Ah a superhero live-service game that wanted to continue it's main story through seasons and ultimately had to be finished early because it wasn't worth continuing it.
I wished we had some sort of antecedent for this sort of thing. Crazy we didn't see this coming.

To this day it breaks my heart that it never got to reach it's full potential.
Nevertheless it's a great time and the ending makes me cry every time 😭

I remember that Lightning returns gives you a limited time until the world ends. Which is great to create a sense of urgency but also gave me the feeling I was "wasting time" when I wasn't optimizing my time doing side-quest.

I get that. I used to be uninterested and dismissed it as a Japanese GTA-like.
Was pleasantly surprised when I played and saw that they're a melodramatic crime drama with comedic side content (most of the time).
Could talk about it extensively but give it a try! I think it's worth it

During the pandemic i decided to play several games on a whim which I ended up loving.

The main two however that come to mind are:

Yakuza 3 that introduced me to the series I ended up loving.

And Resonance of fate which is such a trip and fun once you get the mechanics down.

Fellow Dragon's dogma enjoyer

I remember spending a whole afternoon setting it up before even buying Inquisition. Maybe it was all fluff but it did sell me the illusion of a consistent world.

Of course lol, I long lost my da1/2 saves for example.
And the dragon keep was a solution for that.
Then veilguard didn't use lol

That's a problem i was thinking about, how much time and resources would be needed to account for all big, small or obscure choices every player made. Not just in one game. But in a series of games.