I just watched this and...yeah.
This video encapsulates why, for all my crazy never-ending love for this game, I haven't been able to bring myself to load into any maps with Icon.
After the game closed, I had reoccurring nightmares about running, leaping, flying through an empty Paragon City. Searching frantically for life, calling out to the streets, using gadgets to scan for heat signatures. Just like in your video, only the seagulls lived to hold their secrets; and occasional ghosts would vanish away silently before I could reach them (the effect in my nightmares was closer to the way pedestrian ghosts disappeared in the old Dark Astoria, when you got too close), although these ghosts weren't pedestrians--they were my friends. The world wasn't destroyed. Lights were left on. The water worked. Cars were abandoned, some still idling. Purses, cell phones, and coffee cups on-the-go lay along sidewalks and common areas.
This video game and its community left a mark on me in a way that no other entertainment medium ever has. Dreams like this have left me with an enormously sad feeling upon waking up. But although Icon only seems to promise all of the above, I am absolutely in love with the idea behind it; and I think everyone that shares my state of mind should endeavor to climb over those feelings, and see Icon as the ultimate memorial--entering into a three-dimensional portrait of our lost home, and filling it with group shots of our character rosters alongside friends, citizens, and signature characters. The odds are slim for a return home, slimmer with each passing moment, but my deepest hope is
still that we can all find ourselves home someday. It is guaranteed never to happen if we give up hope.
