I agree that subtlety is the key but sometimes one has to wonder whether it is subtlety or nonexistence at play.
Pretty much
every piece of narrative work comes with a message. Some of the more modern theories try to deny this, but that's, frankly, bullshit. The author applies their own ideology to the work they create, and no matter how simplistic or multi-threaded the piece is, there's always a message that the author intended. A good author will hide their message well enough for others to be able to create their own messages or overlook any such thing; some messages may simply be "Go out and have fun" or something equally impressive; however, they will be present in some form or another. Non-existence of such things is non-existent, and if
you consider them to not exist in a certain work does
not mean that this is in fact the truth.
The SS2 "playing god leads to ruin" is indeed a good example of the kind of theme/message that simply put doesn't even exist for me. All I see is that this AI went bad in the story and that's that. These kinds of things never lead me to conclude that "this movie was trying to say this and that" which is also the reason why I always find it so absurd when some people start seeing things like chauvinism in a game when all the women in the game were assholes. To me it's just that these women happened to be assholes in the story.
A story is usually self-contained, therefore, in the universe of the existing story, the elements
can indeed be analyzed in such an inductive way. One AI can stand for all AI given enough support to the theory. In SS2, not one, but two AIs become the player's active antagonists, and they
are the story universe's only two existing AIs - therefore, an interpretation of "Creating a sentient AI is bad" is quite valid. It's also quite skippable, if you'd rather skip this item. Now, in a game like ME, the theme of "AI = BAD" pops out quite a bit more and is rather more unavoidable, to the point it got noticed by the designers and sorta-kinda retconned in later installments.
That is fairly blatant already - but then again, pretty much every AI in the game there tries to kill you, so yeah, you can probably guess that they're all evil.
I would like to hear what you thought about the themes/messages in Usual Suspects if that's not too much trouble. For me that movie has always been about the twist. Everything for that single moment.
Sadly this is one of the (many) films on my backlog. I'm more of a reader than a watcher, so a lot of things get recommended that just pile up.
Still, I see your point there - a lot of works exist for one moment. A twist, a line of dialogue, hell, even a word, the whole work just for the sake of one thing. Doesn't mean they don't have messages; rather, it means that it's not the message itself that's being fronted.
However, thing here is, people lauding B:I's themes and messages simply don't understand how themes and messages work. Not on your level of "not getting it", mind you, on a completely different level of "I don't get how this works but by GOD I want to sound smart right now" hipstery manner of gamer fanbases that love to spout terms and think they got their wording right. Themes and messages are commendable when they subtly gather in a single knot that, should the audience arrive to, leave them fascinated/amazed/terrified/disgusted et cetera, but not only that, they're meant to leave you feeling at least somewhat smart for picking up on those items. Some people make a living out of this, some, a hobby. Some just enjoy accidentally finding and piecing together this stuff to find a completely different story in front of them. Some rather ignore such things and enjoy things for what they are. And yet some others are just a bunch of morons trying to describe an elephant without ever having seen one, and, ironically, most of these work in gamejourno business.
and 2) what point is there in approaching it
