To be honest I think Final Fantasy might be a bad example. FF16 feeling so weird and being so divisive isn’t because it’s AAA slop, it’s because they always experiment with something in each entry.
This time, they experimented with doing a dark, gritty and punishing word that had basically no levity in it. Even your home base had nothing but NPCs either being quietly depressed or LOUDLY depressed, emphasis on the loud. There was nowhere to go where you could take an emotional break from the impending end of the world. Every chapter of the story up until the very final cutscene did nothing but make the world more depressing.
Rebirth proves that they can create a world that feels massive but not empty, that they can create a gritty story without being emotionally oppressive, and that they can create a game that feels like the classics but in the modern age.
I don’t believe the source material is the only reason they made Rebirth as good as it is. Yes, they knew they couldn’t fuck this one up or else it was the end as a relevant company, but if they had truly lost their soul, they wouldn’t have been able to rise to meet that challenge.
In other words; I won’t write off new FF games unless FF16 becomes the template rather than an experiment I personally choose not to replay.
Because Americans claim they need the second amendment and all its school-shootey downsides in order to protect themselves against a tyrannical government.
Then a tyrannical government appears, and said government also starts executing your citizens in the streets.
Maybe it’s just my leftist bubble of woke protecting me from the truth, but I have heard exactly 0 cases of armed resistance from the people referenced in the first paragraph of this post.