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Crash 4's Japan levels look awful
(hexbear.net)
In the sense that nothing about the architecture or art really evokes Japan at all other than that it looks vaguely Asian. (Some bits feel more Chinese than anything.) This is a big budget 2020 game with art done by contracted artists from all over the world, you'd think they'd be able to get a little closer than this, especially with how overexposed Japanese culture has been for a long while now
Orientalism. That's the word you're looking for. The game was made by orientalists.
It's just wild to me that a game this modern would fall back on generic vaguely Asian slurry. I'd expect this from a game from the 90s but even the China levels in Crash 3 felt more like China than this does Japan
Ironically, an LLM would probably make something that would look more convincingly Japanese at a glance