Board 8 > **SPOILER TOPIC** The Last of Us Part 2 **SPOILERS**

(+) Yeah! (+)

This sheep segment.

I can't.

The streamer is so done with all of this mundane stuff. Ellie PTSD stuff is kinda uh I dunno. It doesn't seem particularly well done. It's awkward.

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Ahahahaha even Tommy becomes a total asshole. What the fuck. Tells Ellie that she promised to go kill Abby and now that he heard where she is because someone described her as a girl "built like an ox" that Ellie needs to go kill her now.

Fuck. Dina is the only one in this entire story that doesn't seem like a total asshole, and she just seems kind of annoying and not too interesting.

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Ellie: Murders some dude who was going to kidnap her and begs her to let him live if he tells her where Abby is, and she murders him anyway.

Also Ellie: Does not murder the woman who killed her surrogate father and brutally beat her and her pregnant girlfriend and killed more of her friends.

Revenge bad

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THE AI!

A human just walked through two zombies that didn't even attempt to go after him.

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Woah, the ending is RUSHED.

Like it feels like they put more time and effort into the farm house bullshit than they did the rest of this game. They just fucking warp speed through everything to get to the ending. And there's no context between Abby breaking her and Dina to the ending of the game that even give a single reason why Ellie would decide not to kill Abby after all of this.

This is just so poorly done, and it's even worse with the full context. She's not wrestling with the idea of letting Abby go at all before this. She's full speed ahead to murder her. It's SO BAD.

The streamer was so excited he finally gets the chance to kill Abby. You have to slice her with a knife like 30 times before anything, which was skipped in the leaked ending. Somehow Ellie has a really hard time killing Abby who has been malnourished and hanging from a pillar for god knows how long. The fight is actually more satisfying because you get to actually fight with her.

HE IS SO OFFENDED ELLIE DIDN'T KILL ABBY! Abby is floating away on her boat and he goes "What the fuck is happening?" He sees that she absolutely lost her two fingers and just set down the controller and went "I'm done." He's so angry Abby didn't get any sort of comeuppance.

All he could do was laugh at it. He's shocked that the game ends how it does.

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How does he take the end bit and the part with Ellie giving Joel shit about the first game's ending?

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He laughed at it.

This touching moment and he just laughed, exasperated by it. And while the final scene is a close zoom in on a guitar, he just laughs and looks so confused.

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It's so weird though.

You have two last scenes with Joel. The first is the weird dance scene from the E3 thing where Ellie says Dina smells like trash and Joel defends Ellie from being called the d-word and makes him go away and Ellie basically goes "FUCK YOU DAD! YOU CAN'T DEFEND ME LIKE THAT!" And the only other flashback after that is the one we get where Ellie keeps giving Joel shit.

They invent a whole new group of enemies in the last like hour of the game that randomly kidnaps Abby and they have a backstory of kidnapping people because ??????? and they hang them from pillars because ??????? None of this is explained. Maybe it is in some stuff you pick up, but the streamer was so done by this point he didn't bother. And it all feels so rushed. They didn't take their time with it. I almost feel like it was added last minute, or maybe they wanted to have more and Druckmann had a skeleton crew of people he didn't scare out of his company left.

I don't know. It's all totally bizarre.

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...Sorry, how are people playing this blind?

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i've watched almost the entire thing now.

..here's some...interesting things...

Joel is only in the game to give Ellie motivation for the revenge plot (he dies)
Jessie is only in the game because Dina needed to be pregnant for Ellie's love story. (he dies)
Tommy is just there to be constantly reminding Ellie to stay on the revenge plot. (doesn't die but might as well be dead.)
Owen is only in the game to give Abby motivation for the revenge plot. (he dies)

these are the only male characters that have the slightest bit of relevance to the story. and they're barely even characters. just tools to get the plot moving.

also

Joel acted completely out of character on top of the situation that led to his death relying on a series of lightning bolt striking a dude in the head odds coincideces happening all in a row

at some point Abby has a literal Shadow the Hedgehog edgelord level reply when threatening to Kill Ellie's girlfriend. Ellie tells her she's pregnant, Abby takes a glance at her, smirks and says "good!"

the writting in this game is just abysmal. its just being masked by the (admitedly mostly great) performances from the voice actors, and the (again, great) cinematography in the cutscenes.

PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

No interactions between Joel and Ellie at all in this game. Not even one.

Oh wow another false claim who'd have thought

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pezzicle posted...

Oh wow another false claim who'd have thought

You've been sitting and waiting to pounce on this gotcha haven't you

They're all flashback interactions which he has already said is all that happens, no interactions in the events of the game itself

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The most frustrating thing about all this somehow manages to not be the game itself, but the people "defending" the game by claiming we just don't like how the game has LGBTQ+ characters in prominent roles. To be so offending and ignorant at the same time... man.

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Leonhart4 posted...

You've been sitting and waiting to pounce on this gotcha haven't you

They're all flashback interactions which he has already said is all that happens, no interactions in the events of the game itself

No I have not. I haven't engaged with this topic since he completely ignored my last post.

And no, they aren't all flashbacks. I'm playing the game right now. They literally have an interaction in the first 15 minutes of the game

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You wanna talk about what you don't like about a game, of course.

I don't expect anyone to like the game. I'm only like 2 hours into it, I have no idea what my opinion about it is going to be

But I've now engaged with two different things this person has said that are flat out false, and that, to me, really diminishes a lot of this topic. You can disagree all you want, that's fine with me. I'll leave you all to your echo chamber

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all right see ya

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Yeah, they have a scene in the prologue. I liked it too!

Of course, that being inaccurate doesn't suddenly mean the other points echoed weren't valid just because you didn't really listen to them.

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Him getting one thing wrong doesnt really change that people have seen the rest of the game now and everything else appears to be right.

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3.4 user score on metacritic

Sorry, I'll amend that.

* In the game, they have one very brief scene in the game with Joel in the present before he is horribly, gruesomely murdered 1/16th into the game.

I feel very bad that he had pointed out this critical flaw that ruins my entire analysis of why this game is peak garbage hack writing that fails to teach the very simple theme that it touts as peak philosophy.

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I skipped a couple pages, did anyone point out that they actually altered preview footage/demos for the press to feature Joel in scenes where hes actually dead in the real game? Druckmann really thought he was the next Kojima with this fucking game. Too bad not one thing from this Philosophy and Ethics 101 course will be looked back on with the reverence MGS2 receives for its prescient social commentary

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Yes, but not only that they used Joel's older model in preview footage in the flashback stuff to make people think he was actually going to be around in the present.

And during an E3 interview, Druckmann told IGN that Ellie was the only playable character.

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quote from egm review

(...) quite possibly the best stealth-action gameplay realized to date.

This is a possibly the worst take i've seen. and it doesn't even involve the dumpster fire writting. i'm now convinced the people reviewing this are ultra casuals who play nothing outside these "cinematic experience" games.

So far what I'm seeing from random people who didn't get spoiled is that they are immediately outraged they need to play as Abby, citing all the horrible shit she did for why they don't want to play as her. One guy I briefly watched just sat down the controller and paused it, in disbelief. And then by the time that he got to a part where Abby is just casually walking around her STADIUM HOME with air conditioning, lunch room, etc., he picked up a plate and set it aside and said he was done and that he was horribly bored and didn't want to play as this character.

I can't wait to see more reception from unknowing people.

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Sharinnegan posted...

i'm now convinced the people reviewing this are ultra casuals who play nothing outside these "cinematic experience" games.

To be fair this is arguably the core demographic of The Last of Us to begin with. Uncharted is ND's offering for people who care about gameplay also being good.

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Is it true the character that fucks Abby is Druckmann's mocaped self insert?

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No. It seemed like it at first. The one that looks shockingly like Druckmann is Manny, who spits on Joel after he's dead.

Owen is Abby's boyfriend who fucks her after he calls her out for being a brutal bloodthirsty psycho after she calls him a pussy.

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PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

The one that looks shockingly like Druckmann is Manny, who spits on Joel after he's dead.

Oh that's somehow worse lol

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I have to wonder how much of this game's apparent sloppiness storytelling-wise is also due to the fact that it has three credited directors. Any time you see more than two it's usually not a great sign for any project. For reference on all of modern ND's best games (UC2, UC4, TLoU1) Bruce Straley was the consistent rock in the director's chair with either Amy Hennig (UC2) or Druckmann (UC4, TLoU1) co-directing. Looking at how projects have gone without him though it's pretty plain to see he probably had a solid grasp of the reins on all three of those.

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Manny is also totally unlikable and a prick but is besties with Abby and he gets killed by an NPC sniper out of nowhere and someone goes "What about him?" and Abby says "He doesn't matter." before they all run off.

I would think that they purposefully went out of their way to make you hate Abby if I didn't know any better, because every decision concerning her just makes her like the worst person.

She doesn't even grieve her boyfriend's death for more than 30 seconds before grinning like a maniac at the idea that she can murder whoever killed him in revenge.

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OK - so hear me out. This is just a thought experiment:

What if this game featured "Noel" and "Kelly" instead? I was thinking about Apollo Justice and how 50% of that game's problems get solved immediately if Hobo Nick is a completely new character instead of Phoenix Wright. How much is this game improved if it's set in the same world as TLOU but doesn't feature Joel and Ellie? Obviously this means that Abby's dad isn't the doctor from the first game, but is instead a brand new character. Maybe Noel is a former firefly who killed Abbys dad trying to escape or something, whatever.

Honestly, and I'm mostly interested in Biscuit's take on this - how does this affect your opinion of the game?

You need to make a lot more improvements to make that work.

First of which is to give significant time with theoretical Noel and Kelly. One problem with this game is that a lot of their intended impact is lost if you never played the first game. They assume you went through that journey already to make Joel's death have meaning. So you can't just kill Noel less than 2 hours in. It doesn't matter what flashbacks you have, a lot of the impact is lost since you don't spend time with Joel and Ellie. And the flashbacks you get range from legitimately sweet moments that are kind of non-sequitors to Ellie is an asshole to Joel, especially the last two flashbacks.

The other issue is that if you have Kelly act like Ellie does, she's not very likable. A complaint is that people say they stop liking Ellie in this game because of how she acts, so if you have Kelly here being awful then you're just not going to have that same patience with her as you do with Ellie. It's a failure of writing on all accounts because they don't establish enough in this game why you should be invested with present Joel and Ellie. If they made new characters, this game would be a boring, forgettable mess that nobody would remember except for pseudo-intellectuals or people who like interacting with dirty plates in their games to tout as a deep, engaging story.

Joel and Ellie are both interesting and play off each other well, which is why the first game excelled. That's why in this game when you mostly play as Ellie alone or with Dina, who is supposed to be her love interest but it's so flat, it fails.

So it doesn't make it much better with new characters. It just makes it less offensive.

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I got this game early on because I don't live in the USA, finished it today. My take on this game is this: It has great graphics, environments and characters look better than in TLOU, if all you want is virtual tourism in which you go around and explore and skip all cut scenes, it's perfect. It has great gameplay especially stealth gameplay although if you compare it to say Assassin's Creed, it's still not as good. It has very good music, its soundtrack is composed by Gustavo Santaolalla, same composer as TLOU.

This leaves the story department which is what most people have a problem with. The story goes something like this, Jole who is living with his brother Tommy explains to him what happened in TLOU1, then one day a muscular woman tortured and murdured him because he killed her pediatric surgeon father in TLOU. Then Ellie and Tommy fights muscular woman's group called something something Liberation Front. You also get to play as muscular woman, her plot is most likely inspired by AC2 but more contrived. In conclusion, not everyone would like the story, there are also some graphic contents in the game which may not be to everyone's liking, but if you look at it as an artistic unintentional dark comedy with great stealth gameplay and beautiful scenery, then it becomes a somewhat great game.

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Oh, wow. I realized the one guy I was watching play beat the whole game in 17 hours. But he didn't do much exploring or looking around.

How long was TLOU1 without looking for all the bonuses?

Edit: Went by HowLongToBeat.com and it looks like the first game was around the same length.

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Just realised two things:

1: The LGBT-hunting Christians are this game's equivalent of the cannibals from the original: A new faction who appear near the end to serve as cannon fodder you don't feel bad for killing because they totally deserve it.

2: Naughty Dog and Neil Druckmann share the initials ND, which was pointed out already - but those initials are also shared with Nathan Drake! Uncharted and The Last of Us are set in the same universe confirmed! (Then again, you could already pretend that they were in a shared universe as early as Uncharted 3, which mentions Cordyceps in a newspaper in the first level, but realistically that's just a hint towards Naughty Dog's next project at the time, like Pixar did in some of their earlier films.)

The LGBTQ-hunting Christians are not the same as the enemies at the end. There's a gigantic side plot in Abby's half of the game dealing with the anti-LGBTQ cult.

The enemies at the end, I think, are just slavers? But it's very poorly explained. But they appears in the last hour out of nowhere, not much information is given for them at all.

It all feels tacked on and incredibly rushed and I honest to god think this game originally ended with Abby beating down Ellie and Dina and leaving and then they have a brief epilogue in the farm house. But then I think someone said this ending blew and that Abby needed more comeuppance and they decided to add this extra chapter in the game, maybe with some unused assets or something, and then they rushed on through the rest because it's so random and out there and it goes at freaking lightspeed through everything.

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Is it true that the trans character kills her mom or something and the reason she is "trans" is because she isn't allowed to be in the warrior crowd like her sister was? If so, then why does that even come into play if women can supposedly be warriors in whatever group she was a part of?

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....Kotaku apparently feels strongly enough about the misdirection that they put out a 2 minute video thats sole purpose is to let people know the trailer was bullshit.

https://youtu.be/8qSO5hsnZKo

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Pirateking2000 posted...

Is it true that the trans character kills her mom or something and the reason she is "trans" is because she isn't allowed to be in the warrior crowd like her sister was? If so, then why does that even come into play if women can supposedly be warriors in whatever group she was a part of?

Yes, this is all true.

But like I said they're anti-trans and there's a thing about how they had a huge problem with it and... I don't want to talk about the issues with it too much since I don't know if I can adequately explain why it's offensive to trans people, but the trans community are pretty universally against this part of the game because of how poorly it's bungled.

But basically they're looking for Lev who is about to be sacrificed for his mom for being an evil trans and then when you get there, Lev is crying next to his dead mother and says he had to kill her because she was going to kill him and then his sister tries to console her.

Basically, this is not the setting to be dealing with trans issues, I don't think.

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PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

Yes, this is all true.

But like I said they're anti-trans and there's a thing about how they had a huge problem with it and... I don't want to talk about the issues with it too much since I don't know if I can adequately explain why it's offensive to trans people, but the trans community are pretty universally against this part of the game because of how poorly it's bungled.

But basically they're looking for Lev who is about to be sacrificed for his mom for being an evil trans and then when you get there, Lev is crying next to his dead mother and says he had to kill her because she was going to kill him and then his sister tries to console her.

Basically, this is not the setting to be dealing with trans issues, I don't think.

Curious when the whole thing is out to check it but from what I am getting it makes no sense. As said something like being trans or gender identity should NOT be the first thing on anyone's mind during the post apocalypse unless things aren't as bad as they are hyping it up to be. Also if the sister could be in the warrior sect or whatever why is her issue with gender even an issue unless her sister is referred to as a "he" by her group. Yeah she may not want to be put into the "wife" role but that shouldn't really affect the gender thing if her sister is a soldier anyway.

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I've jumped around some streams here and there, and something I'm starting to notice is that the streamers that don't appear emotionally invested in it are having a blast. You can set up some pretty wild kill and fight scenarios and the game itself seems pretty decent.

I'm coming around to the fact if you detach yourself emotionally and treat Ellie (and Abby) like Nathan Drake-esque killing machines and the game as a dark comedy, it feels way better.

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I could see that. However, that is absolutely not the intent. lol

One thing I notice is that people don't really like Dina and think she's annoying because all she does is snark. I randomly tuned into one random Twitch streamer's stream and the first thing he said is "I know that Ellie is hooking up with her, but I really don't like this chick." One girl I watched stream for a bit already beat the game and was replaying it, and each time Dina had something to say she would groan or tell her to shut up. I don't know how they thought Dina would be a good partner replacement for Joel, but it's shocking how much they've managed to do a poor job with these characters.

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Shadow Dino posted...

I'm coming around to the fact if you detach yourself emotionally and treat Ellie (and Abby) like Nathan Drake-esque killing machines and the game as a dark comedy, it feels way better.

This was always the weird cognitive dissonance between Nathan Drake the wise-cracking "aw shucks here we go again" protagonist and his tendency to commit a 9/11 every game.

Like, why isn't the federal government actively investigating these incidents against Drake?

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PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

I could see that. However, that is absolutely not the intent. lol

Druckmann: Noooooooo, you can't go wantonly killing every enemy! You're supposed to feel the emotional impact of each death!
Gamers: Hahahahaha Ellie machine gun go ratatatatatatat


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It really falls apart when Ellie is having nervous breakdowns after killing the people who ganged up and murdered Joel but doesn't have an issue with all the other people she kills who are actively trying to kill her too.

This is why your revenge plot is stupid shit, Druckmann. You're actively asking people to ignore everything you're doing between your story bits.

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I missed it, but apparently Metacritic was hiding all the user reviews for just this game earlier today?

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TheRock1525 posted...

This was always the weird cognitive dissonance between Nathan Drake the wise-cracking "aw shucks here we go again" protagonist and his tendency to commit a 9/11 every game.

Like, why isn't the federal government actively investigating these incidents against Drake?

which federal government ?

Im pretty sure all this stuff is happening outside the US and hes basically just killing pirates and other criminal types so I dont think anyone actually minds
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