I feel like I'm reasonably good at picking at a game on the gameplay level, as per what works and does not and why and surface videogame essayist stuff like ludonarrative dissonance (or the rare examples of ludonarrative harmony).
I may offer you my finest insight into video games such as "Lara Croft has some sort of father complex going on" and "Shadow of Chernobyl is unintentionally about life in the collapse of the soviet union" which even by my own admission feels shallow and trite. You watch someone like Jacob Geller or Noah Caldwell-Gervais and they have fascinating things to say even on games you wouldn't expect it, like NCG on Quake.
How do I become that knowledgeable? Interesting? Analytical? about video games?
He is actually a metaphor for haitian slave revolt
(for topic starter: take some bits of astarion story - escape from a master, distrust of public of him as he is the other, fears that he will become just like his master, ignore inconvenient (vampire) bits badaboom, you have a clunky comparison which you can analyze further - this is more thematic analysis, like you strip down story to essential bits, lose some of them as you desire, and then draw parallel to real world, this same bits can be frankenstein creation story or any racially motivated hatred, or with added vampire stuff and removed master stuff a story of fuckboy bourgeoisie, it's all there ready to be recomposed and reassambled however you want, just some parallels will disintegrate under scrutiny (returning missing bits after drawing parallel of the stripped down version), some wont)