10 - The Value of Video Games - Mythic Mind Games

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello, and welcome to Mythic Mind Games, where we discuss
video games through the lens of the Christian humanities. I'm
doctor Andrew Snyder, and I'm glad that you're here. Hey there,
welcome back. Unfortunately we don't have our episode on Mass
Effect three ready to go. The reality is that right now,

(00:25):
I am just slammed busy. I'm still working on my
book that I really need to wrap up as soon
as possible. I'm teaching multiple classes. I've got a few
new classes coming up this false semester in just a
few weeks, and so I'm just in addition to having
three kids three under, and so my life is just
slam busy. I did not have a chance to record

(00:45):
that conversation yet, hopefully we will get there for next time.
So today what I'm going to do is provide you
with episode eighty from the main Mythic Mind podcast, as
I speak with Josh Traylor and Master Samwise, who runs
a pretty big YouTube channel dealing with some of the
things that are related to what we do here. In fact,
he was on the show for Red Dead two not

(01:07):
too long ago, and so provide that conversation for you.
This is from March of twenty twenty five. This is
when I was just starting to really formulate these ideas
about the potential value of video games as an art
form and that they may have some kind of upbuilding
utility to them, some kind of real artistic value that

(01:28):
can move us in a positive direction. And so I'm
just starting to work on these ideas as I recorded
this conversation. I think that we go to some worthwhile
places and I hope that you enjoy, and next time
we'll try to get some fresh content for you. All right,
let's go ahead and get to it. All right, welcome
back to Mythic Mind, where today we're gonna do something

(01:50):
we haven't done so far on the show, and that's
gonna talk about video games. I'm sure we'll get into
some specific titles, but you know, really just I want
to to have a broad level conversation of like what
even our video games? You know, is it just a
waste of time? Or is there some value to be
had there? And given that we're having this conversation, I
guess it's kind obvious where we're going to come down

(02:11):
on that, but you know, it might be helpful to
start off just by talking a little bit about like
like some of some of our background or experience with
games as a medium and as a kid. As a teenager,
I played a good bit, probably more than I should have.
Kind of wish I read a few more books, but nonetheless,

(02:32):
in many ways kind of having not having much of
a literary focus as a kid aside from what I
picked up in school here and there. I do kind
of feel like, looking back, games did kind of fulfill
some of that innate human desire for stories for you know,
entering into other worlds that that's sort of been chanting,
and so I think there's something there that can see

(02:53):
looking back. You know, once I went out on my own,
once I got married, a lot of that sort of
dropped off quite a bit. It once I had kids
dropped off a lot more to the point where now,
I mean, every once in a while I'll pick up something,
but it's it's usually the same something I've been playing
for ten or more years, because you know, even though
I picked up a couple of things during a Steam

(03:15):
sales not too long ago, the reality is, if I
have a few minutes to pick up a game these days,
I tend to go for familiarity, but I do think
that there's something to this question, like what are games?
What are their value? Does it make sense to bring
them to conversation as a medium with something like literature.

(03:36):
It's what's inspired the fact that you know, later on
this year I'm doing that Elder Scrolls and philosophy course,
I'm inclined to have this conversation and I'm interested to
hear what you all have to say. Sam wytn't to
tell us a little bit about yourself, about specifically your
relationship with games.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
Sure, so, yeah, I have. Honestly I have. For you know,
I'm in my early thirties. I have a relatively short
relationship with video games as a medium. Not that I
haven't played video games for long. I have played video
since I was probably six seven years old, maybe a
little bit older, but it started out and for probably
the vast majority of my childhood, from about you know,

(04:15):
seven or eight up till sixteen, I probably played backyard
baseball or backyard soccer. I'm familiar with those old, old
titles that most likely came in the bottom of cereal box.
Or I played something like roller Coaster Tycoon, where you're
just building and maintaining a theme Park, you know, Lego
Star Wars also came in a little bit later on. Yeah,

(04:35):
once the family computer was up to the task, so
it didn't. I didn't really start playing games more extensively
till I was later in high school, and then I
got into I was into things like Call of Duty
and Star Wars Battlefront and a lot of first person shooters,
ones that may may may be are not completely devoid

(04:56):
of value, but certainly just have kind of a more
entertainment usual nature. Again, you can find value in most
anything that isn't just a complete trash, but in those
games are are were anyway generally made with with love
and care, and they the stories they told were were

(05:16):
somewhat solid, but nearly most of the time was just
spent in multiplayers shooting other people who are also shooting
back at me. So it wasn't, honestly until probably after
college the last gosh, how long will be graduated less
than a decade that I really started diving into more
of the deeper world of video games. Right, So I've

(05:37):
played you know, Elder Ring after that came out, which
is a huge, vast and dark fantasy world, and you know,
the makers all the dark Souls games, and the last
few years I've played the God of War. All the
God of War games, and I think the second one,
which were are generally absolutely phenomenal games and they tell
a fantastic story. I finally played Red Dead Redemption to

(05:59):
this last year, which is hard to beat when it
comes to just the depth of the story and the
character development. And I think, what what games have an
advantage over something like, you know, even literature, but certainly
over television and movies is the depth to which they
can go, because it just because they are able to

(06:22):
take all this time. Because television, even television movies especially,
but even TV shows are limited, right, and there is
kind of a set limit on how long they can be.
Even in the age of streaming, where you can really
only be so long, you can only do so much.
Games don't only have that problem. If you look on
my channel, you know the longest my longest videos are

(06:42):
all about video game characters because they you spend so
much more time with them. If you spend twenty hours
or fifty or sixty hours playing through a game, you
spend so much time with this character, you're able to
absorb these little details and then you get a lot
more out of it. So yeah, I think basically that's
kind of my journey with games is it's just in

(07:02):
the last less than ten years or so where I
really come to absorb the value that they can have
in their ability to tell stories. But then there's more
to it than that, And there's a video I'm planning
to do and probably in the distant future at this point.
And how video games cultivate virtue and storytelling is certainly
one way, and the ways in which they can tell
stories that are distinct from books and movies are good

(07:25):
and definitely to be measured, but there are other ways
and that they can teach perseverance. They can teach you know,
explore and they need to the desire to explore and wonder.
They can even teach the logistical thinking and planning and
you know, thinking ahead. And if you take up games
like factory games where you're planning and building you know,

(07:47):
a factory, you're collecting resource. They're all sorts of ways
which games can build us. It's they're fascinating basically.

Speaker 1 (07:58):
Good. Yeah, a lot there. I've got a lot of
follow up questions, but first let's let's stop over to
Josh tell us a little bit about your experience with
video games.

Speaker 3 (08:07):
Oh, man, Yeah, I think I'm a little bit more
in European and drew where you said that you feel
like you played a lot of video games and maybe
even a little bit too much at times and wish
you would have read more. That's like in the exact
summary of like the first like twenty something odd years
of my life. So yeah, for me, I actually like

(08:28):
pretty much have played since basically as long as I
can remember before because my dad was like in his
twenties when like the og like Nintendo and all that
came out in the eighties, and so when I was
born in the mid nineties, like he already had like
Sega Genesis and was a Super Nintendo eventually Nintendo sixty

(08:50):
four PS one Dreamcast. So I really like cut my
teeth on all of that stuff like that nineties gaming,
even though I was extremely little in the second half
of the nineties when I was a toddler, but really
from there kind of like got more. I definitely like
stuck with like the Nintendo a lot and wasn't really
allowed to play like a lot of like the emerated

(09:11):
games at the time, So I would probably good good
decisions on my parents probably for that one. So played
like a lot, played like a lot of game game
played like a lot of them sixty four. Eventually I
got like more into like the Microsoft like Xbox three
sixty stuff when I was in middle school, in high
school eventually kind of like got into uh, I was
super into Halo at one point, Like those games were great,

(09:32):
and I thought that they had exceptional writing as well.
I mean, I really, I mean I've played a lot
of different stuff, probably all the way up until my
early twenties and then just it's not like I never
like lost interest or like saw there as like I
never really really with a phase where even where I
thought like video games were like stupid or pointless or
a waste of time, I would say, and I would

(09:53):
certainly still argue against all of those claims to this day.
I think I just like I started to interest in
other things more probably that I didn't spend time on
growing up, like you know, music and eventually like reading
as well, So probably like distanced myself a little bit
more so when I my knowledge of gaming early spans

(10:14):
from stuff from like the late nineties probably too roughly
like the mid twenty teens. So I'm pretty I'm I'm
a good like decade out of the loop, I would
say with a lot of things. The only one of
the only early RPG games I played in the past
ten years is Cyberpunk twenty seventy seven, which I definitely
have things to say if it comes up. But yeah,

(10:35):
pretty much like a long story short that's like kind
of like the broad kind of like the broad sweeping
overview of really my experiences.

Speaker 1 (10:43):
Yeah, I mean, like you said, we have some similar
stories there. I feel like the newest game that I
still play on a somewhat regular basis is probably like
Fallout four something like it goes goes back a little
bit at this point. You know, one thing that I've
been thinking about because you know, I've over the last

(11:06):
few years, I've really been going through a renaissance as
I've really discovered literature for the first time. It took
me to almost finishing my PhD before I recognized the
value of reading fiction. And at that point it just
I just started reading everything I keep my hands on,
and it really reshaped the way that I view just
about everything really, especially you know, it really started with

(11:28):
with Tolkien and then you know, getting into his unfairy
stories and sort of his philosophy of myths and that
sort of thing. And you know, that's allowed me to
look back on some of the games that really stood
out to me, especially in my youth, and recognize that
maybe they're not just a waste of time. I definitely
went through that phase where I felt like, you know,

(11:49):
it is just escape, But as Tolkien says, escape is
part of the process of recovery, and so I do
believe there's some value there. But at the same time
I'm working through this in real time. I I wonder
how much the games are just fun or there's an
amusement factor, and then I want to justify value into it,

(12:10):
into the story. I don't know, is that a do
you think it's a temptation when we talk about like,
you know, Sam, you're talking about how we can discover
virtue and video games and you know different positive lessons,
Like do you have any comment on that, like how
much is that real? And how much are we trying
to justify something?

Speaker 2 (12:29):
Well, I would say that if you are finding value
in something, then the value exists, right, And I've done
this with an any number of things. I can you know,
you can read value into most anything, right, I would say,
it's how does it actually change you?

Speaker 1 (12:48):
Right?

Speaker 2 (12:48):
If you know, if I am playing you know, Dark
Souls and I'm like, oh, this is this is teaching
me persistence. But you know then I don't actually persist
in my life when it matters. No, it's not really
teaching me persistence. It's not really changing, it's not really
enriching that virtue in me. It's just me. That is
just me justifying it absolutely. But I have seen multiple

(13:11):
testimonies on that game, specifically about people saying like this
saved my life. Right where people if you go on
if you go on YouTube and search you know, dark Souls,
search Dark Souls saved my life, you will find I'm
sure no shortage of of videos of people saying that
they were in a dark place they felt hopeless and helpless, right.
They they had felt like they had no no, no power, right,

(13:36):
they couldn't do anything. And then they picked up Dark
Souls and the game if you haven't played it, and
it beats you over the head quite literally. It beats
you down repeatedly, over and over and over again. The
game is designed unless you you know, really go out
of your way to make it easy for yourself, which
you can do, but it is designed to kill you repeatedly.

(14:00):
The one of the versions that came out on PC
any I'm not sure if this original version is called
Dark Souls Prepared to Die. And the game tells you
right away like you're going to die, and you're going
to die a lot, and all you can do is
get better. I mean that's it. You can yeah, sure,
you can do various things to do that, right, but
the main thing is simply getting better at the game,
learning the boss's attack patterns, learning when to attack, when

(14:22):
not to attack, learning when it's time to change your
own weapon or your build, your strategy. And it teaches
people to have an internal attribution where they say, Okay,
this failure is clearly just my fault, right, and the
only thing I can do about it is change, because
the game's not going to change. Right. When we think
about this in the wider world, I think people want

(14:44):
society to change. They want other people to change for them, right.
This is a huge problem in culture today, where everyone
has an external attribution. Right, the things that have happened
to me aren't my fault. You might be right about that,
but what are you going to do about it? Right,
So we need to have more of like an internal attribution.
That's what Dark Souls teaches through repeatedly crushing your skull in.

(15:07):
It teaches you to look inward and say, Okay, where
am I failing? What do I need to do to
get out of this? To get past this boss. It's again,
it's a very small thing where it's that you could
just it can be contained within the world of the game. Right,
if you learn that lesson in Dark Souls and you
don't apply it to your life, I mean, yeah, that's

(15:28):
that's what most people might very well do. But for
these people right who actually let it change them, I mean,
then it changed them, it did something meaningful. So yeah,
again it is it is with most mediums. Video games
are simply about how you approach them right. Intentionality is huge.
I can watch the most prof I could read the

(15:49):
most profoundly philosophical book on the planet. But if I
do it just because I want to say that I've
read the most profoundly philosophical book on the planet, who cares?
What good is that? What has that changed me?

Speaker 1 (16:02):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (16:03):
So I think that's you know, that's the big piece
when it comes to games, and I know you've pointed
this out, Andrew in a situit of yours said, thank you.
How we approach them, our intentionality, that's what matters. So
if you find good in something, sorry I've branly anchelong,
I'll stop myself here. If you find good in something,
you actually let that good affect you, then it's real.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
Yeah. I think that's very well said. I mean, it
is just like anything that if you are pursuing it
for the sake of discovering wisdom, then you're likely to
find it. Whereas if you are pursuing it just for
the sake of justifying the wrong kind of escape that
obviously at that point it's a vice. But then it's
not necessarily the fault of the medium. It's the fault

(16:46):
of the player, the one participating in it. Yeah, I
think that's that's very very well said. Josh. You do
you have any thoughts on that, on you know, discovering wisdom,
on you know, how video games can potentially serve you know,
a positive role, what kind of wherever you want to
go with that?

Speaker 2 (17:05):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (17:05):
Absolutely, I mean I certainly agree with everything you just said,
and I appreciate the the nods and mentions to Dark Souls,
because that was certainly, you know, one of the series
that's certainly like one of the only series that really
played a lot in like my adult life, and that's
like one of my I always go back to this

(17:26):
kind of game, certainly not always for relaxation, because it's
hard to relax and play Dark Souls even if your
experience sometimes it's still challenging and frustrating even when you
when you fail. But another thing I want to like
say with Dark Souls specifically is there was what actually

(17:49):
drew me into that game. It was, Yes, it was
the challenge, it was the difficulty. But the best word
I could use kind of describe the world and the
lore and the aesthetics of Dark Souls is enchanting, to
be honest. And it's the same thing that I think
any one of us could find enchanting about the best

(18:10):
of like the fantasy genre. Right, whether you're talking about
the great works of the Middle Ages or you're talking
about Tolkien or maybe even some of the the contemporary
later modern works that uh that came after Tolkien, Right,
there's something enchanting about these worlds that are that we
don't see around us necessarily, but there is there is

(18:33):
there is an enchanting reality within the world, and it
awakens and illuminates our imaginations in this this special way
that we can't maybe you can't even always fully explain
in a sense. And that was that was really stood
out for me. And one thing I'd describe myself as
is so like I always I've thought about this a lot,

(18:55):
and sometimes I knew a lot of guys that were
like into like army men growing up, right, Like they
like were like obsessed with like World War two and
stuff like that, And there's like nothing wrong with that.
I think that's great, and there's a lot of wonder
to that as well. But I always describe myself as
a kid who was more into like knights and swords

(19:15):
than like army men and like rifles. Not I'm not
going to say one is better than the other, but
that was just like my draw So I think something
like Dark Souls was enchanting, but it was almost like
enchanting in an adult way, whereas when I was in
a kid, the world and war and mythos of the
Legend of Zelda was super enchanting to me as a kid.

(19:37):
I still think it's interesting and chanting as as a
thirty year old, by the way, So I'm not going
to say it's it's child it's it's cs Lewis right.
It's like you you love childish things, then you don't
love childish things, and you grow up and you will
love childish things again, right, Like It's like that's like
kind of like how I would think of like Legend
of Zelda, but Dark Souls is not for kids. It
is for adults, but it's it's enchanting is a totally

(20:00):
different way. And I mean you just want to talk
about like how like I've never seen outside of like
a fantasy book series or like some of the old
Icelandic or you know, arthury in English tales. It's like
outside of some of that, I haven't really seen anything
else with such a rich war and uh, just like

(20:21):
story behind it, but the story is not on the nose,
you know, it's not explicit like get to learn it,
don't get to kill things and read artifacts and put
the pieces together, and honestly, then watch hours and hours
and hours of basically Dark Soul scholars on YouTube to
really actually understand what's going on and there's a lot
of meaning there, like long story short like it's it's

(20:42):
it's profound, right, And I think sometimes people can even
play Dark like in the Dark Soul series, just for
the challenge, and that's great, and maybe they subconsciously reap
some of the imaginative and philosophical aspects of that in
a way. But I think, like even just to play
it for the challenge of supreme refined melee combat is

(21:07):
still like missing out on all like the richness of
meaning written into those games and designed into those games.

Speaker 1 (21:16):
So you've both talked about Dark Souls a good bit,
which I've actually never played Dark Souls. I'm not super
familiar other than just seeing, you know, glimpses here and there.
So I mean it might provide a good case study here,
like what in particular is so enchanting about it? And
neither of you can take that.

Speaker 2 (21:35):
Up, So I'm not I haven't really gotten deep into
the laure yet of Dark Souls. I'm still on my
first play through of the original game. I've played a
couple of other from software same to all for titles,
one being Eldering. It's just the most recent release, well,
the most recent Souls, like release anyway, I'm just come
back and came out twenty twenty two. It has a

(21:56):
similar sort of gene where it's this dark fantasy setting,
the world's kind of trap to this cyclical cycle where
no one really dies, and it was like the tarnished
and eld Ring of the Undead, And in Dark Souls,
we're kind of just kind of this cyclical cycle to
life which you're a little bit seeking to break. So

(22:16):
there's you know, so that you could go into. You
could probably teach a whole course just on that concept
right where it's just like you've basically created immortality and
you're realizing how awful it truly is. But even without
having you know, it's like, as we're having this conversation, like, oh,
that's right, I keep meaning to go on YouTube and
like Josh said, find the you know, watch a Foddy

(22:37):
video or whoever else is doing the videos on all
the Dark Soul, the Dark Soul's lower deep dives. But
one of the things that really stands out to me
that is most enchanting in Dark Souls you spend a
good amount of time underground, or at least in very
dark places, and there are moments where you see sunlight.

(22:59):
Like there's there's a whole long section of the game
where you're going through is essentially the Sewers, and it's
fairly early on and then you you finally end up
in the boss room and there's this big crack in
the ceiling essentially where sunlight shining through. And it makes
me think of the scene of the Two Towers and
in Aderas where they see the described in the book

(23:22):
as you know, the single high window through you know,
sunlight shining through. And then that same theme comes back
with a single star that Sam seeds as he's on
the I think it's the planes of Gorgoroth, And you know,
it's just kind of this message like not all is dark. Right,
You've been going through this incredibly dark, depressing area and
even as you're about to take on this giant you know,

(23:42):
dragon like boss, right, you still see this this beam
of light coming in that kind of tells you there
there is hope here, there is an end.

Speaker 1 (23:49):
Right.

Speaker 2 (23:50):
You're you know, you're about to take on a very
difficult fight, but you know you have something to look towards,
and that's you know, just I love being able to
kind of imburse myself in that world old and even
not knowing that much yet, you know, not having read
every item description, and you know, I ever looked up
every enemy on the wiki. Just seeing this and seeing
what it's I think it's trying to tell me. Yeah,

(24:12):
it's super super cool.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
Cool. Yeah, I definitely appreciate those themes, the immortality as
well as the light. It definitely makes you think of Tolkien,
so a lot of the stuff that he deals with,
which I mean naturally anything fantasy I'm gonna read talking
into it. Oh that's gonna makes sense, not not without
merit on that. Okay. Cool. So yeah, my expansive fantasy

(24:40):
that that I've lived in for years now, regarding video
games at least, really goes to Elder Scrolls, which I know, Sam,
you just recently started Skyrim for the first time, right,
which I don't. I don't know how to dodge that.

Speaker 2 (24:53):
I I mean, I've heard of Skyri. I think I
heard about Skyrim the year it came out, because I
would have been right along when I started college, and
thank goodness, I didn't play it started playing it then
because I don't think I would have graduated, and i've
I have not I've barely dipped my toes in because
I I was staying up with with our newborn, and
I find I bought it recently when it was finally

(25:14):
bought it when it was like four dollars on Steam,
and I was like, okay, I hooked my my laptop
that I have for gaming on up to our TV.
I'm sitting there with my my sleeping newborn on a
lap at two in the morning or whatever, and like,
all right, I'll start playing Skyrim. And so, I mean,
like I said, I've barely dipped my toes in. There's
not even much I can formulate about, you know, my

(25:34):
thoughts about the world yet, unfortunately, because it's like, okay,
you know, I'm just starting to you understand kind of
the the world building that that's going on here. So
I wish, I wish I could tell talk more about it,
but unfortunately, just not much yet.

Speaker 1 (25:52):
Fair enough. I had to ask, it's it's unusual you
find somebody today who's playing Skyrim for the first time.

Speaker 2 (25:58):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (25:58):
It was such a you know, such a major title. Yeah,
And I started with the Elder Scrolls all the way
back with morrowind which was I mean a little bit
of answer from you, you know, when it first came
out that given you know, my age at the time,
but I had older brothers since I was always playing
a little bit ahead of most people my age of
the time. But I mean, speaking of just vast enchanting worlds,

(26:23):
I mean, it still boggles my mind that, you know,
within each of these major Elder Scrolls titles, I mean,
they have literally entire books, like libraries of books written
within the games. And so the fact that you know
they are willing to, you know, invest the time in
writers to literally write books in the game, most of

(26:44):
which are going to go unread by you know, those
are those who are buying the titles. It just I
think shows a level of detail which you know, unfortunately,
moving forward, I imagine all such things will just be
AI generated. But at least once upon a time, you know,
that really took the time to, you know, invest in
such little storytelling details that you know, it's easy for

(27:05):
me to look at a title like that as well
as whatever comparable fantasy series are out there, Dark Souls, whatever,
and it's easy for me to look at that and
recognize the potential for enchantment, the potential for kind of
expanding your engagement with kind of with ideas, with philosophy,
with with kind of what could be. I do think

(27:28):
that there's a lot of inherent value in that, well,
I guess, I mean from here it it'd be interesting
to hear about, you know, some other titles that have
sort of captured your imagination, that have captured your time,
and just to dig into a little bit about what

(27:50):
it is about these particular titles that stand out to you. So,
I mean, Josh, what's something else that has been uh,
you know, near and dear to you.

Speaker 3 (28:01):
Yeah, I'll run with this one first, just because I
mentioned it earlier and I think it really is like
the only besides Okay, if it's a lie, I did
play elden Ring. I was gonna say, this is the
only game I've played that's come out since twenty twenty,
but not elden Ring, but Cyberpunk twenty seventy seven. I
wanted to talk about that, and I don't know if

(28:22):
i'd I definitely wouldn't exactly use the word enchanting to
describe it, but I also think that's kind of the
point and what I like about Cyberhook twenty seventy seven.
I mean, first of all, like the writing is an
incredible great character arcs, great dialogue back and forth between

(28:43):
like your the protagonist in which you play, and the
various recurring like side quest characters that he encounters in
Knight City, in the outskirts of Night City, which is
the setting of the game. But I think what's really, uh,
what's really profound about that game is that it almost,

(29:04):
to me, it almost captures, it almost captures like a
fairly realistic version of like what the future could be
in a sense, because grow I liked the I liked
Star Trek growing up, and I guess like to some extent,
I still do like the next generation and even like
Deep Space nine to some extent. But one thing I

(29:26):
kind of like abandoned when I got older is I
found out like Gene rowden Berry's kind of like conception
of the future just super like utopian, and it's like
everything's going to be super diplomatic with all these aliens,
and like everything looks crisp all the time, like their
uniforms are always perfectly h you know, perfectly like steamed

(29:47):
and pressed and all that. But the ship is like
the ship is beautiful and there's nothing it's a very
like glorified depiction of like the progression of science beyond
the time that will probably all you know, on the
time that we'll probably all live up to, right like
like hundreds of years in the future. Whereas with cyberpunk,

(30:07):
the future looks it looks kind of it looks kind
of gross, right Like, I don't know if it either
of you ever been to like Times Square in New
York City And I always heard about it and thought
it would sounded cool as a kid, and I went
for the first time a couple of years ago, and
I thought it was kind of gross. It's like there's
just a bunch of weird characters walking around in the
middle of the day and there's just big giant screens

(30:30):
with not beautiful images on them in any sense, And
that's that's kind of like what side like the vibe
of cyberpunk twenty seventy seven is. And people are people
are kind of gross in it in the sense too.
But I think what it really captures more than anything
is kind of like the ramifications of one like taking

(30:53):
like technology and science too far as humans probably the
over alliance on science and technology and the way in
which are kind of like just our human condition is
kind of put on display even more so because of
technology and how the things that I've always been there

(31:14):
for all of human history, like since the Fall especially,
have been have been prevalent and real, But there's a
way in which technology and the evolution of science and
like the the data network and the rapidness of communication
puts that on like full display, and the way that

(31:34):
that's even modified as people are basically, you know, at
this point, like half robot and like you know, part human,
part robot, having implants and all these things asking the
questions even like basically anthropological questions regarding like what actually
is a human? And are you still human or fully
human if you have these implants. It really deals with

(31:54):
all of those things really wonderfully, and I'm I'm trying
to hit it all here, so I'm kind of randing
and speed talking through it a little bit just to
hit the high points. But I can't recommend that game
enough because it's not necessarily beautiful, but it's meaningful and
it really I think, asks a lot of thought provoking
questions and explores them quite nicely.

Speaker 2 (32:14):
Yeah, that one's been on my Steam wish list for sure.
I'm like waiting for it to go and sale or something,
just waiting to find the time. But yeah, whenever I
you know, I see people or right, I see like
ads or people, YouTube videos, whatever, people at the whatever
apples apples headset, you know, ar VR headset that's like
just wear this while you're cooking dinner and stuff or whatever.

(32:36):
Interact to your family with a yes, I see cyberpocket.
I think of that, and yeah, okay, that's definitely a
future we feel like we're creeping closer towards.

Speaker 3 (32:46):
Also, if you like, if you have any like affinity
for Kean or Reuse whatsoever. His likeness is like one
of the main characters in the game and he's a
huge jerk. So it's really funny.

Speaker 1 (32:58):
Yeah, I really are ciate what sci fi can do
in presenting just the warnings against well science progress technology.
You know. I mean, I've I've always felt that anybody
with any kind of sense of things recognizes where technology
can go amiss. But I mean, after reading you know,

(33:20):
Lewis's Rainsom series, that that really put me on you know,
the scientists or the demon possessed villains behind closed Doors here. Uh.
One of my favorite things about those books is the
the ending, especially that the epilogues of like Out of
the Silent Planet, for example, where you know, at the end,

(33:41):
Lewis basically comes out and says, oh, by the way,
this stuff is real. Now, now go cast down the
demonic scientists. And you know that I saw that article
coming out a few years ago about how Lord of
the Rings is radicalizing. But nothing is as straightforward as
Lewis's epilogues in those books against science. But yeah, I
mean my go to dystopian look at the future is

(34:07):
definitely Fallout and I know that super mainstream, but you know,
I've been on board since Fallout three. New Vegas especially
played a lot of Fallout four. All the New Vegas
is definitely the best game objectively, but and even the
show I think was done really well in tune with
the spirit of the games, where you know it is

(34:29):
we're obviously in this disaster scenario. You know, civilization has
been destroyed, We're dealing with the remnants that are left,
and everything is just gross and mean and dirty, but
you know, there's still these glimmers of goodness, glimmers of hope,
this reminder that life does go on, Life can go

(34:49):
on even when everything externally is stripped away, and I
actually think that, especially as you can expect Amazon to do,
I felt like they decently maintained this with the show
in that you know, even like Lucy, the main character,
part of her story is you know, she's like the
bright character in the Wasteland. You know, she always has
this positive attitude. She even you know, maintains fidelity to

(35:12):
the Golden Rule. You know, that's a kind of an
ongoing theme here, even you know too well people who
aren't very nice to her. It's a again, is it
like a Christian franchise? No, certainly not. However, I do
think that there is just some of that resilience of life,
resilience of goodness that can be found through I mean this,

(35:33):
you know, post apocalyptic retro future look at things. And
so that's that's that's my go to, you know, dystopian
franchise of choice, Sam tell us about. You can either
comment on any of that or just go off on
something else.

Speaker 2 (35:48):
Army. I need to both play Fallout. I have New
Vegas in my library, but I need to. And then
I actually want to want to watch the show because
I wanted to. I probably wouldn't wanted to include in
a video that I'm gonna make in the future. But
so again, it's another series that I'd like to explore.
And yeah, when you talk about, you know, franchise, is
that most any franchise is not going to be a
Christian franchise or a Christian story. You know, even Lord

(36:09):
of the Rings is not. It is it is very
much Christian, but it is not. It is not a sermon,
it is not a homily. Right, And that's I've said
this many times. I will say it many more times.
Christian movies generally suck because they don't care enough about
the movie part. Right, They're trying to communicate their message
to a to a broader audience by making a movie.

(36:30):
This is what Hollywood has been doing, just from the
opposite end of the faith spectrum, where they don't really
have much faith. They don't really have much morals for
the most part. They just kind of have a vague sense.
I mean it's like Marxist morals basically, where it's like, yeah,
these people are pressed, we're gonna need to make sure
we support them until they become the present. It's like, anyhow,
this is what Hollywood's done. They've they've forgotten a lot about,

(36:52):
you know, especially big mainstream Disney forgotten about the movie part,
the art right, the telling a story in a way
that no one else can, and they just want to
tell people things just doesn't work anyhow. That's that's my
little stellbuck. So when you talk about you know, movie
or movies, franchises, games, whatever, being Christian, most of them

(37:13):
are not going to be. But there Peter Criefton Is
in Philosophy of Tolkien repeats this phrase from one of
Tolkien's letters at least twice. I'm halfway through the book
and he's repeated it at least twice, where Tolkien says,
you know that you know more important, or at least
the objective of you know, something like Lord of the
Rings is the elucidation of truth, right, the encouragement of

(37:33):
good morals by showing them in these you know, real
but fantastic ways, right with these characters. So that's, you know,
whenever I'm approaching and analyzing some media, which is what
I do on the channel, right, I analyze it from
a Christian perspective, but from the more from the lens
of virtue and you know, growing to you know, growing

(37:54):
in virtue growing in love of others. Anyhow, so I
ended talking about actual games that I actually care about.
Were you about to say something, Agrew, Yeah, I just.

Speaker 1 (38:02):
Can say that. I mean, the Christian way of viewing
anything is to find truth wherever it is and to
recognize it as such. You know, it goes only back
to Justin Martyr, right, I have an old truth is
God's truth wherever it can be found, and so I
definitely agree with you on that. I mean, the way
that Tolkien goes about writing his story is he told
the story he had to tell, then he looked back
and said, oh, I wrote a Christian story. That's what

(38:25):
he basically says to one of his letters, and so yeah,
I'm just echoing what you said. You can continue.

Speaker 2 (38:31):
So tying into that, it would be the games that
have Two of the games that have captured my attention
in the last few years are the God of War games,
so specifically the more recent too so one came out
twenty eighteen, which is called God of War even though
it is really God of War four, and then God
of War Ragnak, which came out twenty twenty two. I
believe so their continuation of the original God of War

(38:53):
PlayStation games, you know one, two, and three and a
couple in between, which followed the tale. If you're not
familiar of Krados, who is a made up character, He's
a son of He's a son of Zeus, because who
in Greek tales isn't a son of Zeus? Who basically
who's a wife and who is tricked into killing his

(39:13):
own wife and child in his battle lost by aries,
and in revenge she ends up tearing down all of
Olympus and throwing all of Grease into chaos. And then
he attempts to what's the word that you have to
use to be algorithmically collect he attempts to unlive himself,
and that's where God of War three ends. Follow up,
you catch up with him a decade plus later in

(39:37):
God of War four in the in the reboot, and
he's now it's now he's now in Norse mythology, so
he is has found a new life. He is, you know,
married a Nordic woman, a giant as we found out
find out, and had a son who's I think about nine, nine, ten,
eleven years old in the first game, and the first

(39:58):
game begins with his wife's funeral and him having to
figure out how to raise this kid to be a father,
to be a good father when he never really had
that example, and his struggles with his past, right, his
struggle with forgiving himself right, finding you know, redemption just

(40:18):
for himself, right, That is a huge, huge theme, right, obviously,
someone who's who's done horrible, horrible deeds in the past
finding for self, forgiveness and redemption. That remains a theme
throughout both of the reboot games. And so those stories
absolutely captured my attention because, especially as a father myself,
even though my kids are a bit younger, just struggling

(40:40):
with you know, whatever struggles I may have, and how
I really do not want to pass on my own
faults and flaws to my kids, you know, seeing him,
you know, grow in humility, right and meaning that in
the very truest way where he learns to know himself
in his place right. But yeah, forgiveness and redemption by

(41:02):
far the largest largest themes in those stories, and that's
again it's a very Christian message, even if the developers
are probably partly not Christian. Certainly the studio as a
whole is not explicitly Christian, but that's kind of Christianity's
whole thing. So and it's but it is beautiful and
it's one of the one of the things that even

(41:23):
people who aren't Christian they can realize that, right, because
it is just an obvious truth if you just tell
people that, yeah, you can't change what's done, right, you
have to move on. At the near the end of
one of the last games, not to spoil it too much,
but one of the one of the characters says to Credos,

(41:44):
don't you know what I've done? And Creatos responds responds, yes,
but what will you do now? And that plays over
and over and over in my head because that's it, right,
because I certainly have the temptation to look back on
what I've done, whether it was five minutes ago or
a year ago, and go, what was I thinking? What's

(42:07):
wrong with me? And you know the answer is who cares?
What are you going to do now? Oh? That's definitely
on the more story spectrum of the you know, the
games that have really captured my attention. There's lots of others,
many far less story driven, but for the sake of brevity,
all kind of there for now.

Speaker 1 (42:27):
Well good, I mean that, you know, final thought that
you left off with there. I mean, it reminds you
what you said at the beginning of the conversation regarding
the you know, persistency of dark souls, and that you
know it presents the scenario of Okay, get to deal
with what's in front of you, and you know figured
it out essentially, you know. In in one of my
one of my philosophy classes, my students recently read Victor

(42:48):
Frenkle's Man Search for Meaning, in which you know Frankel
was a psychiatrist Holocaust survivor comes out writing the book
on how he maintained a life of meaning even in
the camps, and he makes the point that a lot
of times we ask the question of like, what is
the meaning of life? And I mean, I think that's
perfectly valid question. However, he reframes that and says, what

(43:09):
we also need to be asking ourselves is what is
life demanding of me? That's a different kind of question.
A lot of times we ask the question what is
the meaning of life? We even though again as a
Christian like I have answers to that, but I feel
like a lot of times when we ask that question,
we make it so abstract as to hide from any
responsibility that might come from the answer, Whereas if we

(43:32):
ask the question like, what do I actually need to
do today? What are my responsibilities today? What do I
do in light of the things that I've done yesterday?
Like given the facticity of what's before me, what do
I do with that? And I think that's the least
tengentially related to you know, some of what we brought
up there, Josh, do you have any experience with those games?

(43:56):
I do not.

Speaker 3 (43:56):
Those are games that when they first came out, I
was a little bit younger and I wasn't allowed to
play them again, probably a good decision by my parents
at the time two thousands, I think so. But I
have been recommended those most those two most recent God
of Horror games, not just by one friends, not just
by two, but probably at least three or four friends now.

(44:19):
So that's probably a sign that, uh, I do need
to visit those next time I play a new game.

Speaker 1 (44:31):
See what are you guys say something like I.

Speaker 2 (44:33):
Shifted no no, the original God of War games, which
I played when I was making my first video on Kraados.
I played the I played Got Got of War one
and three, and they were they are very very violent,
and the latter games are too, honestly, so, I mean
Credos is it's it's very much fantasy violence. So you know,

(44:55):
the enemies are largely you know, fantasy characters. You know,
fantasy monsters, so you know Dragger right, undead, you know undead,
you know form, you know zombies basically or you know,
wear wolf like creatures or whatever. You know, one of
which you know, Kratos is you know finishing move, will
grab the things jaw and rip it in half, right,

(45:15):
Just there's a character who exclaims that'll hot my dreams
when he does that, and it makes for some funny moments,
but it's they're rather brutal, right, they're they're embrated games,
and they they treat Creatos as the hulking spartan you know,
you know god that he is, So yeah, not not
good game for cure kids. They're a little they get

(45:36):
a little rough, for sure, But yeah, I add me
to the list of people who wholeheartedly recommends them. In
terms of scope, for you know a lot of modern games,
they're not horribly long. The first one is maybe twenty hours,
the second is I think I finished it at under
thirty especially because I don't. I didn't bother playing in
a higher difficulty, uh, because I wanted to experience the story.

(45:59):
Those are very very good, very well done games. The
writing is excellent.

Speaker 1 (46:05):
Yeah, it's just now that you brought up violence, I
should say that, you know, I don't. I don't know
all of you know who's watching and listening to this,
and so don't. Uh well, you know, I endorse fall
Out a little bit ago. Speaking of violence, the show
games grossly violent, like over the top, campy level of violence,

(46:27):
which doesn't really bother me because it's like so over
the top. But that's definitely something you have to be
okay with if you're going to engage at all with
anything related to that franchise. Now, as far as okay,
another game of choice that I can bring up here,
you know, in addition to Elder Scrolls, Fallout one that

(46:48):
I find myself returning to on a fairly regular basis,
even still at least every couple of years or so.
Knights of the Old Republic Right definitely top tier Star
Wars games, top twer RPGs in general. I think that
this is just an era of Star Wars history lore
that's so rich for storytelling. It's back when Star Wars

(47:11):
maintained obvious differences between good and evil. The Jedi are good,
the Sith or evil. And I think that that is
just so so much more compelling from a story level,
as well as accurate philosophically. And you know, I well,
like most things, you know, you go back in history

(47:32):
and there's a lot more to deal with and well,
the modern storytelling, I'll put it that way.

Speaker 3 (47:40):
I'm really glad you mentioned this because there's like, I
don't know enough people who have played those games, and
it kind of it bothers me. Sometimes nothing against people
who haven't played them, but I want more people to
play those games, especially people who are you know, fans
of Star Wars, people who are you know, maybe a

(48:00):
controversy of the real fans of Star Wars, you know,
people who respect the original trilogy and you know, hate
the sequels and such things. Right, But that I always
what I like wanted what I wanted when like they
like announced the Force Awakens, right, episode seven, Force Awakens,
that's what it was called whatever it was like ten

(48:22):
ten eleven years ago when they announced that, when they
were like saying they were making a sequel, trilogy to
Star Wars. It's like going in the direction that like
Kotor was, is like what I wanted them to do, right,
especially like the second game where it's like you really
have like Krays almost like this like Nietzschean like Zara
Thirstra like type of figure who's kind of like challenging

(48:42):
you to It's almost like they could be like taken
as like deconstructionists in some way, of like the Jedi
in the Sith and I guess it kind of is
in some ways, but in some ways she presents like
this this via media like really like gray path between
the two. In some sense, she's like kind of just
like hates the four all together and wants it to die.
But all those are really interesting ideas to explore in

(49:05):
Star Wars, right, And one of my I've been I've
been watching the Star Wars original trilogy since like before
I can even remember, right, So I'm talking to somebody
who has been a fan of those movies my entire life,
and I think, like the thing I noticed like when
I got when I grew older and got a little
more mature with Star Wars is like I like the

(49:27):
writing and the original trilogies I like the stories, I
like all the character arcs, and I more than like,
I love the world of Star Wars. Like the original
Star Wars is just a really cool world, like a
lot of the design of you know, the different characters,
the different races, the different planets, like the the the

(49:48):
escapes of like the cities and the deserts and the
jungles like all of that, Like it's it's a really
cool world. The Jedi is a really cool idea, you know,
basically these kind of like monastic nights with laser swords.
In a sense like that, that's a really cool idea, right,
And it was in a sense, like probably in some
ways really original in its time. But the problem I've
always seen with Star Wars until like besides like really

(50:11):
with Kotor, is that they have a great foundation that
they never really built off of. The original trilogy set
up so much there that could be explored with literature,
with philosophy, with a lot of interesting ideas and dynamics
and character arcs, and then you know, I'm not going

(50:32):
to really talk about the prequels because we could just
talk about all the memes and the acting and the
script and all of that. But with the sequels. I
feel like there was a real opportunity there with honestly
some quality actors, some big name Hollywood directors. Maybe you know,
jaj Abrams could have done better. Maybe he could have
I don't know, but those ideas, like I wanted them

(50:54):
to explored so bad in episode eight, it really seemed
like with the trailer and like the hype up to
that it could they could have explored some of these
ideas from like Kotor one or Kotor two in it.
And then it was just kind of a schlockfest, to
be honest, I'm just gonna say it, like it just
it just was. And they didn't do any of that
with with like Luke, they didn't do any of that

(51:15):
with with Ray or Kylo Red or any of these people,
and it was it was a huge disappointment. But well,
all that to say that, like Kotar one and two
are the Star Wars story that like I always dreamed of,
but has never been told on a screen or even
in a book. Necessarily, it's in these semi obscure video
games from the original Xbox, which a lot of people

(51:38):
didn't even really play in the early mid two thousands,
and they're just kind of you know, for instance, it
was just gonna be like lost in history, and I'm
like this, this is the greatest Star Wars story ever told,
and few and far between people have experienced this or
even know that it exists, And like, there's my plug, puy.
Therefore you to play those games. It's like if you'll
give for something rich in the Star Wars Unit verse,

(52:00):
it's like, there's your story. Play the Code Tour games,
especially kodetor two especially.

Speaker 1 (52:06):
Yeah, definitely second that I'm not gonna go too deep
in it because we'll be having some chats on it
in a couple of months. We're doing some patron chats
on it. But you know, you brought up how in
the second one, Craya like basically tries to deconstruct the Force,
essentially deconstruct the lines between good and evil, the Jedi
and the Sith. But what makes that different than what

(52:27):
happens in the newer movies is that she's the obvious villain,
like she's doing something wrong, which just shows that the
start contrasts in storytelling, whereas so much of I mean,
I know that we could it'd be easy to spend
the rest of this conversation, just hating on the new movies,
but you know, so much of those movies are just

(52:51):
they're deconstructing in the wrong way, which is the spirit
of the age I suppose, where all the heroes get
ripped apart. You know that Hans, obviously one of the
coolest characters in the franchise, is now this like deadbeat
divorcee who's just like not really doing anything significant anymore.
You know, every Luke, I mean, he's obviously a lesser

(53:15):
form of what he really should have been. By this
point in his story. All the heroes are getting torn down.
The institution of the Jedi gets torn down as just
this artifice of raw power. You know, it's all about deconstruction,
as if that's somehow spirit of nobility. I don't know,

(53:36):
But Kotor is Star Wars as it should have been,
And you know, honestly, I can't elevate it above the
original trilogy simply because that's that's the original. But I
think a case can be made that it is an
even better story. But again, I that's hard to say.

(53:57):
Looking back, I say, do you have an experience of
those games?

Speaker 2 (54:01):
I've played the first one I've yet to play the
second one played the first one last year. For the
first time, I set a deadline for myself, said I'm
going to play this game and I make a video
about it by this deadline, and I kind of and
that was right before I was finishing another very long video,
so I was a little bit rushed in that, and

(54:22):
I didn't do as good of a job as I
would have liked. And I admit i'd played the game
under like a little bit of time crunch, so I
probably didn't enjoy it as much I would as I
would have liked. I also played it twenty years after
it came out, and I went I would have enjoyed
this a lot more eighteen years ago if I had
played it before. I had the expectations of what modern
RPGs look like, just in their combat, in their dialogue,

(54:44):
not not the quality of the dialogue, but just how
it's visually portrayed. Where all the dialogue and Kotor is
just a talking head, which is not as interesting as
seeing an actual dynamic cutscene such as technology. That's how
it goes. I found the philosophy of that game to
be wonderful. Again. It is very, very much a story

(55:07):
of redemption assuming you make light size choices. And I
mean but even even at the end there, right, like
Revan offers redemption to Malick, it's Malik, right, that's it. Yeah,
you know, even saying that, like I found it, you
can find it too, despite him, you know, persisting in

(55:28):
in his errors till till that end. And yeah, and
you find that message, you look for that message, you
find that message. Ever, what can we do? Move on?
You move forward. You can't change what's done. You can
only move on. That's that's the dark quote from Red
Dead Redemption too. Yeah, so it's I find I find
it fascinating and wonderful that that theme runs through so

(55:49):
many incredible stories. And yeah, I absolutely the storytelling and
you know, just the character dynamics of of Kotor are
something that don't really exist in Star Wars anymore. Absolutely,
I will refrain from bashing the sequels any further. You
guys have done a fantastic job. I'm not going to
do that. That's not what we're talking about. I will
say one thing. It's fine for us as human beings

(56:10):
living on a planet Earth to say laser swords, because
that is our conceptual knowledge of a lightsaber, right, it's
the sword made out of a laser. Luke says, laser
sword in the Last Jedi, And that drives me nuts
because it's a lightsaber. He knows it as a lightsaber.
They don't know what swords are. All they know are lightsabers.
I mean, I suppose there could be other some sort
of swords or whatever. But it's it's a lightsaber, he

(56:32):
says it in this you know, just again it's deconstructing, right,
like he's tearing down the idea of a very lights
heaer by calling it a derogatory name drives me insane. Anyhow,
the others, the other Star Wars game, what je.

Speaker 3 (56:47):
So this is one of those Ryan John citizens that
was thrown Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (56:53):
The other Star Wars game that I love to death.
It's a very simple game. It takes maybe six hours
to play through. Is Star Wars Republic Commando. It's another
original Xbox game. I think it came out around the
same year's Code Tore two thousand and four, two thousand
and five. I think it was like co Tor, Star
Wars Battle, frond Bart's Public Command all came out right
around the same time. Uh, what a year for Star
Wars video games. And it is if you haven't played it,

(57:16):
which you probably haven't because it's very it really got buried.
It's a story about a commando squad Clone Commando's during
the initially like the Battle of Genosis, and then a
couple of later missions, including a Battle on Kshik Battle
on Kashik which is seen in episode three of the prequels,
and basically they were kind of behind enemy lines missions. Uh,

(57:38):
and it is fantastic. It's you know, it's again. It's
a short first person shooter where you're just going through
You're fighting you know, droids and gen oceans and you know,
raw mercenaries hired by the separatists. But what forms the
core of the game is the bond that these four
Clone commandos share, right, they all have their initial individual

(58:01):
distinct personalities, because otherwise it would just be kind of
weird if they were in fact just the same person,
even though they are the same person, and they have
this incredible bond of brotherhood. My favorite thing to ever
appear on a screen as Band of Brothers, the story
about the one hundred and first Airborne at one of
their companies right in the in the war in Europe
in World War two, because it shows this just how

(58:22):
war forges this bond of brotherhood and how like that
can be found like nowhere else.

Speaker 1 (58:28):
Right.

Speaker 2 (58:28):
War is a horrible, horrible, terrible thing, one of the
worst blights on humanity, but it forges some of the
most incredible love. And I think that's I mean that
you talk about like the beauty of God's creation, like
God's ability to you know, reshape, to make all things
new right into sense, right where he takes this horrible

(58:49):
thing and he creates something incredible, incredibly beautiful out of it,
even if, like you know, on Earth, you know, may
last a short time because men get killed in war,
but they had they found this love they couldn't find
anywhere else. And that you find that distinctly in Republic
Commando right where these you know, these these four clones
right they are they consider each other brothers. They would

(59:11):
happily and immediately die, you know, rather than see one
of their comrades fall. And it's a phenomenally phenomenally done story.
It's something I made a video about it a long
time ago, and like I need to revisit that and
talk about that more in depth.

Speaker 1 (59:27):
You know.

Speaker 2 (59:27):
It makes me think of like Halo Reach to some
extent too, where you know it is kind of you know,
they're doomed in a sense that it's not quite the
same as Halo Reach, where you know they all are doomed,
but you know, you kind of you kind of know
this can't really be a happy ending, but you're there
for you know, the bonds that are forged. And yeah,

(59:48):
it's it's very very good. There's another one, just if
you could find it on Steam for cheap, which it
always is, and uh, yeah, definitely want to check out.

Speaker 1 (59:57):
Yeah. I think that you just go just shows how
rich Star Wars is for good storytelling, because you know,
it's a lot of times it's categorized as sci fi,
but it's not. It's fantasy that happens to be in space.
It's not technologically driven. It's it is a fantasy story.
I mean, the the Jedi are essentially wizards with with

(01:00:20):
swords too. I guess use a derogatory term, but you know,
I mean another well, we're on on this theme. I
mean another title the well, I guess I'm going back
to the Old Republic, but the the MMO is actually
really good. The start the Old Republic MMO and I
I haven't. I don't play a lot of MMOs. I

(01:00:41):
played Wow for a while when it first came out.
I went from from the beta up through Burning Crusade.
But the The Old Republic MMO really takes that basic model.
It's kind of a wild skin, Like I guess, a
lot of things are more or less. But you know,
each of the classes its own character story that's basically

(01:01:02):
ko Tore length at least nearly, which you know, I
hadn't really seen before to have that much replay value,
that much variability, that much storytelling built into this one game,
and it's, uh yeah, so that's just I don't know.
I don't have a who lot else to build on that,
because again, it's like eight different games essentially built into
one as far as the storytelling goes. Josh, we are

(01:01:25):
you gonna say something?

Speaker 3 (01:01:27):
Yeah, I don't. I definitely don't know about The Old
Republic MMO because I've never played it. But I was
just gonna, like, I was gonna second his his recommendation
everything he said about Republic Comando and also offer since
like you said, we're on the topic now, yeah, now
you're saying it. There's like there was a lot of
Star Wars Gems and from like two thousand, two thousand

(01:01:48):
and five and Jedi Outcast and then Jedi Jedi Academy.
I'm getting them in the right, I think, but they
were basically like the stories of Luke Skywalker after Return
of the Jedi and him like he's like the new
like Jedi Master. He's like the Yoda. Now he's not

(01:02:09):
like super old or anything. He's still kind of looks
like you know, Mark Hamill looks like in like the
mid eighties, but he's like that.

Speaker 1 (01:02:17):
He's not drinking blue milk on Island yet.

Speaker 3 (01:02:19):
No, he's not drinking some like aliens utter or something
like that. By me means no. And this never happens
in that story, I don't think, thankfully, because they didn't,
you know, bastardize his character in anyway. But it's it's
really Luke like right after it's like a little bit
after Return of the Jedi, and he's he's rebuilding like
the Jedi. He's building the Jedi Academy as is in

(01:02:41):
the name of in the name of the game title,
and like it's it's that story, and like your your
character is basically one of his, like the apprentices and
padawans there, and he's got this Jedi night named Kyle Kataran,
who's like one of the most underrated Star Wars characters
of all time. He's almost like Han Solo if you
became a Jedi. He's got that like like charismatic like

(01:03:03):
rogue smoke or sarcastic personality type. But he's great. Those
games are awesome too. I couldn't recommend them enough as well.

Speaker 2 (01:03:13):
There's something I was going to say, but like it
slipped my mind, but yeah, okay, glad I found another
the Commando fan of the game is has captured my
heart forever. My wife's too, but she doesn't play a
whole lot of games. Lack of time and you know,
just not not her favorite way to relax. But uh,
she she bought me off off Etsy a couple a

(01:03:36):
couple of different Christmases, like two of the helmets from
from the game, so I had those are on like
on my bookshelf that stands behind me when I when
I filmed videos. Yeah, phenomenal story.

Speaker 3 (01:03:50):
That's super awesome. I have a friend that like makes
uh he like made like Mandalorian helmets for fun. He's
made like a helmet from Fallout and stuff like that too,
but super cool stuff. I will when people do.

Speaker 1 (01:04:00):
That cool and I feel like we could probably go
around all night, just different games laid. But I mean,
I'll throw one more at least from my side. And
really it's I mean, originally it's built off the same

(01:04:21):
model of Kotor, and that, of course is dragon Age,
which I've played. I played a lot of. I mean
I played one and two and sometimes three on a
fairly regular rotation for a while. Just another rich fantasy series,
you know, because I was there in the beginning that
the clunky elements of dragon Age origins, you know, never

(01:04:43):
really bothered me, just as with Kotor, because I definitely
recognize that Sam says that getting into those games can
be difficult, jumping in now without having that, you know,
without being there three thousand years ago, as Alrod would
say that. By the way, you know, there is supposedly
a Kotor rebake in the works. There there's been one

(01:05:06):
off and on studio problems, but for everything I can tell,
it's still happening at some point. But yeah, but dragon Age,
of course, is another one of those franchises that has
just tanked to postmodern ideology. Everything that I've seen from
the latest installation that's come out had just ruined it

(01:05:28):
for me. It's it's it's so easy, I think for
creators for studios to move away from how do I
tell a story to how do I tell the story
that people not even just that they want to hear?
How do I tell the story that people should hear? Right?
And that's when you get into propaganda. That's that same

(01:05:49):
was saying, it's the other side of the I'm going
to tell a Christian story, but I'm gonna tell some
postmodern Marxist deconstruction of story, and so it's just it's
just kind of a shame where things go with that.

Speaker 2 (01:06:03):
I remember what I was about to say. I've not
played I've never touched the Old Republic. I've not played
a second of it, simply due to lack of time.
And also I've never played an MMO, so I just
haven't really depped my toes in. But the cinematic trailers
for that game are incredible. I will go and rewatch
them from time to time on YouTube. They are some

(01:06:26):
of the best storytelling like in the Star Wars universe.
And I'm not being hyperbolic.

Speaker 1 (01:06:32):
Yes, yes, I mean, those games are incredible for storytelling
as far as the end game as well as the
cut scenes. I mean, it's I mean I have not
played many Momos, like I said, I've played Wow. I've
played a good bit of The Old Republic. I did
my toes a little bit in the Elder Scrolls online,
but that just didn't last more than a few hours
before I just decided that wasn't for me. But Star

(01:06:56):
Wars the Old Republic, it's a fantastic game. And even
if you're not into the MMO elements of it, which
you know, I tended to just play by myself. I'm
an independent gamer for the most part. You know, you
can go through those play essentially like single player games
with just very rich storytelling. Well, I mean, is there
anything else? And I said, we could go on all night.

(01:07:17):
We won't do. That's anything on Stammer or Josh that
you wanted to bring up.

Speaker 2 (01:07:23):
We've talked a lot about like kind of story during games,
but I think one of the games one of the
aspects that makes games so good is that you can
tell your own story, right, Like just your progress through
the game is is itself often a story. So some
of my two of my favorite games that are both
of my top ten hours on Steam are the Xcom games,

(01:07:44):
not the original ones from like the early nineties, but
the reboot from twenty twelve and then the Xcom two
from twenty sixteen. And so basically it's an alien invasion.
Xcom is the you know, multinational agency that comes together
and online all other multi national agencies ever created is
actually effective. So right, so you're fighting back against the

(01:08:06):
aliens and you know, progressing your technology tree, you know,
doing various research, building out your base, et cetera, all
those you know, good kind of RPG like elements. But
you are controlling a you know, kind of a top
down almost like you know, almost like a tabletup game,
squad of soldiers that you you know, on take turns,
you moving around the maps, the tactical turn based game.

(01:08:26):
You move around the map, you shoot the anlyats, you
throw the grenades. You know, you win the mission and
the story. This game would not be half as good
if it didn't let you name your characters, but it does.
And so you can name them Ao and are ericorn
Aylmer and so forth, or you can give them names
from Star Wars, or pick your favorite fantasy you know
series or name them after your friends and family whatever,

(01:08:48):
all right, but then you have because you have characters, right,
because you have people, this is now a story, right,
These characters now have arcs almost right where they get wounded,
you know, they're severely you know, wanted to buy a
plasma bolt from from an alien. But they come back
and you know they rise, you know, the top rank.
They have the most kills of the whole mission, right

(01:09:08):
or you know, someone who's your star throughout the whole
whole mission. You know, it gets the it gets the
floor blown out from out of them, the falls to
their death. Right. So it's kind of it lets you
kind of create this this story in your mind as
you go through this games, you know, and and it's
got lots of other elements which you could get value of. Again,
it's it's planning, thinking ahead, perseverance. You make the game,

(01:09:30):
the games more difficult, you know, actually tactical thinking, not
just rushing through. But I love the element of being
able to create your own story. And this is where games,
you know, RPGs and the like are, you know, really
shines that you know, the choices you make matter. And
I think that's one of the one of the things
that games to tell people best because they're interactive. It

(01:09:51):
forces you to make choices, and those choices mattering is
you know something that is obviously applicable to our for
day life.

Speaker 1 (01:09:58):
Well, so you mentioned that's one of your you know,
highest our account on Steam. What do you think is
your your your number one Steam game most I know.

Speaker 2 (01:10:09):
I looked this up recently and I know it's it's
more than double anything else. The game is called Rocket League,
and this is again very very opposite end of the
spectrum everything we've been talking about. Rocket League is soccer
with rocket powered cars. It's it is exactly what it
sounds like. I have. I think it's something like six
hundred hours on Steam, and I know that that number

(01:10:30):
is maybe a little more half of my actual total
number of hours in the game to played on Xbox,
and I played on like Epic Games for a while.
For whatever reason, that's the game I get back into
like twenty fifteen when it came out. I played a lot.
I played it a lot with my friends, and it
was a game I got very good at, which again
there's it's the most sport like video game that you

(01:10:52):
could possibly ever make because it's most sport video games
Matt and NHL whatever are just like press a button
to throw the pop, throw a pass, shoot the puck,
shoot the ball, whatever, and like there's very little actual
refined skill in it, whereas Rocket League is you have
minute control over your car and it's all physics based,
so how you hit the ball at what point, at

(01:11:14):
what angle, what speed matters, and you know where the
ball actually goes right, So it is it's just entirely skilled.
There's basically no luck whatsoever. And having played a lot
of sports when I was younger, that kind of filled
that need for a little bit, whereas like I'm not
wasn't competing in sports anymore, so it gave me something
to really practice and get good at. So yeah, very

(01:11:37):
different for most of the stuff we've been talking about,
And that's kind of what I love about video games
is where it can it can, you know, bring out
good in you, It can teach you all sorts of things.
It can you know, be of value, even if it's
whether it's practicing a very specific skill in Rocket League
or exploring fill deep and philosophical themes in Kotor.

Speaker 1 (01:11:59):
Yeah, that that emphasis on skill. That's something that you know,
sometimes I hear Elon Must talk about, which I mean,
he's not my number one philosopher, but you know he
talks about how that kind of hyper focus can help
you to one thing, kind of reset your mind and
separating out other things in life. You know, take that
a little bit of a break. But also it just
trains your mind to hyper focus, and that itself is

(01:12:22):
a good exercise from time to time. Uh, Josh, tell us,
what's what's your most played game? Do you think.

Speaker 3 (01:12:33):
Most played game of all time or on Steam.

Speaker 1 (01:12:36):
Wherever you want to go with that.

Speaker 2 (01:12:37):
I don't know all time all time.

Speaker 3 (01:12:40):
I don't know if I might spend too much time
thinking about that, so on my for now because I
haven't checked this and I've been on Steam in a while,
to be honest, but I know for sure it's actually
is like the first Dark Souls game, because I think
I've beaten it like a lot of in our twelve times.
I used to like like quasi speed run it. I
mean like I could like beat it in like maybe

(01:13:01):
like two or three hours. But that doesn't make me
a speed runner because you know, there's like guys that
play that game like naked with like nothing but like
a caveman club and like they like play it with
like the guitar hero controller and still beat it in
twenty minutes somehow, Like I'm not I wasn't never that ridiculous,
but I think that that is like my most played game,
and honestly, like it really was. Yes, it was fun,

(01:13:25):
but I wanted to like keep exploring that world. It's
Dark Soul is one of the world's called Wardrone, and
I wanted to keep exploring Wardrone over and over and
over and over and over again. And that's what kept
drawing me back to play. It was like a comfort
food for a while. It was like whenever I was
like needed to, like I don't want to say relax
too much, because you can only relax so much playing

(01:13:46):
Dark Souls, but there was like a level or like
there's something that just feels like it's like like going
home after like a difficult journey in a way to
like only go home and go on a virtually difficult journey.
But there was something really comforting about just exploring that world.
Even though the world is sometimes terrifying, the world is
sometimes challenges you to wit send in a way but yeah,

(01:14:12):
I just something about that game that's always kept bringing
me back to it, so that that's I have, like
I think close to one hundred hours on that on Steam,
so quite a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:14:24):
Yeah. I mean, as with Sam, despite most of our conversation,
my number one game is not story driven. It's actually
Crusader Kings two by a long run, which that that
game if you haven't played it as a kind of
a deep learning curve, but once you get it down,
it's just it's infinite replay value. I'm not going to

(01:14:46):
tell you how many hours I have on it. It's
kind of an ups number. And then after that, then
we get to the story driven games and we go
to Fallout, Skyrim and whatnot. Although five is up there
as well.

Speaker 2 (01:15:00):
Yep, so five is easily in my top ten, but
again there's a there's a story within that game, right,
Like my wife and I would both play five. We'd
be playing you know, we're in college, but separate colleges.
You know, we'd divisive five. You know, our individual games.
And we get on Skype back when Skype still existed,
you know, a couple of times a week, and we

(01:15:21):
talk about our SIV games. We're talking about the story.
What wonders you building? You know, we go into war
with anybody? Has anybody you know been been harassing you
right as England and Constant been attempting to trade with you,
and you have to tell us what the go pound
sand like? There's I don't know. I love the Yeah,
the ability to just tell a story with you know,
the ability of games to tell stories even when they're

(01:15:42):
not telling a story.

Speaker 1 (01:15:45):
Yeah, And that's part of the value of subcreation when
when they give you that room to tell your own story,
to participate, you know, that's why you know. Tolkien says
that one benefit of literature over movies is that you
have to visualize things in your own mind, and so
just that extent, every reader has a somewhat of a

(01:16:06):
different story based off what their experience, other things they've read,
the various things that go into forming your mental images
of what's playing out. That you participate in the act
of subcreation as a reader versus a movie where you're
just watching something play out. I think a similar case
could be made for video games, at least for a
large number of video games, when you play a role

(01:16:28):
in creating what the story is. I mean, yes, you're
operating within certain parameters, but you are also operating in
certain parameters. When you read a book, you're dealing with
the texas given to you, And so I think that
that case very easily could be made.

Speaker 2 (01:16:42):
Yeah, I mean really applies more to less to story
driven games than it is to a lot of others,
because most of games, like the God of War games
that I'm thinking of specifically, they are largely movies right
where there's a lot of gameplay, but then there's a
cutscene right in the kind of this long cut scene,
something like kotor Is, which is which is still very
storage ofn is less like that. There is much more
subcreation available to than games which are like, Okay, they're

(01:17:06):
telling you this story and you're playing through it. So
it kind of depends on the game. There's a lot
of a lot of variation there. But yeah, I think absolutely.
I didn't I assume that's from one of Tolkien's letters,
because most everything that Tolkien says that I haven't already
read from his letters or I don't remember anyway, I've
read some of them. But yeah, I hadn't heard that before,

(01:17:29):
So that's fascinating.

Speaker 1 (01:17:30):
Yeah, Yeah, he really gets into that in his essay
on fairy stories.

Speaker 2 (01:17:33):
That's fair stories, Okay, yeah, something I've read hearts of it.
I don't think I ever sat down read the whole thing.

Speaker 1 (01:17:40):
Yeah, it's definitely worthwhile. I mean, he has a lot
of literary references that most people, myself included, like, I
don't follow all of his references that he makes, not yet,
but as far as the basic idea he's laying out there,
it's really foundational to the way that I engage with
stories in any format. So it definitely would recommend that
dataybody listening. Yeah, So I feel like we covered good

(01:18:05):
ground that the basics of what I wanted to discuss.
I mean, is there is there anything that Josh or
Sam you feel like should be brought into this that
hasn't already? It's a gay if not, But I don't
want to cut off any thoughts.

Speaker 2 (01:18:16):
M I don't think so.

Speaker 3 (01:18:20):
I was kind of curious and maybe we've already touched
on this enough, so let me know. But like the
idea of like games that and like, I guess we
did kind of talk about this with dark Souls, but
games that like don't have like an explicit uh an
explicit like narrative but almost like tells its meaning through
like simple and some and aesthetics, if that makes sense.

(01:18:42):
So I think like something like something like Legends of
Selad I might like fit into that category more where
I guess like there is like an explicit story, but
sometimes there's there's more beyond the story, or sometimes it's
just the story is really basic, but there's more within
the world. And one game I wanted to bring up
in that regard in case anybody else's point is I

(01:19:04):
was curious, pointed Shadow of the Colossus, and if not,
I'll like look that game up later. First of all,
but that's a game where there's this it's kind of
just symbol like you're this you're this boy, and you
you arrive at like this temple on a horse and
basically had to beat these I think it's like I
don't even remember how many coloss side there are.

Speaker 2 (01:19:23):
I think there's six. It's it's funny you mentioned it
because I just picked that game like I had it
forever and I started playing it. I needed to like
lie down on the couch because I'm dealing with like
an injury, but I was lying on the couch with like, hey, kids,
like we're gonna we're gonna play this for a little bit.
We don't do that very much, but I was like so,
and they got all sorts of questions, so I literally

(01:19:44):
just like beat like the first colossus just the other day.

Speaker 3 (01:19:48):
But yeah, continue, oh no, for sure, that's that's super
cool and coincidental to hear. But yeah, so there's like
basically these sixteen coloss side and it's like your character
is like this, it's kind of like your typical like
you know, twelve year old boy with a sword in
a fantasy setting and he's got he's got this horse,
which is sometimes incorporated into the combat, sometimes more, sometimes less,

(01:20:10):
but like you just you're just dropped off on this
huge plane and you find the next colossus by like
he holds his sword up to like the sun and
like it points a beam of light towards just the
general direction you have to go.

Speaker 2 (01:20:23):
And that's that's it.

Speaker 3 (01:20:25):
Like that's the entire game is just hunting down a
six colossi. They all represent different different like mythical beasts,
and therefore you have different ways to basically attack them
like that. They're all like kind of they're kind of
like a giant Humanoid Boss Puzzle in a sense. But
it's it's just a really fascinating game and it's so

(01:20:48):
unbelievably unique, but it kind of like ties in with
that concept I'm trying to get at here. It's like,
there's not like some explicitly deep store. It's not like
it's not Fallout New Vegas where you can spend like
dozens of hours just walking around, you know, the desert
of Las Vegas, talking to different people. Right, It's not
you don't really talk to anybody the entire game, but
somehow there's a story being told there through like the

(01:21:11):
substance of the world versus you know, the mouths of
the characters in this sense. And I feel like that's
like a there's like a category of gaming that that
that is that is that too. That's sometimes not talked about,
but it can be even overlooked because sometimes it can
be seen as or that game was dumb or something
because it didn't have like a story, like what's the
point it's like, but there was there was something there,

(01:21:33):
and I think sometimes people just it's over their head.
They miss it.

Speaker 2 (01:21:37):
Yeah, games have the advantage of that. Most movies, you know,
TV shows were not of environmental storytelling, right, so they
you know, developers, good ones anyway, will often you know,
place objects in the world that tell a story that
if you will care enough, you will find and notice them.

(01:21:57):
The example that comes to mind the thing of of
when it comes to environmental storytelling is a game called
Prey p R E Y that came out twenty sixteen,
twenty seventeen, I think, and it very much has a story.
It has a narrative set into spaceship or space station,
you know, the not too distant future that you know

(01:22:17):
it gets infected by an alien parasite essentially, but it
has a lot of environmental storytelling, right, so, whether it's
notes that are left around or even just like I
think I've seen I remember seeing this in a video
like someone's like baseball, glove and pizza that are sitting
out and kind of like you know stowed away spot

(01:22:39):
where you can learn about you know, other characters. Mostly
all that anyway at this point just by you know,
walking around and observing the world, and that's you know
that you could apply the same sort of thing to
you know, Breath of the Wild, where you you're going
to learn about the history of the world. Just by observing,
by walking around exploring, whether it's you know, just looking
at every nook and Gride can possibly find, or talking

(01:23:01):
to every NPC and exists, you know, exhausting every possible
dialogue tree and yeah that you know that is really cool.
Where it's just the games really take in. And this
supplies to think, to games more than most media, but
to all media, because intentionality matters. Like we said at
the beginning, but you really do get in what you

(01:23:23):
put out, or get you really get out what you
put in, and to an extreme extent where yeah, you
can last through you know, the main quest of Skyrim,
which everyone told me not to do when I tweeted
that it was my first time playing and asking for
advice like don't play them in a question, Okay, I
got it. Yeah, So it's just explore, right, experience. That's

(01:23:46):
something that games can do that you know, other media
can't really.

Speaker 1 (01:23:52):
Yeah, and that is for so long what has kept
me with the beathesta titles, with elder scrolls, with the
fallout that you.

Speaker 2 (01:24:03):
It.

Speaker 1 (01:24:04):
I mean, it's it's kind of a you know, running
joke that the main storyline is the side story, like
it's it's the last thing you want to do after
you you do everything else, because the purpose of the
games is not really the story per se. And I
think that the stories have some value, especially when you
go back to morrowind and Oblivion. I mean, Skyrim's has

(01:24:25):
a good central story too, but it's it's very simple.
But the real purpose of the game, the value of
the game is in the exploration, the engagement, in the
subcreation of determining like what kind of role are you
going to play in this world? And I think that's
what gives something like Skyrims so much replay value, and
that yeah, even though you're you're doing the same stuff

(01:24:46):
eventually if you've played enough times, but you do it
with your own sort of headcanon on who you are
and what you're doing in the in this world, how
you're engaging. And you know, Josha talking about that like
dynamic storyteller of just the nonverbal cues and whatnot, the symbolism,
the aesthetics, And I feel like even in these these

(01:25:07):
Bethesta titles, you get a lot of that when you're
just wandering around and you discover like the way like
you'll come across like a corpse. That's that's in a
certain way with other environmental cues as to what happened here,
you know, follow Out I think does this very well
with the way that you know, some of some of
the settings laid out, and it's just it becomes this immersive,

(01:25:28):
mysterious enchanting aesthetic or I guess for Fallout kind of
disenchanting is more of the point. Yeah, and so I
think it's it's a good point. Well, we've been run
for like an hour and a half. We could, as said,
easily go all night just talking about different things, but
I think we'll go ahead and wrap it there for now,

(01:25:48):
and maybe if we want to at some point in
the future, we could hit up some more things. But
I appreciate you Sam and Josh coming on, and I'm
sure that we will talk again about something or another.

Speaker 2 (01:26:02):
No, thank you so much for having me on, Andrew.
We appreciate it. This is this is a great conversation.
I enjoyed this.

Speaker 1 (01:26:11):
All right. Thank you for listening. And please, if you're
not already, make sure that you are subscribed to this podcast,
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(01:26:33):
over on the main Mythic Mind podcast we're doing a
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(01:26:55):
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(01:27:15):
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(01:27:36):
are on the Freebee feed, then you will hear from
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then God's Freaking The Psychology of Soaring care quy guards
a ten week course led up by doctor Andrew Snyder,
coming in the spring of twenty twenty six. What if

(01:28:00):
anxiety is not just a disease to be cured or
to be wished away, but it's actually a revelation of
one of our most fundamental freedoms, a freedom that is
awakened by possibility. And I don't just mean the possibility
of doing one thing or another, not just the possibility
of what might happen to you or around you in
this world of changing fortunes, but rather the possibility that's

(01:28:21):
presented by our own will, of our ability to determine
what it is that we are and where we're going
to base our identity. Who are we? What is our essence?
Where will we seek for stability in this changing world?
What even are we in a world that is constantly
given over to change into uncertainty. These are questions that

(01:28:43):
we answer at every single moment, although we often fail
to recognize that there's even a choice to be made,
let alone that we are the ones who are doing
the choosing. Most people today answer these questions by claiming
that we are whatever we want to be. There's no
one to tell us no or where to go. Truth, goodness,
and beauty, and even what it means to be human

(01:29:04):
is entirely upprograbs because, as the secular existentialist Jean Paul
Sart says, existence precedes essence, which means that we are
thrown into this world without purpose or design. We have
no boundaries, and we are all just making it up
as we go along. Popular academia and even well meaning
theological critics often trace this thought back to Soaring Caukedguard,

(01:29:27):
the nineteenth century Danish philosopher and so called father of existentialism. However,
as I argued in my doctoral dissertation, an honest reading
of Careguard will actually lead to very different conclusions. In
this ten week study, we will discuss three of Careguard's
critical and often very difficult psychological texts that form the
foundation for my dissertation, The Concept of anxiety, The Sickness

(01:29:50):
unto Death, and Fear and Trembling. The Concept of anxiety
provides a penetrating investigation into the experience and consequences of
anxiety as the gateway to losing or or finding oneself.
The Sickness unto Death surveys the various forms that the
loss of one's self can take, such as reality denying,
hyper imaginations which run in the mainstream of today's thought,

(01:30:11):
and inability to consider the possibility of change or identification
with transient things, and several other forms of despair, many
of which often go undetected, at least for a time
now for a more positive outcome. Fear and Trembling focuses
on Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac to demonstrate the leap of
faith that results in one's true self. Ask your Guard

(01:30:33):
rights in one of his journals, With God's help, I
shall become myself. Whether you are interested in the history
of ideas and you want to better understand Careguard's role
as a Christian who became dubbed as the Father of existentialism,
or you have more existential concerns, such as finding a
better way to understand your anxiety as a potential pathway

(01:30:53):
to living out your human purpose. Or you want to
root out underlying despair that seems to ruminate on the
surface even in the good times when you stop to
pay attention, or you want to discover what it means
to live as a knight of faith, then join me
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(01:31:14):
com slash Mythic Mind, or become a Tier three annual
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get the best value, be sure to head over to
patreon dot com slash Mythic Mind right now and become
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10 - The Value of Video Games

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