cyberpunk as a game being some amalgamation of a collective unconsciousness in nerd shit, the marketing strategies of Postal colliding with homogenized memories of the 80s to fuse with generic tech dystopia to make a game that will get 10/10s on release, then quickly forgotten

i have a whole lot cooking in my brain lately on how high budget "prestige" - not just high res graphics, but a few certain templates of 'quality' - keeps getting so much in games graded on a curve. TLOU2 is the latest, but it's a hardly new pattern. RDR2 lived that shit too

same as how i look at a lot of stuff in TV. HBO's Watchmen was a v. good example. people in a fever to praise that thing and i could only wonder "what if the acting was just a little not as good? what if the camera quality was lower?" and if its other flaws would become apparent

"is this a good story, or is this good acting and good cameras?"

watchmen had very good cameras, and very good acting

and that framing is how i end up looking at a lot of the big budget prestige blockbusters in games too. it's not just 'expensive graphics', per se, but.