This comment will include a lot of spoilers for the yokoverse. Continue at your own peril.

Anyway, just to give you an idea of how little any of this matters to Yoko Taro, here’s how his stories have developed:

Drakengard: Ends with absolute apocalypse, total destruction of the world, no coming back.

Nier: Let’s go ahead and change the name and say that all the Drakengard stuff has now entered a new dimension. Our dimension! The story technically goes on, and THIS time we’ll have the absolute apocalypse of OUR world.

Drakengard 3: Where do we go to continue the Darkengard name? Make it a prequel! Ezpz. Also we already did interdimensional stuff so let’s add time travel why not.

Nier Automata: Okay the world basically ended for humans, but who cares? Just make it all about legacy of humans.

You know what, we can do even more already. Why not pepper in some mobile games, like Nier Reincarnation and SINoALICE (yes, this is still Nier universe). Why keep it to games? Let’s write light novels (YoRHa, Drakengard 1.3) and a stage play (YoRHa Boys). I am not even the biggest Yokostan so this list is probably incomplete.

My personal take is that this methodology is all very intentionally tied to the main theme of the Yokoverse, which is that no matter how dark and hopeless the situation may become, there is always a future; a new opportunity.

Homelander will definitely be a zoner, Omni-man is a bruiser.

It’s the same basic gamefeel NRS has been doing for a while now. If you’ve played MK11, Injustice 1 or 2, you can expect pretty much more of the same baseline experience with new characters, moves, fatalities.

Story is a solid new entry if that’s what you’re going for.

You’re missing the scale.

Everyone knew BG3 would “a success,” but it hasn’t just been a success, it’s been a nuclear bomb of a success.

Optimistically, people were expecting to get around 1 million in sales. Total. THAT would have been a GREAT SUCCESS. Today I think it has around 10 million on Steam alone, 10x the “hope we get there” number.

Imagine taking a job and hoping for a $10,000 bonus for good performance, and then your boss drops $100,000 on your desk. It’s that level of joyful shock.

It’s strange, people can’t seem to help themselves.

Even the Star Citizen community was full of people talking about how Starfield was finally going to deliver as the superior sandbox space sim.

Space Game is not a genre, it’s a setting. Bethesda RPGs are gonna Bethesda RPG, no matter how you flavor it.

This seems like a marketing move. When the Parental Advisory Label was created for the music industry, some bands and labels went out of their way to make sure they got it put on their albums, sometimes even altering their content just for that purpose, because it would actually drive sales. Of course every kid listening to rock and rap wanted “the real shit.”

Here again we are being promised “the real shit” by a meaningless content warning.

It also helps Konami keep its distance from Kojima, which is probably what both of them want.

It reeks of immaturity in general, or maybe more cynically, the perception of a bunch of nerds that have never had a sex life. There are so few games that handle sexual and romantic relationships realistically, and now that we have one nobody knows what to make of it.

Some characters take things slow. Opening up gradually, sharing some wine, holding hands and enjoying a single kiss on a night alone together. Eventually this ramps up naturally.

Some characters on the other hand are like, “you ready to fuck? I’m ready. Love? Never heard of it.”

Both of these are normal and it’s cool to see both represented in the same world.

Because they’re kids, and probably poor too. When I was younger I played so much CS 1.6 that I seriously considered going pro. The setup I had then would probably literally kill me now, but when I was a teenager I didn’t feel it at all. I could work with anything so long as I had my trusty MX518.