The game’s story is in media res and you don’t just get spoon fed major themes. I’d say the most salient emergent theme is the foils of ambition. We see various characters struggle with the consequences of extreme ambition and power grabs, resulting in both the physical corruption of themselves and the world around them. Cyclical stagnation is also a major theme. We see that the world is stuck in a repeating loop of power struggles. Our player character witnesses this through fragmented interactions with other characters, the environment, and found items. Ultimately, we are asked to make choices that would involve the player character in the same corruption and cyclical fate that we witness throughout the game, or to choose alternative futures (all fairly bleak).
So decades ago I worked at a bike shop and some college students came in. One of them was black, everyone else in the shop was white. She sat down on a bike, that was all black with dark grey lettering. And I said “this bike looks great, I love the black on black look.” Everyone looked at me funny, she immediately got off the bike, and i literally died inside and froze up.
20 years later and i still think about this.
Also I should note that it was not the first time I used that phrase for that bike - when you work sales you end up with little automatic narratives that you barely think about.