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[xrnzaaas]

His decisions from the past few years killed my need to buy more Naughty Dog games and that's coming from a person who LOVED The Last of Us 1.

 

[Sophist]

People should accept that not all studios will make the games they (the people) want. Naughty Dog and Druckmann games are well made: High quality textures, Orchestrated Musics, High quality animations from motion capture, Voice acting, Hollywoodian cutscenes, a whole story, ...

They are making good games... ...but not for you.

 

[Paasei]

TLOU 1 is great. Part 2 was fun when if you only take the gameplay and animations. Story wasn’t the greatest but also not the worst.

Then we only had remasters of the above. Guess it’s still neutral for now. I don’t find story’s all that important compared to gameplay.

 

[Radical_3d]

Hennig is God. She should’ve stay instead of him.

 

[Vick]

She's literally done nothing since leaving naughty dog and her track record is abysmal. The two games she has credits for since leaving naughty dog are battlefield hardline 'fart noise' and forspoken lmaooooo. Maybe she isn't as talented as people keep hyping her up to be when she's put out two turds since leaving.

Now imagine what Druckmann would do without Naughty Dog..

No production values, no visuals, no art, no gameplay.. just his ideas, writing, fetishes and viewpoints.

 

[Banjo64]

Now imagine what Druckmann would do without Naughty Dog..

No production values, no visuals, no art, no gameplay.. just his ideas, writing, fetishes and viewpoints.

He’d be making Dustborn.

 

[Hypereides]

I'm conflicted. I'm somewhere between indifferent and negative.

I think he's the kind of guy who has some interesting ideas, but needs people around him to pushback on them once in a while (as he said himself, game development is a "collaborative effort"). There's been some questionable choices from Uncharted 4 and onwards under his leadership. He's been riding on the coattails off how Naughty Dog rose to fame prior to TLOU.

The success of TLOU probably got to him, but TLOU2 seems to have humbled him a little bit. It made some significant damage to the studio's reputation though. I still think the final released state of TLOU2 was a "victim" of its circumstances at the time and rushed out to minimize loss.

 

[Eimran]

Anyone who inserts his personal politics in games is a no no for me.

He has talent ofcourse but people give him way too much credit. The reason he is well known is because he works at ND. He is mostly riding along on the succes of great games that a lot of other more talented people have worked on.

I would would trade him for Amy Hennig 10 out of 10 times

 

[Optimus Lime]

Overrated man makes overrated games for overrated console.

 

[Ozriel]

When it’s time to cite how many Sony games make the GOTY lists and win TGA awards, folks here are eager to list his games.

The guy makes games that review very well and sell very well. It’s crazy to see so much antipathy towards him himself.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

It's obviously worked out extremely well for them from a business standpoint. I can't deny that. With the exception of the original The Last of Us, I feel like every game Naughty Dog has put out since Uncharted has been trash from a gameplay standpoint. TLOU1 was pretty good. But frankly, I don't know how much of an impact Druckmann has had on the aspects of ND games that I didn't like.

 

[coachmcguirk91]

The success of TLOU probably got to him, but TLOU2 seems to have humbled him a little bit. It made some significant damage to the studio's reputation though. I still think the final released state of TLOU2 was a "victim" of its circumstances at the time and rushed out to minimize loss.

Only damage ND has taken has come from internet dwellers who push an agenda. TLOU2 won GOTY and the 150+million tv adaptation will be releasing this Spring, possibly spanning 3 seasons. It will almost certainly be a smash hit, like the first season was

 

[ElFenomeno]

He made worse versions of better games made by people before him.
Uncharted 4, Last of Us 2 ...

 

[Fabieter]

Wokeman should leave the company.

 

[CliffBronger]

I won't be buying anything from ND going forward.

Out of 10 he get a 0

 

[Mayar]

So far the voting is moving towards the three-finger figure - which is quite symbolic, and it is not yet clear whether this is the influence of Neil Druckmann, or the creator of the topic has strategically placed the answer options so that the middle option is guaranteed to come out on top, and the two outer ones will be divided 50/50.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Not questioning the quality of his games as they are highly polished, but I feel like people and himself give him far too much credit. He’s treated like a Kojima or Miyazaki in that it’s under his leadership that ND became what it is now and he was the visionary behind their most important workd such as Uncharted 2 or TLOU when I’m almost positive he wasn’t.

The one game he can take full big credit for is TLOU Part II and that’s the most divisive one in ND’s history.

lol wat

He was an OG and hugely responsible for uncharted and TLOU where he was codirector

He took over UC4 and that sold better than any other one in the series. He made an enormous TV hit with HBO

Kojima isnt divisive…? Death stranding got laughed at by people calling it a walking simulator

Druckmann deserves a ton of praise. It is ridiculous how much hate some Sony people get. Hulst is another one.

 

[Vick]

Druckmann deserves a ton of praise. It is ridiculous how much hate some Sony people get. Hulst is another one.

Imagine a timeline where Druckmann left ND before 2017 instead of Straley, and Hennig, and Balestra.

That bottom line of game protagonists would certainly look a hell of a lot different. Do you actually like what you see there?
That is the legacy of a man you think "deserves a ton of praise".

 

[TastyPastry]

But they've disregarded the need to sell a game, and doubled down on the crap they were trying to push before.

intergalactic has been in development for 4 years so long before concord happened. i bet if the game started development today there is no way the main character would look like this.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Imagine a timeline where Druckmann left ND before 2017 instead of Straley, and Hennig, and Balestra.

That bottom line of game protagonists would certainly look a hell of a lot different. Do you actually like what you see there?
That is the legacy of a man you think "deserves a ton of praise".

It’s a sign of a maturing company that has grown to like making adult themed games

If you don’t like that direction, there are many other studios that still make more lighthearted platformers or adventure games.

And yes, I love what I’m seeing from Intergalactic

 

[Fabieter]

It’s a sign of a maturing company that has grown to like making adult themed games

If you don’t like that direction, there are many other studios that still make more lighthearted platformers or adventure games.

And yes, I love what I’m seeing from Intergalactic

So adult content implies being completely woke nowadays? The character designs under wokemann is completely garbage. It's not worth the ND name.

 

[Hypereides]

Only damage ND has taken has come from internet dwellers who push an agenda. TLOU2 won GOTY and the 150+million tv adaptation will be releasing this Spring, possibly spanning 3 seasons. It will almost certainly be a smash hit, like the first season was

You honestly think that matters? Those awards are just nice shelf space and marketing fluff that looks nice on a cover. Fame and accolade is a fleeting quantity. Its not everlasting.

In the end, what really matters is what the consumers think and not what some supposed awards proclaim.

 

[Fabieter]

lol wat

He was an OG and hugely responsible for uncharted and TLOU where he was codirector

He took over UC4 and that sold better than any other one in the series. He made an enormous TV hit with HBO

Kojima isnt divisive…? Death stranding got laughed at by people calling it a walking simulator

Druckmann deserves a ton of praise. It is ridiculous how much hate some Sony people get. Hulst is another one.

He was a programmer and game designer until last of us. He was not important before that and his partner Straley helped him alot with lou1 and uc4. He is on his own with his crazy ideas now and all we will see is woke probably worse than the last dragon age.

 

[Vick]

It’s a sign of a maturing company that has grown to like making adult themed games

What you see as "mature" I only see as malicious, disruptive, and completely fantasy-based ideologies mixed with a good dose of fetishes, all driven by ill-intent agendas.

And when you say "adult".. Part II target audience wasn't really well adjusted adults. Quite the opposite actually, as from what I've seen the most hardcore fans of that game narrative are easily impressed brainwashed teenagers, or broken and downright mentally ill people.

 

[REDRZA MWS]

Every time I see that woke cocksuckers face I want to punch it. Last game I bought developed by ND was Uncharted 4. After his radical left politics were all woven into later games I decided I never buy a ND game again.

 

[Synless]

I think he sucks. I miss the old crew at naughty dog that created Uncharted 1-3.

 

[FingerBang]

He has made some of my favorite games ever. I have mixed feelings about the "agenda" he pushes because I think he creates good characters and stories. I loved TLOU, U4, and TLOU2, although I can see the effects of "wokeness" creeping more in the games as we move forward.

Ellie kissing her friend in Left Behind was ok. It didn't make a political statement. Then the articles about Ellie HAVING to be a heavily butch lesbian to defeat the patriarchy came out, and in the TLOU2, that is part of the story. And it didn't bother me too much because it did serve the purpose of giving her another relationship to fuck up. What bothered me more was how the whole thing was introduced, how one of the biggest trailers we got showed the scene with Dina.

Weirdly enough, I do not have a problem with how Abby looks; It's the Lev story that feels like extreme pandering to the holy trans saints. It would have been fine if they made it "I don't want to be a sex slave for the cult" instead of "I'm not a girl; I'm a boy.", but here we are.

Nadine kicking all the guy's asses in U4 was BY FAR the worst offender. I love U4, but that section fighting her felt so wrong.

But all of the above did not prevent me from enjoying the games. On so many levels, they are so above average you can overlook those things. But man, I wish so fucking hard I could have a cocky male asshole protagonist in Intergalactic instead of that (so far) very unlikeable girlboss.

 

[GymWolf]

Never gave much fucks about nd stories and charas even before he took the driving seat, but he definitely made them even worse so i guess he is a net negative for the studio.

He is also a woke moron.

 

[Astray]

I personally don't like TLOU as a franchise for various reasons, but you have to be delusional to deny the amount of money and recognition it brought both Sony and Naughty Dog.

Intergalactic will likely be another hit too.

Gotta love it when people do absolutely no research into what they're saying and just spew diarrhea from their mouth.

But it's true that Amy had an entirely different direction for UC4 (even had Todd Stashwick in a role and helping out with writing). And it's highly likely that it really wasn't going well. UC3 had a completely botched final third too (basically everything from the point you enter Iram is complete nonsense), so it kinda supports it.

I think the fact that Amy's biggest credit since leaving Naughty Dog is Forspoken kinda says a lot.

Like I love her past work (and I hope that Marvel 1943 turns out great), but she was NOT in her creative peak at that point in time.

 

[AgatonSax]

TV man should work in TV, to better understand just how unexceptional he is.

 

[SkylineRKR]

Naughty Dog was already leading in tech on the PS1. Crash 3, CTR were among the most impressive games on that system.

They created both Uncharted and TLOU for PS3 which are similar at heart; story driven TPS. But one is very dark themed. They rode these 2 IP on PS4. Its just weird that for PS5 they still have nothing new released yet. I think its kind of alarming if Intergalactic turns out to be their sole release for this gen.

Remember at some point Cerny said that PS4 development and time to pixel was shorter than on PS3. Yet I don't see it? PS3 had a MUCH higher rate of output lol.

 

[Majormaxxx]

F this guy. This used to be my favorite studio.

 

[Gaiff]

lol wat

He was an OG and hugely responsible for uncharted and TLOU where he was codirector

Yeah, codirector, yet he acts like it was all him. Furthermore, ND was already a well-established and successful studio years before TLOU.

He took over UC4 and that sold better than any other one in the series. He made an enormous TV hit with HBO

Uncharted 4…the 4th one in the series. Don’t give a shit about a TV show.

Kojima isnt divisive…? Death stranding got laughed at by people calling it a walking simulator

Kojima’s best work isn’t Death Stranding and he’s unquestionably the mastermind behind MGS. Not even close to Druckmann who really took over only for TLOU2, but people act like he has Kojima’s pedigree.

Druckmann deserves a ton of praise. It is ridiculous how much hate some Sony people get. Hulst is another one.

He deserves some praise, but to act like he’s mostly responsible for ND’s success id laughable. Some other people deserve more credit than he does, yet you barely hear about them. It’s undeniable that Miyazaki and Kojima are the minds behind MGS and Souls games. This is not the case for Druckmann.

There was even a poster crediting him for freakin’ Jak 3. I checked and he has credit as a programmer. Come on.

 

[Heisenberg007]

His portfolio and games -- and the critical and commercial success of those games -- speak for themselves. No matter what others may say about him, positive or negative.

Actions speak louder than words.

 

[dDoc]

In The Last of Us 1 Druckman worked in tandem with Bruce Straley. Safe to say that story wise this was the best installment.

Whilst TLOU2 had great graphics and good gameplay, the story was subpar on a lot of fronts.

He openly stated he has an agenda he pushes in his games (pro-woke) and was in cahoots with Sarkeesian.

Ep3 from season 1 of TLOU was directed by him. This whole episode was dedicated to a gay romance, whereas in the game you blinked and you missed out on knowing that Bill loved sausage.

This has left me with a negative impression of the Druckmann, and the latest (albeit short) trailer for his upcoming game's main character's appearance left me in no doubt on the themes the game's story will drum up.

 

[Bernardougf]

Well first lets stablish that ND makes story driven cinematic action games, so trying to separate gameplay from the story in this type of games is impossible IMHO because everything you do is according to the narrative given to you and what you see constantly in a lot of cutscenes and real time events. Different for ex. from games like the Souls series that the Lore and Narrative are really secondary, Bloodborne is my GOAT and I couldn't tell anything about characthers or lore, it just dosent matter.

Second TLOUS1 was in my top 5 GOAT, I played regularly, so Im a big fan of the first game as well as the Uncharted franchise.

TLOUS2 is and probably forever will be the worst sequel of all time for me, I cant think of another game that will go from GOAT to Ill never touch anything from this studio again including the first game. Is hard for one midia to actively make the previous entry worst by default. I can remember of only a few in other midia like Last Jedi and The last season of game of thrones, but in gaming is the only one I can think of because of the nature of this game (story/cinematic) ....

Cuckman already started showing his shtick in Uncharted 4 and super soldier Nadine kicking and outsmarting our protag. (And his brothers) ass everychance she could, Nathan came out alive of the game, and I hope Cuckman never touches uncharted again.

And than he unleashed all his culture bias in TLOU2 finally doing a game of his own, I wont enter in detalis its been discussed to death.

My personal opinion is that his storys are awful, with badly written characters, plot holes and woke specially modern feminist "Anita Sarkeesian" tropes. Afterall he is a woke/male feminist and dosent hide form anyone.

The studio on the other hand does great technical work with top of the art animations and mocap with good to great game play, but it dosent matter when the story is just shit and preachy.

 

[PatientGamer]

Naughty Dog is comfortably Sony's best development studio and Druckmann is at the helm of it. They're immensely more successful (not entirely because of him) since he took over. Sure it's cool to hate him because he killed Joel, made Abby hench and Ellie gay; but there's no doubt that he's one of the industry's finest in my eyes.

Druckmann and ND haven't released a game less than great-to-spectular since Uncharted 1 in 2007 so they have a 17-year track record of greatness that 99% of creative directors, devs and publishers could only dream of.

 

[EN250]

Well, since he's being climbing at the top of ND, their games are gotten worse for me, last great game was TLOU, Uncharted 4 was a disappointment (MP was great tho) and TLOU2 is trash and not for being "woke", the story is so tryhard stupid to force you to side and empathize with the character that kills Joel and it's so unapologetic about it, straight up throws Ellie under a bus to do so as well and also this Asian character that works like "Jiminy Cricket" and serves as the conscience for Mrs Olympia, because she has none and could act like a complete psychopath if not for Lev, that's what reviewers called a masterpiece, lmao

 

[Begleiter]

He's a deeply unlikeable man. The talent he didn't push out to sate his ego and need for control he crunched relentlessly and forced to watch Liveleak gore videos. It's likely that little of the talent there now was there when they were making their best stuff.

His direction for Uncharted 4 robbed Nate of some of his mystique and undermined the prior games, and the absence of any supernatural elements showed he didn't understand the material that inspired it. All because he wanted it to be more "grounded", because if it's not realistic it's not prestige. A completely joyless attitude.

The Last of Us Part 2 was one of the funniest games I'll never play, though. It was a truly special time from when those leaks came out into the first few weeks after release. Fat Geralt was the hero we really needed. I look forward to enjoying Intergalactic the same way.

Without a big change in leadership I'm not spending money on anything Naughty Dog makes.

 

[Hugare]

Havent played a bad game from Naughty Dog yet, only generational defining ones

Guy has directed all of the Uncharted games (expect Lost Legacy and Bend's), created the story for TLOU and directed it, made the sequel to critical acclaim and etc.

I dont love TLOU Part II as much as Part I, but I still recognize it as one of the best games of that gen. Even if you didnt like the game, he still only made one bad game in pretty much 20 years.

People were so hurt by Part II that Druckmann's directing is now up to discussion, while before Part II he was considered as one of the best directors working today.

I suspect that Halley Gross is the one to blame for the majority of stuff that I didnt like in Part II, but people oblivious to it blame Druckmann instead.

She was the co-writter in Part II, having never created a game before and only had worked for TV (Westworld, with "girl bosses" leads). Could be coincidence, but Part II dialogue was a huge downgrade compared to any past ND game.

She became really close to Neil, and is working on Intergalatic (she voices the fixer in the trailer), so I dont have high hopes for its dialogue quality.

 

[Gaiff]

Guy has directed all of the Uncharted games (expect Lost Legacy and Bend's), created the story for TLOU and directed it, made the sequel to critical acclaim and etc.

Did he direct the first one? Wikipedia says he was a writer, not a director.

 

[Hugare]

Did he direct the first one? Wikipedia says he was a writer, not a director.

Yeah, you're probably right. I posted it from my memory.

 

[Vick]

Ep3 from season 1 of TLOU was directed by him. This whole episode was dedicated to a gay romance, whereas in the game you blinked and you missed out on knowing that Bill loved sausage.

I wholeheartedly agree with the rest of your post, but Druckmann didn't direct Episode 3 of the TV series, Peter Hoar did.

 

[GymWolf]

Henning didn't wrote forspoken, i think it was already debunked like the 500 mil budget for halo infinity.

She is listed as writer with other people vut she didn't had much to do with the actual plot and characters.

 

[Chuck Berry]

Wow another ND related thread. It’s been far too long.

 

[Lambogenie]

Neutral.

ND is one of the best and most respected studios in the industry.
That doesn't happen if you're incompetent.

As for Druckmann himself, I couldn't give two shits about him personally. It's just a guy with a job.
Do a good job and I might buy and enjoy your game. If not, no harm done.

Mostly agree with this.

My view is we need to stop elevating and idolising directors/devs as we currently do (we need to stop idolising in general, crazy cringe world).

 

[dDoc]

I wholeheartedly agree with the rest of your post, but Druckmann didn't direct Episode 3 of the TV series, Peter Hoar did.

Might be wrong on that one, but was under the impression that he did. If not, I am sure he was very involved with the show's creation, so I still put it on him.

 

[Codeblew]

I hope their next project fails so they can get rid of Druckman. He is cancer. I feel bad for the tech people that carried him.

 

[Sanepar]

Tlou 2 is top 3 of all time for me and saved uncharted 4 being a dumb game.

 

[Heisenberg007]

Naughty Dog is comfortably Sony's best development studio and Druckmann is at the helm of it. They're immensely more successful (not entirely because of him) since he took over. Sure it's cool to hate him because he killed Joel, made Abby hench and Ellie gay; but there's no doubt that he's one of the industry's finest in my eyes.

Druckmann and ND haven't released a game less than great-to-spectular since Uncharted 1 in 2007 so they have a 17-year track record of greatness that 99% of creative directors, devs and publishers could only dream of.

Agreed. Just one correction - Ellie was always gay, even in TLOU, which a lot of folks give credit to Bruce. So, in a way, Bruce made Ellie gay lol.