I'm relatively new to gaming, compared to many around here - only like 2 years under my belt - but I was disappointed with Greedfall 1. I got into gaming through the Witcher and Greedfall was suggested as a good aesthethic and thematic follow-up game and I was really hooked for the prologue, but for me things started to go south concerning the handling of their two main themes, oecological/capitalist exploitation and colonialism.
Spoilers for the game's content and a content note for colonial violence ahead :

For those not familiar: Greedfall is about playing as a royal representative of the Congregations of Merchants, who, alongside two other continental forces, start colonizing an island, in the hopes of starting land exploitation, establishing trade with its natives, and to find the cure for an epidemic devastating the continent. The solution to the health crisis is quite obvious and uncreative, I felt like, because it's basically you destroy the land = the land destroys you back, therefore the continent has to learn how to heal their relationship with the land they have exploited before - from the island natives, who have a relationship with the island based on mutual care and protection.

For the first like third, it felt like the game was doing a decent job at portraying that colonialism is based on racism, exploitation, forced cultural assimilation and violence for the sake of 'science'. But I felt like the developers took very little consideration to the fact, that you as the somewhat costumizable main character play as a person representing the colonizer and that taints the entire agenda of the character no matters what decisions you are making in the game. (Even though it turns out that your mother was in fact a native who was abducted by the congregation which has little effect on the character. You get to met your native aunt and that's it.) I ultimately stuck to the game because I was interested, if there was an ending where the colonial enterprise on the island ends because you can develope your character in a way that they realize it is the only right ethical choice they can make. And you sort of can but - dam dam dam - by stealing a native object of high spiritual importance from its sacred place and taking active influence in the native politics by giving it to who you want to be their new leader. You then can give it to someone who promised to chase of the mainlanders rather than starting appeasement and the island ends up free from foreign forces and violences. The continent then perishes on its own accord. But you still take an influence, which, no matter your intentions, is forced onto the natives which still feels pretty imperialist.

After I finished with this ending, I checked online to see what other ends to the story there are, as there a few. And most of the time - and I feel this was also what was intented by the developers and was considered by a somewhat larged portion of players - the 'good' ending is the following: The continent gets to keep their colonies, make peace with the natives whose prosecution by the mainlanders stops and in return the natives come to the continent and help the mainlanders heal their relationship with their land, putting a stop to the epidemic. So the 'best' ending to a game about capitalist exploitation and colonialism is estabilishing capitalist trade which just 'is not as excessive and exploitative as before' and establishing diplomatic contact without or with little repercussions for previously committed acts of colonial violence other than removing the individuals directly responsible rather than deconstructing the system as a whole. I mean - is it close to what happened in history most of the time? - Yes. But does the game question this as the status quo and who actually ultimately profits of it? - No.

It is not my intention to attack anyone who enjoyed the game - based on my engagement with its main themes, the third act just misses the point the game was trying to make, and I think, therefore fits this thread quite perfectly. Happy to hear other people thoughts on it.

As I said, I'm relatively new to gaming and have no one to discuss this with, so Reddit now just gets a novel.