And the conflicts that do happen, happen at the behest the US and in the interest of US corporations. And the US has control over the narrative surrounding the conflict.
The series become increasingly linear starting with Zelda 2 until BOTW. The first game hides a bunch of stuff in the world and then gives you clues to find them and you can tackle them in any order you figure out the puzzles in. The wizards and witches give you cryptic hints, whereas the later games are just straight up like "hey go here, touch this item to this thing". It's super liberating to live and die by my own intuition.
I wasn't old enough to have played the OG Zelda when it launched, but I recently played it. It is still an unbelievable masterpiece to this day. It accomplishes things that Zeldas that came after didn't. It's my second favorite Zelda of all time.
China hasn't tried to expand or colonize anyone in my lifetime. America has some so numerous times. Maybe stop being so defensive and look at history without your America colored glasses.
The point I'm trying to make is America likes war a lot. China hasn't fought a war in 50 years. It's hard to take Americans seriously when they accuse someone of being aggressive.
America has engaged in war the majority of the post world war 2 era. Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan twice, Iraq twice. And that's not including all the proxy wars they've funded.
I'm not an expert on Chinese military policy. I just know that all of us living in the West have been told by our media and our government that China is bad for us. I know we see the world through the lens of war.
"China, a country that hasn't invaded another country in 50 years, is going to invade this country" said the country that invades a country once a decade.
I think ad funded stuff is the only way to get things done in a capitalist economy. There may be other types of economies that could get by without ads, but we'll never know because this is the world we've created.
The way the US centric world works, you kinda have to, or you risk inviting the US trying to spread "freedom"