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.

  • @Axxys
    13•1 year ago

    Celeste.

    Hard retro platformer with amazing musical themes that persist throughout the whole game.

    The main character has anxiety, which another character helps them deal with by imagining a floating feather that your breath controls. Slow, long breaths in and out to keep the feather balanced.

    The game has an evil entity pursue you intermittently, and all you can do is run.

    The feather actually appears on screen and you try to make it slowly move up and down to calm down. It was a great tool that is actually used IRL to deal with anxiety.

    When the character is being chased, the entity makes you panic, so the character tries to calm down and the feather comes back on screen. The entity slashed through that feather and mocks you for trying.

    What a gut punch that was.