I recently had another pleasant hard sci-fi surprise, though: Horizon Zero Dawn. I didn't expect it to take the backstory (or even the main story) seriously, but it did, and it did a brilliant job of it.
I had exactly the same prejudice. "Shoot robot dinos with a bow and arrow" doesn't sound like a premise that could possibly have a decent underlying story, but they actually pulled it off.
I recently had another pleasant hard sci-fi surprise, though: Horizon Zero Dawn. I didn't expect it to take the backstory (or even the main story) seriously, but it did, and it did a brilliant job of it.