Clair Obscur, Avowed, and more games grappled with COVID’s impact in 2025

Five years is an awkward period of time. It hangs somewhere between only yesterday and ancient history. While some wounds inflicted by COVID-19’s peak have begun to heal, the disease has left permanent scars. You feel it every time two lines pop up on your COVID test even though you could have sworn we had defeated it. You feel it in that lingering fatigue that you’ve been dealing with for years. You feel it in the United States government’s ongoing war on vaccines. You feel it in the empty chairs around the dinner table every holiday. Even if you’re sick of thinking about a pandemic that’s been discussed inside and out, we’ve barely started unpacking the lasting effects of it.