It's Critter Time!

Star Control 2 whips and the Orz have seriously informed my philosophy in ways that are, possibly, too stupid to explain. I played through that whole game with a walkthrough and that's my recommended way of doing it, as it's possible to miss most of the good stuff in the game if you go in completely blind. Absolutely phenomenal game regardless.

Oh yeah, that's the same approach I did honestly. It's either that or save scumming to hell and back, especially considering QuasiSpace routing and some of the later-game quests. Intrigued but also unsettled at the idea of Orz-informed philosophy though.

Cania wrote: Thu Jul 31, 2025 10:30 pm Star Control 2

I'm looking forward to that spiritual successor to the Star Control games, Free Stars.

lilySeafoam wrote: Fri Aug 01, 2025 2:16 pm Intrigued but also unsettled at the idea of Orz-informed philosophy though.

i love the Orz so much. my initial connection with them, I think, was that often when I communicate I struggle to find the right word to convey exactly what I mean. I also often feel like an alien when I try to explain my morality to people: they look at me like I'm speaking gibberish. This happened more in the past, and I've surrounded myself with good people now who don't think "being empathetic" is a bad or stupid thing, but it was definitely something I encountered a lot.

So having an alien that has to use suboptimal words to explain a totally bizarre "blue-orange morality" type philosophy to people is really appealing to me, especially at the time.

But it goes deeper than that.

(spoiled for talk of death)
The Orz being extrusions of an extradimensional entity is, I think, the starting point of this philosophy to me. To see the self as part of the whole, or the idea of "self" at all as a complete illusion, is so fundamental to my happiness that I can't imagine living any other way. To see the self as merely a temporary expression of a more complete object that is so large as to be incomprehensible is...sublime is the best word for it. But it creates a feeling of utter insignificance and freedom to enjoy the life I was given by pure chance.

Of course, the Orz also don't understand individuality at all, and I think this serves as a metaphor for my seeming inability to understand the motivations of many allistic or otherwise neurotypical people, and vice versa. This isn't to say that my way of being is better by any means!! But that we speak a different language, and I'm okay with that.

But when I say things like "There is literally no difference between Me and You" or "We are merely the fruiting bodies of the universal mycelium" (yes im mixing my SC2 races here but i feel like the orz are much more fungal in nature than the mycons) I definitely get blank stares from a good percentage of people. It's comforting to think that someone else was able to write a whole species that thinks the same way I do, to some degree.

Of course, the Orz also like, destroyed an entire species and don't understand why that's a problem so, y'know. Impossible to say if it's good or bad lmao

(doing a quick reread of their wiki page, i had forgotten that their perception of time is basically vonnegut-levels of messed up, and with my memory being as bad as it is + not really believing in the concept of linear time being meaningful, i think that also contributes to my love of the Orz)

So there you go, the Orz philosophy by way of Cania. <3

I was just reminded of Noctis, the original No Man's Sky from ~2001. There is a huge generated galaxy of stars and planets, and you can send your weird ship to land on any of them, and even exit to do a walkabout. Even navigation is weird, you're interacting with your ship's own interface, rather than abstracting it into a map or something.

You can even name places you've explored, upload that to the website, and people can then download that and apply it to their own copies.

It's free, made by one person and updated over many years, and it's... hm. I'm not even sure how much of a Game it is, but it's certainly fascinating. There's even a story, though it's largely told through its manual and original website.

I highly recommend looking at Mobygames' screenshots for the sort of weird, dreamy stuff you can come across.

I love noctis! you play as a space cat whose people is mostly extinct, and you're exploring the galaxy partially to discover what happened to them. not that any of that is actually in the game, but the lonely vibes are immaculate.

if anything I wish NMS was a little more like noctis, ie lonely and empty and atmospheric. it is amazing but it's gotten more Full of Stuff as the updates have occurred. I much prefer the lonely feel.

Noctis IV is a cool little thing! It's been kept alive by the community over the years. There was Noctis IV Community Edition, which added features and made a Windows executable, but as time progressed it became very incompatible with modern Windows. If you want to play Noctis today, Noctis IV Plus is a backport of nice features from CE to the DOS game, which you can play on DOSBox.

It is sort of hilarious how DOS programs have become much easier to actually run vs. any Windows programs prior to XP. Thank you DOSBox!!

Omg yes, Noctis! Really technically impressive for it's times, and with such wonderful vibes. Almost has the same feel as if the planetary exploration of SC2 was it's own exploration-focused game. Wonderful to just try wandering about the galaxy and landing on planets, seeing whatever features you end up with, and even trying to come up with backstory for some of them. Didn't know about IV+! Should definitely come in handy since CE doesn't work on 64bit machines.