It's single-handedly made me think about how...limited game narratives influences are in yet another way? Like I know the old adage that it's all military, scifi, and fantasy...but something about actually reading those genres underlines how narrow a slice of even those genres are drawn from.
Adastra, which has been an excellent slow-burn romance and political thriller (still not as into it as Echo but I think that's a taste thing. The median furry friend I have would probably like Adastra more) is also a scifi story where the little bits of scifi worldbuilding are drawn primarily from science fiction stories. And not golden age ones, like, actual stuff from later books. It's a little bit like a Star Trek episode, but the biggest influences that jumped out at me are David Brin's Uplift, and Iain M Banks culture series. It's literally a plot point that some of the cultures in this game sublime themselves like in the culture.
The thing that has me actually fucked up is that one of the things it's directly taken an element from is something that evokes The Book of the New Sun, which is some serious street cred for a video game.
None of it should feel unusual but...damned if I can think of another game that draws from that stuff in a real way.
...also there's like, hot dog boys but that was pretty much expected.