A few decades ago the masses believed video games were a waste of time for lackadaisical youths to pacify themselves while ignoring their responsibilities as both kids and young adults. As more and more people started understanding the benefits of gaming so too did the perception of what a video game is and, most importantly, the benefits gaming can bestow on a person’s life changed. Hi, my name is James Bullock and I am a gamer who has spent the better part of his existence testing the laws of physics, exploring the vastness of a world ruined, and been a champion inside various arenas courtesy of digitized worlds both driven by reality and created through pure unbelievable ingenuity unlike anything seen by human eyes. And as a gamer I’ve discovered something else video games provide: life lessons. Today I examine a game where someone’s past actions can hurt the following generation, “Red Dead Redemption”.
The Sins of the Father Return to the Child
The introduction of Rockstar Games’ digital masterpiece set in the early twentieth century is a grand presentation of change. For men & women who lived a life of desperation & ruthlessness only held together by a vague moral & ethical code, this turning of the century meant the end of their lifestyle. For people like outlaw, bandit & shockingly devoted family man John Marston, the 1900s presented a chance for him to potentially right all the wrongs of his recent past that resulted in the United States government hiring him to take on his old gang while holding Marston’s wife & child as collateral for a job well done. John’s journey takes him throughout the dying or adapting western half of a country that’s no longer so wild; forming & snuffing out relationships all the same in a quest for some twisted example of “justice”. When John actually finishes his job for the government constantly reminding him of his past as an outlaw, the patriarch is able to reunite with wife Abigail and son Jack and begin life as he left it before everything came tumbling down thanks to lawmen.
John’s life is simple with only fleeting glimpses of a world he wants to move past and a time society is glad to forget. But on one quiet afternoon everything John had done during his time being the best criminal he could be returned to him in the form of a firing squad. Slain in front of his family & the home he built for them, John Marston leaves this world as nothing more than an example of the end of an era in American history. But that isn’t the story’s end.
Three years later and now orphaned after the death of his mother, Jack leaves his father’s resting place to enter a brave new world while burdened by an old philosophy, “An eye for an eye.” Jack’s sole purpose for living during this time is to avenge his father’s death by slaying the man who betrayed his word all for the sake of “justice” legalized by a government that didn’t recognize John as a valuable commodity once his “civil” duty was done. Jack eventually completed his mission, but there was no solace or even redemption in his actions; only the painful truth that the sins of the father can be passed down onto the son. Though it may not seem like it at the time, the actions of your present will affect your future; and if you’re not careful it could inflict great damage to the lives of those you love the most.
Have you learned any major life lessons from playing “Red Dead Redemption” or any video game for that matter? Leave them in the comments below and, as always, thanks for reading.