“I’m really bad at reading fantasy”, and we’re all bad at “reading” games
I don’t think that the mark of a good author is to mask their symbolism to the point where people like you and the author of that article cannot see the meaning. I definitely think it’s a common notion among artists - especially “experimental” artists - that the more foggy you create your symbolism and metaphors, the greater your work is!
The Dune series is heavy reading. Frank Herbert is regarded as a great author, but also one that is unnecessarily complex, using extra characters where they’re not needed, extra superfluous dialogue. JR Tolkien raped his thesaurus for only the most ancient words to use to describe what was going on in his stories. I myself thought MonBre was more suited for intellectuals because of how complicated everything was, and having to read manuals: it turned out I just sucked at game design and had no honest clue of what I was doing.
I find a lot of artists and lyric writers are in the same boat I was in with MonBre. I absolutely hate when musicians think they’re absolute geniuses for telling the fans that their lyrics are “open to interpretation”. I also really hate seeing this guy’s films, and realizing nothing happened for seven minutes, while the commenters calling him a genius. I still watch him, of course, when I’m in the mood. :P