In the book Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, the main character Sadie is a video game designer who created his game in which you play a worker creating factory parts. If you ignore what’s going on around you and just focus on winning the game by making the parts better and faster, eventually the game ends and it becomes clear that you were creating equipment for Nazis during the Holocaust and, thus, you lose the game.
Movies love to have twist endings in which something would have been obvious if you were paying better attention. I think more video games need to do this as well.
Driving a Cybertruck in the game would be like being a child molestor in the penitentiary. Other inmates may have beef with one another and be ready to shank a mfer if they get froggy; but if a child molester joins the cell block, they team up on him first.
I have a core memory of getting into my mom’s car on a rare day (which happened to be my birthday) that she picked me up instead of me taking the bus home. Sitting there on the passenger seat was a copy of Nintendo Power Issue #11 that my mom had grabbed out of the mailbox (she had just signed me and my brother up for a subscription, and this was the first issue to arrive). I didn’t have Super Mario Bros. 3 and wouldn’t get it for another year maybe, but to be able to read all about this game was just so thrilling for my 13-year-old self.
The most fun I had in Starfield was probably a zero-G fight at one point, can’t remember if it was the main storyline or not. But I got as far as the final main quest line fight, after which New Game+ would become available. I realized before going into it that…I just didn’t care. And I am not one to experience the sunken cost fallacy. So I just logged out, canceled Xbox PC Game Pass, and did something else.
Like Dave and Buster’s play cards and games that cost 7.8 credits (at least right now, higher weekend evenings because of dynamic pricing) and needing to get out a fucking calculator to do the conversion from dollars to points to figure out you are spending $3.72 or whatever to play a single shitty game.
This…this right here is the reason I quit playing this game, the reason I couldn’t quite put my finger on. It was just too fucking disjointed, you are so right.
People are still falling through elevators and delivery missions are still bugged to hell four years after I quit for those reasons, but hey, they have beards now! 😂