I’ve got to say, I love sci-fi that lets me play as a scientist. I really appreciated all the real science bits (leptin controls hunger...). I skipped the Hope myself and continued Phineas’ work in the endgame. I feel for him with losing the dozen people he previously tried to revive. I’ve felt guilty over the deaths of animal subjects that didn’t have (to my knowledge) names and hobbies and families waiting for them, even when there wasn’t anything much I could‘ve done.

Also, why is it always cannibalism? Initially, when I saw the empty pods, I thought that it was Phineas’ previous trials... but no. (Is there an in-game explanation of why the Hope’s crew didn’t just get in the cryopods?) One day, I will learn not to finish video games at three in the morning. But not today. I think the story of the Hope’s crew made it a little bit more real to me how scary space travel could be, and how scary sea travel used to be. In 2020, a helicopter can pick you up in the middle of the Pacific, but in hundreds of years ago, that wasn’t an option. <shivers>

I liked that I could color my hair and put a beard on a male or female character. Love those fun customization options. Also, Parvati has my heart. I completely get why Ellie was so bitter after doing her quest.

And then there’s the sass. Who doesn’t love the sass? I liked being able to cross my eyes and pretend to be an alien at Sublight or tell people I was Alex Hawthorne. Although maybe my captain shouldn’t have had so much fun telling everyone they were from the Hope and watching them laugh or roll their eyes.

The botanical garden ending slide was a little more depressing than I’d thought it would be. I had thought that with the food shortages, having rerouted the power to a garden would help, but they ended up turning a lot of people away. How does keeping the cannery in business affect the ending?

I was also surprised that sparing the life of the chimerist didn’t bring her up in the ending slides. She seemed remarkably decent to me. Felix’s ending slide was good. I think some people who rebel against corporatism in real life could stand to remember that not all progress is big and dramatic. I was also eventually glad that I took 100% of the dimethyl sulfoxide. But in the moment? Eeek! I mean, it didn’t sound like the Board scientists had gotten very far with reviving the test subjects - all the logs I saw had only failures - but it was still a little... wrenching.

It is a pretty short game. I only picked it back up again a few days ago and felt like just as I was getting into the swing of it, it was over. But I’d rather a game be good and short than bad and long. Definitely hoping for a sequel. (But imagine everybody on the Hope waking up after all that and learning what happened! Sorry, the sister who was waiting for you in Halcyon died fifty years ago...)

Games with this much replayability tend to stress me out a little bit, because I want to do everything at once. But right now I’m considering a second run, either as a low-intelligence character or maybe as a Board sympathizer/general bastard. (Can companions disapprove of you and leave?)

Oh, and on a scale of 1-10, how worth it is the DLC?