this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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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.

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[–] CumBroth@discuss.tchncs.de 68 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Disco Elysium was full of such moments for me. Here's one:

You spend a lot of time in the game basically talking to yourself and your inner voices, and one of these voices is volition. If you put enough points into it, it'll chime in when you're having an identity crisis or struggling to keep yourself together and it'll try to cheer you up and keep you going. At the end of Day 1 in the game you, an amnesiac cop, stand on a balcony in an impoverished district reflecting on the day's events and trying to make sense of the reality you've woken up into with barely any of your memories intact. If you pass a volition check, it'll say the following line:

"No. This is somewhere to be. This is all you have, but it's still something. Streets and sodium lights. The sky, the world. You're still alive."

This line in combination with the somewhat retro Euro setting, the faint lighting, and the sombre-yet-somewhat-upbeat music was very powerful. The image it painted was quite relatable for me. I just sat there for a minute staring at the scene and soaking it all in. Even though this is a predominantly text-based game with barely any cinematics/animations, I felt a level of immersion I had rarely, if ever, experienced before.

Oh, look at that. Someone actually made a volition compilation. 😀 This video will give you a better idea of what I'm describing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENSAbyGlij0 Minor spoilers alert!

[–] RagnarokOnline@reddthat.com 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This thread is filled with comments on DE, but it was your comment that convinced me to finally play the game.

Thanks for the story!

[–] Boldizzle@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

I really hope you get as much out of the game as many others have. What an experience.

[–] adam_y@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

I feel that. It's the only game to date to leave me just sat there wondering why my face is leaking.

Fucking hell yeah, brother, volition is the best

[–] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 4 points 1 year ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://www.piped.video/watch?v=ENSAbyGlij0

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

Volition may be one of the "boring" companions, but what it lacks in dynamism it makes up for by being uplifting.