Truthfully, the only other SAO game I've played is Hollow Fragment, which I'm pretty sure is the start of the alternate timeline the games run on. Honestly, it wasn't that good as a game, and I think most of the later games used similar, if slightly refined, playstyle systems.
Fatal Bullet was something entirely different though, being a TPS using the Gun Gale Online setting. It wasn't the best, but it did what it needed to, and was entertaining.
Currently: Shin Megami Tensei III- Nocturne, HD Remastered (Featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry Series)
Later this week: Elden Ring- Shadow of the Erdtree
As July comes around, I'll be looking into The First Descendant, a co-op looter shooter.
It's happening extremely often in current media, but probably Disney Star Wars the most. But if you need another huge example- Rebel Moon part 2:
Bad guy to subordinate- "We must go back, the Scargiver is there!!"
Subordinate to guy acting as good guy's mole- "We are returning to claim our tax yield of grain." (Obviously a cover story excuse)
ALL bad guys for the rest of the movie- "We're here to take your grain! ... What Scargiver?"
They literally forget what they wrote just scenes before.
How can they say "A Jedi only pulls their weapon when they are prepared to kill," and in the same episode, have one pull out their lightsaber to be a fucking flashlight??
They try to sound profound and cryptic in their scripting, and completely forget everything they wrote immediately.
They're not even "Force users under a different name" anymore, it is literally magic now.
As I recall, don't the Witches of Dathomir go back as far as The Courtship of Princess Leia? And that in the end of that, the man that becomes the king of Hapan marries one of them instead of Leia, and then they eventually give birth to the red-headed warrior princess (and Jacen Solo's lover) Tenel Ka?
I don't disagree. But the fact still remains, they took an established "miracle child" point from something 1000x better made and made it worthless.
And the Darth Plageus theories just get more confusing. In Revenge of the Sith, I thought he was talking "restoring and elongating life" rather than creating it. And as you say, that whole spiel could have been just a seductive lie. Then there was a comic insinuating that Anakin's birth was directly attributed to Palpatine or Plageus. That much I ABSOLUTELY say is stupid bullshit.
When I had heard about Chris Gore's "leaking" of episode 3, I had thought he was saying "The Force is being made tangible- in the form of a woman." No, it wasn't that. But what they did is basically spit on established Lucas lore. Anakin is no longer a Christ-like miracle child, these lesbian witches were giving birth through Force Conception at will a hundred years before.
Honestly, I think I can actually say I've gotten dumber as a result of absurd levels of handholding in games. I've been playing SMT3 Remastered (Featuring Dante from the "Devil May Cry" Series) lately, something I never played back in its original release, and there was a point I was lost for a good hour trying to find my way to the next region, nothing to point my way. And of course it was just a matter of me forgetting there was an NPC-guarded door that was no longer guarded after a certain event.
SMTVengeance was released last weekend. I am at the moment looking forward to getting it sometime, but I'm prioritizing other games first, may as well also wait for a deal.