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.

  • @[email protected]
    13•1 year ago

    Outer Wilds had so many profound moments, imho. Just listing a couple more:

    Spoilers, obviously
    • The core of the interloper
    • The dead Nomai in Dark Bramble (two of them in an embrace, iirc)
    • The messages from other Nomai tribes in the Vessel
    • Having to remove the warp core from the ATP
    • The number of loop iterations in the probe tracking module
    • The ending of the DLC
    • @buzziebee
      4•1 year ago

      !Oh man the DLC ending was incredible. The tragic story that unfolded as you played was incredibly sad, but then inviting the prisoner to join you at the fire and add their song to your music was beautiful and moving.!<

      Those devs really caught lightning in a bottle. I can’t wait to play whatever they make next, whenever it’s ready.

      Btw. You can use >! and !&lt; blocks to create proper spoiler tags.