My disdain for Origins is just about Brad Wardell's treatment of Fred and Paul and his complete disregard for which rights he purchased versus which he didn't. And that really hurt because I liked Stardock so much - I remember reading something about how he built the original Galactic Civilizations and each ship was its own window due to how he misunderstood the system, and I really admired the pragmatism and get-things-done attitude. And then he was a massive jerk to these other people I think are cool.

The game itself was lovely. The writing was good. The art was good. The combat was fine. The lander and everything adjacent to it was frustrating; not only did it bounce around like a caffeine-addled pigeon, the things you'd do with the resources were not satisfying. The game was short, but it was supposed to be a platform upon which other people would build using a campaign editor, and then the entire community hated Stardock and nobody wanted to create more content.

Interesting, I always thought of Mass Effect as a spiritual successor to Sentinel Worlds 1: Future Magic. Never played Star Control though, may need to check it out.

Both Star Control II and Mass Effect create this sense of alien-ness, where you feel like you're really trying to deal with alien races using human concepts and, unless you can break out of that mold, you won't succeed. In SC2 this is quite literal, since the game runs on a clock of sorts, and it's possible to get into an unwinnable state.

The best part of SC2 is that it is impossible to know ahead of time if your encounters will result in making loyal allies or barbaric enemies. The only way forward is to keep exploring the galaxy.

If you like that feeling, you might enjoy the old game Vangers. It's not quite ‘take these completely foreign things and do barely understandable tasks with them’, but the mood is definitely there.

It was ok, but it felt more like a checklist of progression then the wonder of exploration.