Have you actually played Rising Storm 2: Vietnam? I thought the setting worked decently well there. And I really didn’t encounter any racism aside from popular lines like “Welcome to the ricefields mfer”. It still has a couple of populated servers going even though it’s kinda outdated compared to HLL or Squad 44.
I will never forgive Dishonored for glitching the peaceful achievement on the Xbox 360. I went out of my way to not kill anyone and it was still locked when the credits rolled. I remember there was some funkyness with knocked out enemies dying from external factors.
I imagine a lot of indie games can’t really afford to pay or commission artists but still want to have a product that looks presentable. I know someone who does mostly programming but is now considering being a solo dev on a game because generative AI enables him to do it alone.
There definitely exists a spectrum between shovelware, large studios being too cheap to pay actual artists and indie devs having little to no other options.
Probably not, but the studio has a pretty good record when it comes to the voice acting. They even brought back some of Mafia 1’s original cast for the remake almost 20 years later.