I've been in the Outlast fandom since 2013. I remember how everyone was still outraged from those times that Miles, when he went to the asylum, did not take a gun with him.

Now I am a third-year student of the faculty of journalism and I have an answer to this question. There is a so-called "journalistic code" — a worldwide thing, by the way — which says: if a journalist takes up arms, he ceases to be a journalist. That is, even if a journalist arms himself in order to protect himself, he will lose his status as a journalist in front of himself and in the eyes of the public.

Anyway, I want people to stop bullying my lovely boy Miles now, stop bullying him for not taking a gun with him to Mount Massive. He is not reckless, he is just a decent and professional journalist who knows and observes such basic things !!!

Well, you kind of liked my reasoning about Miles' behavior from the point of view of a journalist (me), so I'll continue.

So, many people were also outraged that Miles didn't turn around and leave at the very beginning, when the dying dude told him what was going on in the asylum. To begin with, a journalist should not take someone's word for it. It is the duty of a journalist to listen to as many opinions as possible, to take them into account, so that later, having made sure of everything personally, to present objective reality, without evaluation (if we do not touch the genre of opinion journalism, this is a little different). That is, he couldn't just believe that dude, write down his words, turn around and go home.

And, as we know, Upshur used to be a military journalist — he published unacceptable materials about Afghanistan, for which he was fired. What is military journalism in general? Yes, the fact that a reporter has to climb into the very hell. Imagine if military journalists listened to a couple of random, the first people they met about the horrors of war, and then just left? "Well, why should I check everything and find evidence of other people's words, they can kill me there, lol" — with this approach, it would not be just a billion fakes about various armed conflicts in the world (and not only), and maybe journalism did not exist in principle; it would all be just jaundice the press, where they publish some rumors and someone's ideas. And that's why, thanks to his old training as a war reporter, Miles does not leave, but goes on to see all the hell happening firsthand. Otherwise, he probably would have just fallen in his own eyes.

I don't know, maybe I just want to justify Miles so much, but in my opinion, everything is very logical, especially when you understand what it really feels like to be a journalist when you are taught this.

P.S. Thanks to the user for the comment under my last post, which supported my idea and developed it in the right direction !!!