They expect you to die of starvation, disease, and infighting. If you choose to lunge at them, they hope to have a network of automated weapons to drop the god particle on your peasant ass.

Once they no longer need your labor, you are an externality to them. A cost to be cut.

I would think drifting runs the odometer higher because your wheels are spinning like in a burnout while moving a comparatively short distance.

That cuts into Bethesda’s paid re-release.

That goodwill can change in an instant, especially if they are releasing a competing product, and especially if the legal team gets in the loop rather than the development staff.

I’m afraid replacement parts may not merely go up in price, but many could simply disappear from the American market. Higher prices quash demand, and importers may make the strategic decision to stop delivering less popular secondary SKUs if it doesn’t make financial sense.

one of their in-house artists, or a furry artist

Probably one and the same.

In that gen at least you kind of have to grind out some XP before each gym or you get schwacked. Whether that makes it a better or worse game is subjective. In the Alpha/Omega remakes this isn’t much of a problem. But when I tried playing through those I stopped because it was trivially easy for that reason and others. Again, subjective.