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sots1 was a buggy trashmess with broken damage profiles for their laser/missile/cannon mix. Kerberos had a grand vision and simply couldn't execute. a smaller scope might have worked better but then it'd have lost its magic.
however my own winner for overambitious nonsense is star citizen. it is the quintessential space sim, combining the worst of 90s suboptimal UI with 2000s busywork gameplay loop grind and 2010s predatory monetization. If there ever was a reason why a studio exec was necessary to keep a visionary in check, its anything to do with chris roberts. he shit the bed with freelancer being way too complex for no reason, and then developed star citizen in retaliation to fulfil his luke skywalker starfighter elite pilot roleplay fantasy, a fantasy shared by many a space nerd. whether people actually LIKE flying around in a claustrophobic cockpit in space flipping around the elliptical plane nauseatingly or spending 10 minutes travelling through jump gatea for the sake of "immersion" is secondary to roberts and his fans. what matters is that they get to pretend theyre really hanging out with luke about to take out the death star. a noble enough aim, save for the fact that they made flying a spaceship not fun at all.
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