an until-your-inevitable-death-in-the-wilderness challenge, as you and Sommer have described it here.
Even if I were the kind of person who plays more games than CivV, and even given how good you two make this game sound, I think I would, in the end, pass on it for that reason.
I play CivV on deity level, and at that level win maybe one game in ten. That's pretty masochistic. But this takes the next step over that line. Now a player could set his own goals, and say extending life for X days counts as a win, or beating my last longevity counts as a win. But nothing is a win!
As I mentioned before... when you hear the theme music for the game (any edition) you instantly know that this isn't a "happy ending" kind of game. But I have to say, that this game... in some ways, much like Civ... is kind of a fun/relief to die,
because its so fun starting over. The early game... in so many ways, is the best part of the game. So when
@EgonSpengler says that he "jumped right back in the saddle", I can totally relate to that. Its hard to fully describe the feeling, but when you die in this game, you don't have that exasperated feeling of "
Aw man... I lost all my progress/stuff 
"
It's more like the feeling you have when you get off a roller coaster, or finish watching a really good movie...
you wanna do it again, right away. As far as goals go, well for one thing, there are the story mode episodes, as well as the minigame/challenge modes, where you actually can "win" (or "finish" at least) so don't fret about that. The mode where death is the only, inevitable conclusion, is the "Survival" mode, and achievements abound in that mode, so there is always something new, some new goal to accomplish.
The other thing, is that the game is so immersive, that the whole concept of "goals" in a macro sense, start to fade, really. It very quickly becomes all about "What am I going to do
today/tomorrow?" and "What item(s) do I need
next and where can I get them?" and the omnipresent, all-important "What am I going to eat/drink today/tomorrow?" The day-to-day survival starts to become a game onto itself, where you're not so much playing
one game, as much as you are doing a series of independent, but interconnected challenges, that take place one after the other, beginning with the sunrise each day. in other words, if
@EgonSpengler survived for 70 days... he didn't play one game where he lost after 70 days. He played 70 games where he won 69 times and lost once. That's really how you feel when you die in the game.
The other thing that is different about this game... for me at least,
is how BIG the environment is... I mean the game was already pretty ridiculously big, but they keep adding more and more regions, to the point where now, it really feels like the game is just endless. there is literally so much to explore, so much to collect, so much to do. I may be a little more predisposed to getting overwhelmed/over-impressed with First Person, "open world" games, since such a thing was unheard of in games when I was young. The closest thing I had to an open world game back then was Zelda 2: Adventure of Link and that game blew my mind at the time. The first next gen Open World game I really got into was Zelda: Ocarina of Time as a young adult and that one blew my mind again. TLD is way bigger than Ocarina, in terms of how many different places you can go, (both in a macro and micro sense) and how many different things you can collect/use.