sharpen the edges, and it’s a home defense weapon

Also see TVtropes. There’s several related pages, e.g. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SissyVillain

Mind linking it? I never received any sort of contact; I presume they’re v busy!

Reminds me of Terry Pratchett, and the Death of Rats.

oh man probably me too. either that or Evanescence.

i was a angsty lil’ dickhead omg

Hi. You don’t know me, but programmer salary means I can foot $270 to help out our beloved admin — you’ve seemed stressed recently.

DM me on masto or discord (same name everywhere) to figure out how to exchange? 💜

Oh man Astroneer is so good — but I don’t think it’s up OP’s alley. There’s no quests to speak of, or even goals really, besides the 1. tutorial stuff, and 2. overall “reach the end” — besides that, it’s up to you to be self-directed.

Context: my breath-of-the-wild loving partners didn’t much get into Astroneer, unless I specifically set them goals and they didn’t have to figure anything out for themselves. :P (Well, one of them, at least …)

I think the “map marker check mark” dopamine game is a whole different thing from ‘true’ open-world … well, that’d unnecessarily exclusionary. Neither one is truer than the other. But they’re definitely extremely different.

Anyway, OP, my suggestion in that vibe would definitely be the Fallout or Assassin’s Creed serieses. Or Horizon: Zero Dawn! Great sidequest-driven, exploration-heavy, gigaaaaaantic games, all of them!