bishopcruz
Member
Whatever you say, bud.
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The Last of Us Pt II |OT| Oh Ellie...I think they should be terrified of you
Whatever you say, bud.
We as players sympathize with Joel number one because ND did a great job of making him a likable and compelling character and two because we play as him. If we played as a Firefly who has seen countless death and suffering and has killed and seen many of their friends and loved ones killed then we see a chance at a cure to at least get society back on it's feet and have some hope for a future we might think it is worth it if it came at the cost of one life.
Sure killing a fourteen year old girl is terrible but so is letting dooming the world to a hellscape. If a cure really did result from Ellie and they were able to successfully distribute it many more lives would be saved. That is potentially millions of people alive and not turned into clickers,
That being said almost none of those doctors would sacrifice their own kid which why we empathize with Joel. Ellie got him to open up and reactivate that part of his humanity that was long buried and she wasn't worth sacrificing for a world that took so much from him. If it was a kid he never met before though and somebody told him about it he would probably support the decision though.
This universe has very little one dimensional cardboard cutout villains. Almost everybody except for David and a group at the end of 2 is a multilayered person with a real reason for doing what they do even if we don't agree with it.
Sure killing a fourteen year old girl is terrible but so is letting dooming the world to a hellscape. If a cure really did result from Ellie and they were able to successfully distribute it many more lives would be saved. That is potentially millions of people alive and not turned into clickers,
That being said almost none of those doctors would sacrifice their own kid which why we empathize with Joel. Ellie got him to open up and reactivate that part of his humanity that was long buried and she wasn't worth sacrificing for a world that took so much from him. If it was a kid he never met before though and somebody told him about it he would probably support the decision though.
This universe has very little one dimensional cardboard cutout villains. Almost everybody except for David and a group at the end of 2 is a multilayered person with a real reason for doing what they do even if we don't agree with it.
Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
Well its true. Defend your proposition that:
What exactly is this supposed to mean? Please explain your thinking because to me its completely specious.
My assertion was that events form the basis of continuity, not perspective, and not perspective of the player.
The latter of which I disregard out of hand as the players perspective is extrinsic to the work itself. Because "perspective" in this context is a synonym for understanding, and people can intuit radically different things from the same text, even when ambiguity is not intended.
The former is just blatantly false though. Perspectives can shift, reversing perceptions within the same text. Its got nothing to do with continuity or sequelization.
bishopcruz
Member
Eh, Issac is a cardboard cutout, but he is barely in the game. The Seraphites are too, their backstory is interesting, in the gameplay itself, not so much. I'd even argue the WLF as a group was pretty awful when you look at what they actually did. And FEDRA? Shit, they are pretty much cutouts of inept military takeover as well.
I would like to think that if I was in the position of the Fireflies I would at least have the common decency to ask the 14-year-old girl for her consent and let her make her peace though, especially as she risked her life of relative safety to cross the country to help us. That is the true dick move of the fireflies, and why the end of the first isn't really much of a moral dilemma. Primarily because there is no reason given in the game or even hinted at for why they had to move with the speed they did.
And it wasn't almost none of those doctors, NONE of those doctors would do it. The Fireflies are a great group that shows what can happen to people with good intentions after 20 years of taking losses.
bishopcruz
Member
Lost most of a post so went back to rewrite it, and realized something, Your continued insistence on cherry-picking particular points and taking them out of context and then continuing to argue them while simply ignoring points that you find inconvenient.
YOU initially said that it was wrong to put the perspective of the first game on the second. But you made a fairly fatal flaw in that argument that I missed the first time. The perspective of the first game isn't Joel's perspective, not entirely. It is the perspective of the player and it uses Joel as an avatar. We have a third-person view of what happens. It is through him that we experience the game. Ellie as well to a lesser extent.
TLoU2 takes great pains to play with the player based on their perspective of the first game. Joel was a well-loved character, one who went through a hero's journey and emerged a better man. Even if you disagree with the latter, the well-loved aspect is irrefutable. And we have a perspective outside of that of any particular character. We know the journey that Joel went through, and we can see his changes clearer than he can himself. The same for Ellie. Because of that perspective, Naughty Dog decided to use it against the players (in a manner of speaking) in order to elicit an emotional response. If you did not care about Joel then the effect of the game of golf would not be as emotionally draining. What he did, and our reactions to it set up the opening tragedy.
So when it gives us Abby's motivations, players still have the perspective of the previous game. We are given additional context, but it and everything else that happens to both her and Ellie is informed by that perspective. It doesn't vanish simply because the character shifted. And we can make moral judgments based on those perspectives as well. If not, what is the point?
So are we done here, or are you going to pick out more minutiae and ignore the broader arguments of the previous post?
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igivehugs2nakedwomen
Banned
So if someone killed your father and you caught up to them 15 years later what would you do? I think this point of view is being missed by some. A young woman lost her father because of the actions of one man. The impact of that murder was probably amplified by the fact that this murder also killed any chance for a cure that could have saved millions of lives. Sure I understand why Joel did what he did, love is a very powerful emotion. I also understand why Abby did what she did for exactly the same reasons.
bishopcruz
Member
It depends? Was my dad trying to murder a 14-year-old girl when he got killed?
Seriously, though, what I WOULDN'T do is torture a man for hours to get my rocks off.
igivehugs2nakedwomen
Banned
Here's the thing about that 14 year old girl, she agreed to sacrifice her life so it was never murder. Joel murdered someone's father for love and Someone murdered Joel for love.
Perspective.
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Danjin44
The nicest person on this forum
One thing in my opinion would have made it better if Abby's father was the one against idea killing Ellie and believes it needed more testing before deciding that while Marlene was the one pushing him to do it, would have made Joel killing Abby's father more tragic and Abby's revenge more justifiable. I mean in the first game Marlene was desperate and she was super excited finding Ellie and Joel but it was weird to see Marlene having the second thought about it in Part 2.
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PanzerAzel
Member
The world is already a hellscape, civilization has long past collapsed into barbarity and tribalism.
This whole ongoing debate is fascinating, but wholly irrelevant, as the attainment of a cure would be negated by the utter collapse of any infrastructure and logistical capability necessary to effect it to any degree that would “save” anything. There’s no governments, no trade, no oversight, no industry. Only corruption and the instinct to survive at all costs. How would it be distributed? Horseback? How would it be manufactured en masse to have any real impact? Even if you could, you would have people killing left and right for it like the Holy Grail.
To hold the Fireflies desire for a cure to a higher ideal past their own ambitions is the height of naïveté and foolishness. They’d use it as nothing but a power play, and it’s always annoyed me that Joel never defended his (correct) decision to Ellie in saving her by asking her if she would’ve willingly sacrificed herself not for humanity, not as a selfless act as she naively, in her youth, believed, but one that would only end up serving others’ selfish desires for control and power.
Because that’s the only thing the Fireflies were interested in, and if not, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway as the state of the world would’ve precluded their ideal regardless. A cure at that point was long past useful to serve anything.
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Danjin44
The nicest person on this forum
And let’s think about it logically here, creating vaccines takes years, man power, resource, and lots of money even for a government, how the hell can anyone expect a small group of Fireflies create large amount of vaccine and distributed it in order to “save humanity”?
Roronoa Zoro
Gold Member
After he saved her life she could have at least asked him questions or said who she was. Hell ANY of her friends could have. Though that whole thing running into him and being chased back to her friends by a horde was already the most convenient thing ever
Roronoa Zoro
Gold Member
Even people who hate the story like me have been saying from the beginning that gameplay and graphics are incredible. Like in the angry joe review they constantly bring it up
Explosive Zombie
Banned
Tommy tells her Joel is Joel right after they escape danger, she knew exactly who he was. Why would her friends ask him anything? She wasn't torturing him for information, they knew who he was and what he did. "Most convenient thing ever" - It's why the story even exists, though. Like... okay, resolving a story with convenient circumstances is poor writing but most stories are borne out of convenience... you guys know this right? Like the story is radically changed if the patrol they find isn't Joel's, it's radically changed if it's not winter and there isn't a horde... just like Star Wars is radically changed if the droids don't land on Tattooine because they happen to be near Tattooine. Like, legit think of any big story ever written and tell me the circumstances that begin the story have no convenience or coincidence to them.
Roronoa Zoro
Gold Member
I'm saying once he proves that he's not a shitbag maybe at least say something other than "guess"
Hell wouldn't it make for better revenge to say "remember the doctor you killed in cold blood? When you doomed humanity!?". If that's what she was going for. Or ask Ellie who TF she was afterwards and why she cared so much.
Explosive Zombie
Banned
Abby constantly proves SHE isn't a shitbag but the average person who hates her wanted her dead for killing Joel, the average person who hates her didn't care about her reasons or justifications or if she was a good person otherwise. Lots of people, even forced to play as Abby refuse to empathize with her, but we're mad she doesn't empathize with Joel because he saved her? It's the whole point of the game! If Joel hadn't saved her what reason is their to question her actions besides loving Joel? If Abby doesn't spare Ellie and Tommy because they're "innocent" what reason is there to believe she's any less the "monster" she views Joel as? Abby had nothing but contempt for the man who killed her father, to the point that she wouldn't even recognize he'd helped her selflessly... just like some of you have nothing but contempt for Abby and even when she does good things you consider it the game being manipulative and reject it, how are you not being Abby in her time of getting revenge? How are you not exhibiting the same mindset?
I don't really get what telling him adds, or asking Ellie things adds, either.
Is Ellie asking Abby's friends why they'd help someone like her? Why they hated Joel? Revenge has blinded our dual protagonists but you play as one protagonist while they want revenge and another after getting it, that's why Abby's story can be portrayed more positively and contrasted with Ellie's, because like Joel saving Abby we get to see her as a good person after her monstrous act and if you can't empathize with her because of what she did asking her to empathize with Joel is a stretch, isn't it? After all, people wanted to see Abby dead for killing a video game character, not a real person, Abby wanted revenge for her FATHER.
Roronoa Zoro
Gold Member
Perspective and the way one empathizes are the two big reasons
Explosive Zombie
Banned
reasons for what?
Roronoa Zoro
Gold Member
Perspective is why questions don't need asked for us
The way they try to make you empathize is what holds people back from empathizing. It's hamfisted
Explosive Zombie
Banned
You're asking why Abby doesn't ask Joel questions you know the answers to, though.
I'd like to know what makes it hamfisted in your mind.
Keihart
Member
Marlene was kind of an aunt for Ellie, so it makes sense.
For doctor good shoes she is an stranger, i think it works better like this.
There was no point in Joel asking why, he had done dirty way too many people by that point, Abby didn't need to have such a cool dad for her revenge to make sense.
And for all we know, Abby might have got her speech anyway but out of camera, there was no need to show that tho.
"why don't you say whatever speech you've got rehearsed and get this over with"
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Roronoa Zoro
Gold Member
giving her dad a happy go lucky flashback of him saving an animal to show how perfect he is. Have Abby get to play fetch with the dog. Have her act perfect towards all her terrible friends (other than the weird random sex scene)
Explosive Zombie
Banned
Why is any of that hamfisted? Should she have beaten her dog, should her dad have been a raging alcoholic surgeon who's trying to save the world? Should she have hated her friends? I don't get it.
Roronoa Zoro
Gold Member
don't take this to the other extreme. They keep trying to make her seem perfect after sucking all the personality out of Ellie because "oooooo Ellie is still obsessed with revenge and abby got hers" and they want you to like Abby so they give her a dog who Ellie just killed and make her dad perfect to try and make you dislike Joel (well on the surface but he's still an asshole who spends one day thinking about it before deciding to kill a girl). I was rolling my eyes so hard when they make you start playing fetch with it
Explosive Zombie
Banned
This isn't a nuanced view of what you're shown, where Abby is actually kind of the bad girl of her group who tends to go too far and Owen is more of the good guy than she is. It ignores that if the situation were reversed people could argue Ellie's relationship with Dina, Jesse, Tommy, etc. is "too perfect" at "hamfistedly" humanizing someone on a revenge quest. Both characters lose everything because of their revenge quests, one because they succeeded and one in attempting to do so. If Ellie is portrayed worse then ask yourself why she's the one who relents and ultimately doesn't take revenge on Abby? Abby liking her dog is like... so weird to complain about, but it has more purpose than simply humanizing Abby, anyways, the point is every NPC isn't just an NPC... they have a backstory and people who care about them, even dogs. That's why people call out the names of your victims, the game is all about humanizing EVERYONE to help contextualize the horror of the violence both parties undertake.
bishopcruz
Member
That never happened. Play the ending of part 1 again, and maybe read up about how consent works.
Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
First sophistry and now cherry picking. So many excuses...
My last couple of posts solely focused on a specific issue which I believe to be key, and I hoped that by addressing them we could actually salvage something productive and enlightening from the discussion.
Yes, this is correct and I stand by it, its the defining reason why I reject your whole position.
Yes, that's what perspective is genius! A perspective is the angle of address between viewer and object, the object in case is the game story and its events and the angle is the player-character we vicariously experience said things through.
Hence, same events but different pc gets you a new perspective. Even within the same game. i.e. Nier/Automata
Basically the first game is Joel's perspective entirely. The only deviation from this is short stretch where he's incapacitated and Ellie goes hunting and encounters David and his cannibalistic group. A scenario with minimal overlap to the rest of the game as it doesn't really show a different side to what we already know about anything, and the two lead characters barely interact during it.
From an overarching narrative perspective it serves a couple of functions; first and foremost its an exercise in showing how much Joel cares for Ellie at this point, and in so doing how far he'll go to that end (i.e. torturing captives for intel). Its largely foreshadowing of the climax of the story in the segments where he's the PC.
The sequences where we control Ellie show her to be tough and resourceful, first in the deer hunt, the initial negotiation with David, all the way through to the boss-fight that closes out the sequence and the chapter.
Bottom line though, the pc active is always the perspective, the only way this can be broken is when the entire scene cuts away to a location where that character isn't or includes information that the active character could not be aware of at that point.
No it doesn't. This is another of your baseless assertions we are supposed to take as fact.
He's pretty well liked for a murdering, torturing, survivalist with a tragic back-story. But hero? No fucking way. Protagonist and anti-hero is what he is, and as to him emerging a better man that's highly debatable, especially given the ambiguous note the first game ends on.
So what. Not everyone has the same degree of emotional attachment. Some players will likely not even have experienced the first game so it has to stand on its own as a narrative
That I, a self-admitted admirer of the first game, am disgreeing with you just shows how bogus this line of argument is.
No, as I've already proven the only time the first game deviates from Joel's perspective is during the Ellie sections where he's incapacitated, and those sections shed no light onto Joel's character at all.
For all the changes he undergoes over the course of the story, becoming "a better man" is not really one of them. He learns to reconnect a bit better emotionally (although clearly there is a bond with Tess, as shown during her death), and manages to adapt his grief for Sarah into a need to protect Ellie.
He rediscovers the joy of fatherhood but his final acts in the story are still shooting an unarmed woman in the face and lying to the person he just "saved" without her consent.
As written the end of TLOU was intended to be morally ambiguous. So saying that your moral formulation is the only correct interpretation is utter horse-shit in every dimension.
Get it through your thick head that not everyone shares your takeaways from the first game, including the people who wrote it.
**SECOND GAME SPOILERS AHEAD**
It gives us 12 or so hours of Ellie's perspective first, including flashbacks. Or didn't you notice?
How is that not enough to orientate yourself to the tone, outlook, and character perspective of the second game, and why are you still hanging on to the first? This is not rational.
If Joel's death and Ellie's reaction to it weren't a powerful inciting moment, there would be no story. You don't need to know anything about the first game to get the idea that Abby and the WLF group are the villains of the piece, because its how they appear from Ellie's and hence the player's perspective.
When later we get to see Abby and Salt Lake crew's perspective, then we get the opportunity to revise our thinking as to whether they are really as irredeemable as they first appear.
This is what normal people do, they adjust their thinking as new facts emerge and are integrated into the big picture of events. In your case however....
In the sequel the perspective is deliberately fixed to be that of whichever character the player is controlling at that point in the story. We only get Ellie flashbacks when Ellie is the active pc, same with Abby. This is to emphasize that what the game is offering is competing perspectives on the same sequence of events.
The problem is basically that you are unable or unwilling to accommodate different perspectives because you are shipping so hard for "Joel+Ellie forever". What's worse you don't even seem to have understood the first game's ending, and how it left a dangling question as to whether Ellie believed Joel or not.
This question is picked-up in the opening moments of the sequel as Joel lays out what happened in Salt Lake to Tommy.
I'm done. Because after all this yak its apparent that you're just dumb. You talk a lot but basically its all about your upset that you didn't get a soft-serve fanwank sequel that lionizes Joel because in your mind he's what TLOU is all about.
Its amazing, in a game that offers two diametrical opposed competing perspectives, the only one that actually matters to you is the previous game (and not its DLC expansion which at least shares Ellie as pc) pushing Joel up front.
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bishopcruz
Member
OK buddy. One more accusation without evidence, and an inability to understand the ending of the first game outside of the surface level. You also continue to assume motivation as to why someone doesn't like the game because you cannot see past your emotional response to the second.
You are projecting your dislike for the fact that someone could not like a game you adore, one that is flawed in its storytelling on several objective levels. You have no idea what parts of the game I like or do not like, and it becomes clearer with each post that you never read what the actual arguments made are and argue what you think they are instead.
The perfect example of this is:
Because this never came up. Never once did I say that. It is again sophistry on your part and creating arguments that were never made. And the second sentence there is patently false.
For all your talk of perspective, you (and you are not alone in this, I have seen it happen elsewhere) cannot see the perspective of those who dislike the game. You assign a simplistic motive, and then argue against that. If you were a student in a debate class of mine I'd give you points for enthusiasm and several marks against for not arguing the matter at hand.
It was Naughty Dog's job to get players to buy in to Abby, and for a sizable part of the audience, they failed and failed rather spectacularly.
Druckmann himself said he stuctured the game as he did on purpose, to outrage the player early on and then to have them outraged again when they are forced to take on the role of Joel's killer. And he was surprised that they got the level of hate they did for Abby. He also thought he could bring people around, and had he been a better writer he could have probably done it for more people. But his ambition outweighed his ability,
Entroyp
Member
These would have been pretty much my scores as well. Well, maybe 8 for gameplay because looting got really old and boring towards the end.
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The world already is a hellscape in the game but some people are desperate to change that and if you don't have hope then what it is the point of living. Right or wrong to some people in that universe the Fireflies represent hope. Even if it is a pipe dream they offer the small chance that maybe one day the cordyceps infection can be stopped and society can be put back together. In their eyes Joel took all that hope away and the world will remain a darwinistic fight for survival where you are either a predator or prey.
Another thing is that it is clear that Abby's dad and her had a great relationship. He seemed to be a very loving father towards her plus the other fireflies were like an extended family. This was her life and all she had known and Joel ripped that from her. I many ways he ruined her life and that loving father was on the floor with his throat slit. Her hatred of Joel was natural. ND killed off a fictional video game daddy and a good portion of people want his head so how do you expect somebody to react to finding their real daddy dead on the floor.
bishopcruz
Member
Why do people keep posting the reasons that Abby wanted Joel dead as if it is some kind of revelation? It isn't rocket science. Even before the reveal is is OBVIOUS that these are former fireflies because the game just spent the opening of the game reminding you that Joel killed a bunch of them to save Ellie.
Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
No I just debated you because I thought your arguments were meritless, and you followed up by doubling down with even more worthless rot when challenged.
At no point have I said the game is flawless, its just that in my judgement its flaws lie elsewhere to where you think they are. Because, to reiterate once more, I find your arguments lacking in any sort of merit or substance.
I've stated my case, and tried to point out your errors in good faith. Because regardless of how abrasive my tone was, I really truly hoped that discussion would deepen my appreciation and understanding of the game the way numerous of my previous interactions on this topic have.
But no, you have failed to convince me of anything more enlightening than talking with you was just a waste of time and energy.
bishopcruz
Member
Ok.
Lokimaru
Member
Gotta say Playing through the second half of the game is making me feel like a Dick for the carnage I laid down in the First Half. Yeah it was justifiable but still. Even found myself self saying sorry lately when I have to kill someone whilst in the first Half I was cracking jokes while taking people out. Funny what a change in perspective can do.
Danjin44
The nicest person on this forum
Marlene in the first game was desperate, she was losing men left and right and putting all her hope on Joel getting Ellie to Fireflies and Part 2 suddenly having second thought really weird, doesn't that mean all she sacrificed is for nothing? Abby's father in other hand is a doctor, he should try to do more testing before deciding for something like this and most important part asking patient's permission before he do surgery on her. I mean in the flashback we see him saving wounded animal but he was so eager to sacrifice the little girl without asking her permission and he himself is a father, it just I found his behavior very weird and out of character based on the flashbacks we saw of him.
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Keihart
Member
I think it helps to build the characters as more than narrative devices.
If the doctor was good through and through, it would be unbelievable because nobody is good all the way to the core. So his flaw it's that he sees this mission about making a vaccine as the end that justifies the means. The flaw makes him human.
In the case of Marlene, she already was portrayed as being willing to sacrifice people for the cause and being desperate so her being reluctant about Ellie paints her as more human too, because she is not a mustache twirling villain anymore and it makes sense taking into consideration their relationship.
This is consistent with most characters that get enough time in the game, either trough on screen development or notes. There is a care into building characters into more than one note characters, every one of them with their own morals and flaws.
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bishopcruz
Member
Marlene's dialog is the best part of the entire flrefly scenario. As stupid as the whole thing of doing it immediately is, the way she talks is just top notch. Listen to what she says. Every single thing is a rationalization as to why it is ok. She makes it about HER sacrifice, not Ellie's. Her recorder does the same thing, she talks about how this is in line with looking after Ellie, how Marlene herself didn't really have a choice because the doctors would do it anyway, then she walks it back, saying it isn't about her, or about Ellie. The best line is that "there is no other choice" which is the ultimate rationalization. She is desperate to get Joel, the only other person who KNOWS Ellie to buy in, to agree with her in order to absolve her of what she has agreed to.
It continues again when she confronts him at the elevator. Ellie will die out in the world anyway, she'll get raped, or eaten by a clicker, or anything. Why not spare her that and save the world. She couches her act of evil as an act of good because she can't actually live with what she is doing otherwise. It really is a great bit of dialog showing how people can allow acts that they know are morally wrong.
As bad as the overall structure of TLoU2 is, it does have moments that shine, or link back well to the original game. Dr. Jerry's arguments to Marlene are very similar to the same ones she uses with Joel. He want's HER to buy in, he says it himself. He wants to absolve himself of the responsibility of murdering a girl for the chance at a cure. Marlene doesn't want to give it to him, but he keeps pushing. The one who does is Abby, she gives him enough to justify his heinous acts. His recorder in part 1 does the same.
Fbh
Gold Member
Finally finished it.
Sadly that was a really disappointing sequel. I love TLOU 1 in large parts because I think it reaches a really great balance between story and gameplay, but this time around I found it hard to care or even enjoy the story for large stretches of the game, and even the gameplay feels like it was stretched thin by a run time that was 5 to 10 hours too long.
Joel is a great character, and his relationship and interactions with Ellie are what made TLOU special (it wasn't the generic zombie apocalypse setting). If you are going to kill him so early into the sequel you need to have new characters and relationships that are just as engaging, and I think they simply aren't there. It's made crystal clear by the fact that at least IMO the few scenes with him and Ellie that we get through flashbacks are so much better than anything else in the game.
The Abby part was completely uninteresting and boring, you not only take out Joel early on but then you also take out Ellie for half of the game and you have basically taken what made TLOU stand out from the average zombie movie/game story and replaced it with something worse. This entire part felt less like a great story that ND wanted to tell and more like they decided early on that they wanted a new strong female character and a trans kid in the sequel and this was the way they came up with to mash them into the story.
A disappointing end to a disappointing gen by ND.
It's a real shame, their tech is still top tier but between a disappointing Uncharted 4 and now this, in the past 7 years they went from one of the devs that had me the most hyped about "next gen" to a B tier studio.
Overall I'd still give it a 7.5 or an 8. But I expected so much more to the next gen sequel to one of my favorite Ps3 games, specially after waiting so long for it.
Sadly that was a really disappointing sequel. I love TLOU 1 in large parts because I think it reaches a really great balance between story and gameplay, but this time around I found it hard to care or even enjoy the story for large stretches of the game, and even the gameplay feels like it was stretched thin by a run time that was 5 to 10 hours too long.
Joel is a great character, and his relationship and interactions with Ellie are what made TLOU special (it wasn't the generic zombie apocalypse setting). If you are going to kill him so early into the sequel you need to have new characters and relationships that are just as engaging, and I think they simply aren't there. It's made crystal clear by the fact that at least IMO the few scenes with him and Ellie that we get through flashbacks are so much better than anything else in the game.
The Abby part was completely uninteresting and boring, you not only take out Joel early on but then you also take out Ellie for half of the game and you have basically taken what made TLOU stand out from the average zombie movie/game story and replaced it with something worse. This entire part felt less like a great story that ND wanted to tell and more like they decided early on that they wanted a new strong female character and a trans kid in the sequel and this was the way they came up with to mash them into the story.
A disappointing end to a disappointing gen by ND.
It's a real shame, their tech is still top tier but between a disappointing Uncharted 4 and now this, in the past 7 years they went from one of the devs that had me the most hyped about "next gen" to a B tier studio.
Overall I'd still give it a 7.5 or an 8. But I expected so much more to the next gen sequel to one of my favorite Ps3 games, specially after waiting so long for it.
TheAssist
Member
Only a few hours in. One of the best things so far is the fact that the loading times after you die is only like 5 seconds.
How do they do that? Its one of my most hated things in games, that even if you die 5 meters away from your spawn point, they load the entire level for a minute, but somehow there are ways to do it better
.
Other than that the game feels a bit drawn out. Every section is a bit too long. The gameplay itself is fun, but after scavenging the 3rd house and seeing 2 or 3 more to come I already feel a big sigh. Its tooo much to "explore". Also there is nothing really happening in the story right now. Its practically a goose chase. Maybe it gets better down the road.
I think after this, ND should do something new. New genre, new IP. They made 4,5 Uncharteds and 2,5 The Last of Us's. Thats enough story based TPS for a decade.
They should take their strenghts in character writing and game design and apply it something new.
How do they do that? Its one of my most hated things in games, that even if you die 5 meters away from your spawn point, they load the entire level for a minute, but somehow there are ways to do it better
. Other than that the game feels a bit drawn out. Every section is a bit too long. The gameplay itself is fun, but after scavenging the 3rd house and seeing 2 or 3 more to come I already feel a big sigh. Its tooo much to "explore". Also there is nothing really happening in the story right now. Its practically a goose chase. Maybe it gets better down the road.
I think after this, ND should do something new. New genre, new IP. They made 4,5 Uncharteds and 2,5 The Last of Us's. Thats enough story based TPS for a decade.
They should take their strenghts in character writing and game design and apply it something new.
