SecondQuantization

I really like all of those ideas. There could be randomly rolled endgame "crises" happening every 50 days or so. One such crisis would be an earthquake (which also makes a lot of sense lore-wise), which would collapse a traversable cave or the dam, blocking direct pathways between some regions and forcing you to take a longer route. This would also reinforce the idea of the player's lack of agency over the world in the face of the forces of nature. There could also be an aurora-surge crisis causing wildlife migrations, which for example would replace a region's wolf population with timberwolves, or bears with polar bears. Polar bears would be much tougher to kill than black bears, so they wouldn't be such an easy late-game food source anymore. A mega-blizzard, let's say a week-long blizzard (with some prior indication), is also a nice idea, forcing you to stock up and hunker down. Actually, much of the above doesn't seem like it would take a massive amount of time to code, maybe someone could make a mod? Further regions would also be very nice, including the high-security prison and Perseverance Mills that are hinted at in the story mode. A super-cold arctic region would also be cool, populated with polar bears from the start, maybe with an oil rig/refinery or stranded offshore oil platform with massive supplies of petroleum to incentivise you to go there. I'm actually surprised we hasn't seen an oil rig yet. After all, Great Bear is supposed to be exploited by mainlanders for its natural resources.