Finally played enough of Heaven Will Be Mine to reach an ending, and I see what you mean.
I also loved WKTD. It probably helps that I was in Boy Scouts until I was 18, and despite sticking with it and growing to appreciate it, I know enough about myself to realize it’s not something I’d have chosen for myself, probably. WKTD isn’t really about that, but the similarity of setting made me even more invested in understanding the significant differences that underpinned its world.
HWBM asks a lot more of its player—nobody grew up in space getting trained to pilot space robots. Not that the ship-selves really even resemble robots more than superficially.
I felt this way about WKTD to a lesser degree as well, but I struggled to follow the emotional logic of this story. Luna-Terra’s aloof betrayals, Pluto’s grandiose shouldering of everyone’s burdens… it’s all described, but the concrete details are only alluded to, and combined with all the other ambiguity, I’m not really following so far. They’re not so much characters than they are archetypes. Which was just as true in WKTD, but when those characters acted in defiance of the roles they’d established for themselves, it made them feel more real to me. I need to play more.