I think they gave people time to get over the hype and they saw that what they had was good enough. Especially once inflation hit and they had less extra money.
The game Overlord on the NES had the best intro music of the generation, IMO. It was a port of Supremacy from Amiga and other PCs. The Commodore 64 version had really great intro music too! (I love SID music and warez chip tunes) The Commodore intro melody was later used in a Machinae Supremacy song.
I really enjoyed the game StarTropics too. It had real world tie in stuff with physical media (anti-piracy, but it was neat), and I enjoyed the music and story. The second StarTropics had graphics that blew my mind, everything just looked so smooth.
IMO most of the lore is in the physical novels and later games that go more into story. Myst and Riven sort of drop you into an existing universe without explaining much and then you can learn some through bits and pieces as you go.
Those are called smart cards. Traditional smart cards needed centralized management of credentials, but FIDO2 smart cards exist that work like the keys. The reason tokens are more typically USB-based (or NFC) is every PC has USB, but most don’t have smart card readers.
FIDO2 can be used for passwordless log in on a few sites, but the site and browser need to support the feature (no extra installation). It sets a pin on the yubikey and when entered the key does all the authentication. It will likely be seen more as Apple “passkeys” gain more popularity, Windows and Android already have native support but don’t market as hard.
I think this is the main bit of it. Just look at the Baldur’s Gate drama on the Xbox because there are two configurations and one of them is less capable.
You didn’t play long enough, eventually there are miscellaneous Cuban enemies too.
If you aren’t going to finish the game, I’d recommend at least watching the ending. The “good” ending modifies the typical narrative and the “bad” ending ends up being much more fun.
AI was poorly recreating the first lines of the Eurogamer article: “Do you remember 1995’s 16-bit Disney platformer Gargoyles? Because I certainly don’t, and I’m nearly as old as an actual gargoyle.”
Entire thing looks like a poor copy of the Eurogamer one.