Kinda reminds me of a thought I had in Factorio. I was flame throwering trees to get then the hell out of my way, and I thought that this was a little on the nose about how manufacturing might actually work - fuck the environment it’s keeping me from growing my factory!
Oh, yeah, once you break down everything happening in Factorio or Satisfactory, it’s pretty quickly apparent that you’re the bad guy in this story. I often hum “Paved Paradise, put up a parking lot” while playing them.
Similar experience in Dyson sphere program. By the time you’re advanced enough to build a Dyson sphere, you’ve likely paved over the oceans and destroyed all the trees. The resources of the planet are completely tapped dry and you’re bringing in raw materials from all over the galaxy to continue building the Dyson sphere, and killing the local inhabitants of most systems to do it.
And the endgame literally gives us a glimpse of what a type 2+ civilization would do: your planet has iron, so your entire planet’s mission is to produce iron plates. We will destroy all terrain and life to put as many conveyor belts and smelters as possible. Nothing else matters.
Your planet has iron and stone, so you will make reinforced concrete so that we may more efficiently exploit other planets. And when you’re out of the resources we need we will leave you barren and forgotten.
I’my first playthrough of Satisfactory, I was like “I’m gonna leave these trees up to not completely ruin this area and make things look nice.” After a few playthroughs I was full on “is it faster to use explosive rebar or cluster bombs to remove the trees?”
Isn’t colonialism sucking the between-the-lines premise of Factorio? You arrive on a new planet which already has a local population. You start collecting resources, building factories&shit there, polluting the hell out of the air around you. Locals get pissed and start attacking you, you kill them without ever considering them sentient beings. At some point, you also kinda have to also reduce everything and everyone within the range of your artillery to ashes - even before they become hostile. In the process you keep polluting the air until it is black with soot, destroy entire ecosystems for land or resources, turn water into sludge. The only thing missing to make it more realistic is enslaving the locals to work for you. It’s really grim if you think about the gameplay that way.
Ah cool. Horrifying, but cool in a meta way, as in it just proves my point. I stopped playing way before the DLC because it was too difficult for me already :)
Kinda reminds me of a thought I had in Factorio. I was flame throwering trees to get then the hell out of my way, and I thought that this was a little on the nose about how manufacturing might actually work - fuck the environment it’s keeping me from growing my factory!
Oh, yeah, once you break down everything happening in Factorio or Satisfactory, it’s pretty quickly apparent that you’re the bad guy in this story. I often hum “Paved Paradise, put up a parking lot” while playing them.
Similar experience in Dyson sphere program. By the time you’re advanced enough to build a Dyson sphere, you’ve likely paved over the oceans and destroyed all the trees. The resources of the planet are completely tapped dry and you’re bringing in raw materials from all over the galaxy to continue building the Dyson sphere, and killing the local inhabitants of most systems to do it.
And the endgame literally gives us a glimpse of what a type 2+ civilization would do: your planet has iron, so your entire planet’s mission is to produce iron plates. We will destroy all terrain and life to put as many conveyor belts and smelters as possible. Nothing else matters.
Your planet has iron and stone, so you will make reinforced concrete so that we may more efficiently exploit other planets. And when you’re out of the resources we need we will leave you barren and forgotten.
And we’ll use the remains of your planet to build a giant planet killing machine.
I’my first playthrough of Satisfactory, I was like “I’m gonna leave these trees up to not completely ruin this area and make things look nice.” After a few playthroughs I was full on “is it faster to use explosive rebar or cluster bombs to remove the trees?”
Isn’t colonialism sucking the between-the-lines premise of Factorio? You arrive on a new planet which already has a local population. You start collecting resources, building factories&shit there, polluting the hell out of the air around you. Locals get pissed and start attacking you, you kill them without ever considering them sentient beings. At some point, you also kinda have to also reduce everything and everyone within the range of your artillery to ashes - even before they become hostile. In the process you keep polluting the air until it is black with soot, destroy entire ecosystems for land or resources, turn water into sludge. The only thing missing to make it more realistic is enslaving the locals to work for you. It’s really grim if you think about the gameplay that way.
In the Space Age DLC you literally have to enslave the biters, they produce eggs that you need to advance in the science tree.
Ah cool. Horrifying, but cool in a meta way, as in it just proves my point. I stopped playing way before the DLC because it was too difficult for me already :)
It’s pretty explicit. The local aliens attack you when aggravated by the pollution from your factory.
Slash-and-burn Agriculture