>>53791446A soulful game is a have you can tell it was made with love and passion. In an interview of Ori and the Will of the Wisps, the game director said there was a HUGE conflict between the whole group of devs because they were split literally 50-50 on whether the little owl you rescue in the first game should die or not. The game director wanted to kill her, and a bunch of people agreed it would make for a great story about losing a loved one and empathizing with the villain, but half the crew was so against letting her die, he couldnt make the choice and kept postponing her fate. When he released beta testings of the game, he found out the vast majority of testers were so sad and upset to see the owl die, he ultimately decided to save her - and he says in the end, that was the right choice.
This is what soul means. Now take how emotionally invested all the devs were in the fate of this fictional character, with lets say TLOU2 and Joel getting spat in the face before getting murdered in front of Ellie, just to play as the murderer for the next 15 hours.
The developers unironically thought this was okay. They thought the players would find this thought-provoking and a masterpiece in storytelling.
