Late to this but no game has given me that feeling of a tiny, claustrophobic, closed-off world expanding into infinite possibility quite like No Man's Sky. You should absolutely play it.
Should one really be worried about reality of the sublime? If literature is at all able to give the reader a glimpse of it, then we are already dealing with something abstract; and does it then matter if the vastness and beauty are experienced not in Tianzi but in Liyue? And if we are willing to allow more abstraction, then even the impossible places could be sublime. My own moment of rationality-overwhelming emotion from the first “serious” game came in Ori and the Blind Forest, through a perfectly-directed gameplay sequence. So, perhaps, sublime is also found in actions as opposed to passive observation.
Your list of games is interestingly eclectic! I feel like you might also like Pathologic (2), a play about being a doctor in a plagued city. It is often praised for a strong story, but, being made in Russian theatre traditions, its player-actor must suffer to get into the character. And do not believe in the difficulty of Dark Souls: if you are willing to look obscure things up and use whatever tools and helpers you can (as you are encouraged to by the game), it will yield.
Late to this but no game has given me that feeling of a tiny, claustrophobic, closed-off world expanding into infinite possibility quite like No Man's Sky. You should absolutely play it.
Had a cathartic moment playing The Return of the Obra Dinn, definitely worth a playthrough
Should one really be worried about reality of the sublime? If literature is at all able to give the reader a glimpse of it, then we are already dealing with something abstract; and does it then matter if the vastness and beauty are experienced not in Tianzi but in Liyue? And if we are willing to allow more abstraction, then even the impossible places could be sublime. My own moment of rationality-overwhelming emotion from the first “serious” game came in Ori and the Blind Forest, through a perfectly-directed gameplay sequence. So, perhaps, sublime is also found in actions as opposed to passive observation.
Your list of games is interestingly eclectic! I feel like you might also like Pathologic (2), a play about being a doctor in a plagued city. It is often praised for a strong story, but, being made in Russian theatre traditions, its player-actor must suffer to get into the character. And do not believe in the difficulty of Dark Souls: if you are willing to look obscure things up and use whatever tools and helpers you can (as you are encouraged to by the game), it will yield.