I gotta say you picked a really bad game and a really bad element of that game for your comparison.
The thargoid interaction there was a bit of eye candy that's all, something that happened randomly to pilots in certain sectors.
What about the tonnes of other puzzles? the Guardian Bases, The Thargoid bases, Raxxla, the artefacts the strange triangular, patterns on them , the images embedded into audio signals that had to be deciphered out of the game?
To solve most of them you needed a degree in astrophysics, astronomy something pretty much 75% of the player base didn't have, in fact if you looked at the forums most of those discoveries were made by the same people.