Xcom2 had a nice "feature" where if you hit capslock right when the mission starts to load it paused all animations and actually loaded the damn mission far quicker than normal
Ive been trying to figure this out all day and thats not it
Im pretty sure ive conflated parts of Mr murder and a completely different author/book called the mark of the assassin and honestly maybe parts of a 3rd book i havent remembered yet
I think it involved a child genius inventing time travel with something that looked like salt and pepper shakers because his family was being targeted by an assassin for some reason
Honorable mentions that could be swapped with any of my bottom 4:
Eve online
Total war Warhammer 2/3
Baldurs gate 3
Minecraft