Listened to a podcast (waypoint) and they asked a mid-level dev about the ad as well, and their answer matched up almost exactly with what the artist said in the polygon interview. If nothing else, it strikes me as a pretty consistent explanation/philosophy.
Seems like they are saying the gameworld is so broken and commercialized that body modding is wholly cynical, brought about by social/commercial pressures, not something someone does to remake themselves in a way to self-validate or self-actualize. A TLDR summary of what TurinTur initially posted
It’s a pretty dark take. And an interesting one. We’ll see if this is a consistent theme, or a one-off.
My post expressed frustration with representation issues, and racial stereotyping as a too-easy fallback position for most game devs. Conversations about controversial issues can be productive. It very often isn’t because of the way twitter/The Internet works. Just bringing up a topic is always fraught because people are going to feel attacked for whatever reason. I was a bit surprised some people on these forums were willing to go so hard in pushing back against any discussion of fraught representation issues.
Encouraged to see posts with different and thoughtful viewpoints (dismissive posts not included, obv).