gets the floor
Speaker 4: blown out from out of them, the falls to their death.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: So it's kind of it lets you kind of create
Speaker 4: this this story in your mind as you go through
Speaker 4: this games, you know, and and it's got lots of
Speaker 4: other elements which you could get value of. Again, it's
Speaker 4: it's planning, thinking ahead, perseverance. You make the game, the
Speaker 4: games more difficult, actually tactical thinking, not just rushing through.
Speaker 4: But I love the element of being able to create
Speaker 4: your own story. And this is where games, you know,
Speaker 4: RPGs and the like are, you know, really shines that
Speaker 4: you know, the choices you make matter. And I think
Speaker 4: that's one of the one of the things that games
Speaker 4: to tell people best because they're interactive. It forces you
Speaker 4: to make choices, and those choices mattering is you know
Speaker 4: something that is obviously applicable to our for day life.
Speaker 2: So you mentioned that one of your your you know,
Speaker 2: highest our account on Steam. What do you think it's
Speaker 2: your your your number one Steam game most out.
Speaker 4: I know I looked this up recently, and I know
Speaker 4: it's it's more than double anything else. The game is
Speaker 4: called Rocket League, and this is again very very opposite
Speaker 4: end of the spectrum. Everything we've been talking about. Rocket
Speaker 4: League is soccer with rocket powered cars. It's it is
Speaker 4: exactly what it sounds like.
Speaker 3: I have.
Speaker 4: I think it's something like six hundred hours on Steam,
Speaker 4: and I know that that number is maybe a little
Speaker 4: more half of my actual total number of hours in
Speaker 4: the game. I played on Xbox, and I played on
Speaker 4: like Epic Games for a while for whatever reason. Uh,
Speaker 4: that's the game I get back into in like twenty
Speaker 4: fifteen when it came out and I played a lot.
Speaker 4: I played it a lot with my friends and it
Speaker 4: was a game I got very good at, which again
Speaker 4: there's it's the most sport like video game that you
Speaker 4: could possibly ever make, because it's most sport video games Madden,
Speaker 4: NHL whatever are just like press a button to throw
Speaker 4: the throw a pass, shoot the puck, shoot the ball, whatever,
Speaker 4: and like there's very little actual refined skill in it,
Speaker 4: whereas Rocket League is you have minute control over your
Speaker 4: car and it's all physics based, so how you hit
Speaker 4: the ball at what point, at what angle, what speed matters,
Speaker 4: and you know where the ball actually goes right, So
Speaker 4: it is it's just entirely skilled. There's basically no luck whatsoever.
Speaker 4: And having play a lot of sports when I was younger,
Speaker 4: that kind of filled that need for a little bit,
Speaker 4: whereas like I'm not wasn't competing in sports anymore, so
Speaker 4: it gave me something to really practice and get good at.
Speaker 4: So yeah, very different for most of the stuff we've
Speaker 4: been talking about, And that's kind of what I love
Speaker 4: about video games is where it can it can you know,
Speaker 4: bring out good in you, It can teach you all
Speaker 4: sorts of things. It can you know, be of value,
Speaker 4: even if it's whether it's practicing a very specific skill
Speaker 4: in Rocket League or exploring pill deep and philosophical themes
Speaker 4: in Kotor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that that emphasis on skill, that's something that you
Speaker 2: know sometimes I hear Elon must talk about, which I mean,
Speaker 2: he's not my number one philosopher, but you know, he
Speaker 2: talks about how that kind of hyper focus can help
Speaker 2: you to one thing, kind of reset your mind and
Speaker 2: separating out other things in life. You know, take that
Speaker 2: a little bit of a break. But also it just
Speaker 2: trains your mind to hyper focus, and that itself is
Speaker 2: a good exercise from time to time. Uh, Josh, tell us,
Speaker 2: what's what's your most played game?
Speaker 1: Do you think.
Speaker 5: Most played game of all time or on Steam.
Speaker 3: Wherever you want to go with that. I don't know
Speaker 3: all time all time.
Speaker 6: I don't know if I might spend too much time
Speaker 6: thinking about that, So I'm for now because I haven't
Speaker 6: checked this and I've been on Steam in a while,
Speaker 6: to be honest, but I know for sure it's actually
Speaker 6: is like the first Dark Souls.
Speaker 5: Game, because I think I've beaten it like a lot
Speaker 5: of our twelve times. I used to like like quasi
Speaker 5: speed run it, meaning like I could like beat it
Speaker 5: in like maybe like two or three hours. But that
Speaker 5: doesn't make me a speed runner because you know, there's
Speaker 5: like guys that play that game like Naked with like nothing,
Speaker 5: but like a Caveman Club and like they like play
Speaker 5: it with like the guitar Hero controller and still beat
Speaker 5: it in twenty minutes. Like I'm not. I wasn't never
Speaker 5: that ridiculous, But I think that that is like my
Speaker 5: most played game, and honestly, like it really was. Yes,
Speaker 5: it was fun, but I wanted to like keep exploring
Speaker 5: that world. It's Dark Soul is one of the world's
Speaker 5: called Wardrone, and I wanted to keep exploring Wardrone over
Speaker 5: and over and over and over and over again. And
Speaker 5: that's what kept drawing me back to play. It was
Speaker 5: like a comfort food for a while. It was like
Speaker 5: whenever I was like needed to, like I don't want
Speaker 5: to say relax too much, because you can only relax
Speaker 5: so much playing Dark Souls, but there was like a
Speaker 5: level or like there's something that just feels like it's
Speaker 5: like like going home after like a difficult journey in
Speaker 5: a way to like only go home and go on
Speaker 5: a virtually difficult journey. But there was something really comforting
Speaker 5: about just exploring that world. Even though the world is
Speaker 5: sometimes terrifying, the world is sometimes challenges you to wit
Speaker 5: send in a way. But yeah, I just something about
Speaker 5: that game that's always kept bringing me back to it.
Speaker 5: So that's I have, like I think close to one
Speaker 5: hundred hours on that on Steam, so quite a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, as with Sam, despite most of our conversation,
Speaker 2: my number one game is not story driven. It's actually
Speaker 2: Crusader Kings two by a long run, which that that
Speaker 2: game if you haven't played it as a kind of
Speaker 2: a deep learning curve, but once you get it down, it's.
Speaker 3: Just it's.
Speaker 2: Infinite replay value. I'm not going to tell you how
Speaker 2: many hours I have on it. It's kind of an
Speaker 2: ups number. And then after that, then we get to
Speaker 2: the story driven games and we go to Fallout, Skyrim
Speaker 2: and whatnot. Although five is up there as well.
Speaker 4: Yep, so five is easily my top ten, but again
Speaker 4: there's a there's a story within that game, right, Like
Speaker 4: my wife and I would both play five. We'd be
Speaker 4: playing you know, we're in college, but separate colleges. You know,
Speaker 4: we'd divisive five, you know, our individual games. And we
Speaker 4: get on Skype back when Skype still existed, you know,
Speaker 4: a couple of times a week, and we talk about
Speaker 4: our sip games. We're talking about the story, what wonders
Speaker 4: you building? You know, we go into war with anybody.
Speaker 4: Has anybody you know been been harassing you right as
Speaker 4: England and Constant been attempting to trade with you, and
Speaker 4: you have to tell us what the go pound sand like?
Speaker 4: There's I don't know. I love the Yeah, the ability
Speaker 4: to just tell a story with you know, the ability
Speaker 4: of games to tell stories even when they're not telling
Speaker 4: a story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's part of the value of subcreation when
Speaker 2: when they give you that room to tell your own story,
Speaker 2: to participate, you know, that's why you know. Tolkien says
Speaker 2: that one benefit of literature over movies is that you
Speaker 2: have to visualize things in your own mind. And to
Speaker 2: that extent, every reader has a somewhat of a different
Speaker 2: story based off what their experience, other things they've read,
Speaker 2: the various things that go into forming your mental images
Speaker 2: of what's playing out. That you participate in the act
Speaker 2: of subcreation as a reader versus a movie where you're
Speaker 2: just watching something play out. I think a similar case
Speaker 2: could be made for video games, at least for a
Speaker 2: large number of video games. When you play a role
Speaker 2: in creating what the story is. I mean, yes, you're
Speaker 2: operating within certain parameters, but you are also operating in
Speaker 2: certain parameters. When you read a book, you're dealing with
Speaker 2: the texas given to you, and so I think that
Speaker 2: that case very easily could be made.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean really, it applies more to less to
Speaker 4: story driven games than it is to a lot of others,
Speaker 4: because most of games, like the God of War games
Speaker 4: that I'm thinking of specifically, they are largely movies, right
Speaker 4: where there's a lot of gameplay, but then there's a
Speaker 4: cutscene right in this kind of this long cut scene.
Speaker 4: Something like kotor Is, which is still very storag driven,
Speaker 4: is less like that. There much more subcreation available to
Speaker 4: than games which are like, Okay, they're telling you this
Speaker 4: story and you're playing through it. So it kind of
Speaker 4: depends on the game. There's a lot of a lot
Speaker 4: of variation there. But yeah, I think absolutely. I didn't
Speaker 4: I assume that it's from one of Tolkien's letters, because
Speaker 4: most everything that Tolkien says that I haven't already read
Speaker 4: from his letters or I don't remember anyway, I've read
Speaker 4: some of them, but yeah, I hadn't heard that before,
Speaker 4: So that's fascinating.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, he really gets into that in his essay
Speaker 3: on fairy stories.
Speaker 4: That's fair stories, Okay, yeah, something I've read hearts of
Speaker 4: I don't think I ever sat down read the whole thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's definitely worthwhile.
Speaker 2: I mean, he has a lot of literary references that
Speaker 2: most people, myself included, like, I don't follow all of
Speaker 2: his references that he makes, not yet, but as far
Speaker 2: as the basic idea he's laying out there, it's really
Speaker 2: foundational to the way that I engage with stories in
Speaker 2: any format. So it definitely would recommend that to anybody listening. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so I feel like we covered good ground that the
Speaker 2: basics of what I wanted to discuss. I mean, is
Speaker 2: there is there anything that Josh or Sam you feel
Speaker 2: like should be brought to this that hasn't already It's
Speaker 2: a gay if not, But I don't want to cut
Speaker 2: off any thoughts.
Speaker 4: Hmm, I don't think so.
Speaker 5: I was kind of curious and maybe we've already touched
Speaker 5: on this enough, so let me know. But like the
Speaker 5: idea of like games that and like, I guess we
Speaker 5: did kind of talk about this with Stark Souls, but
Speaker 5: games that like don't have like an explicit uh an
Speaker 5: explicit like narrative, but almost like tells its meaning through
Speaker 5: like simple and aesthetics, if that makes sense. So I
Speaker 5: think like something like something like Legends of Selada might
Speaker 5: like fit into that category more where I guess like
Speaker 5: there is like an explicit story, but sometimes there's there's
Speaker 5: more beyond the story, or sometimes it's just the story
Speaker 5: is really basic, but there's more within the world. And
Speaker 5: one game I wanted to bring up in that regard
Speaker 5: in case anybody else's point is I was curious of
Speaker 5: a pointed shadow of the Colossus and if not, I'll
Speaker 5: like look that game up later. First of all, but
Speaker 5: that's a game where there's this it's kind of just
Speaker 5: symbol like you're this, you're this boy, and you you
Speaker 5: arrive at like this temple on a horse and basically
Speaker 5: had to beat these I think it's like I don't
Speaker 5: even remember how many coloss side there are.
Speaker 4: I think there's six. It's it's funny you mentioned it
Speaker 4: because they just picked that game like I had it
Speaker 4: forever and I started playing it. I needed to like
Speaker 4: lie down on the couch because I'm dealing with like
Speaker 4: an injury, but I was lying on the couch with
Speaker 4: like hey, kids, like we're gonna we're gonna play this
Speaker 4: for a little bit. We don't do that very much,
Speaker 4: but I was like so, and they got all sorts
Speaker 4: of questions, so I literally just like beat like the
Speaker 4: first colossus just the other day.
Speaker 5: But yeah, continue, oh no, for sure, that's that's super
Speaker 5: cool and coincidental to hear. But yeah, so there's like
Speaker 5: basically these sixteen coloss side and it's like your character
Speaker 5: is like this, it's kind of like your typical like
Speaker 5: you know, twelve year old boy with a sword in
Speaker 5: a fantasy setting and he's got he's got this horse,
Speaker 5: which is sometimes incorporated into the combat, sometimes more, sometimes less,
Speaker 5: but like you just you're just dropped off on this
Speaker 5: huge plane and you find the next colossus by like
Speaker 5: he holds his sword up to like the sun and
Speaker 5: like it points a beam of light towards just the
Speaker 5: general direction you have to go. And that's that's it.
Speaker 5: Like that's the entire game is just hunting down the
Speaker 5: sixth Colossi. They all represent different different like mythical beasts,
Speaker 5: and therefore it you have different ways to basically attack
Speaker 5: them like that. They're all like kind of they're kind
Speaker 5: of like a giant humanoid boss puzzle in a sense.
Speaker 5: But it's it's just a really fascinating game, and it's
Speaker 5: so unbelievably unique, but it kind of like ties in
Speaker 5: with that concept I'm trying to get at here. It's like,
Speaker 5: there's not like some explicitly deep store. It's not like
Speaker 5: it's not fall Out New Vegas where you can spend
Speaker 5: like dozens of hours just walking around, you know, the
Speaker 5: desert of Hilas Vegas talking to different people. Right, It's
Speaker 5: not you don't really talk to anybody the entire game,
Speaker 5: but somehow there's a story being told there through like
Speaker 5: the substance of the world versus you know, the mouths
Speaker 5: of the characters in this sense. And I feel like
Speaker 5: that's like a there's like a category of gaming that
Speaker 5: that that is that is that too. That's sometimes not
Speaker 5: talked about, but it can be even overlooked because sometimes
Speaker 5: it can be seen as or that game was dumb
Speaker 5: or something because it didn't have like a story, like
Speaker 5: what's the point it's like, but there was there was
Speaker 5: something there, and I think sometimes people just it's over
Speaker 5: their head. They miss it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, games have the advantage of that. Most movies, you know,
Speaker 4: TV shows will not of environmental storytelling, right, so they
Speaker 4: you know, developers good ones anyway will often you know,
Speaker 4: place objects in the world that tell a story that
Speaker 4: if you will care enough, you will find and notice them.
Speaker 4: The example that comes to mind the thing of when
Speaker 4: it comes to environmental storytelling is a game called Prey
Speaker 4: p R E Y that came out twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen,
Speaker 4: I think, and it very much has a story. It
Speaker 4: has a narrative set into spaceship or space station, you know,
Speaker 4: the not too distant future that you know it gets
Speaker 4: infected by an alien parasite essentially, but it has a
Speaker 4: lot of environmental storytelling, right, so, whether it's notes that
Speaker 4: are left around or even just like I think I've
Speaker 4: seen I remember seeing this in a video like someone's
Speaker 4: like baseball glove and pizza that are sitting out and
Speaker 4: kind of like you know stowed away spot where you
Speaker 4: can learn about you know, other characters for mostly all
Speaker 4: that anyway at this point just by you know, walking
Speaker 4: around and observing the world. And that's you know that
Speaker 4: you could apply the same sort of thing to you know,
Speaker 4: Breath of the Wild, where you you're going to learn
Speaker 4: about the history of the world just by observing, by
Speaker 4: walking around exploring, whether it's you know, just looking at
Speaker 4: every nook and grit that you can possibly find, or
Speaker 4: talking to every NPC and that you know, exhausting every
Speaker 4: possible dialogue tree, and yeah, that you know that is
Speaker 4: really cool. Where it's just the games really take in
Speaker 4: And this supplies to to think, to games more than
Speaker 4: most media, but to all media, because intentionality matters. Like
Speaker 4: we said at the beginning, but you really do get
Speaker 4: in what you put out, or get you really get
Speaker 4: out what you put in, and to an extreme extent
Speaker 4: where yeah, you can last through you know, the main
Speaker 4: quest of Skyrim, which everyone told me not to do
Speaker 4: when I tweeted that it was my first time playing
Speaker 4: and asking for advice like don't play them in question, Okay,
Speaker 4: I got it. Yeah, So it's just explore right experience.
Speaker 4: That's something that games can do that you know, other
Speaker 4: media can't really.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that is for so long what has kept
Speaker 2: me with the Bethesda titles, with Elder Scrolls, with the
Speaker 2: fallout that you.
Speaker 3: It.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's kind of a you know, running
Speaker 2: joke that the main storyline is the side story, like
Speaker 2: it's it's the last thing you want to do after
Speaker 2: you you do everything else because the purpose of the
Speaker 2: games is not really the story per se. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think that the stories have some value, especially when
Speaker 2: you go back to morrowind and Oblivion. I mean, Skyrim's
Speaker 2: has a good central story too, but it's it's very simple.
Speaker 2: But the real purpose of the game, the value of
Speaker 2: the game is in the exploration, the engagement, in the
Speaker 2: subcreation of determining like what kind of role are you
Speaker 2: going to play in this world? And I think that's
Speaker 2: what gives something like Skyrims so much replay value, and
Speaker 2: that yeah, even though you're you're doing the same stuff
Speaker 2: eventually if you've played enough times, but you do it
Speaker 2: with your own sort of headcanon on who you are
Speaker 2: and what you're doing in the in this world, how
Speaker 2: you're engaging, And you know, Josha talking about that like
Speaker 2: dynamic storytelling of just the nonverbal cues and whatnot, the
Speaker 2: symbolism of the aesthetics. And I feel like even in
Speaker 2: these these Bethesta titles, you get a lot of that
Speaker 2: when you're just wandering around and you discover like the
Speaker 2: way like you'll come across like a corpse. That's that's
Speaker 2: in a certain way with other environmental cues as to
Speaker 2: what happened here, you know, follow Out I think does
Speaker 2: this very well with the way that you know, some
Speaker 2: of some of the settings laid out, and it's just
Speaker 2: it becomes this immersive, mysterious enchanting aesthetic, or I guess
Speaker 2: for Fallout kind of disenchanting is more of the point. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and so I think it's it's a good point. Well,
Speaker 2: we've been run for like an hour and a half.
Speaker 2: We could, as said, easily go all night just talking
Speaker 2: about different things, but I think we'll go ahead and
Speaker 2: wrap it there for now, and maybe if we want
Speaker 2: to at some point in the future we could hit
Speaker 2: up some more things. But I appreciate you Sam and
Speaker 2: Josh coming on, and I'm sure that we will talk
Speaker 2: again about something or another.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thank you so much for having me on, Andrew.
Speaker 4: We appreciate it. This is this is a great conversation.
Speaker 4: I enjoyed this.
Speaker 1: Thank you for watching and thank you for listening.
Speaker 2: If you're going through the podcast, I'm glad that you
Speaker 2: were able to join us for this conversation, and I
Speaker 2: hope that you'll be able to partake in some of
Speaker 2: the upcoming conversations. I hope that you'll be able to
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Speaker 2: God Speak. The music for this episode is owned by Bethesta.
Speaker 2: Please don't sue me. I don't play many video games
Speaker 2: these days, but there are certain titles that have stuck
Speaker 2: with me, enchanting the mind of my youth and never
Speaker 2: entirely fading away. One of the chiefs among these titles
Speaker 2: is the Elder Scrolls, namely Marwin, Oblivion and Skyrim. The
Speaker 2: level of artistry, mythology, and lore of this universe is
Speaker 2: vast and provides a strong representative for asking the question
Speaker 2: as to how video games might relate to literature as
Speaker 2: an art form. Where might it rise to such a level,
Speaker 2: where must it fall short? And what unique advantages does
Speaker 2: it possess. For this eight week study, we'll be seeking
Speaker 2: to answer these questions while analyzing various elements of this franchise,
Speaker 2: specifically focusing on content related to Morow and Oblivion and
Speaker 2: Skyrim will be taking a look at the philosophy of
Speaker 2: RPGs and considering the philosophical implications of character creation and
Speaker 2: formation in an open ended series such as this, and
Speaker 2: will be looking at the relationship between in game religion, lore,
Speaker 2: and ideas with our primary world philosophical and religious concepts.
Speaker 2: Each week will include one to two videos addressing these topics,
Speaker 2: ongoing discord conversations, and live meetings. You are also encouraged
Speaker 2: to spend at least a little time playing one of
Speaker 2: these titles each week as a launching pad for conversation.
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