Red Dead
I haven't figured out a way to post here (at least, in a tasteful way) about what's going on in my life, so instead I'm going to write about a video game I've been obsessed with and how it relates to me. By the way, I am going to give you MASSIVE SPOILERS in the discussion of this game and in the YouTube clips below, so consider that if this is a game you're playing or plan to play.
Red Dead Redemption is a western done in the sandbox style of games like Grand Theft Auto. Rather than a city, though, you roam the West in the latter days of the American cowboy. You play John Marston, a gunslinger trying desperately to go straight when his wife and son are kidnapped by government agents who wish to force Marston to hunt down the remaining members of his old gang. Do that, they tell him, and he can go legit and work on a farm.
Although it's a sandbox game and you have the freedom to play the good guy or the bad guy, the story doesn't generally feel right if you go about indiscriminately shooting folks like a common rustler. John is a well-written character, and going against his nature seems awkward at best. The game won't even let you cheat on your wife with the various ladies of the evening who populate the saloons. John's polite, well-spoken, and well meaning, but not to be trifled with. Perhaps this clip from Mexico summarizes his character best:
I could go on forever praising the game's graphics, rich characters, etc., but what interests me most is John himself. He doesn't feel great about rounding up his former gangmates, men he once considered family, but he's had a genuine change of heart about what it is that they did together. The references to it are frustratingly vague, but in the dialogue between John and his former clan, you learn that they believed in some sort of larger cause beyond robbery and other self-gain. Unlike his former gang, though, John has reached the conclusion that the price for that cause (e.g., lives and suffering) was far too high.
This will seem like a ludicrous comparison, so it won't offend me too much if you laugh: I have often, in my own mind, likened what I used to do--satire, parody, mordant humor--to what an assassin or gunslinger does. I've never shot or killed anyone in the literal sense, but I've lampooned them and held them up for mockery...and I do know that some people prefer death to such public ridicule. I know of one person I targeted who actually left town in disgrace, and I stayed up some nights wondering if this person might be a suicide case. The fact that I thought my attack was completely justified did not always make me feel better about it.
So, then my question becomes, is the cause worth the price? Making people laugh is good. Exposing corruption/nonsense/evil is good. Using whatever talents one has been given is supposed to be good. But where do you stop? And who am I to weigh those scales?
Throughout the game John runs into a mysterious stranger who won't reveal his name or where he knows John from. It is, however, apparent that he knows John and is more than what he appears to be. Here's a collection of those scenes:
I didn't think anything of it at the time, but it appears that John's gun jams on the third shot.
Anyway, I won't go through the entire plot, but eventually John succeeds in eliminating the last of his former gang and is reunited with his wife and teenage son. They start a simple life on the farm, and John reconnects with his son. But then one day the army shows up at their ranch. It seems that Agent Ross, the government man John had been dealing with, had just one more member of the gang to round up for his superiors: John himself. There's a hell of a shoot-out before the family retreats to the barn in this scene:
We catch up with Jack Marston years later as he's laying his second parent to rest. (It's at this point that, if you're really paying attention, you start to get the references to the earlier scene with the stranger. The grave site is where the two of them were talking, and John's gun jams before it can fire a third shot, representing his and his wife's deaths and the sparing of his son, Jack. I just thought that was a nice touch.) Jack's about to go out into the world and become his own man, but there's one matter to settle first:
The credits roll at this point, and my favorite song from the soundtrack "Dead Man's Gun" by Ashtar Command, is played over them. Several folks made John Marston tribute videos to this song. Here's my favorite so far.
Red Dead Redemption is a western done in the sandbox style of games like Grand Theft Auto. Rather than a city, though, you roam the West in the latter days of the American cowboy. You play John Marston, a gunslinger trying desperately to go straight when his wife and son are kidnapped by government agents who wish to force Marston to hunt down the remaining members of his old gang. Do that, they tell him, and he can go legit and work on a farm.
Although it's a sandbox game and you have the freedom to play the good guy or the bad guy, the story doesn't generally feel right if you go about indiscriminately shooting folks like a common rustler. John is a well-written character, and going against his nature seems awkward at best. The game won't even let you cheat on your wife with the various ladies of the evening who populate the saloons. John's polite, well-spoken, and well meaning, but not to be trifled with. Perhaps this clip from Mexico summarizes his character best:
Click to viewI could go on forever praising the game's graphics, rich characters, etc., but what interests me most is John himself. He doesn't feel great about rounding up his former gangmates, men he once considered family, but he's had a genuine change of heart about what it is that they did together. The references to it are frustratingly vague, but in the dialogue between John and his former clan, you learn that they believed in some sort of larger cause beyond robbery and other self-gain. Unlike his former gang, though, John has reached the conclusion that the price for that cause (e.g., lives and suffering) was far too high.
This will seem like a ludicrous comparison, so it won't offend me too much if you laugh: I have often, in my own mind, likened what I used to do--satire, parody, mordant humor--to what an assassin or gunslinger does. I've never shot or killed anyone in the literal sense, but I've lampooned them and held them up for mockery...and I do know that some people prefer death to such public ridicule. I know of one person I targeted who actually left town in disgrace, and I stayed up some nights wondering if this person might be a suicide case. The fact that I thought my attack was completely justified did not always make me feel better about it.
So, then my question becomes, is the cause worth the price? Making people laugh is good. Exposing corruption/nonsense/evil is good. Using whatever talents one has been given is supposed to be good. But where do you stop? And who am I to weigh those scales?
Throughout the game John runs into a mysterious stranger who won't reveal his name or where he knows John from. It is, however, apparent that he knows John and is more than what he appears to be. Here's a collection of those scenes:
I didn't think anything of it at the time, but it appears that John's gun jams on the third shot.
Anyway, I won't go through the entire plot, but eventually John succeeds in eliminating the last of his former gang and is reunited with his wife and teenage son. They start a simple life on the farm, and John reconnects with his son. But then one day the army shows up at their ranch. It seems that Agent Ross, the government man John had been dealing with, had just one more member of the gang to round up for his superiors: John himself. There's a hell of a shoot-out before the family retreats to the barn in this scene:
We catch up with Jack Marston years later as he's laying his second parent to rest. (It's at this point that, if you're really paying attention, you start to get the references to the earlier scene with the stranger. The grave site is where the two of them were talking, and John's gun jams before it can fire a third shot, representing his and his wife's deaths and the sparing of his son, Jack. I just thought that was a nice touch.) Jack's about to go out into the world and become his own man, but there's one matter to settle first:
The credits roll at this point, and my favorite song from the soundtrack "Dead Man's Gun" by Ashtar Command, is played over them. Several folks made John Marston tribute videos to this song. Here's my favorite so far.