so iām still going to play this game, which makes me living garbage and part of the problem, but iām going to hell anyway so
also every convenience we have in our modern lives comes at the expense of someone elseās suffering and iām going nuts from thinking about it all the time, i have to stop
You donāt have to actually worry about anything. Thereās that saying āthere is no ethical consumption under capitalismā so āvoting with your walletā is bullshit from the start.
The only people who are part of the problem are the ones who maintain vertical hierarchies rather than flatten them and hoard power rather than share it.
Iām more comfortable saying that itās mostly bullshit and that thereās little to no fully ethical consumption ā some industries and some corporations are actually worse than others, and adopting a fully nihilistic position on that isnāt really beneficial either. But when it comes to huge entertainment media productions, your options are realistically āpirate itā or āhave snobbier tastes to the point where you donāt want to play big expensive game,ā both of which are fair but donāt really move the needle enough to beat yourself up over it.
Spend your money on indie games and pretend to play this thing because fuuuuuuuuuuck it looks good goddamnit
Can I be a cynic and I donāt want to play a game that is somehow going to have morality and thousands of murders. Like you start from the position of definitely killed and robbed some corpses. But itās all about making your gang friends and building up camp but look out the wild west is crazy!
Yeah but I have a moral duty to take the most extreme position possible so that other people can see where the middle ground really is.
fwiw the thing that made the first game so good was the way it seamlessly permitted you to make Marston as much or as little of a mass murderer as you wanted without ruining the plot and also being clear that he was a bad guy
and as someone who often finds hardcore Marxists a little extra I think itās very important to respect your position!
There were 10 hours where you single handedly kill most of mexico.
Also dude trying to put his past behind him and shit sucks is better than wanted outlaw just trying to keep outlawing bang bang bang.
what if you could interrogate every personās feelings on the institution of slavery before you shot them
I have no reservations about just picking this up day one and going to town.
ā¦I do unfortunately have a co-worker getting married the following weekend, so it comes out on day #2 of me working ten straight full day shifts at work (I get one day off during this stretch; it is said wedding day) which means I basically get to stare at the box for a week and a half before really being able to dig my teeth into it.
the game is right next door to or within the time period when americaās wealth landed directly into the bank straight from plantation slavery and funded native genocide, Iām actually going to be annoyed at the parts of the game that will try to act like thereās anything ethically dubious about being in a cowboy bandit gang that includes minorities and women who rob this genocidal slave empire.
so things get a little hairy now and then, maybe a bystander catches a round. geeze, everythingās always got to go perfect when youāre outside the law, but the state gets all the leeway in the world no matter how unjust or exploitative or violent it is.
as for rockstar themselves, Iām sure itās an exploitative hellhole to work in, like every aaa game developer. and all work is exploitation anyway. nothing I can do about that, I already steal everything I can get away with thinking someday itāll be enough to even things up. either itāll be piratable on pc or it wonāt when it eventually comes out here.
somebody said something recently on twitter I think, must of been heather alexandra or some waypoint writer maybe, about how ārockstar is only interested in the treatment of minorities to use as a bludgeon against the american mythā, something like that. yeah, but I think thatās uk and australian brocialists in general though. I know I definitely get rockstar-ish feelings everytime some smug australian humor twitter account brings up guns in america lol. But Iām not quite at the point where Iām ready to retire to a cave staring at a wall to prevent myself from partaking in or contributing to any human suffering. Iāll take the smug game that accidentally embodies some outlaw values occasionally over one more 100% sincere military murder or fascist vigilante sim.
Iām going to play the game, and like everything else, keep in mind the above things while trying to phase out the things I donāt like when possible and focus on the things I do like when they show up, see which ones I felt showed up more in the thing, think about why I liked and disliked them, maybe write about them here, and not beat myself or the van der linde gang up too much about it, because we didnāt ask to be brought into this world.
these are the justifications of a low man.
I would actually get the game no matter what because you can sit in any chair you want
First leak of regular gameplay, 20 seconds.
Yup it is in fact a video game.
might even be a Red Dead Redemption game in fact