>my young brain could have imagined how a 2D game could be programmed, naively thinking they had just coded up every possible game state. But the sheer number of permutations in the 3D, open world plane immediately made me realize that was impossible to do because of the sheer number of permutations - so I concluded something else must have been afoot, but it was all mystical to me.

This is so nostalgically intimately familiar it is nearly uncanny.