Something that i liked very much on some games was choosing the assets you want to download, you want to play on low, no need to download ultra high res textures.
The thing is, using less resources is always an optimization cost for the company. If the user will just get better hardware, there’s not much incentive for spending on that. Unless the company aims for devices with lower hardware like switch, deck or mobile.
Choose whatever laptop you like, and do a quick search on the model for incompatibilities. If there’s something critical or long-term, like a very specific hardware module not working well without its proprietary driver, consider changing, but most of the time, Linux will just work.
For distro, PopOS is good. It doesn’t come with a bunch of bloatware, but it is also not barebones. Mint is also a great choice.