The SOP gameplay was running on PS5 Pro? I thought it was base PS5 no?
Graphics aren't the issue here; the game looks great visually especially if the art style is your jam. Does it tower over other single-player story-driven AAA games the way Sony's AAA during PS3 and most of PS4 gen did, visually? No. But, times are different and other studios simply started catching up.
What I'd like to see is more immersion in meaningful ways. Stuff like the B&W visual mode and Japanese dub w/ lip sync are good steps, but the original had those too (via updates).
TBF, from what I've seen the best female-led revenge stories are where the women use their smarts to get an advantage on the men (either than and/or their sexuality), especially when it involves them going up against groups of men and they're on relatively equal terms weapon-wise (i.e neither have weapons, both have swords, both have guns etc.).
Unless it's a story involving supernatural powers, I do think a lot of people would have a harder time suspending disbelief if a woman were fighting & beating even one full-grown man and they were even in terms of weapons or starting condition (i.e the guy isn't already heavily injured or missing a limb), let alone a group of men. The guys would just overpower her unless, again, she uses smarts to engage them (pick them off one-by-one maybe with long-range attacks out of sight) or has incredible supernatural powers.
These may be works of fiction but they have to ground themselves by some natural, generally universal rules of reality regardless in order to explain how the fictional stuff functions. That's what also helps give audiences a point of reference. BTW I'm not accusing Yotei of having this problem, though it'd probably help if her style were based more off of combos and (hopefully) chaining together combo attacks with the pet wolf, especially when dealing with small groups. That's usually a good way of differentiating the women from men in combat scenarios: making them faster and more nimble (higher agility) combined with being smart in isolating targets, misdirecting targets, and using longer-range approaches to weaken them before getting closer-range when the target is noticeably weakened.
I'm definitely waiting for when SIE (or someone else) makes the next big evolution for story-driven games, because there are many ways to push that forward but it feels no one in the AAA space is doing so. Could be a combination of risk aversion + tunnel vision.
If the stories are going to be so narratively-driven, why can't I see the character's face in conversation outside of cutscenes or Bethesda-style conversations (which are unnatural, since most people don't simply stand around in place on the spot while having conversations; they move around, do many different body gestures, say things indirectly, don't say things at all in order to convey thoughts sometimes, etc.)? If my character's yapping while running at full speed, why don't they sound out of breath or winded when delivering their lines? Why aren't they skipping or slurring over parts of their lines due to tiredness? Why do all of my interactions with environmental objects have the exact same emotional weight to them? Shouldn't my character be more careful when picking up sentimental objects vs. random junk? If I try throwing that sentimental object, shouldn't it mechanically be way tougher for me to throw or discard it?
Most of the story-driven games out there, especially in the AAA stage, still seem "stuck" on 1st gear. They're basically as structurally advanced as what we got from SIE and the better 3P during 7th gen, as even a lot of the improvements in 8th gen (in terms of story interactivity segments) were small incremental betterments at best.
