i think one of the most underrated things about Factorio is how it conveys themes of assimilation very implicitly like, if you think about, say, the borg in Star Trek, or your average drone hive full of tgirls, it's a very explicit form of becoming a part of a hivemind; the assimilation is the point what Factorio does is making assimilation mostly unavoidable, but not directly in your face you start the game as a pretty normal human character; representing you, the player, like in most games; and it stays that way for a while but like, as you progress, the character, that is, you in a sense, starts losing importance; it's no longer the in-world idea of you building those machines, it's the machine that you are simply commanding and controlling pretty quickly you'll spiral further into that assimilation, the character matters less and less as a character and as a representation of the player, and more as just another tool at the disposal of the factory and that extends in a meta sense to the actual player; who shifts from taking the role of an engineer on an alien planets to basically just being the machine the factory uses to coordinate its expansion and combat strategy it's no longer you as a person building a factory, it becomes the factory using you to build itself Space Age spoilers below cut

Omg I love this piece. Grace the hanging man, content with his life but cannot avoid the changes coming; the ship his noose, the rope that binds him to his fate; the blood red stars beside him, Olesya and Yáo the angels haunting him in the background. Eva Stratt, the one who holds it all on her back, the world is literally on her shoulders, the Petrova line on her neck. She will not falter, cannot afford to move, and yet still she glares at us. Eva challenges us, daring us to ask if we could do better, if we could hold her burden for even a fraction of the time.

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