Shutdown Fullcast - The Red Dead Redemption 2 Bonus Episode

Episode Date: November 20, 2018

Featuring special guests Richard Johnson and Matt Brown, who help us discuss important gamer topics like: - Should you hitch your horse or accept you will smash it into a tree before long? - What if someone on the trail says something rude to you? - Can you play this game with a toddler and not ruin them for life? - Wait, there's an art museum brawl? - Spencer shot a blind man, but it was on accident and while he was trying to do something cool so maybe that's ok? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's segment is sponsored by the Dell XPS 13 laptop with an 8th-gen Intel Core I-7 processor. Experience Dell Cinema's incredible color, sound, and streaming on the Dell XPS 13. It's the laptop for people who watch things on their laptop. Learn more at Dell.com slash XPS13, sponsored by Dell and Intel. Welcome, partner. Red Dead Red Dead Redemption Edition of the show. down forecast let me the what let me did you just say the shalt down the shalt down are you going to mock my regional accent partner i just don't like a damn old dress of me is that a fella from

new york city trying to tell us how to talk would you like me to diffuse or antagonize this situation antagonize that some bitch joke choke choke jock rob i assume choke is diffuse right in a manner of speaking if you push the wrong button which does happen quite a bit like you try to mount horse and you end up tackle lady the best one was I was trying to yet the worst thing about the game is trying to hitch the damn horse and I was trying to hitch the horse the other day and ended up like pointing my gun I think I might hit the trigger wrong too ended up pointing my gun at just a lady right next to me and then the lady's husband, the NPC's husband, tried to show me the hands. Then I killed him, but I was in Sandinie, so there's cops all over the place,

so I then had to get on my horse and flip. Okay, so listen, just hold your horses here. Hold your horse. That's what he was trying to do. It was, but, you know, metaphorically, not literally. Let's just all hit the pause button. The only button that doesn't get you shot by bounty hunters. Sorry, pause, but a little inside gamer talk here.

We have a gamer term. We're in the gamer zone now, so. We have, that's why there are no women on this podcast tonight. It's about ethics in Red Dead Redemption Journalism. So we have on the podcast, our usual crew, there's myself, Spencer Hall, joined by, you know, I'm going to give you this name. You're, you're going to be, you're going to be, you're going to be, Jason

Parson of Death Kirk Then there will be Ryan The Bishop Nanny These are your Western names Then they'll be

Richard I'm going to I'm going to call you The Vulture of the Grizzlies Johnson And then I think we'll go to Matt Brown

joining us You know what Matt? we're just going to play you to type, man. Which brave, macho, Mormon hero, the West title do you want? Because I realize we have new options. Oh, oh, I mean, I was about to say, I figured I should have been the bishop, right? I think maybe, well, yeah, but it's funnier if Ryan's the bishop.

Because you could, in theory, maybe in one reality actually be one. That's right. Oh, no, no, no. I'm Matt Porter Rockwell Brown. There we go. Hortar Rockwell. Porter Rockwell, the one badass in all of Mormon history. It's like him and Sean Bradley, right?

Porter Rockwell would have dunked on Sean Bradley's ass so bad in church basketball. We are all playing this game except for Ryan. Ryan is going to be, Ryan's going to be the new stranger in town, just walking in from the east, asking questions, being naive. He's the green horn. Hello, I have money and I'm waving it around. Look at this city slicker. Just wandering around strawberry trying to figure out how to get back in town.

Does anyone know where I could acquire a panther pelt and a bath? Ryan's walking around saying, has anyone seen Gavin? My good friend Gavin. Or my zebra. I've seen to have misplaced him too. We are going to be discussing the video game Red Dead Red Dead Redemption too. Ryan is going to ask naive questions, just like a city slicker walking through the dirty streets of San Deney, uh, wood. Like a corn cob from Ohio. Ohio. How dare you all?

So Ryan, uh, you know, I'll let, I'll let you shoot first. Well, real quick, just to tee up, we, uh, oh, that too. We are about, collectively, about halfway through this game. I know, uh, Richard and Matt have made some progress into chapter five. We gather that chapter four is roughly the cutoff point halfway through the game. I have just now entered into chapter five. I'm like five minutes in a chapter five, but we're going to attempt to only discuss the first four chapters, which means, yeah, we'll probably do this again once we're all finished with it.

Spencer, are you through chapter four? I am not. However, I will go ahead and tell you, don't worry about any spoilers through that point. I don't care. So anyone progressing further, including Spencer, answer you uh if you hear anything that happens in sand knee then now you know yeah so uh don't cry spoilers at us because you simpleton's life happens in real time you know get used to it we're giving you we're giving you adequate warning i mean except this podcast which is recorded and then

released after the fact anyway it's close to live like well that's like 19th century live right that's red dead redemption live like oh the spanish and Eric Gabor started. You can find out about something that happened 12 hours earlier on the other side of Earth. So this is civilization, huh? Got the sound quality from 1899, I think, on this podcast. That's hurtful. We're trying.

My first question. So is Dutch. My first question is for Richard, but it's really for all of you. I just want Richard to go first. Richard, what is the thing Red Dead Red Dead Redemption 2 regularly asks you to do that you are the worst at? It's probably hitched the horse. Holy shit, I am bad at hitching the horse.

And then it's like the thing about it is you have to hit triangle. I'm on PS4. They hit triangle to hitch the horse or unhitch the horse. So, but if you miss it, you just either get off or on the horse. But when you get off the horse, you can't really hitch the horse unless you like lead the horse when you're off the horse to hitch the horse. It's like the clunkiest thing I've ever done in a video game. and it's even worse because there's like not much clunky about this video game so it really stands out

why do you have to hitch the horse we don't have to hitch it but like when you get a new one it like i guess it like quicker like levels the horse up it like builds your bond of the horse or whatever oh but it all it also rests the horse like better yeah the horse the horse likes being hitched and the more the horse likes you uh the more uh dressage tricks you can do and the faster it can run It's all very logical. This is a horse romance simulator. Yes. If you get to level six, you get to fuck the horse.

Horse e-books and video game for them. Yeah, also you can drift on the horse. I just want to mention that. There's a move called drifting. Yeah. It is not actually smoking hooves drifting around corners, which was a slight disappointment on my behalf. Maybe you just haven't gotten your horse to like you enough.

Yeah, maybe your horse hates you. Nitro boost Matt, Matt, what is the thing that you are worst at that you regularly have to do? Yeah, there really isn't a whole lot to actually complain about the game, but I feel like the controls when I'm not on the horse

and I have to do anything other than like run straight ahead is where problems happen. Like I feel like there's been multiple times in the game when you're having like this big dramatic set piece battle. You're supposed to be zipping from like barrel of hay to tree or whatever. for cover and everything and then what I'm supposed to be like you know making some kind of smooth

movement I then face plant or you know I actually hit the wrong button and I dive like four feet up into the air and try to like tackle an odriskel and it it is a little immersion breaking oh sons of bitches so you're so you're a receiver who can't run anything but a go route yeah I'm a receiver that's falling a go round right if that go route to three yards and then a big 10 go route, if you will. Man, you run through the forest and the horse is like, it's time to run sluggo. Sluggo was not open, horse.

The Arabian's got a hell of a double move. Jason, what are you worst at in this game? So the game is amazing and beautiful and basically perfect in like a million ways, except for anything that approximates anything you would do in real life, such as opening a drawer and pulling a can out of the drawer, because this might take you up to a minute just to make Arthur point correctly at the drawer, especially if there's like four dead bodies in the way.

You know, like you have to go into first person camera to specifically look at the can of peaches in order to successfully pick it up just because I don't know. Whoever designed this, I think they thought that every single move you make will be exactly as they designed it, which is a crazy thing to think for the most like open world game of all time. and that juxtaposition is it's almost immersion breaking but i mostly just find it charming when like this stupid country fuck doesn't know how to pick up a can of vegetables how many how do you need like lots of cans yeah yeah because every time you get shot you got to eat cans yeah and also every time you shoot someone you got to smoke cigarette

if you're stuck if you're stuck my favorite is if you run out of the ability to shoot basically it's called dead eye and it's what you use to target something. If you run out of that, one way to get it back is to drink a shitload of brandy, moonshine, bourbon, right? Like, oh, you can't shoot, new buddy. Here, drink this bourbon. You'll shoot the shit out of somebody.

If you're, like, riding from one gun battle to the other, you're looking at your dead eye meter, and you're like, shit, I got to drink some gin on the way. At least. And then it's also funny to me that, like, one of the other main benefits of smoking, and the benefits are myriad. you also pick up like the 1890 equivalent to Pokemon cards every time that you like smoke a smoke a cigarette

which you like people will give you like actual money for and you need that to get your completion you know up so you're also you know ransacking these houses after you murdered like 80 people trying to find cigarettes just so you can get some trading card of like the 1870s robber barons that someone's going to give you a gold bar for also they try and ground it in realism because doesn't smoking like take a little bit of your health away yeah it's it's it's tiny bit you lose stamina so then you have to so you have to go for the my favorite is the chocolate bar because it raises your stamina and your dead eye so you're just pounding gin and chocolate bars and cocaine gum like that this is also i think part of what needs of the the red dead redemption food pyramid

so you've got like right so like at your base right you've got various cans and beans and you work your way up to like big game chunks that I've been just like dangling off your horse like some like demented meat tank as you like drive all the way across the country and then you have the sprinklings of chocolate candy and cocaine and it's like the federal government told me not to eat five cans a day well guess how many cans I'm going to eat five I also like that in your satchel you have meat that you cooked uh the day before seven days before 30 days before you kill an animal and you take five pieces of meat off it you cook them They're just in your purse.

They just stay in your purse. You got some extremely old-ass meat that you watch on that. That's true. That's true of any Mississippi State tailgate as well, though. Yeah. Have any of you guys managed to make Arthur fat? Because allegedly, if you eat a bunch of bad food, you can get. I can't.

He's permanently underway. Our colleagues at Polygon have a wonderful video all about the inability to make him a large boy. Yeah, it's Polygon. Vox Media's good website. They did a, like, entire video. It's got to be like 10 minutes about trying to make Arthur read as overweight. It's almost impossible.

Getting ready for Big Boy, season. That's the name of the video. And the dedication, like, they basically just try to get him fat. They're not trying to do anything else in the game other than try to get him fat, and it's impossible. You can, now that speaks to a larger point about this game.

It is so big and the plot is open world. So there are indications of where you should go, right? However, for the most part, you can do what you want. So there are people in your life in the game who are close to you as characters who I guess see you ride off into the sunset one day. When you come back, in my case, 90 to 120 days later, they're like, well, Arthur, where are you? you've been? And I'm like, I was looking for a perfect squirrel pelt. But then I was eaten by animals 72 times. And I decided to see how many bar fights I could get into in a row

and ended up fighting a guy who said he was eating turds. And then I was jailed and killed again and resurrected. And then I went and I tried to get a bad, you know, like this is basically you end up being the biggest idiot in this person's life, right? Like, that's why I was gone. Well, second biggest because they know uncle. They know Uncle and Micah, yeah. Fucking Micah, man. Spencer, we're going to get there, okay? Calm down.

Spencer, you should know that as somebody who works with you, disappearing for months at a time without explanation, that's your life. That's your real life. This is why I love this game. It's autobiographical. All right. Last for you, what is the thing that this game regularly asks you to do

that you are the worst at? The worst at basic movement. Arthur is so, it's very realistic because I think that if you took a bunch of standard 19th century people and then told them to go into the West, right, that they would suck at things, you know, because the people who are, the people who are doing this, right, they are from Ohio, right? They are from places where you don't have to, I don't know, know how to skin a cougar. So Arthur is in really crappy boots and he's, probably really tired and then you go hey let's climb this mountain and in a game like

Zelda Breath of the Wild link is just going to scale that thing he's just going to bound up that like some kind of lemur on meth well because he literally has no other purpose in life right Arthur if you ask him to ask Arthur ain't a damn elf if you ask Arthur to climb a simple eight-foot acclivity okay just eight feet to incline you ask Arthur to climb that by by four feet up. He's going, just tumbling down the side of this thing because he sucks at it. Could Arthur pass a single event in the presidential fitness test? Fighting. Is fighting in it? I have never more felt as a gamer. I have never more felt that my character is wearing jeans than I do when I'm playing red dead too. This is a jeans-ass game.

Yeah. Does anybody play in first person? No. No. Go. Only when I'm trying to pick something up. Only when it's K& time. It is very fun when you're riding a horse, especially when you're out near Valentine, where you're out where it looks kind of like New Mexico, which is very pretty. First person is very nice there.

The first person's also great when you're riding. And if you don't know, you can go into cinematic mode. Cinematic mode is where you kind of put the game on autopilot. and it pulls back and when you're riding between things the game lets you admire these vistas and then sometimes it runs you into a fucking cliff wall at like 20 miles an hour head first right

like just out of nowhere and you know your horse your horse distrust you for a minute if it lives through it and Arthur loses half his health and goes god damn this is half of the Red Dead Redemption subreddit which I think Spencer and I check every morning of our lives now where people just have horse bloopers,

most of which are in, like, cinematic mode where, yeah, you know, it's not actually cinematic. The game is actually still going. This is probably, I mean, if I was to think of all the stupidest things that have happened to me while playing this game, I think 90% of them are some kind of horse accident. Like, this literally happened,

like right before I hopped on here, right? Like, otherwise, there's this big emotional crescendo. There's like a, like, a DeAngelo song happening in the background. like it's it's this very it's supposed to make you feel a bunch of things and you know you pants to this vista and I'm riding along and contemplating my my my place in the west and and whether I can be redeemed as a human being and I just snack right over this motherfucker carrying a bail like a bail of hay

the horse flips over twice like lands on the dude the music stops and like oh okay I guess I was supposed to be riding and you're like my wife's like the other you know like you're watching from behind there and she's like laughing so hard, there's some ear stuff. You barrel over this dude and DiAngelo switches to singing, how does it feel? I was trying to cross a footbridge somewhere, and I, instead of getting on the bridge, I hit the post next to the bridge, and I tumbled off the horse but landed on the land, and the horse fell into like a ravine or something, like off a cliff.

Yeah. That'll happen. And that's why I got, that's, that's why I got, that you have multiple horses. Because, you know, something, that's, you got to do it like me. You don't even got to worry about hitching him. Just like, well, I mean, I'm just going to drive it into a tree anywhere. Let's just leave it here. I'm a bad guy.

I'm going to steal horses. Why don't you lock your car? I'm just going to wreck it. This is, why would I lock it? All right. The other thing I'm really bad at as a bonus is hunting small animals because inevitably in the game when you pull a gun, it doesn't always pull the gun you want first. You have to specify which.

one, so I would spend time stalking small animals and going, let's get the farm and rifle, it'll be perfect. And I'd pull the wrong trigger and immediately blow away a perfectly good three-star. Grab the shotgun for the squirrel. No, saw it off. I'd have the sword off.

All right. Let's start with Matt for this one. Which character in the game do you hate the most? Oh, Micah is the worst. This is going to be unanimous. Micah is human refuse. He has no redeemable qualities. As Spencer can attest you, his heartheadedness is the reason that we can't go bathe in the town that let you drink champagne while you're getting a bath because you end up having to, like, murder 75 law enforcement personnel to go bust them out of jail.

And then he mocks you for it the whole time. I mean, like, the cast is huge. And I feel like there are lots of members of the camp that are genuinely likable. You know, I enjoy riding around with Lenny. I kind of enjoy Josea and, you know, I think the game does a better job of making more three-dimensional women than Rockstar games typically do. Micah, I just want, I want to drop a howitzer on it. He's the worst person in the world.

Is that the same answer for everyone? Yeah, yeah. I would love it if the mission, after you break Micah out, you can put him back. That would be awesome. As soon as I could, I paid my bounties and then I just spent like four days in strawberry, just like, no, I've earned this. Well, what is, what is, what is, what is, what is Micah's deal? Like, give me some context. Micah, Micah is the guy who always, um, Micah is the trigger happy, hot-headed moron with very little conscience who never, ever, ever gets it right. So like, the Trevor of Red Dead, if you play Grand The thought.

Yeah, but without like the humor, right? Like, Micah's just, Micah's there. Trevor, but worse. Yeah, like, Micah's just there to turn an easy stagecoach robbery into a quintuple homicide that it didn't have to happen where you each walk away with 20 bucks. Right? The first thing Micah does in the game is you're in a,

the first, the game has a real slow start, which now I understand why, and it's a really cool thing, actually. But the first part of the game is trying to survive a blizzard, and you find a perfectly good house. Micah's second in the door. Guess what Micah does? Micah burns the whole fucking thing down on accident because that's your intro to the character is.

This is the guy who burns down the perfectly good house that belongs to somebody else who's standing right there who's like, what the fuck, dude? Just burn down my house, asshole. Yeah, he's the kind of person that does all of these things and then blames it on you. Like there are criminals in this band that possess a modicum of self-reflection,

occasionally express remorse, not for the innocent people, because fuck them, but the other people within this camp, that part of Micah's brain never developed. It is a kidney meat. It's just, I'm going to perpetually do terrible things

that inconvenience everybody else with my stupid mustache, and then after you bail him out again, he calls you dumb. Like, you know, if this is 2018, Micah is the 12-year-old, who's like constantly, you know,

insulting your mother on Xbox Live. Like, he's, I have nothing positive to say about him. Richard, Richard, do you, do you despise Micah as well? Yeah, Micah's trash. Mike is really trash. I was trying to, I was trying to think of a different character. I have one. I think the way the game, like, is really mean to Uncle, like, almost feel bad for Uncle.

Because the first one, Uncle was, like, sympathetic, you know, oh, Uncle, whatever. Like, Arthur, like, really, really hates Uncle. I have one, Ms. Grimshaw, because every time I come back into camp, she goes, Arthur, been a while since you've contributed to the camp fund, been a while since you've given us anything. And if I go over and look at the ledger, some, like, Miss Grimshaw is throwing in like, ooh, $250. Yeah, look at the fucking ledger and like, what are the names on it? Arthur, Arthur, Arthur, Arthur, Arthur, Arthur. Like, I'm the one keeping this entire place running, lady. And it's like Lenny, like 250. You know, know bill a dollar 50 i'll put it like a hundred dollars in this thing i bought a fucking boat ma'am i bought a coop i bought you a chicken coop i have this bucket which is filled to the brim with platinum belt buckles that is that that is how we survive in this house to come in here and give me lip about the last time i took a bath what do i do it's very simple i go out i shoot nearly broke morons in the head i take their silver bolt buckles

I do that until I have like 500 of them and then I come back and feed my family this is the American dream adopted family this is the saddest form of organized crime I've ever heard yeah exactly if Arthur went out on his own

and just did nothing but robbed people for himself he'd be rich as fuck but it's tied to these people so this is an anti-corporate game yes in many ways. It's a fine argument against socialism, I'll tell you that. Yeah.

Yeah, and then you got Dutch going, we just need one more big score. We just need a little bit more money. And I'm looking at it like, bitch, I have $4,000. And I'm not exactly frugal. Like, I've bought every fancy outfit that they have insane to me.

Like, how much more money do we need? Well, why can't, can you just, like, live on your own? It sounds like that's what Spencer is doing for weeks at a time. You could. Yeah, you could. As soon as I paid my bounties and I got back into strawberry, which if you haven't paid the game, it's just, it's picture a nice little mountain resort town.

Very chill. As soon as you can get back into strawberry, the thought goes through your mind of, why don't I just stay here? Why would I go back to those people? They're awful. It costs me a dollar a day to pay my hotel. I can go rob someone once a month and make enough money to eat and sleep in this hotel for the rest of my life. And that could be the end of the game. It could just be endless baths and me hog tying the clergyman who pretty.

reaches in the corner every single day for the rest of my life. What's wrong with that? You don't even have to cook if you don't want to. You can go to the saloon. They'll give you a tin full of slop and all the cocaine gum you can ask for. I can hang out there with the old prospector who's literally Gus Chiggins from the S&L skid. Is that the one that eats poop or seeing a different one? That's the turd-eaten old prospector with the badass like badger hat.

Yeah. I took it. Damn right, I took his hat. It took me five minutes to knock that bitch out. In what? In what context is he? You know what? I don't want to know.

I don't want to know. I'm just glad. It's a Wild West partner. You wouldn't understand. I'm just glad that the game allows you the possibility to, you know, leave your troublesome gang who only causes you problems behind and just go do something for you. And on that note, we're going to hear a little advertiser content from Dell Cinema. about the same thing, about binge watching, about how binge watching has changed everything

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about Dell Cinema's amazing color and Intel Core I7 processor at Dell.com slash XPS13. That's Dell.com slash XPS 13. Next question. I'm going to leave the Spencer for this. Spencer, do you regret anything you've done in this game so far? A lot. There is a young man in a dress, I believe, being used as a sex slave somewhere in the city of Rhodes, who is in the basement of the gun shop.

and the first time you walk in I think the sequence that the game wants you to do is find the guy hear his plea for help because he's being used as a gimp by it's a redneck town right there has to be some creepy redneck sex thing going on

in any game with rednecks and Rhodes is super redneck Rhodes kind of looks like either old Atlanta or some old town in Mississippi be around 1899. So I go in and what you're supposed to do is hold the guy up and make him free the guy downstairs. Then you can take whatever you want from the gun shop because you're effectively blackmailing the guy and you freed his gimp, right?

Tadda. I go in to pull the gun on him and I shoot him in the head. Just blow his head. It's a different form of freedom. Because I messed up the triggers and it's like, it's like, it's. instead of, you know, a cost. It was, it was instantly draw, yeah, I got to stop carrying that shotgun as my primary sidearm. This is just causing me all kinds of problems. So I instantly pulled the gun and shot him. And now every time I go back through Rose, the guy, I went over

and talked to him and he's like, you still haven't done anything? You got to help me. This guy's never going to let me go. And I go in and the script is off. Like, I don't know whether I have to save or do something or whether he's just trapped down there forever. So I just go and say hi to him. I'm like, oh, hey. Hey, Wilson. How you doing? That seems more cruel.

How you doing, buddy? Here, I'm going to give you some cocaine gum. Keep you peppy down there. That's one thing I regret. The other thing I regret is there is a blind man in the game. And I, um, Jason, this is a byproduct of reading too much of the subreddit. Somebody said, it's cool. If you pull your gun on him, it doesn't trigger any like, you know, defensive responses

because he's blind. he doesn't see it and, you know, you're not like... Spencer, did you shoot the blind man? Ryan, I shot the blind man. Wow. I had to make sure I couldn't see. With my wife watching. So I said, hey, this is kind of a cool thing the game does.

And the guy goes, oh, for the blind. And I mean, wow! But worse, I put one in like his gut. So I had to finish him off. Yeah. And there were witnesses because they all went to the cops and they're like, that guy shot a blind man. Even in our society.

Even in our society, this is very uncool. And my wife goes, what was supposed to be cool about? Hang on. I have a story similar to this. So I have a four-year-old who has made it difficult for me to play this game as much as I would like. I have learned, unfortunately, that if, I play games with profanity or, you know, the things maybe I don't want my daughter to repeat and she is awake, she will repeat them. You know, so my kids, preschool teachers have

probably a negative opinion to me. So my workaround here to try to continue to play this game is I've told Penny that this is the horsey game. And when we play, I just don't shoot anybody. So we go and we look for animals and, you know, yeah, yeah. And she's like, oh, this is fun. I like horses. And I like trying to pick out the different animals. The problem, And this is going to come up, I think, again and again over this podcast, is it's very easy to accidentally discharge firearms. This is a design thing. Yeah.

So I'm riding along on my horse and I'm like, hey, you know, I'm going to be a good neighbor, you know, Mr. Rogers bandit here with my four-year-olds and let's go just, you know, greet all of the pastors by. Hey, Mr. Hey, Mr.. No, I blew like two people. I blew a couple away with the shotgun. Like, my daughter's like, ah! You know, not only sure what's going on.

I'm like, you know what? Maybe we'll go play Mario Odyssey right now. I decapitated a man with my hat. Oh, no. And maybe not tell your mother about this particular story or anybody at church or anybody at school. Or anyone. This is a secret forever.

Yeah. Yeah, it's a good thing that I'll listen to this podcast. So, yeah, the horsey game bit didn't work as well as I had hoped. Good try that. And here's the thing. You know that at some point when Rockstar was testing this game, somebody was like, yeah, we got the trigger mechanism. It's just like way too twitchy, accidentally shooting people all the time.

We've got to fix that. And then somebody else was like, but what if we don't? Yeah. I said, I thought this is America. Richard, have you done anything that you regret in the game so far? No, man. No, man, you got to live life with no regrets. Richard, have you tied anybody to train tracks yet?

No, I haven't done that yet. There was one mission we used to lasso a guy, and I think the game wanted you to hog tie him, but I kind of just like dragged him back behind my horse because the guy died and being dragged behind the back of my horse. That's the closest I really even come to lasso. Jason, have you done anything you regretting this game? Brother, let me tell you.

I'm just roaming the West looking for, looking to absolve myself of my sin. So one was just straight up stupid. There's one where you can go around. If you find enough disgruntled postal workers, they will tell you where stage coaches are that you can rob. And I got a good tip that there was one coming out of the Blackwater. If you played Redemption Red Dead Redemption 1, you know Blackwater is a very scary place.

There's like a massive bounty on you in Blackwater. And if you go in it, it's like nuclear bombs descend on. you. So don't go in it. Wait for the stagecoach to come out of Blackwater and then rob it. I'm up on a mountain. I got a good perch and I see it. And what do I do? I get a little trigger happy. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And now there is a wagon parked on the Blackwater side of the river. And I'm like, all right, I can sneak across the river and go clean out that wagon and be back across. I get over there. There are $100 in there. Long story short, by the time. I murder my way back across the river.

I have a $350 bounty on me. I am $250 in the red from this robbery. Also, I died, which also cost you money. I want to talk about that bounty system here real quick, because this is a somewhat strange system for me in a game that really prioritizes hyper-realism, right? You've got to remember to take a bath, and you don't get to just, like, press X for bath. you have to freaking hit a bunch of buttons to scrub behind your ears and like under your toes and stuff right you go in you go out in the cold and the testicles on your horse shrink so like every tiny little detail is set up and then you can murder like 700 people and if you just give a couple of belt buckles everyone's just like well howdy partner and just kind of forget the whole thing ever happened um that seems a little weird doesn't it maybe i thought this was America maybe that's how it was at the time it must have been like you can't be it's Like, maybe this is just, it's important to remember that, you know, as violent and horrifying and terrible as the America we live in is now, man, it used to be even worse, just even worse.

They do a good job. They do a good job of showing, you know, you have, this is one of those games where, you know, there's an honor system. And that honor system is meant to sort of say, well, you can be good or you can be bad, but there will be cost either way. And the worse you are, the easier it is to hustle backwards and hustle backwards hard. It's expensive to be really, really bad. Yeah, yeah. If you're honorating as high, clothes are cheap. If you're oner rating as low, everyone wants to kill you.

All right. Well, that leads into my next question, and we'll start with Spencer. Spencer, are you living honorably in Red Dead Redemption, too? I am because ultimately it's easier and I'm lazy. It's just easier to be good. But also, I'm kind of, I actually like, I'm kind of a sucker for the MPCs who need help, even the guy who's been bitten by the same snake three times. Unless you shoot them. Unless I accidentally blow a blind man away.

Or, as I have discussed in previous discussions of this game, if I come up on a guy who needs to be put out of his misery after bleeding, while bleeding out by wolves, and instead of shooting him in the head and ending it, I plug him in the gut and make it worse. And he tells me, oh, you made it worse. You know, I live mostly honorably, although I do tend to, I show favor to outlaws. For instance, there is a scene where you pass a chain gang. And the chain gang is yelling at the boss of the chain gang. And the heated argument gets gradually, like, more intense until one of them pulls out a shiv and kills him. And I'm standing there on my horse. And the guys look up and they're like, Mr.

This ain't none of your business. And I'm like, nope, nope. mine just going right on by these guys in convict uniforms and chains just take off toward the tree line yeah i'm mostly i'm living mostly honorably especially when it comes to rubbin hood like feats if it's like do you want to give this person money i'm like take a hundred dollars buddy there you go richard are you living honorably nah bro my shit's way in the red i want to watch you play man that lines that lines up with your i regret nothing i've done in this games I'm not, I'm not, like, me in high school playing GTA bad, but I, like, first of all,

if I bump into you on the trailer or something like that and you give me lip, I'm letting that chop a sang, baby. That's the first thing. The other thing, like, I won't, I won't, like, you know, kill the homeless people asking for moms for the blind or anything like that. Like, I'll just leave them alone. But the other thing is I kind of play the game. I probably play the game a little too linearly.

Like, I really roll from mission to mission. So if I'm, if I'm on my way somewhere and you stop me, like, help me, sir, da, da, da, da, like, I'm not going to help you. And a lot of times when you go past people, and like that, it, like, shows your little thing, like, minus honor or whatever it is. Richard, you are playing this game, like, such a New Yorker. It's amazing. But, yeah, I got shit you do, man, sorry. Excuse me, I lost my child and I need your, ab, I'm sorry, listen. The train's leaving, okay.

Hey, I'm walking here. Matt, do you play this game honorably? I mean, to the extent that you can play a game honorably, where the missions require you to rob and steal and kill people. Like, I think my honor meter is near the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, I helped the terrible nature photographer. Uh, I served as the world's worst research assistant. I've done a lot of the side quests.

I mean, I'm just a wimp when I play video games like this. Like, I had a problem playing GTA because I'm, like, trying to obey traffic signals and stuff. And, like, you know, I felt like a bad person. Like, I had to play this game for, like, 12 hours before I felt comfortable just, like, belligerently insulting Micah and, like, uncle. So, like, I'm still definitely a bad person, but maybe the least bad person that the game lets you be and still kind of progress.

so okay so when you're like super honorable it you know that like cinematic like kill cam or whatever like mine is like apparently really gory compared to because when you're really bad it's like really gory but when you're really good apparently it's really like honorable and like noble like clean eastwood westward like western shit what does it look like when that thing comes up um it still seems pretty gory to me okay i mean i do i do most of my killing through dead eye at this point And it still looks like someone just explode an entire can of, like, crushed tomatoes. Yeah, it's like Gallagher, basically. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, man, I bet if you shot Pearson, it would be like Gallagher, because he's, like, holding, like, three watermelons in there. Jason, are you playing this game in a morally upright fashion? So I feel like I'm being very true to the character because Arthur is, he's not very smart. So when somebody comes up to me and says, help feller help my you know my my leg stuff in the bear trap or whatever arthur's like huh i know how to fix that okay i will you know and if you do everything that everyone is yelling at you to do

you will have a high honor rating but i think what is even true to the character is then you can can capitalize on that and you can do all the crime you want and still have a higher honor rating because you let a cop loose like three hours ago the the one hack i would tell anyone about this game is if you ever come across a cop who is being held captive, let him loose, and then you have a blank check. You can go shoot up a fucking town and get away with it. So you're taking the Whitey Bulger approach to this game. I'm being a fake good guy.

Right. Yeah, you're being a good guy. You're cooperating witness. Like, I have, there was, I was riding in the mountains and a dude, a rancher, he said some shit to me, and guess what? Not only did I kill him, I skint all his cows to take him back to camp. I shot one in the head, wrote it all the way back,

a day journey across the map, and then I came back and skint the other one because you can only carry one skin at a time. That's how much I hated that motherfucker. And yet, I'm counted as a good guy because I set two cops free. So Jason's Arthur is an Oklahoma fan. I would say that the attitude that I have maintained

is always this, which is I will be fine with you unless you are an MPC who is impolite with me and refuses a diffuse. I'll give you one diffuse. And I don't know if this is the programming or not or if it's just my bias. But the further south you get

and the more country things get, the stupider they get. So like if you ride by somebody and say hi and they go, don't hire me. I'm like, refuse once. Like, okay, buddy. And then the guy on the horse is like,

you want to die? Dead I. Yeah, and then like 15 seconds later, I'm looting his body in front of horrified bystanders going, what me? And you're like, I just said hi. All I did was say hi. I thought y'all were supposed to be polite.

All right, my final question, and we can keep talking about the game after this. I'm not going to tell you what to do. Let's start with Matt. Matt, what's the dumbest thing you've done recently in this game? besides i mean i think the only time i've really been caught by the law at this point is when i am you know just king hell full sprint on my arabian you know you know got nine guys on my tail and i feel i'm pretty proud of myself and then i just drive directly into a tree and you know

the horse's head basically goes through the tree and you fly like nine feet up in the air oh god damn it wow and you roll around the whole thing i i do that a lot and that's i i i think but i think i think i think between that and then spending my limited video game time literally just playing poker are the the two dumbest things. I'm just like a big picture thing, right? You know, like my wife will come downstairs and like, is this part of the game? I'm avoiding my responsibilities, not just in real life, but also in the video games. I'm supposed to like go get beans for these people. I just want everyone to shut up, be quiet, and play poker. I'm trying to make some money. Let daddy cook. It may be not be the dumbest thing in like,

economy of the game, but in terms of the economy of, like, how I spend my real life actual waking moments on this earth before shuffling off the mortal coil, yeah, it's probably pretty dumb. Great. Don't think about that too much. Do me a favor. Just don't put it out of your brain. Buddy, I, if I do, then I start to think about what I actually do for a living and I get all context. Well, you know, you could be spending your leisure time on a terrible podcast talking about a video game. Okay, cool. Hook him. Richard, what's the dumbest thing you've done recently in Red Dead Redemption, too? It's probably, it was kind of near the beginning of the game.

You like, kind of when it first turns you loose, I just kind of started roaming around a little bit. And I accidentally kind of stumbled upon a, like, enemy compound or whatever. And I looked at the map, and the map only showed, it was probably like two or three red dots. And I had like a pistol on me, and I was like, I bet, like, I got this. and so like I rode in, brandished the pistol, and just dudes just came out. And I was, it's like, too, there's like no cover. And I had ditched the horse and it kind of like crouched up to it. So I was just done.

Like, just done. So basically you saw, you saw three bees and we're like, that's clearly all the bees there are around. I'll attack. So the defense had had more numbers in the box than you realize. Exactly. Spencer, what's the next thing you've done recently since this game? And I realize you could probably do it happen around this.

I can. I'll probably give you three things. But I'm going to start with one, which was similar to Richards. There's a camp of O'Driskels, and they were only accounted. There were only about seven of them. They didn't see me coming. And I, because I am the master of video game control, I had the lasso on instead of a gun. And I hit the first one.

and I lassoed him, and I thought, well, let's see how far I can go with this. So I hog tied him while people are shooting at me, right? Arthur's like, hold on. Let me twirl this. Come on. Come on, cowboy. So I got one, and then I ran into the woods, and they can't unhog tie them, right? They just kind of, the NPCs sit there and go, well, look at that.

We should tell you called this. Let's go tell Como Driscoll, he's been hogtied. Aye, fuck. Look at that. So I kept running back into camp and take acid losses. But I got, ultimately, I got all of them hogtied. And then I, you know, I'd go eat some can of beans, run back in, hogtide, another one, right?

And I was like, well, what don't I do? And I was like, well, I do have fire bottles. So I just threw a bunch of fire bottles and burned them because I didn't really know what to do. But I've done that countless times in this game where I've seen somebody and they've tried to shoot me and rather than shooting them because I was like, oh, I don't want to kill them.

So I hog tie them. I'll ass of them and hog tie them. And then realize I'm like, oh, I'm just leaving you wriggling out here in the middle of the wilderness filled with cougars and wolves. Bye! And then I ride off going, oh, I just did something way worse. Oh, wow. Hang on.

this podcast can't be used as like admissible evidence later right now somebody would have to listen to it so you're fine okay carry on imagine the detective who's like trying to track spent it doesn't know it's spencer but trying to track like man his emo is always the same he hogties all the victims then sets them on fire while they're still alive for no reason also there's a shitload of bean cans everywhere after he's done it should have been when you get an odd time. All right, Spencer, please continue with your tales of stupidity.

Other stupid thing, I attempted to hold up a poker game after losing one hand in a crowded bar. Because I had a straight flush to the jack, and they had a straight flush to the king, and I didn't

think that was reasonable. And the other stupid thing that I have done in the game, which this is it's short but it's sweet. I was playing with fire bottles and trying to hunt a legendary animal at the same time and missed the legendary animal and hit a hog. The hog caught fire. The hog ran into my horse, knocked me and the horse over. And then I was rammed to death by the legendary animal. So yeah, that's man those fire bottles that might be my close second there's one uh mission we like forged the brake lights you know cornfields or whatever and i could not figure out how to either

a get the fire bottle to work while i'm being shot at or be like throw it the right distance like one time i threw it the other time like sean hit me with his fire bottle when you're throwing it in like i had to do that mission like four or five times that one was hard let me ask you all a question Maybe this is just me because I'm a broken person, but has playing this game a lot altered your, have you caught yourself like talking like Arthur or thinking in like old-timey language when you're not playing the game after playing it for a long time?

Because I've caught myself, not quite like just like walking into like the daycare going like, Mr.'s or anything, but like I think I've talked to my baby like I've talked to the horse to try to get her to calm down a little bit. I'm not too proud to admit that. I think it's more like there are spare moments

when I catch myself not thinking like Arthur. I think you think a lot like Arthur anyway, yeah. That's fair. I did look over, I did look over from the road tonight. I'm on the way I was driving from Atlanta to Florida for the holidays, right? And I looked over at a field in South Georgia as the sun was setting and the mist was settling on it. And I looked over and I was like, it's probably some good white tail over there. Three stars.

You see a single plume of smoke, and you're like, hmm. There's a victim right for the picking over there. Jason, what's the dumbest thing you've done in this game recently? So I gather from discussing with y'all a few hours ago that I have done by far the most moseying in this game, the most open-worlding, the most just wandering. and one of my side quests there's like a billion side quests but I really want to get the the best possible satchel which requires you to hunt 21 specific animals get perfect peltz and bring them all back to camp a lot of them one by one this is like a monumental task

and if you if you treat the game as sort of like it takes you a whole day to go across the map then like you're talking about it would take this dude like two months to pull this off Um, the hardest one I have gotten so far, and I'm one short right now. The hardest one I've gotten was the perfect panther pelt, which it only spawns in one spot on the entire map. Uh, and there's only one of them on the entire map at a time. So the one you see, that's the only one there is. If you don't get it, then you leave for like three days to come back to hope it respawns as a perfect panther.

Uh, after an in-game week of trying, like I was literally camping in a swamp to get this fucking panther. I got it. Blow! Perfect shot right in the forehead. The panther's dead. Skinned it. Yes, I got my pelting.

It's not far back to camp. It's like, if you extrapolate the thing, it might be like two miles back to camp. This is nothing. I got it. I did it. On the way back,

a feller said something sideways to me, so I got in a gun fight, and then there was a big old chase, and I died, and the perfect panther pel was gone, so I had to do the whole fucking thing. That's the dumbest thing I did. I let somebody say,

a crossword to me spoil my perfect panther pill manners matter okay manor's matter civility stability matters happy iron bowl week everyone the discourse the discourse matters i failure the discourse on this road is is not up to par mr why are you so divisive i do have one i do have one uh bonus question have all of you encountered the clansman yes yeah i did wonder that was my one of my questions for everyone what is the best way to destroy a clan rally i have not i'm i'm like a maria obviously i'm really looking forward to it and they're in the woods i was hype about the clan rally but i care in the woods they're in the they're in the they're in the swamp right i found him i found them in woods two different

times. Yeah, they're in the woods in LaMoyne. They're not far from Clemens Point or Clemens Landing where you're like the second camp is. They're over to the, they're to the west of the road and they're always at night, usually doing something in this kind of like extremely tragicomic fashion, killing each other accidentally. I recommend anything involving fire because those robes really go up.

Yeah. You'll like the dynamite. The one I did was the dynamite just. Chuck it right in the middle there. They're supplying their own fire. Perfect. Seems fair. I had a question for everyone.

How are we dressing our Arthur's? That is a great question. I got a fancy boy, Arthur. I think he has like a bright green paisley vest. Wow. One of them expensive coats. The hat is the one thing I haven't done a lot of investing in just because I lose it all the time. I get shot a lot.

and the hat is gone, and then I just typically commandeer, whatever hat is somewhere else. Although I did manage to find a pirate hat, which is pretty cool. Same, yeah, it's in a wreck along the big, like, along the river when you're going down. Like with a skull and crossbones type pirate hat? No, like the trichorn. It's a trifle. Yeah. There's a, I mean, there's allegedly like some, like a Viking hat and you can wear like weird animal masks.

There's a bunch of things that the pirate hat's the only weird one that I found. but he is uh my arthur is generally dressed a little bit fancier than he probably should given that he bades once every 10 days right well when you dress that good you don't have to bathe well that's that's what i was saying um the and a gigantic floppy mustache huh okay what about y'all so i did have him i felt i i like when i play video games i usually don't care this much about the character but in this one i am really invested i want to be true to this guy give a shit you know i when i get back from like a hard day out on the range we're eating stew we're drinking coffee and we're taking a nap you know um i i have been invested in making arthur

look like how i think he should which is basically a dirt bag doesn't give a shit about anything like the beard's getting long the hair's getting long the clothes are getting dirty we're buying a cheap gray shirt cheap jeans but i felt it was true in chapter four after you go to the mayor's house in a tux and you realize it's easier to rob rich folks if you're wearing a tux and then you go to the poker game on the boat and you realize it's easier to rob a poker game if you're wearing a suit so after that arthur invested in some rich or clothes we got some we got some blue plaid pants we got nicest boots you could find i got a panama hat we got a nice silk vest oh arthur's dripping now and it is so much

you to rob rich folks so this is this is the ocean's 11 approach yeah arthur just if if i wear blue plaid pants it's easier to kill people i will give you three guesses as to how i go and the first two don't count shirtless you can't go unfortunately you cannot just step naked out of the bath and walk into the street i tried it that would that would be your choice if God, can y'all just imagine the mosquitoes? Like, I'm just, I mean, there are significant parts of this game where you have to wait up to your neck in the swamp to, like, look for alligators.

I'm just, I mean, just, just practically speaking. Spencer would be a swamp thing if they let it. Like that are really upsetting because for a while, I had some really nice bear chaps in that one. You kill the bear, you want everyone to know. You're going to wear your bear chaps. But then it's like, you go on the swamp, and it's like, damn, I'm wearing bear fur coated in the swamp.

stuff. Yeah, I wear peltz whenever possible. Walking through Sandinney and you hear people go on country, come to town. Like people will snap on you as you're walking down the street if you're wearing the wrong thing. It's amazing. Or if you haven't bathed in a while.

Oh, yeah. And you can see like the little flies like above your head and everything and like the cut scenes. I'm like, oh yeah, I guess it hasn't been a minute. If you check your, if you check your status on your Arthur, mine is forever like like fatigued underweight unhealthy

especially I think when you get later in the game and you realize that you don't actually have to eat to like regain your health it's more efficient when people are shooting at you to just drink some miracle tonic

and then you forget like oh yeah I haven't eaten in four game days you've just been deciding on various oils like you're just Dana Holgers and you're just on Red Bull and gambling

yeah you're old yeah I like I like Jason's No good Dana Holgerson Barreling across the west. I like Jason's Arthur

who just roams around drinking gin and eating chocolate like some sort of deranged Willie Walton. In a fine suit. It's like an 11-year-old's idea of a grown-up. I'm just going to wear

a self-best eating candy. I'm just riding this horse and you're nice. cream for breakfast. I got my tucks on and I'm eating nothing but chocolate. When I grow up, I don't wear a bear hat, eat nothing but chocolate, and tie people to train tracks all day long. Oh, I forgot the most...

And fish. The most fucked up thing I did was there is someone you come across who wants you to mail him the carcasses of a perfect rabbit and a perfect squirrel, their entire bodies, not just their pelts. The only thing is you figure out that you have to do them. You have to kill them both at the same time, basically, because if you kill a rabbit and tote it around until you find a squirrel, the rabbit's get all nasty, and then you won't be able to mail it. So I walked up to the post office. I had my perfect rabbit.

I was going to try to mail that one, and they won't take it. And I'm like, what the fuck? It's a perfect rabbit. Dude wants me to mail him a perfect rabbit. So then I realize that you have to have them both at the same time. There's a train track right there. I set the rabbit down on the train track just to see what the train does, and it scoots the rabbit along. just scoots the rabbits, corks.

There it goes. Could you mail that one? And that's how you invented Greyhound racing. Good job. It was no longer perfect. I'll tell you that much. Poor pelt. What about, do we have alternate uniforms?

Like, do we have cold weather gear, hot weather gear, fancy town gear, stuff like that? I will leave it on way too long. I have the winter gunslinger on. They'll be like, you are hot. like what the fuck game why would i be hot and i'm wearing like the bear hat and a heavy coat yeah the uh the stamina penalty you get if you go up in the mountains and just like your union shirt and like flip flops is pretty significant god that's so yeah that's so fucking big ten of you

jesus it's not that cold it's not that cold i can wear jim shorts it's fine no i don't never plays road games. Roads never goes up to Grizzlies. They never leave the state. I want to actually, I wanted to ask this. This is why Annabelle never gets to play in the Le Moyne Bowl games. And this is the like slightly sincere question, but what's the coolest thing that you've either seen or just driven by or like ridden by or done in the game?

I got a list. Where you were like, this is unexpectedly beautiful or cool. I want to hear Richards first because Richard is playing this the most depraved way, so I want to know. What's the coolest thing I've seen? Yeah, or done. I'm trying to think. I don't know, like, riding in, like, riding into a city, okay, well, here, I'm going to show my cards here. Riding into, like, sand in the knee at night and just, like, raising a little bit of hell,

like, just popping some caps off into a couple people. Like, that's pretty cool. and then the thing is like it's there's a couple times when you because the cops are insanity you're kind of like swarming all over the place it does the thing we're on the map it's like a red circle and so sometimes i'll kind of like ride into town see how long it takes the cops to like find me and then just initiate the chase or like something like that yeah just giving them some exercise exactly what about you matt um it's a little bit a little bit of a spoiler here, but I shot a bunch of O'Driskels from a hot air balloon,

and that is cool as hell. Wow. I didn't know about this. Keep playing a little bit, friends. There is a chase scene, and let me first of all, let me tell you something. Steering a hot air balloon is hard. So there were a lot of, you know, Zeppelin accidents, I think. You had to, like, maneuver around a bridge, and there's rescuing somebody who's, like,

on horseback from your balloon. And then you just get to cap a bunch of people from way up in the air. I was not expecting that. And that was a delight. All right. That might get admitted in a court of law, Matt. I'm just saying if you do go on to shoot a bunch of people from a hot air balloon, this segment will be in trial.

That's all I'm saying. This is why I'm not allowed back in New Mexico. Jason, what was yours? So I wrote a few things down. Can I run through a list? And if you have seen these things, can you call it out? because I want to know how the meteorite crater no no I have not seen this there's a big ass meteorite crater and I came upon it in a rainstorm so like I saw these trees were bent

out at me and I'm like wow this wind is really blowing but then I come over a hill and I look down and it's this huge black crater with this rock in the middle and you go down and you look at it and Arthur draws a picture of it he said there's a rock fell from the heavens the miniature church in the swamp Yeah I have seen that one Okay It's like a tiny tiny building

You think it's a shack And then you walk in And it's a church That would fit like Four children It's I found it at night So it was pretty fucked up The ironclad

In the lake in San Deney Missed it, no Is that the one that you That you drive And like have like Yeah Like battleship Yeah

That's pretty fun Yeah The swamp zombies No No I got to get out there a little bit more. Yeah, get out in the swamp. It gets weird.

When you help the guy build the electric chair and test it. Mm-hmm. Yep. Boy, that's fucked up. The two brothers who want you to shoot them in the head in order to impress a lady. Twice. Yeah. Just for fun, Jason, did you deliberately fail that mission just to see what would happen?

I didn't, no. Just because I was in town. I didn't have time for all that. You failed and you have to go again. but the lady is extremely unimpressed. That's fucked up. So if one of them gets died, if one of them gets shot in the head,

it doesn't even work. Yeah, you got, you gotta redo it. Have you found the ghost train? I'm sorry, the what train? Have you found the ghost train?

No. There's a ghost train. What do you mean ghost train? It's a ghost train. Like a spectral train? Yeah. The whole train is a ghost. Damn.

It's out near, I think it's in the swamp like around Le Moyne. It's in the middle of the night, obviously. And this is my favorite, the single favorite thing that I have discovered is the art gallery brawl. I know what I'm doing after we get off the phone here.

So in San Deney, there is a French dude you meet in the bar and he draws you a picture. Anytime that dude pops up on the map after that, go find him because you eventually get into a massive melee in a museum. and ever realizes he's been drawing naked paintings of their spouses? You're looking around the room

and this one dude's like, that's my wife. I'm looking at my husband's butt. And then a huge brawl breaks out all these rich people punching each other in the face. Yeah, you've wandered. You spent a little time in the swamp. Yeah, I like to Mosey.

This game rules. I have, one time I was up in Rocky Mountain National Park with my brother and being real smart we didn't take enough gear or the right stuff or check the weather report we just went up to the lake and a storm rolled in over the mountains and you know what happens like

it happens fast because you can't see it right just blows up on you and it turns really weird weird dangerous looking shade of like purple white and a hail storm kicked in and there was lightning and the only place we really had to hide were under some like low scrubby bushes and I thought oh this is jacked up this is not good and in about 15 minutes it was over but it was a very intense 15 minutes and I'm very stupid so I was playing the game and I was up in the mountains like in the grizzlies and all of a sudden this like

weird light came in and the storm sort of rolled in and like I was like well we've got to get Arthur to camp and as I was setting it up I was like oh shit they nailed it they got the exact same light like I'd read about how in GTA five they'd really studied the light of Los Angeles and wanted to get it completely right somebody spent a ton of time just up in the mountains and like Colorado or Utah or Montana doing this because it like I like I I almost triggered a sense memory for me. I was like, I can smell that. That's the coolest thing that's happened where I was like, they got it still right. It triggered one of my own memories. This game definitely is unique among video games that I've played, and that actually does make me want to go outside.

Yeah. Yeah, I think you had written about that, about Red Dead Redemption 1, and I've thought about that a couple of times. And, you know, Taylor will walk in two. I'm like, yeah, we need to go camping again, which is, you know, not a reaction you have, when you're playing, say, GTA,

then you never want to go outside ever again because there's people out there. But they really did do a very good job with that sort of thing. Especially the night scenes. And there are two different things I'm thinking of. One is if you go away up in the mountains and you look south, you can see the lights of Sandini,

which is like insanely far across the map. And the other is at night, on a clear night, you can look up and see the galaxy. Like, you can see everything. which if you go out very dark parts of America you will be able to see the galaxy and like I've been it's funny you say that Matt because like I have been for a long time like I got to get out to some of these like you know like official dark sky parks where you can literally see like completely everything and then to see that in the game is like yeah okay I definitely got to do that

you know so yeah so what I'm hearing is that playing lots of video games are in fact good for you yeah that's it yeah that's the conclusion I've come to well that's that's that's I mean, I want to thank you all because, again, I haven't played this game. I don't know when I will. I probably will at some point down the line when I'm like, eh, if I get divorced now, it's fine. I'm not there yet, so. But if I had to take one thing away from this conversation,

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