Other than weird itch.io or old flash games or obviously straight up horror games, this has to be the most surreal/weirdest "mainstream game" right?
Hard to say cuz there are a lot of weird games that most people know now that weren't really popular upon first release (Pathologic[Мор. Утопия], LSD etc)
Absolutely. I think a lot of the game's weirdness is owed to the fact that after Ura Zelda was cancelled they pretty much had to rush out an asset swap of OoT and weave whatever story they could out of Eiji Aonuma's depressed headspace in short window of time. The result was something compellingly madcap yet filled with little narrative holes that the player could conveniently fill on their own. The fact that triple-A games now have the budget and scope of Hollywood movies I think has led to a gradual pushing away of little narrative subtleties and mysteries in games, and when developers try to get mysterious they get caught up in the particulars the result tends to feel contrived and theory-baity, if not downright pretentious.
Hard to say cuz there are a lot of weird games that most people know now that weren't really popular upon first release (Pathologic [Мор. Утопия], LSD etc)