I dunno I thought it was incredible.

I feel kinda disillusioned with the '' mainstream '' where games like GoW and TLOU or even HZD are put up on a pedestal as '' the greats '' of game story-telling, if they were movies they'd be average at best and they try too hard to be '' artsy '' imo.
Ultimately they're incredibly beyond generic and indulge very heavily in extremely tired movie tropes ( the sad dad thing in particular ), to some extent EW did have the sad dad thing too but it was definitely not the same thing at all.
It's even a thing game directors will brag about how '' we're doing what movies do, wow look at us with our movie scripts and one cut ''.
It's the same with AoT which gets brought up too I have no clue why people act like it's revolutionary the same themes and story have been done to death.
I kinda feel like if something is sad and brooding + blood and gore with dramatic music with vocals going '' OOoAOOOOoAAAAAAAAaAAAAAAH '' and/ or a kid and parent people will treat it like art.

Same with female characters, all it takes is for them to be frumpy and modest and people will act like they're top tier best female character ever created and written.
I feel like people are extremely shallow about this and how they judge stories and characters ( I've seen this a lot with Aloy and Mikasa it's so transparent and often they'll even admit it ).

I still think that what Venat did was kinda messed up I don't think it's meant to be a 100% good thing but more of a necessary evil ( there's a lot of comparisons to God people can make too, and how religious people have to adress the question why suffering exists ).
I also don't think that everything needs to be grey, we've already had grey villains and heroes in FFXIV it's fine to have more straight forward stuff too and ultimately it's kinda necessary for a position to be taken in a game like this.
FFXIV could be said to be a bit of a soap opera too like the rest but I don't feel like it's so unapologetically generic about it at least.
I think EW was very bold and took very big risks that I honestly wasn't sure about at first but had a huge payoff, and I also appreciate that it made me cry for other reasons than just '' wow it's so sad '' I felt a lot of different emotions at the same time most of it was happy tears.

It's not for everyone nothing will be liked by everyone.
But damn does it deserve its praise so much more than the other big titles people put up on a pedestal.
Same goes for Anime too all it takes is good animation and wow best thing ever created apparently.