The Blood of Dawnwalker’s Interesting Solution to Urgency in RPGs

Mass Effect 2 doesn't force its timetable, but if you spend time on other missions after the Normandy crew is kidnapped, when you reach the final mission you find almost your entire crew has been killed. You catch an earful from the sole remaining survivor. It came as a bit of a shock to me as VERY few RPGs have any time sensitivity in mission completion.

Upgrades costing time is really interesting. I kind of like it from the view of showing that learning something new takes time. I can also see arguments that the time gaining the xp to learn the skill is the time investment in learning it so there shouldn't be a time cost to unlock it.

Only other game I can really remember pushing back on you with a set time limit was Unsighted. And that made it even more stressful because just about every character was on their own internal clock that would turn them into mindless beasts once it ran out.

4:06 "Letting the players get comfortable with the loop of the game and then changing the structure to be time-based would have... allowed emotional bonds to form." - I like this idea. I think it might even do two more things: 1) Take players' fears about experimenting with the game's systems (I haven't played this game, but in others, when under pressure by time, I am not very keen on experimenting). And 2) Make the player feel a loss mechanically which supports the loss the character's supposed to have emotionally. And this in a better way than "Here's your toys - aaaand they're gone." (Assassin's Creed 1 style). It'd rather be a "Remember how nice and not-stressful it felt with your loved ones around?"