Bugs were always there
You are an entomologist, estranged from a family that always found you strange, doing the only work that ever made sense. The game opens on that, in your own words, before it shows you anything else.
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They have already decided. The paperwork is moving, the survey crew has a start date, and nobody at that desk has ever walked the ground they are signing away. You have one season and a notebook. Make it impossible for them to say no.
I have always felt lonely in my life. Even my own family thinks I should not be around.
But the bugs were always there. They never once asked me to be someone else.
They only have their lives. Small. Brief. And about to be taken from them, unless somebody stops it.
So I am going to stop it.
(the first thing the game says to you)
You are an entomologist, estranged from a family that always found you strange, doing the only work that ever made sense. The game opens on that, in your own words, before it shows you anything else.
An office with that word right in its name has decided this place is empty and scheduled it for clearing. You have walked it. You know better. Nobody has ever thought to ask you.
A full terrarium is not a collection, it is a record. A species nobody logged is a species nobody has to account for. Every one you bring home is another witness they cannot quietly write around.
Nothing waits for you in a cutscene. It arrives in pieces, at the moments you earn them: the first one you hold in your hands, the first one you lose, the first place nobody has ever surveyed.
Letters reach the cabin as the season turns. Some of them are encouragement. One of them will have a start date on it, and your hands will shake a little when you read it.