Board 8 > The Last of Us 2 topic (ongoing spoilers)

(+) Yeah! (+)

oh damn
they got it on

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Casually raiding a scar base and taking all their shit to upgrade my weapons
It would have been nice if Lev had commented on my thievery tbh

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Hahaha the skybridge bit was gold

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I like the way Abby's playstyle is more military. With Abby I feel like I have more ammo, better guns, and am more comfortable with just gunning through infected

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That chapter is great. Making your way across and them down was a great part of the game for.me

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Oh my god that fucking amalgam in the bottom of the hospital
jesus

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XIII_rocks posted...

Oh my god that fucking amalgam in the bottom of the hospital
jesus

I'm glad they gave us a proper boss infected in this game.

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Aw man

Tommy (I'm pretty sure it's Tommy) killed Manny =(

Edit: I thought right lol

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Holy jesus christ this whole Haven section is intense
just beat the Scar equivalent of Rasputin in a melee fight
the kill was beyond brutal. jesus christ guys chill out

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Well all that shit I just went through successfully made me feel sorry for Abby

As we walked back into the Aquarium looking exhausted, knowing I was gonna find Owen and Mel killed I audibly said "oh, Abby".

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holy shit

(Also I like Abby fine but I still prefer Ellie, and she did just kill me while playing as Abby, so, uh, can I call that the end?)

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Lmao, they clearly didn't thoroughly test all the weapons in NG+. If you shoot the trip wires with arrows, they'll just stop in the air where they hit them and be retrievable every time.

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damnit this girl is kicking my ass
Joel taught her so well <3

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I want to read all of those spoiler tag posts but I don't know where any of them are relative to where I am in the game.

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davidponte posted...

I want to read all of those spoiler tag posts but I don't know where any of them are relative to where I am in the game.

Where you at I'll tell you

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pezzicle posted...

Where you at I'll tell you

Day 2 night, just left Jesse at the theatre.

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Oh then don't read any of them dude I'm nearly finished

Edit: I mean I think you're good up to post, like, 75

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so wait wff, is Tommy just like immortal lmao? This is the second time I thought he died and he just shows up fine. Or, you know, almost fine

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XIII_rocks posted...

Oh then don't read any of them dude I'm nearly finished

Well jesus. Maybe not.

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Every time the screen goes black I'm kind of expecting the credits to roll, but hell, the more the better

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jesus christ wtf this is still going
getting into RotK territory here

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davidponte posted...

Day 2 night, just left Jesse at the theatre.

Ya leave anything after like post 70 or so


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XIII_rocks posted...

Every time the screen goes black I'm kind of expecting the credits to roll, but hell, the more the better

You have passed me at this point I stopped after this part yesterday

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Beat the game last night. Overall thoughts below.

Thought the game was pretty good. I think the storytelling aspect of the perspective switch was really well done. I went from absolutely hating Abby to sympathizing with her. By the end I really didn't know how I wanted the story to end. The gameplay felt fun, I loved the extras they added from the first game but by the end I felt like it was a bit tedious. The story itself was good but I think I needed a giraffe moment to balance out the bleakness of it all. The museum flashback was wonderful and it was well needed, but I thought something like that near the end would've been nice too.

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Ending thoughts:

At first I wasnt sure if I wanted Ellie to kill Abby during the ending scene but it makes sense that she didnt. Its thanks to Lev that Abby didnt kill Ellie and (I forget her name already). Plus if Ellie had killed Abby, Lev would likely try to find her, continuing the chain of revenge. And if she were to kill Lev at that moment, the guilt would probably get to her because he wasnt any part of the group that killed Joel.

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Great_Paul posted...

Ending thoughts:

At first I wasnt sure if I wanted Ellie to kill Abby during the ending scene but it makes sense that she didnt. Its thanks to Lev that Abby didnt kill Ellie and (I forget her name already). Plus if Ellie had killed Abby, Lev would likely try to find her, continuing the chain of revenge. And if she were to kill Lev at that moment, the guilt would probably get to her because he wasnt any part of the group that killed Joel.

Yea, I think ultimately this is a story of anger and forgiveness. Ellie wanted to forgive Joel for what he did but she couldn't. She ended up forgiving Abby at the end to break the cycle of revenge but the journey that led her to that decision cost her everything.

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Just got to day 3 now

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Well that was outstanding. The brutality of the final fight between them...it felt like a more grounded version of like the tail end of the MGS4 final boss where the fighting just becomes sad. I wanted Ellie to kill Abby... then, as I was drowning her, I didn't. Very very good shit.

I thought the game wasn't going to address why Ellie, having been livid with Joel for what he did in TLOU1, was so bent on getting revenge on his killers. That they did it right at the very end, while also explaining why she spared Abby, was very good. They did a good job with Abby overall. They had so much work to do when she killed Joel to make her sympathetic and likeable but they largely pulled it off without totally absolving her.

But yeah it got me big time. I laughed, I almost cried, I audibly yelled/screamed, I felt reluctant as a player to act at times, I felt visceral satisfaction at others, and obviously the performances were great. And the change in the visuals at the end when you get to California was excellent too. It felt so fresh.

Fantastic game, probably just a hair below the original because its brutality and excellent production/performances were more expected as opposed to hitting like a truck the first time. Idk, I need time to think on it.

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Just read a spoiler discussion which said something I liked about the ending:

I think some people will say that the game has a clear ending and then goes on for a few more hours, but I think thats entirely the point. Ellie and Dina get to a place that is for anyone else the perfect life, for the reality they live in. The farm house is beautiful, they have peace, and theyre looking after a baby. Its the end for a normal person but not for her. That final stretch in Santa Barbara is supposed to, in my interpretation, feel like one step too far. The game is making you feel this weird dissonance between leaving that idyllic place and going back to something horrible.

It felt like a happy ending to me, then the minute the shovel drops and she gets that PTSD flashback it's like "shit", and then Tommy comes...game screws with you in all sorts of ways. It does feel like a step too far. Like "jesus Ellie stop".

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When she returns I was bawwwwwling

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It was so sad to see the house bare and empty like that. In my mind Dina was in Jackson, Ellie found her and they made up, but, honestly, probably not.

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XIII_rocks posted...

It was so sad to see the house bare and empty like that. In my mind Dina was in Jackson, Ellie found her and they made up, but, honestly, probably not.

:(

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She killed Jesse what the fuck.

Just got to the point where I'm playing Abby and we're back to Seattle Day 1. I'm not sure if the game is going to try to get me to empathize with her, and I know I probably should after all that happened to her, but fuck I just can't do it.

Stopping for the night here, which post can I read up to in terms of XIII's spoiler discussion?

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But I was told TLoU2 had the worst story ever.

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I still maintain it's a really bad story, but I'm glad people are enjoying it here!

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davidponte posted...

Stopping for the night here, which post can I read up to in terms of XIII's spoiler discussion?

Anything up to post 90 is fine

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TheRock1525 posted...

But I was told TLoU2 had the worst story ever.

I think reading leaks prejudiced a lot of people against it. I'm not saying that explains everything, it's not perfect or unimpeachable or anything, but there's a huge difference between reading a summary of this stuff without the feel of playing it (there's great tension to a lot of it, especially later on) and actually going through it, especially with all the small characterization stuff that ND does - the smaller bits of dialogue during gameplay, little tics and expressions in the performances, that sort of thing.

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I honestly feel like the game has also gotten more "omg BGE" than it would if those leaks had not happened. I mean obviously the damage is bigger, but this is my impression. A lot of places also had the wrong idea about why the game was initially disliked, which hasn't helped, but that's a whole different talk.

I think the game has some pretty glaring flaws in pacing, story and character development, but I'm enjoying it still, primarily because of the gameplay which I find near perfect (except for melee combat, that has some flaws) and the presentation. Presentation isn't everything, but this is very strong, most scenes are powerful. I've seen a few ocassions where the developers defended criticism by stating that they intended what they did, but just because something was intended, it does not necessarily make it flawless.

I still haven't played all of it, I only know what happens. But with everything so far I think it's safe to say that this will not reach the heights of the first game for me, but that was always a high bar!

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I'd agree there are some pacing and characterization flaws but outside of that I enjoyed it immensely

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This game had no chance of being rated fairly because you had people going in determined to hate it for one reason or another, and people going in determined to like it for one reason or another.

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Yeah, it's not like pacing and characterizations are constant issues either.

Edit: Yeah, SEP is spot on there. I guess we'll see how people will look at it in a few years, but it's a huge shame what happened.

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I haven't played the game yet (I very much intend to, though) but I have a question for folks who have dug into it. How do you feel the game handles the ludonarrative dissonance between the overall theme of the game and the gameplay? That stuff drives me bananas when it's not done well and some of the gifs/clips I've seen of the gameplay look legitimately awesome and fun, which is great in a bubble but seems to run rather contrary to the game's stated mission of making violence seem horrific.

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Yea, the game isn't perfect but it's still really good. I think what is most impressive with me is that they came off such a high from the first game, which honestly, was a fairly straightforward game, and took a pretty big risk in crafting a more complex story and presenting it in a different way.

I personally think they did really well.

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Xiahou Shake posted...

I haven't played the game yet (I very much intend to, though) but I have a question for folks who have dug into it. How do you feel the game handles the ludonarrative dissonance between the overall theme of the game and the gameplay? That stuff drives me bananas when it's not done well and some of the gifs/clips I've seen of the gameplay look legitimately awesome and fun, which is great in a bubble but seems to run rather contrary to the game's stated mission of making violence seem horrific.

Violence is horrific but I think that in this case we have to make a distinction between killing and murdering. The Last of Us is a world where violence and death is a constant thing and it's very much normalized. Killing people in order to survive is fairly accepted. I think they did a good job in portraying that the murdering of others for non-survival reasons is something of a different beast.

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BlackDra90n posted...

Violence is horrific but I think that in this case we have to make a distinction between killing and murdering. The Last of Us is a world where violence and death is a constant thing and it's very much normalized. Killing people in order to survive is fairly accepted. I think they did a good job in portraying that the murdering of others for non-survival reasons is something of a different beast.

Okay, this is kind of silly though.

Ellie only has to survive, for instance, because she's actively pursuing and trying to murder people. Of course they're going to try and kill her. The game is like the opposite of survival like the first game, and that's why a lot of the story regarding violence suffers. It's not poor Ellie trying to just stay alive in this messed up world, it's Ellie mowing down a countless number of people to specifically murder certain people.

So I would say that it honestly hurts the story it's trying to tell, without getting into spoilers here.

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Yeah, I also think the gameplay and the narrative are at odds. In almost every combat encounter, it's more beneficial to murder everyone rather than flee, so you can loot the area in peace. If you're really good at it, you can even get a net gain, since stealth kills are free.

It's a shame, as it's a real missed opportunity to punish the player for being too violent. Like, if you stealth through most encounters and don't murder people, have fewer people patrolling later encounters, but if you kill everyone, have more people, because now they're out for blood. Teach you through the gameplay that, although violence is the easy option, it's not always the best one. I think Dishonored had a similar system. Even cooler if it affected how characters acted in cutscenes.

Also, they aren't kidding when they suggest not playing the game on Survival your first time through. Not that it's impossible or anything (though some sections are brutal), but because it's actively making me hate everything. Whenever I hear a character shout 'oh no, they got Colin' or whatever, I don't feel bad, I think 'fuck you, Colin'. And dogs, Jesus. They're the first thing I try and kill in most encounters, after lookouts.

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Xiahou Shake posted...

I haven't played the game yet (I very much intend to, though) but I have a question for folks who have dug into it. How do you feel the game handles the ludonarrative dissonance between the overall theme of the game and the gameplay? That stuff drives me bananas when it's not done well and some of the gifs/clips I've seen of the gameplay look legitimately awesome and fun, which is great in a bubble but seems to run rather contrary to the game's stated mission of making violence seem horrific.

I'm just on my phone so I can't get into it well but the theme being "violence is bad" is not really my take on it at all so I don't see a dissonance that much.

I found the game was much more a game about belief and tribalism

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Dishonored has a plague of rats if you murder too many people. I think it's probably the coolest thing that game did.

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JackMan posted...

Yeah, I also think the gameplay and the narrative are at odds. In almost every combat encounter, it's more beneficial to murder everyone rather than flee, so you can loot the area in peace. If you're really good at it, you can even get a net gain, since stealth kills are free.

It's a shame, as it's a real missed opportunity to punish the player for being too violent. Like, if you stealth through most encounters and don't murder people, have fewer people patrolling later encounters, but if you kill everyone, have more people, because now they're out for blood. Teach you through the gameplay that, although violence is the easy option, it's not always the best one. I think Dishonored had a similar system. Even cooler if it affected how characters acted in cutscenes.

Also, they aren't kidding when they suggest not playing the game on Survival your first time through. Not that it's impossible or anything (though some sections are brutal), but because it's actively making me hate everything. Whenever I hear a character shout 'oh no, they got Colin' or whatever, I don't feel bad, I think 'fuck you, Colin'. And dogs, Jesus. They're the first thing I try and kill in most encounters, after lookouts.

I actually think it's a very interesting decision that half the game stealth is free and then half the game it goes back to not being

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XIII_rocks posted...

I'm not saying that explains everything, it's not perfect or unimpeachable or anything, but there's a huge difference between reading a summary of this stuff without the feel of playing it (there's great tension to a lot of it, especially later on) and actually going through it, especially with all the small characterization stuff that ND does - the smaller bits of dialogue during gameplay, little tics and expressions in the performances, that sort of thing.

i think a big thing is the source of the leaks and the summaries that were floating about were explicitly bigoted and that seeded a lot of early discussion of the game. they were also misleading in general with the intent to rile up negative sentiments towards the game.

now, i don't think the story is very good, but after completing the game i had to go back and see what exactly that corner of the internet had to say, and the disconnect between what was presented and how it was talked about was huge

Xiahou Shake posted...

How do you feel the game handles the ludonarrative dissonance between the overall theme of the game and the gameplay? That stuff drives me bananas when it's not done well and some of the gifs/clips I've seen of the gameplay look legitimately awesome and fun, which is great in a bubble but seems to run rather contrary to the game's stated mission of making violence seem horrific.

this is a game about revenge and the effects that has on survivors. there's frustratingly little else. you will murder an encampment because they're an obstacle in your way and a willing accomplice, and ellie doesn't feel remorse. it's not exactly a nathan drake situation here, the scores of enemies you kill are built into the story.

weirdly i think the misery-porn aspect of the game was talked up pre-release more than is evidenced in the game. i think this game attempts to make you feel bad about the level of violence you're engaging in, but it's not through gruesome details or dog deaths, it's through the connections your victims have for each other that are told through notes, or given brief highlights when they speak to each other, or one of the big spoilers that people walk around, and i largely found these to be flat.

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