I was rewatching the Fargo series last night and it got me thinking about how a lot of US media these days, especially media aimed at young adults in their 20s and 30s, tries to address existential questions. I think that's to be expected in a society that most everyone agrees is moribund, and in which religious influence over most young people is at a low ebb.
But the answer to the question of purpose that all these shows and movies and games provide usually just amounts to "live for the moment." Live for your hobbies, your little joys, maybe an especially pretty sunset. A show that tries to be a more explicit morality tale like Bojack Horseman may go an extra mile and say, live for your friends and family.
That all sounds nice at first, but think about it for more than five seconds and you realize it's deeply unsatisfying. Mostly because it's just a kinder, gentler hedonism. Different in degree but not in category from saying that the meaning of life is found at the bottom of a bottle.
I think its indicative of our collective realization of how little agency we have in the world today. Of course we should want to live for the little moments. In between oppressive work and school schedules, childrearing responsibilities and the daily barrage of fresh horrors, the little moments are all we have. We can't dream of a future or what we coud collectively create in it. We don't have anything meaningful that we can give ourselves to, anything larger than ourselves that we can be a part of and in turn draw purpose from. We only have the present moment, and the present moment sucks. The only purpose we can hope to have here is the dopamine shot we get from eating our favorite sandwhich on a Tuesdsy afternoon.
Was it Nightfire?
Holy shit, yeah, I think that was it.
played on a potato PC when I was like 14?... no driving sections: verdict, not cool.
Agent under fire was way better
Haven't played it, I have played Rogue Agent.
Agent under fire I believe was before night fire but it had some super fun customization stuff for the splitscreen multiplayer where you could turn on low gravity, one shot kills, and the Q claw and basically do a claw fight and jump around like Spiderman lol
sounds like a fun fps, but personally more into rts and sims now. Have you played XIII? that was fun.
What is XIII? And tbh I wouldn't recommend agent under fire anymore except for nostalgia purposes. The game was fun for the time period but it was kinda clunky and a long time ago
The only reason to buy nightfire is because it let you softmod your console in order to play pirated games.
This inspired me to go and watch a playthrough of this game. Those maps are burned into a deep recess of my brain, especially the one where you fight the evil communist in the snow. Also, holy hell it's horny. Literally every cutscene is innuendo.