Starting to realize just how smart Evangelion and NieR were with their use of symbolism.
Both have strong aesthetics that "feel" symbolic next to strong themes, but they don't bother tying the symbols to the themes, and instead let your brain invent whatever connection it wants. Evangelion uses bold Christian imagery to tell a story about societal pressures, parental pressures, etc. etc. but doesn't impart a clear "truth" or "meaning" and instead lets you grow your own interpretation, which makes it more personal to you & guarantees decades of internet debate.
NieR: Automata's story has themes of existential ennui, reason for living, duty, duality of love & hate, but they also named a bunch of the robots after philosophers. What does a godzilla-sized machine with a chainsaw arm have to do with Engels? probably nothing, but it sounds cool, and it makes you wonder, and honestly that's good enough.
Creating that internal debate is so powerful! These symbols prime you to question their meaning, and suddenly you're opening up to the feelings, themes, and emotions the rest of the game is playing with. You're turning things around in your head. Maybe you go wild and start making YouTube videos about lore and philosophy, or maybe you just go, fuck, what just happened?
The thing about mediums that are not like, Ikea furniture guides: You do not have to describe things directly. You do not have to impart a point on the reader. Maybe you want to, and that's fine!! There are reasons to do that.
But maybe you just want to share a feeling with the reader, whether it's the feeling of being a disappointment to those around you, or the feeling of realizing life's pointlessness. These things are not directive, they are not trying to make you believe a specific thing. They are trying to provoke a feeling, and maybe not even a specific one. Maybe that feeling is very familiar to you, and a game makes you remember it, and you cry and cry and cry. Maybe it's a totally new feeling, and you find yourself thinking about that new experience when you're lying in bed at night. Different people will take away different things.
Aesthetic and symbol helps to crystallize these feelings. Feelings are ephemeral and easily forgotten, but when tied to something concrete - a heartbreaking ballad, a gorgeous visual - they can stick around for a very long time. You remember the symbol, then you remember the emotion, and suddenly you are re-experiencing all of it. I have sobbed listening to the main theme of J.J. Macfield so many times, even if I can't remember the lyrics. Just hearing the melody summons all of the loveliness and pain of that story with a surprising strength.
The Christian elements in Evangelion and the philosophers of NieR: Automata come with the gravity of centuries of history, and use that gravity to stick in your brain, even if they have the thinnest relation to the themes and feelings of those stories. This kind of playful, ornamental symbolism doesn't work for everything. But for the kinds of stories that are exploring emotion, situation, and feeling, with no discrete end goal outside of sharing an experience, it kinda rules. It doesn't have to mean anything at all, because it'll mean something to you.