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Notes -
I gotta try this one, thanks.
My copotype was "boring", so I didn't get the worst result at the big event, but I think DE isn't this bleak. To me, the moral of its story is "you can't save the whole world, so choose your battles to make a difference". It means both letting go of your past mistakes, because even the figurines won't win her back, and understanding that things won't always go your way even if you do your best, but you can still do something that matters, you are not defined by what you haven't achieved, but by what you have.
That's also kind of the message of Esoteric Ebb, I just think it has a more optimistic lean to it. I only played (half of) DE once, so I don't know what all the alternatives are, but the problem with DE was less me being a goof and moreThe only way I found to get my gun back was doing a dirty job for a scummy landlord where you extort his tenants for rent or something like that. I didn't want to do that, so I didn't get my gun back, hoping I'd eventually find an alternate way of getting it, only to get the crisis sprung on me without realizing I'd need my gun then and there. A bunch of people died and my character started hating himself for being such a failure. It became super bleak. Maybe if you're willing to compromise on your morals it turns out a lot less bleak. Or maybe I missed a clever way to get the gun some other way. I don't want to spoiler Esoteric Ebb too much in the comparison, but the dilemmas that exist in the game were not quite that bleak, and were much more honestly presented. Choose A or B, with both having tradeoffs. DE never explicitly offered me a choice "exploit the tenants or people will die", it just played out that way later.
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