This game is incredible. Not only for the obvious references and important subjects it touches upon, but even on very basic terms how it offered an amazing narrative payoff to something it build up during sidequests.
It's amazing. Incredibly tasteful, too. The kind of social commentary that makes people think, rather than hammer the point over and over again, and very loudly, that only serves as intellectual masturbation for people who already agree with it.
By creating this beautiful narrative to go with the themes and commentary the game makes on society and humanity in general, it'll naturally put people in a more empathetic position, even if some of the direct references go over their heads.
You don't need to get who this character is alluding to, or completely understand the philosophical line of thinking, in order to feel for them and just realize how much fabricated bullshit such standards are.
MEANINGLESS.
It's interesting because, as I get older, and more and more familiar with these kinds of subject, I tend to get driven off of things when their selling point is repeating the same things I've spent countless hours reading and discussing already. It feels like the narrative holds less value when it's all just a cheap allegory to say the same thing. But the fact that this game (this series, I suppose) first draws you into its world and story, selling you on the fiction completely before getting into these topics just makes it a joy. I haven't felt excited for fiction touching these themes in a considerable amount of time.
It's pretty crazy now that I think about it, in the same thread I can go back and forth discussing what it means to be human and the origins of the goddamn Cult of the Watchers. Yoko Taro is a treasure.
_/¯
