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.

  • naticus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    8 months ago

    Lol I didn’t know anything either, and a friend of mine also strongly recommended because he wanted to talk about it so much. I tried it and stopped after like 7 min. He was IRATE. I didn’t give it a proper go until like 3 years later. He thought I was trolling him when I started playing it, and it quickly turned into one of my all-time favorites.

    • pomodoro_longbreak@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      8 months ago

      Rofl, yeah if it hadn’t come so highly recommend I would not have stuck it out. Because at first I was put off by the very obviously stock Unity-looking visuals, floaty feeling physics… it wasn’t a good first impression IMHO. But it made a great second, and third, and fourth impression 😉 Game just got deeper and more poetic the more I played

      • naticus@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        8 months ago

        Completely agree! I know a lot of people say you can’t play it more than once, but it’s actually a nostalgic journey for me to replay and do all the lore pickups. Have done it several times now and it hasn’t taken away my enjoyment in the slightest.