The moment that inspired this question:
A long time ago I was playing an MMO called Voyage of the Century Online. A major part of the game was sailing around on a galleon ship and having naval battles in the 1600s.
The game basically allowed you to sail around all of the oceans of the 1600s world and explore. The game was populated with a lot of NPC ships that you could raid and pick up its cargo for loot.
One time, I was sailing around the western coast of Africa and I came across some slavers. This was shocking to me at the time, and I was like “oh, I’m gonna fuck these racist slavers up!”
I proceed to engage the slave ship in battle and win. As I approach the wreckage, I’m bummed out because there wasn’t any loot. Like every ship up until this point had at least some spare cannon balls or treasure, but this one had nothing.
… then it hit me. A slave ship’s cargo would be… people. I sunk this ship and the reason there wasn’t any loot was because I killed the cargo. I felt so bad.
I just sat there for a little while and felt guilty, but I always appreciated that the developers included that detail so I could be humbled in my own self-righteousness. Not all issues can be solved with force.
God I just loved the puzzles that can only be solved by it falling apart. And the message of little actions matter even if much further down the line? I still love that game so fricking much.
I wanted to like Outer Wilds, I really did. I just don’t do well under pressure and with time constraints, like at all 😅
Oh I immediately loved the full control of the space ship and after zooming around low atmosphere for a while really took to just flying it around and have even landed on the sun station manually a couple times. Pressure was fine but man the time restraints got me screaming a couple of times that I just needed another minute or two… But that’s the point. You don’t have control over that. It’s a lot about letting go, you’ll come back around to try again.
(But man the twin planet timing sucked so hard for so many respawns)