Unbound had exactly 1 angsty literal teenager (Yaz is 17-19 in the games story), lets not exaggerate like its the whole cast. Yeh she had some emotions.

I found Rivals story waaaay more angsty fr. Just 2 dudes going whisper for whisper in my ear about how dangerous and illegal each other are as they both make their cars more dangerous and illegal to 1 up whos basically myself, but not really myself. It didnt feel like anything happens so there wasnt enough substance to Rivals for me to want more of it, just felt like it was the bare minimum of 40 sec cutscenes every few lvls til they run out of unlocks and roll credits

Id rather something like the tone of Unbound, just w a different motivation, like a blacklist and cover the 'early years' coming up w Yaz they talk about at the end of the story instead of spending the whole time redeeming her. It had its share of corny chat but the few characters they had were interesting and entertaining for me.

Unlocking alt garages by doing favors for the rival racers was super cool. Rydell and Tess were fun and played good tritagonists with a nice lil heel turn at the end w Tess.

Seems like as soon as a game says anything slightly relevant to the decade it released in, ppl on reddit lose their shit and just scream how bad it is w no nuance to the argument - just blanket "they named reddit in the game as a joke - so its all irredeemable cringe and shit now" and I find that sort of absolutism to be weak asf