u/Emmyy_Beans

I was playing Baldur's Gate 3 again and it really hit me home how far we have come. It is obviously amazing to see a massive AAA game give us such a great cast. Seeing characters like Karlach or Astarion written as completely messy, complex people who are also unashamedly queer is just incredible. But it made me think about the indie scene, because indie devs have been leading this charge for years now, guess AAA is now trying to catch up.

If you think about it, we went from basically zero representation, to an awkward phase where any queer character was either a token stereotype or the punchline to a joke. But now we are finally getting games where you can just exist and your orientation or gender are not a big deal.

I played I Was a Teenage Exocolonist a while back and was really impressed how real the relationships and characters felt. You just grow up and figure out who you are alongside characters who are figuring themselves out too without any judgment. Wylde Flowers is also one of my favorites that does proper representation without making a big deal out of it. The town feels so authentically diverse and people are just allowed to be gay or trans without their entire storyline revolving around trauma.

I was also checking out the demo for High Times and it gave me that exact same hopeful feeling. The story focuses a lot on messy relationships and interacting with your exes, but the writing for the cast is really grounded because you can fully customize your character and date whoever you want. It isn't a whole dramatic plot point that you are queer or who you choose to romance, it is just treated like a normal part of life.

I wish I had games like this when I was younger and just figuring things out. It would have saved me a lot of confusion to see people like me represented as just normal, fun characters instead of tragic side plots or token stereotypes.

I have been feeling pretty anxious about the state of the world lately. Everything just feels so uncertain right now and it seems like nobody really knows what to expect from the future. Whenever I get stressed out like this I usually turn to gaming to escape for a bit.

Over the weekend I managed to get into the closed beta for a game called Loftia and it honestly gave me a lot of comfort. It is a cozy multiplayer game set in a solarpunk world. You are basically just living on these floating islands, using green tech to build things, and working with other players to improve the town. It was just so incredibly refreshing to play something where the future is actually a bright and optimistic place to be.

But playing it triggered a realization that made me kind of sad. Almost every single other sci fi game is completely miserable. If a game is set in the future it is basically guaranteed to be a gritty cyberpunk dystopia or a post apocalyptic wasteland where you are just scavenging to survive. It’s honestly exhausting. It feels like developers think a happy future is just impossible at this point. I guess that explains why all my favorite life sims are always set in the present day or some nostalgic version of the past.

Games that paint a genuinely positive picture of the future are so incredibly rare right now. Starbound was the first game I remember playing that actually made me feel hopeful. You aren't fighting off a robot apocalypse or digging through trash, you are just exploring a colorful universe and building peaceful colonies. Slime Rancher gave me that exact same feeling. Both of those games let you imagine a sci fi reality that you would actually want to wake up in. It might sound dumb, but it's somehow comforting for me to picture a timeline where everything works out great in the end and humanity just gets to thrive.

I just really wish we had more games that give us a future to look forward to instead of just another apocalypse to survive after. Am I the only one feeling jaded with oh so many gritty settings that most games want to develop?  I would love to hear if you guys know of any other games that actually make the future seem like a good place.