1. Ask questions (to yourself, but to other people works too). Why did the author make this decision? Why are things this way? If you ask “why” questions you’ll come up with your own interpretation of the game.

2. You just kinda have to spend a lot of time thinking about it. There are some pieces of media I’ve really liked for a long time and as a result I have fairly developed views on them just from the length of time I’ve been thinking about them.

Why is this here, this took some labor, who put this in and why did they do it? Everything is, in some shape, chekhov’s gun in invented worlds (aside from procedural generation, for obvious reason, although it also implies some things, be it in scope or nature of generation)

(Also, i would treat people who say they enjoyed every single chapter of ulysses with suspicion)

*like say lara croft, would first storyline work not in a forest, but in densely populated city? You can’t hunt there, you can’t murder your way through hordes of enemies etc, it would become uncharted basically. You can’t flashback to the dad when you are gunning down police forces, it’s a very silly “what if” but it shows limitations and possibilities by the chosen path of the game. Everything was a choice even if it looks like monolithic story. In that case, i suspect, they started from lara croft shivering in the woods and build the game from there, how they built it is another matter with some colonialism and orientalism sprinkled in, according to writers inclinations

Or take ftl, there is a choice made that the main opponents are exclusively humans, they just as well could be mix of aliens like you most likely are, or another species entirely. There is a lot of implied story there, even if the game doesn’t hit you with it.

Or something silly like skyrim shops decorations, there is a choice made in everything here, state of wares (broken/dirty/pristine), collection of them, state of the doors etc. some poor soul spend hours doing it and likely pondering, can they put this candle here if it’s named mage-guild-candle-final.3dasset

Also, as it’s my comfy watch lately, watch lord of the rings making, but not actors stuff, but set production/light grading/music or commentary of production/design. They talk quite a lot about selecting this precise decoration because it invokes blah blah, or selecting this color scheme because it looks like x, or selecting this musical instruments as implying y. Cause it was so heavily hand crafted movie (and entirely imaginary, so no real existing locations), there is a lot of behind the scenes expressed ideas, that you won’t notice or see talked about in movies made more digitally (at least interviews with cgi artists aren’t that thorough, even if the intent of artist is the same in scope, as they are drawing damn things, they typically trying to sell volume or whatever latest tech) or shot on real locations

*also, as a funny tidbit from lotr commentary watching during times - peter jackson mentions zulu (1964) movie as an inspiration for helm’s deep, so you can take from that what you will, the story line of that movie is something.

Those guys are just interpreting that. Who says the devs intended one or the other? Especially when it comes to deeper meanings. FromSoft made Soulslikes in Berserk’s image because its fucking cool to swing massive swords at unspeakable horrors. Not because theres heavy foreplay on the rot of society due to the actions and goals of our leaders.

Don’t. Just play the games.