Last of Us 2 - POTENTIAL SPOILERS. Poster Beware

[Thelonebillsfan]

Also a reminder that this game about the bleakness of the human condition was created through extreme acts of wanton labor exploitation, proving once and for all that Mr. Druckmann does not understand the concept of irony.

Plus he made his art team watch snuff films, gross.

Edited June 22, 2020 by Thelonebillsfan

[Thelonebillsfan]

1 hour ago, JBURGE said:

I will say I partly agree with this. I felt distraught when your character did some things that I just did not at all want to do. One review I read a week ago said that, and he nailed it. I finished the game and sat there thinking why did I do that? But "I" had no choice in it.

I feel the game was actually very effective in what they wanted to do, I am just not too happy with what they wanted to do. I don't think the story was bad, I just didn't like it, if that makes sense. 

Everything else about the game is incredible imo

Idk I feel like if you strip away the artifice of the just absurd production values, which are staggeringly impressive, the story itself is pretty generic and middle of the road. "Revenge is bad" is a well that's been mined so many times and this doesn't try and do anything new with it really at all. I'd qualify the core narrative as just its own plot construction, removed from the game elements, as just "okay".

[Apparition]

1 hour ago, Thelonebillsfan said:

Also I think Spec Ops handled it incredibly poorly too. There's no other choice other than to use the white phosphorus, the game literally does not continue on unless you do. There's no real agency there other than you can turn off the game before that I guess? But even then you're spending the game just murdering the **** out of people so it's another thing about these games that try and say something about humanity always falling *** first into being either ridiculous or gross because they make the video game parts super obvious and it makes an active detriment to the experience as a whole.

At least Spec Ops did what it did within the context of a genre that generally glorifies Western military aggression so it at least had the veneer of making a worthwhile political statement.

TLoU2 shoves a brutally Hobbesian worldview down your throat that's entirely stripped of that context and expects you to accept that its characters are making rational decisions when they're clearly not.

[JBURGE]

1 hour ago, Thelonebillsfan said:

Idk I feel like if you strip away the artifice of the just absurd production values, which are staggeringly impressive, the story itself is pretty generic and middle of the road. "Revenge is bad" is a well that's been mined so many times and this doesn't try and do anything new with it really at all. I'd qualify the core narrative as just its own plot construction, removed from the game elements, as just "okay".

Sure, which is why I am not saying it's terrible nor a good story,  I just didn't think it was bad. It was sadly not nearly as original as the first game, but I still enjoyed playing it. My biggest issues came in the last few hours, and then sitting after it was over reflecting. 

[BobbyPhil1781]

1 hour ago, Herbie_Hancock said:

Haven’t bought a game since RDR2. 
bought this because on Friday as the first was the best game I’ve ever played. 
haven’t played it yet but reading what people have to say is discouraging 

I mean, most reviews I see are good and I am thoroughly enjoying it but I'm only about 4.5 hours in. As most here suggest, it's later in the game that gets bad. I'll find out soon enough I guess.

[Apparition]

The Hobbesianism with which this game insists on bludgeoning us is made even more obnoxious by the fact that ITS OWN WORLD-BUILDING CONTRADICTS IT.
Here we have a peaceful, fully-functional (albeit imperfect) communist society where money has been abolished. But OMFG LOOK AT ALL THIS WANTON SENSELESS MURDER THAT'S GOING ON BECAUSE A COUPLE OF PEOPLE ARE INCAPABLE OF ACTING RATIONALLY.

Dude, Neil, buddy... It's not humanity that's irredeemably awful. It's just that YOUR values are trash and you're forcing us to play along with them. 

[Apparition]

Anyway, play A Plague Tale: Innocence instead.
Same core mechanics and a fair share of disturbing imagery, but it doesn't leave you hating yourself for having played it. 

[showtime]

7 hours ago, JBURGE said:

TLOU remastered was a PS+ game in October 2019, so you might be waiting a while if you do that lol. The remaster will probably be out in 2021 if you can wait that long. TLOU released June 2013 on PS3, the PS4 released Nov 2013, and the remaster came out July 2014. Off that timeline we may see this remaster next July/August or so

It's possible I may wait until 2021.  If I get a PS5 this year, I'll probably get Miles Morales at launch along with some other PS4 games that I have never played.  I haven't played first Last of Us game since launch back on the PS3, so I'd want to play that one again before TLOU2.

I just think because it was a summer release, it'll be extremely cheap around Chrismas.  Like around $30 or even less.

[Thelonebillsfan]

6 hours ago, Starless said:

The Hobbesianism with which this game insists on bludgeoning us is made even more obnoxious by the fact that ITS OWN WORLD-BUILDING CONTRADICTS IT.
Here we have a peaceful, fully-functional (albeit imperfect) communist society where money has been abolished. But OMFG LOOK AT ALL THIS WANTON SENSELESS MURDER THAT'S GOING ON BECAUSE A COUPLE OF PEOPLE ARE INCAPABLE OF ACTING RATIONALLY.

Dude, Neil, buddy... It's not humanity that's irredeemably awful. It's just that YOUR values are trash and you're forcing us to play along with them. 

I cannot get over that he makes a LITERAL post capitalist commune where it's explicitly stated that people work for communal good and within an hour it's like "Wow you sure are a bastard coated bastard with bastard filling Ellie, murdering all these people for no reason".

Also again, he made his devs watch actual snuff films for this, in a game where like... I'm sorry but the violence isn't even that graphic so it's TOTALLY UNNECESSARY ANYWAY! It's such an evil, stupid, peak smart dumb energy.

Throw a surface level reading of Hobbes and Burke into a stew, pepper it with some more total misunderstanding of Nietzsche, man do video games love doing that part even more than movies do, and you've got a total ******* tonal mess that NEVER understands where it's going or what it's trying to do.

Edited June 23, 2020 by Thelonebillsfan

[Thelonebillsfan]

The moral is just play indie games if you want good stories and compelling crafting of game mechanics around the trappings of the human condition and what it means.

Read: Play Disco Elysium you cowards I need a spiritual successor.

[Apparition]

2 minutes ago, Thelonebillsfan said:

The moral is just play indie games if you want good stories and compelling crafting of game mechanics around the trappings of the human condition and what it means.

Read: Play Disco Elysium you cowards I need a spiritual successor.

I'm gonna replay Disco Elysium in a little bit. One of the best narrative-driven games ever. 

[JBURGE]

14 hours ago, showtime said:

It's possible I may wait until 2021.  If I get a PS5 this year, I'll probably get Miles Morales at launch along with some other PS4 games that I have never played.  I haven't played first Last of Us game since launch back on the PS3, so I'd want to play that one again before TLOU2.

I just think because it was a summer release, it'll be extremely cheap around Chrismas.  Like around $30 or even less.

I did not replay TLOU before playing this one, I just watched an extended youtube summary video, because I've already played it twice and that's enough for me. In hindsight, I am pretty happy I didn't replay it before the 2nd. 

[Nex_Gen]

I was fine never having a sequel to this game. The story and writing in the first was one of the most complete and satisfying fictional stories I've ever come across in any movie or game. 

Of course, as a selfish human being, I was never going to fully operate against a continuation of the game, and let the hype build up over time. The story is still important to me. Only because of the first. If they managed to completely destroy the arc of it (based on the little things I've read), I'm not sure if I'm going to let them do it.

The DLC story they added for Elie already left a bad taste in my mouth.

 

Debating if I should pick this up now.

Edited June 23, 2020 by Nex_Gen

[Jakuvious]

On 6/22/2020 at 10:48 AM, JBURGE said:

I will say I partly agree with this. I felt distraught when your character did some things that I just did not at all want to do. One review I read a week ago said that, and he nailed it. I finished the game and sat there thinking why did I do that? But "I" had no choice in it.

I feel the game was actually very effective in what they wanted to do, I am just not too happy with what they wanted to do. I don't think the story was bad, I just didn't like it, if that makes sense. 

Everything else about the game is incredible imo

See, I think the first game did a really good job of it, because it gave you little to no choice as well, but everything felt in character, and even if perhaps morally wrong, it at minimum felt justifiable to the character you were playing as. So much of the second just doesn't feels like it makes sense, which makes it infuriating when you have no choice but to do it, AND the game then shames you for doing it. 

[Thelonebillsfan]

1 hour ago, Jakuvious said:

See, I think the first game did a really good job of it, because it gave you little to no choice as well, but everything felt in character, and even if perhaps morally wrong, it at minimum felt justifiable to the character you were playing as. So much of the second just doesn't feels like it makes sense, which makes it infuriating when you have no choice but to do it, AND the game then shames you for doing it. 

I think it's easier to write a story about a dad wanting to save the surrogate family he found after great trauma and keep it grounded and relatable to the player as a way to put them in that headspace. Than one about "revenge is bad" where it's like, you've quite literally murdered several villages worth of people at this point eventually no matter how furious, empty, and driven you are there's a point when you say "Okay this is clearly too far, I've clearly gone beyond reasonable limit here". But at no point does it allow you to stop and it constantly is reminding you what a piece of **** you are for not stopping like, if you gave me the choice to stop I ******* would have you monsters.

It never makes sense, and it never feels coherent. I think there is a way to maybe do a story like this (revenge stories are as old as stories themselves, but one about the bleakness of the human condition can maybe bedone right), but this is absolutely not the way to do it.

Edited June 24, 2020 by Thelonebillsfan