i think more games should allow you to go out of your way to do something dumb and stupid and then be able to face the obvious consequences of the stupid thing you did. i like how peak lets you cook your gear over a fire to incinerate it and make it worse for no reason
My favorite game of all time is a very old (1998) PC game called Zork: Grand Inquisitor. It is a point and click sequel to the og text adventure Zork games, known both for getting a little silly with it and for developing a game system that was capable of parsing language much better than was previously possible, which meant they could respond to user inputs more flexibly. This meant that instead of getting an error or "you can't do that" response, the player could interact with a lot of stuff that didn't necessarily advance the game or do anything, and could occasionally be detrimental to your existence. It's the kind of game where trying everything in your inventory in any way possible is often the best way to solve a situation even (and for Zork, especially) if it seems ridiculous. The game rewards your efforts with useless or pointless results for the fun of it even if you didn't succeed your original goal.
Grand Inquisitor carries in the spirit of that. As one of my favorite examples, you start the game with a couple (illegal) magic spells: Rezrov (opens locked things), and Igram (turns purple things invisible(yes really)) and one of the first new scrolls you find is Throck (causes vegetation to grow). Upon finding and entering a wizard's garden, you see a sign that says Please Don't Throck The Grass. So of course as any good player would do, you check to see if you can actually cast the spell there or if it's just for fun. You Throck the grass, which immediately rises up into huge plant tentacles, and you receive the inevitable You Have Died screen.
It serves no other purpose but to bait you into trying it and I think that's beautiful.
