Why can't the industry give us more games like TLoU?

Echoenigma said:
This is a discussion board. If someone claims that the last of us is better than a decade's worth of movies I'm gonna ask exactly what movies they do enjoy.

Because frankly, the last of us was good, but there are films that are far better written. The last of us' writing seems to be getting overly praised because its a video game and when compared to other forms of art it doesnt really stand out.
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Notice how they said "most" but nobody mentioned all. I'd still even respect their opinion if it were the case in all.

And obviously TLoU narrative stands out due to the amount of poor writing and narrative in most video games. But it also stands on its own merits as well.
 
Echoenigma said:
This is a discussion board. If someone claims that the last of us is better than a decade's worth of movies I'm gonna ask exactly what movies they do enjoy.

Because frankly, the last of us was good, but there are films that are far better written. The last of us' writing seems to be getting overly praised because its a video game and when compared to other forms of art it doesnt really stand out.
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I definitely get what you are saying here, but still you don't have to call what two other people said as jokes just because what they said doesn't align with what your own views are on the game itself.
 
Yeah, no one ever said it's better than all movies, but I would say it's more engaging than many, many of the movies I've seen in theaters. Unless you limit yourself to watching only the best of the best movies, then I don't see anything weird with finding TLoU better than the majority of movies a person has seen.
 
Eusis said:
To be fair if we follow Sturgeon's Law it's quite plausible. Being equivalent to a GOOD movie is still ahead of 90% of movies even if it's not equivalent to a GREAT movie.
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That still assumes a lot. I wouldn't even place it in the league of your typical summer blockbuster myself.
 
4orLiV5.jpg


That's it.
 
mesmerMAN said:
Not every movie you watch has to be an Oscar winner drama.

Sometimes you need your Ace Venturas or Zoolanders to go with your schindler's list or The Departed.
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The problem is that 99 percent of the games with the production values and budget of TLoU are Ace Venturas or Zoolanders. Yes, the TLoU is "cinematic," but it's so far removed from the typical cinematic-style game like Uncharted with that franchise's movie serial/Indiana Jones pulp-fiction, action adventure vibe it's not even funny. It's a game that explores themes and complex characters usually reserved for indie games at this point in the industry since B-tier games no longer exist and every AAA game is a focus tested, watered down product meant to appeal to as many people as possible that can't be too hard and certainly can't have depth deeper than a puddle when it comes to story for fear of scaring away people that just discovered they have opposable thumbs and an attention span that requires an explosion, rumbling controller, gun porn and a pair of tits every three seconds lest they trade in the game five minutes after buying it.

Are the game mechanics in the LoTU revolutionary? Probably not. It's a semi-open stealth sandbox game with occassional shooting and an intuitive crafting mechanic and resource management angle. If anything, the amount of pure gameplay is surprising. There's hardly any signature/typical Naughty Dog levels as playable setpiece cutscenes going on in the game where every ledge and ladder will collapse followed by a QTE or frantic running at the screen moment.

Does it curb stomp a lot of videogame tropes by giving you a story that doesn't treat you like a child and forces you to play as a flawed character that, for the most part, is an unlikeable piece of shit killer? Yes. Does it apologize for that? No. Does it try to hide the fact that your actions have consequences? Certainly not. If you get shot, do you brush the bullets off like they were flies while Max Payne, Olympic gymnastic floor exercise diving to the next chest high wall while waiting for your health to regenerate like Wolverine? Nope.

Is it a game that both has simple, but solid gameplay mechanics and a story that would actually not make Warren Spector embarrassed? Yes.
 
Echoenigma said:
This is a discussion board. If someone claims that the last of us is better than a decade's worth of movies I'm gonna ask exactly what movies they do enjoy.

Because frankly, the last of us was good, but there are films that are far better written. The last of us' writing seems to be getting overly praised because its a video game and when compared to other forms of art it doesnt really stand out.
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This isn't really true. Aintitcoolnews, a film critic site even gave lofty praise to TLoU's narrative and writing. It's expert stuff even among movies, namely because it's often quite subtle and nuanced. Especially when it comes to Joel and Ellie's relationship.
 
People saying "the story in The Last of Us is only praised because it's a video game, it's bad compared to movies" can you go into more detail about the flaws you see in the game's storytelling? It's an argument that's going nowhere at all because some people are just making dismissive one sentence arguments.
 
^AICN is a joke. They're hardly a barometer for anything lol

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I don't really agree that TLoU explores any kind of new themes or anything. It's facile, it's polished, it doesn't set out to ask (or answer) a whole lot and that's precisely why it works. It gets the basics (characters) right, and while it doesn't give a whole lot more than basic character interactions, when those basics are regularly failed time after time after time in the industry, ND deserves praise for not fucking it up. They did a good job integrating it into the game itself. But the characters are tropes (maybe not video game tropes, but they're still tropes lol) and the plot is as generic as they come. The story's construction is basically just emotional set pieces strung together, deliberately and (imo) not-particularly-subtly manipulative emotionally. Nothing wrong with that, but it's very obvious. Again, the execution of those basics (and really, those basics alone) is what makes TLoU successful to me.

I certainly don't think TLoU is anywhere near as ballsy as people are making it out to be though. Ballsy for a AAA game, maybe. (in other news, stop playing AAA games) Ballsy for a video game? I don't think so. And certainly not ballsy compared to any other story in any other medium. (I'd call it a very very poor man's Children of Men, but believe me, considering that Children of Men is godly—that's incredibly high praise :p) But baby steps, and all that. I won't begrudge ND that.
 
To answer the OP, the real reason why is that Naughty Dog are a first party studio, heavily subsidised to be able to afford the kind of risks that 'The Last of Us' represents. The Sony money has allowed them to assemble a talented team that can specialise in extremely expensive, high quality animation, storytelling and graphical fidelity over several games now, and it is bearing fruit.

I am not sure how well Uncharted games sold, and how profitable they were overall, and whether it would be sufficient to greenlight the sequels at a studio that wasn't in the business of providing marquee titles for their parent corporations hardware.
 
There is a glut of cover-based corridor action games with an emphasis on cinematics. So nothing new there.

What sets this game apart is its level of polish. ND basically only made cover-based action games with cinematic emphasis this entire generation, so they've honed their craft there.

Ultimately it doesn't do anything new, but what it does it does very well. Which is certainly still worthy of praise.
 
The Last of Us is of the kind of games that has been nr. 2 this gen after FPS. The gaming industry makes loads of these games all the time. This time with a little more fleshed out and less stupid story, but in the end it's not a genre not well represented.
 
jtb said:
^AICN is a joke. They're hardly a barometer for anything lol

--

I don't really agree that TLoU explores any kind of new themes or anything. It's facile, it's polished, it doesn't set out to ask (or answer) a whole lot and that's precisely why it works. It gets the basics (characters) right, and while it doesn't give a whole lot more than basic character interactions, when those basics are regularly failed time after time after time in the industry, ND deserves praise for not fucking it up. They did a good job integrating it into the game itself. But the characters are tropes (maybe not video game tropes, but they're still tropes lol) and the plot is as generic as they come. The story's construction is basically just emotional set pieces strung together, deliberately and (imo) not-particularly-subtly manipulative emotionally. Nothing wrong with that, but it's very obvious. Again, the execution of those basics (and really, those basics alone) is what makes TLoU successful to me.

I certainly don't think TLoU is anywhere near as ballsy as people are making it out to be though. Ballsy for a AAA game, maybe. (in other news, stop playing AAA games) Ballsy for a video game? I don't think so. And certainly not ballsy compared to any other story in any other medium. (I'd call it a very very poor man's Children of Men, but believe me, considering that Children of Men is godly—that's incredibly high praise :p) But baby steps, and all that. I won't begrudge ND that.
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I dont see anything wrong with what he said...
 
Not many developers have the talent and even few publishers would take the risk.
Look at what happened to Resident Evil and Dead Space over the course of this gen. The delicious irony here is that TLOU is set to outsell the PS3 versions of RE6 and DS3 by far.
 
Wait..... how the hell is TLoU a huge risk?
Its a third person shooter/stealth game in a "zombie" populated world. One of the hottest genres around with one of the most popular current themes too.
Its heavily marketed by sony as a cinematic, actor driven, huge-budget release and its done by "THE CREATORS OF UNCHARTED", as the sticker on the cover says.

Everyone knew the game was going to sell well. It was a pretty safe bet for sony and ND.
 
the_id said:
I don't usually post threads but I want to pose this question to GAF - why can't we get more games like TLoU?

I just finished the The Last Of Us and what an amazing experience. In my 17 years of gaming only few games ever evoked such a strong emotional response - MGS, MGS3, HL2, FFVII, Bioshock, Bioshock Infinite, Journey, SoTC and Uncharted 2. And now TLoU.

These games, to me offered the complete package. They had excellent gameplay, story and for their time - technical achievements and innovation. To me there were more than just games. It was a complete experience.

Which brings me back to my question - why can't the industry produce more games of this quality? Is it the cost? Or is it just the lack of creativity? Or is it the push to release sequel after sequel to meet those financial year targets??

Next-gen is supposedly going to bring the cost of production down - is that going to give developers for room to exercise their creative freedom?

What do you think GAF?
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Thats a fairly specific list there, OP, the thread seems to assume that your idea of what represents the high watermark of gaming applies to all. For example, Metal Gear is a bit of an acquired taste, for a start- I thought its story and musings on war and soldiers are bloated and barely comprehensible at best, and that the games are better when they aren't trying to wrap a story around the core gameplay. Same goes for FFVII- maybe it loses something in translation but I loved the themes, artwork and setting, but found the story to be a mess.

Not everyone wants story-driven action games, I'm quite happy with games that don't pretend to be films and barely have stories at all, and are unashamed of it. I don't even need my games to be innovative or show technical achievement.

Often refining what has gone before is still worth doing, and plenty of awesome games haven't been cinematic ones.
 
famousmortimer said:
I think The Walking Dead game from TellTale is another example of this. Shit, i never even liked a telltale game before that... but something clicked and now I can't wait to see what they do next.
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Same, Sam & Max are a fun series in general, but I don't really wanna play them. Their other series don't really click with me either. But after TWD and the Poker Night series I'm now a big telltale fan.

Haven't played TLOU yet because I don't have a ps3 so I might never will. But I'm really hoping I can at some point, it sounds amazing.
 
OP, you seem to like being emotionally moved by the story in games. I recommend that you play The Walking Dead by Telltale and Silent Hill Shattered Memories (on Wii).
 
If you really want more games like Last of Us you should play Enslaved. They're pretty much the same game in many aspects. Both tell the same Journey to the West story with the same central characters who give exceptional performances. Both set in a lush post-apocalypse with a mindless enemy that hunts you down, and in my opinion both rely far too much on their less than stellar gameplay to the detriment of the overall experience.

I liked the Enslaved story and ending much more though (maybe even the characters though I'd have to play it again to be sure), and when I made the connection that they're basically the same game I discovered the lead designer on Enslaved moved to Naughty Dog to work on Last of Us.
 
First, it takes 3+ years to create.
Second, it takes a publisher to finance it for this long.
Third, it needs a good writer.
Fourth, there's plenting of movies released very year so you should look into that :p
 
You can't just name the very best works of a medium and say "Why can't there be more like this?" It's about talent, and to some degree, luck.

Why can't we have more Sgt. Pepper's or Kind of Blues? Why can't we just have more Casablancas or Star Wars or Inceptions? I mean, really, why can't we just get more Huck Finns, Great Gatbys and 1984s?

Where is my endless supply of teh pure awesome??? Geez!
 
RadarScope1 said:
You can't just name the very best works of a medium and say "Why can't there be more like this?" It's about talent, and to some degree, luck.

Why can't we have more Sgt. Pepper's or Kind of Blues? Why can't we just have more Casablancas or Star Wars or Inceptions? I mean, really, why can't we just get more Huck Finns, Great Gatbys and 1984s?

Where is my endless supply of teh pure awesome??? Geez!
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tumblr_lracuhssFJ1qfwkq4.gif
 
I hope this game sells a lot and inspire other dev/publishers on how to do linear cinematic games right.

the plot of Last of Us is nothing groundbreaking, it's how they tell the stories and characters that are exceptional.
 
TLoU's gameplay really isn't all that super great in comparison to things like Metro and STALKER. But man, the storytelling and script are probably the best in the industry. Even their text diaries are more interesting and placed better than other games featuring them. A game with ND's penchant for storytelling and some hard, precise eastern-euro gameplay mechanics would be fucking incredible.
 
MYE said:
Wait..... how the hell is TLoU a huge risk?
Its a third person shooter/stealth game in a "zombie" populated world. One of the hottest genres around with one of the most popular current themes too.
Its heavily marketed by sony as a cinematic, actor driven, huge-budget release and its done by "THE CREATORS OF UNCHARTED", as the sticker on the cover says.

Everyone knew the game was going to sell well. It was a pretty safe bet for sony and ND.
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Its a new IP coming out in the year where next gen consoles are releasing. How many of those do you see with marketing behind it like the Last of Us.
 
SlowRevolution said:
People saying "the story in The Last of Us is only praised because it's a video game, it's bad compared to movies" can you go into more detail about the flaws you see in the game's storytelling? It's an argument that's going nowhere at all because some people are just making dismissive one sentence arguments.
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Is the same people that agreed with COD receiving 9-10s in reviews and after critic Killzone for being gamey and having horrible history and characters.
 
Echoenigma said:
This is a discussion board. If someone claims that the last of us is better than a decade's worth of movies I'm gonna ask exactly what movies they do enjoy.

Because frankly, the last of us was good, but there are films that are far better written. The last of us' writing seems to be getting overly praised because its a video game and when compared to other forms of art it doesnt really stand out.
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I've watched almost every single movie on the IMDB top 250 (God Father, TBTGTU, Casablanca etc) and yet I would still rank TLOU over any of them any day of the week.

I simply just enjoy video games as a medium more than than films, these stuff are not even comparable imo.
 
Toxi said:
If anything, I think the industry is trying too much to give us games like The Last of Us, or to a a greater extent, Uncharted. The triple A linear cinematic story-driven experience has been done many times, but only a few times has it been done right.
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I agree, I still think that Naughty Dogs games, which are funded to showcase the PS3 are games that have been designed around the visuals.
I'm not saying that the gameplay suffers, but I'm saying is that this design route had lead them to produce a very specific type of game and experience, and that the same visual polish and production value simply wouldn't be possible for other genres.

I'm glad that not too many other developers have pursued this in such a voracious way as the Sony 1st party studios have.
 
JokerOfSpades said:
So I hear that this game is extremely overrated and the story is cliche. Plus too much stealth in a game that has shitty stealth mechanics. And detective mode hearing. Basically everything it does has been done better elsewhere.

Why do you guys believe its amazing?
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Because it's not overrated. There's not too much stealth because you can play however you want. You can turn off 'listening mode' and the game only gets better for it.

The story is not cliche at all, it's a very nice story told in a very creative way.
 
I do wonder, until TLoU, for me, the best action game ever made had been RE4. That's eight years. And it's not like this genre isn't fully tapped, everyone has been making these games, and no one has even come close to RE4 until now, not even TLoU's team's previous game UC2.

For games to come along rarely of this quality is nice, because it means it's always a legitimate surprise, but it's also pretty damning of the industry.
 
The industry pumps out a solid dozen AAA single player cinematic snooze fests every year. How many more do you want?
 
StuBurns said:
I do wonder, until TLoU, for me, the best action game ever made had been RE4. That's eight years. And it's not like this genre isn't fully tapped, everyone has been making these games, and no one has even come close to RE4 until now, not even TLoU's team's previous game UC2.

For games to come along rarely of this quality is nice, because it means it's always a legitimate surprise, but it's also pretty damning of the industry.
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Yes.In fact i started the new Tomb Raider and i couldnt even finish it.
 
nizerifin said:
TLOU is a damn masterpiece. You've got to have at least one genius (probably many) working on a game to deliver something that good. It's better than 90% of movies from a narrative standpoint.
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What a load of crock. TloU is a great game, but the writing and plot are still hammy cheese compared to any other medium.
 
Pyscho_Mantis said:
Its a new IP coming out in the year where next gen consoles are releasing.
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Doesnt mean much when the industry is still heavily focused on moving as much software as possible on both PS3 and 360. Their respective install bases are still growing and as active as ever.
Next gen Sony and Microsoft consoles comming out at the end of this year is no threat to a huge release right now,

Pyscho_Mantis said:
How many of those do you see with marketing behind it like the Last of Us.
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There you go, it has alot of marketing behind it. Sony wants and knows this game is a sure commercial hit if they just create buzz around it.

amstradcpc said:
who is this guy?.
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Naughty Dog dude
 
I'm jealous of the people who like this game more than they liked RE4. I want to like a game that much but for me TLoU doesn't even come close to that masterpiece's gameplay.
 
Industry doesn't have much space for creatives with something to say. Publishers basically treat gamers like kids who want to play war games. So that's what you get.
 
Hulud said:
I'm jealous of the people who like this game more than they liked RE4. I want to like a game that much but for me TLoU doesn't even come close to that masterpiece's gameplay.
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This! While TLOU has high production values and a great story, the core gameplay is not near as polished and fun to play as something like re4
 
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