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Rand: I think he is obsessed with history because it is a means to an end. He's got some very definite things he wants to do. He wants to set himself up as a god and he will do anything. That is the point, he never gets it. He's got his sights set on something and he uses pieces of whatever he can to get to that end.

Robyn: And he can't always see the big picture.

Rand: He has his understanding of history, his view of it, but he doesn't see it all. He doesn't acknowledge it all.

Robyn: He is that kind of character.

Kyle: But history and tradition are a huge theme in the book and the game; either resisting it or embracing it or trying to destroy it.

Rand: Oh, this is going to be a hard question.

Kyle: It is a hard one. I think we are in a time in America where we have been notoriously non-committed to anything, especially history and tradition. We don't sit around the fire telling stories anymore, so it feels like a lot of what is driving you two is a longing for that tradition.

Rand: It might be there on a subconscious level. We sort of fancy ourselves as being.... well, we don't like wearing coats and ties. That is a very simple illustration of the fact that the generation we live in tends to ask why. Why do we do this, why do we carry these traditions through? And if there is not a good answer, we say, well, I'm not going to do it. We've been influenced by that and at the same time we are fairly conservative guys. We come from a real traditional family and have conservative values and that kind of thing. But I don't know if consciously we wrote in that kind of admiration for that kind of thing.

Robyn: Yeah, it is interesting that that would come through.

Rand: Although, surely, subconsciously it is there.

Kyle: It feels almost as though you wanted to build a world that was dependent upon it.

Rand: We say that all the time, that we want to build a real world with a real history, that we are going to build all this stuff behind this game... This is kind of an interesting take on the whole thing. Maybe it's some kind of subconscious knee-jerk reaction.

Robyn: It certainly would not be a question or comment I would have expected.

Kyle: Well, it is an issue I go back and forth with. And in Myst, Atrus is constantly amazed at 'look at all this history that is me'. Part of me longs for that.

Rand: Yeah, you are right.

Robyn: It is a balance, not all of history was good things. A lot of that was bad. Even though we need to recognize us coming from that, we also need to reject those things. But there is also a lot back there that is good that we need to embrace. Rand and I probably have embraced a lot of our own history.

It is interesting, I'll have to think about that.

Rand: Hmmmm. You've made us ponder

[GENERAL LAUGHTER]

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