I’m some 18 hours in to the game. I heard that the game was all gloom, extreme violence and bad writing.
Granted in this survival adventure it’s dark and violent but there is some really heartfelt touching moments in it that hit the mark.
The gameplay has made for some truly reactive gameplay shenanigans on the fly that all comes together and normally with a bloody result.
I’ve still got more game to get through but I am enjoying the highs and lows of the story so far.
I think the gamergate boys got a hold of the review narrative thanks to the leak and youtuber personalities took it for a ride because controversy is good for them.
The biggest complaint I keep hearing is 'Abby is too musclar'.
She's awesome.
I know you won't be taking further questions, but I can't help myself. Why is she awesome?
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
"For a few seconds Oskar saw through Eli's eyes. And what he saw was...himself. Only much better, more handsome, stronger than what he thought of himself. Seen with love."
--John Ajvide Lindqvist, Let the Right One In (Page 446).
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited June 2020
For me about Abby (these are massive spoilers here for anyone else):
She is one of few characters who does something altruistic, as opposed to directly for her own gain. She has no requirement to help Lev and his sister anymore but does so anyway. Arguably at a significant personal cost to herself. I am not 100% sure how this works out yet, but I am finding her attitude to be quite good.
It is humanising her actions very well. In many ways her motivations are not very different from Ellie’s.
For me about Abby (these are massive spoilers here for anyone else):
She is one of few characters who does something altruistic, as opposed to directly for her own gain. She has no requirement to help Lev and his sister anymore but does so anyway. Arguably at a significant personal cost to herself. I am not 100% sure how this works out yet, but I am finding her attitude to be quite good.
It is humanising her actions very well. In many ways her motivations are not very different from Ellie’s.
Except that her hatred of Joel is based on a cult mentality and a warped idea that their ridiculous shot in the dark vaccine was actually going to work out when everything about that faction and the game world in the first Last of Us leading up to the final area tells you that they would not have been successful and would have killed an innocent girl for it anyway.
Like sure, Ellie would have volunteered, but they didn't know that. She arrived there unconscious. And there are files in the game that tell us they were ready to kill her regardless. So even if Ellie had arrived there conscious, and didn't want to go through with that procedure they would have forcefully sedated her and killed her anyway, and killed Joel because he would have obviously tried to save her. Hell they wanted to kill Joel anyway.
Like before they had any idea that he would be opposed to what they were going to do with Ellie, they wanted to just straight up murder the man who risked his life and went through hell getting their prized specimen all the way across a post apocalyptic wasteland.
I feel like their attempt to "humanize" random human mobs falls flat when you consider just how many gun fights you get into with human enemies and how they all use the same few models and names. If you want to do away with every aspect of "this is also a video game" in your game, then you need to reduce your encounters, put a heavier narrative focus on each one, and give every npc a unique model.
If that's not possible, then maybe just let your gunfights be your video game gunfights and realize that it's fine for some obvious game aspects to exist outside of the narrative.
Because the last few hours of their game are an absolute slog of an area that didn't even need to be in the game. Just encounter after encounter after encounter with no story and you just want to get to the next cutscene and get this story resolved and it just drags.
Viskod on
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Yeah their attempt was noteworthy, but it doesn’t work in the context of a video game trying to get several hours of gameplay.
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
I think I am getting very close to the end of the game now. It is not in any way all relentless awful grim dark, but by gods that past halfway point fight (huge spoilers!!!):
Zavianuniversal peace sounds better than forever warRegistered Userregular
If anyone is finding combat a slog, I noticed there’s less enemies the lower the difficulty. I’m around the halfway point, and for me the best parts have been the quiet non-combat sections. In particular
the museum
has been my favorite section so far. I think the “it’s nonstop misery porn” people just really have no idea, that section alone was very heartfelt and I wasn’t expecting it. Also if people are getting their opinions from watching streamers who are playing the game while talking to their chat they’re really missing out, this is a game meant for headphones so you can get immersed. Really loving it so far, I guess it will be “misery porn” later but the quiet sections of this game, especially the guitar parts, have really surprised me
I am somewhere in day 2 and very glad I played it on the lowest difficulty. I just have no idea how to deal with the dogs. Fortunately on this difficulty Ellie can take a lot of damage so I just brute force my way through the encounters. So far this game is still looking like one of the best I have ever played. Still not seeing any of the major criticisms. Can't get over how phenomenal the characters look and move either.
Gamertag: KL Retribution
PSN:Furlion
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Zavianuniversal peace sounds better than forever warRegistered Userregular
I am somewhere in day 2 and very glad I played it on the lowest difficulty. I just have no idea how to deal with the dogs. Fortunately on this difficulty Ellie can take a lot of damage so I just brute force my way through the encounters. So far this game is still looking like one of the best I have ever played. Still not seeing any of the major criticisms. Can't get over how phenomenal the characters look and move either.
Even though I feel like a dick cause they’re doggos, if you place a mine trap along the path of your scent trail you can blow them up pretty easily. They also seem to go down with one melee swing. I’m playing on Easy/Light though so might be different on higher difficulties.
Yeah I went the easy route and I got to the section of the game in all the demo trailers and I still got my ass grassed several times. Enemies don't miss and the patrol patterns range from "only moves in two directions" to "oh fuck where did you come from how did you get behind me?"
Same as the first game, I don't find the controls responsive enough to give me the kinda twitch reactions to get out the tight spots you find yourself in. I'm playing on easier modes so I can take a little more damage when I inevitably fuck up and walk into a dog or something.
If I found a couple more Nik's in the post apocalypse I'd definitely start up a Nik Squad, so a Judy doing that makes total sense to me.
Kanden on
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Zavianuniversal peace sounds better than forever warRegistered Userregular
I’ve also been using Molotovs on groups of enemies, as well as drawing enemies using bricks/bottles then sniping while prone in grass. I like that there’s a bunch of different ways to handle fights, though I’m guessing on higher difficulties it’s better to stealth avoid enemies and run away. On Light difficulty there’s usually more resources than I can craft/hold so I try to use moltovs and traps as much as possible. Using bricks/bottles to send mushroom zombies against human enemies is also pretty fun just sitting back listening to the chaos then dealing with whatever is left
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Zavianuniversal peace sounds better than forever warRegistered Userregular
I have got to a point in the game where I killed 5 female enemies. All of them were called Judy! What are the odds?!?
Edit: SIX JUDYS!!!
Too bad they weren’t Karens!
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Finished the game. I thought the ending was extremely poignant in a way, but I can easily see why it’s been so incredibly divisive. I really need to process this.
In many ways, the way I feel about the game:
Ellie becomes the antagonist at a certain point. Also that Ellie throws everything away to keep a promise that she didn’t even need to. Abby was dead without her intervention.
I suspect Ellie spared Abby because of her thoughts with Joel. In that she might be breaking the cycle of violence and revenge caused by Joel’s killing. Lev trying to go after Ellie for killing Abby maybe?
I am very curious where they might go after this. A post-game DLC would be really welcome.
Finished the game. I thought the ending was extremely poignant in a way, but I can easily see why it’s been so incredibly divisive. I really need to process this.
In many ways, the way I feel about the game:
Ellie becomes the antagonist at a certain point. Also that Ellie throws everything away to keep a promise that she didn’t even need to. Abby was dead without her intervention.
I suspect Ellie spared Abby because of her thoughts with Joel. In that she might be breaking the cycle of violence and revenge caused by Joel’s killing. Lev trying to go after Ellie for killing Abby maybe?
I am very curious where they might go after this. A post-game DLC would be really welcome.
I would have preferred if
Ellie had just cut her down and let her go instead of that whole “I can’t let you leave” fight.
When Abby was hanging there it perfectly paralleled how Abby had Joel wounded and at her mercy. That would have been the better moment for her to make that decision.
I think it would have better because then she could have come home, still lost everything, gotten out the guitar, sat there with it, but then choose not to play it at all, sit it by the window and leave.
Okay. Save game frustrations, pretty much but still spoilers for the second half of the game. After THE BIG TWEEST
So I end my play yesterday in Chinatown. Abby and I both turn around and see that gorgeous double-barreled shotgun hanging under the counter and say "fuck yes" in harmony.
I grin ear-to-ear, save, and get some sleep.
Today I pick back up in Chinatown, am quite sure I've got everything, and I bail to the next area. Takes some real stealth to get through this, but I clear it and... wait... where's my shotgun?!
I saved it AFTER I picked it up, but it saved the entire Chinatown area as if my involvement with it ended after opening the safe. Then I look up where I got the shotgun just to be sure and see I missed Abby's hunting pistol. So I'm reloading an old manual save at the boat repair that I feel super-lucky to have.
Just got the skill where Abby will chain finishers, too.
Damn.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
Once a dude came around a truck, really reefing on the leash for his dog. I was super-impressed with the animation, and put an arrow into the dog (I was prone, in the grass, about 20 feet away). The dude did not even notice.
Just dropped the leash and kept walkin'. Now that's obviously an example of the AI screwing up, but yeah.
Silencer. Headshot. I am the predator.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
I’m some 18 hours in to the game. I heard that the game was all gloom, extreme violence and bad writing.
Granted in this survival adventure it’s dark and violent but there is some really heartfelt touching moments in it that hit the mark.
The gameplay has made for some truly reactive gameplay shenanigans on the fly that all comes together and normally with a bloody result.
I’ve still got more game to get through but I am enjoying the highs and lows of the story so far.
I think the gamergate boys got a hold of the review narrative thanks to the leak and youtuber personalities took it for a ride because controversy is good for them.
The biggest complaint I keep hearing is 'Abby is too musclar'.
She's awesome.
I know you won't be taking further questions, but I can't help myself. Why is she awesome?
I have resumed question period.
I'm not done the game yet - in fact I just put myself back like 3 hours at least with a save load - but:
Like Ellie, Abby has a permanent fucking scowl on her face. Idk why but I love that.
Those arrrrms! Those arrrrms! It's like they started with Michelle Obama and said "nah we need at least Nadine in Uncharted 4," and then they said "now crank it up by like 50%." "Sir, we're at 60% Schwarznegger!" "...perfect."
Unlike Ellie (to almost everyone she talks to, nearly all the time but not entirely all the time), Abby seems like a nice person who genuinely prioritizes her friends.
She's got a fucking skill that lets her use a second finisher instantly if she used a finisher in the last few seconds.
For some reason I really like how she feels and sounds heavier than Ellie as she moves around.
Have you tried just like posting up at the end of an area with her rifle and going for headshots as they come for you? This girl's a soldier. She gets it dunnn.
My only disappointment with Abby so far is that her Frig'd Dad has led us into another trope-y conversation:
"Oh Owen, I love you so much, and this beautiful aquarium you've dragged me to really is just as magical as it was when Joel and Ellie met the giraffes in the first game or Ellie and Riley went to the mall in the first game's DLC, or Ellie and Joel went to the Museum earlier in this game and so doesn't feel totally forced at all, but I just can't think about kissing when my father's killer is still at large. That's really the priority in our world, and like Neve Campbell in Scream, I'm sorry if my problems don't fit into your perfect, magical life, but my trauma has left me kinda' frigid, which is the most meaningful way emotional problems can affect a woman! In a way that inconveniences my male partner's libido!"
That felt hollow and Druckmann'd as fuck. But I like Abby, as we're meant to, I think.
And just tooling around as her in-game is awesome. This remains the awesome stealth-action game I wanted, I'm just peeved I lost my bow.
Chance on
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
The first time I took a owner/dog handler out and then watch the dog go back and whimper pained me greatly.
Sadly it’s also now my no.1 strategy. The variables in this game are crazy and let’s not forget sweet rope physics.
Saw a twitter thread yesterday about the team of people it took to make the rope work like it does, started by the animator who was in charge of Ellie spooling it up as she walks towards it and unspooling it as she walks away.
Unsavory rumors around that studio lately, but you can't argue with their results.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
The first time I took a owner/dog handler out and then watch the dog go back and whimper pained me greatly.
Sadly it’s also now my no.1 strategy. The variables in this game are crazy and let’s not forget sweet rope physics.
Saw a twitter thread yesterday about the team of people it took to make the rope work like it does, started by the animator who was in charge of Ellie spooling it up as she walks towards it and unspooling it as she walks away.
Unsavory rumors around that studio lately, but you can't argue with their results.
Just finished. I really don't think that was any bleaker than the first one, and it had a tonne more contemplative giraffe moments. On a technical side I'm confused why everyone jumps like they weight 400 pounds and have no leg muscles. They just immediately plummet or barely make easy jumps. It's annoying, like the animation to check cupboards. Also maybe too many fights? Sometimes I was just like "please let this end, let me platform or something". That said, the sheer quantity of game you get here is amazing. It may be is on par with RDR2 (without measuring) but none of the time feels as wasted as it does in that game.
So some things might become clearer as I piece everything together but:
So like real death, I got past the anger of killing Joel. Someone mentioned it was unearned and I agree. Joel has been a survivor for like 18-19 years at this point and he walked into a room full of strangers unarmed. Like at the least he'd be cautious. He's so cautious that he's not just managing his patrols he's managing Ellie's. The scene requires him to be an idiot. I guess maybe it's a commentary on how awful shit happens regardless of who you are, but when you've survived all the shit you have with a character, having them done in by a bunch of late teens is frustrating. They didn't even check his last name first, just heard Joel and blasted his leg off. They did at least swerve me a little by having that one Jackson resident by a Firefly, I thought maybe they had come for him instead. I've seen people saying he deserved it, and that Joel is a monster. I don't get that. Pre-Ellie he was doing what every other single person was doing to survive. The people sat in nice, safe places like Jackson get to do so because of people like Joel and Tommy. They weren't evil people pre-apocalypse and they're not evil post-, they became survivors and have had to do awful shit to survive. I don't think that makes them a monster. In saving Ellie, again, I task any father (figure) with saying with all their heart that to save the world they'd let someone kill their (surrogate) daughter. They wouldn't. Even the doctor was a hypocrite, for all his nicety in flashbacks, he couldn't say that he would sacrifice his own daughter for the world, but someone else's? Well he just needed Marlene to give him the OK so he didn't have to feel guilty. It was a clever idea to make him into a more significant character in the sequel though.
They definitely did not seem that interested in the Ellie side of the tale. Her half of the story is very much both incomplete and impotent because Tommy is always ahead of you killing everyone you are after. I think Ellie only killed two out of about 10. It focused more on her and Dina and to a lesser extent Jesse, and I just didn't find either character interesting. Dina particularly comes across as a big burden when you realize she's let you drag her out there while pregnant. Someone also saw the Departed because there are a few established characters just straight murdered in a split second with no build up. Every flashback between Joel and Ellie just makes you wish you were continuing the adventures of Joel and Ellie. Tommy also got done dirty, he's having a huge impact on the story but you never see him, he gets massively injured, and then is a dick to Ellie to wrap his story up.
Ellie's PTSD from witnessing Joel's death was pretty well done. The sniffing his jacket I can relate to. I didn't really buy into Abby's segment because it's never clear if it's going to be a brief thing or not. I won't say I liked any of her supporting cast any better at the end except Owen. I didn't really clock who Alice was until Abby followed my path into the Aquarium and I realized it was the dog I killed (no choice given). It does add some context to Owen who is clearly struggling a lot and isn't really in love with Mel, and instead of going down to Santa Barbara he just got offed alongside his baby mama. Pretty rough way to go, but then he would have likely died in Santa Barbara too. They did turn me around on Abby, at least to the point that during the end fight I did not want her or Ellie to die. It's one of those times I wish Naughty Dog could take their foot of the gas and let us actually make a choice. The Californian location was a nice change of pace after 16 hours of rain and gloom.
I'm not sure where the ending leads. Abby's at least seems to be set for DLC, for them finding Catalina and the Fireflys. Ellie's, I think leaving the guitar behind (with the Firefly logo on) is her moving on from her guilt (I assume for all the time she spent mad at Joel, only to try making up and then I think it's the next day he dies), but also her responsibility as saviour of the world. I get it would be hard to basically be The Chosen One, and now you're just no one. Her quest for revenge has also cost her the ability to play the guitar anyway. By seeking revenge so relentlessly she's cut her self off from that connection to Joel via him teaching her guitar. She probably couldn't even pass that skill on now. Not well anyway. It almost seems open to a Last of Us 3. It's definitely more ambiguous than even the first game. There there's an uneasy truce between Ellie and Joel and they're going to be together and safe in Jackson. Here, I can only assume that Ellie returns to Jackson to see if she can repair her relationship with Dina but it's left up in the air.
It's a good game. I cannot imagine ever wanting to slog through the entire thing again though. Not because of the subject matter but just because it is very deliberately slow paced and I don't have time for that. I'm kinda burnt out on slow ponderous walks in games now.
i just got past the section in the game that kicks off with the infamous noose trailer. thoughts at this point:
holy moly. the absolute cojones of naughty dog.
not playing out exactly as i expected, which is good. the perspective swap thing was easy to see coming. what i didn't anticipate was owen
owen is the straight up heart and soul of this game, and if there's a candle of redeeming light to come out of this, it's owen's doing. a brilliant performance, a wonderfully written character, and an alternate vision of a world where you don't just take up the call to fight.
someone commented that the tropey nature of the wild-animal date experience was getting formulaic, but i kinda disagree. i think naughty dog really cleverly subverted that set-up to shortcut our empathy to owen. we earned our love of ellie and joel through moments like the giraffe in salt lake city; putting us there with another set of characters so efficiently makes us understand their backstory, their relationship. we start at the emotional high-point of a different game with different main characters, equally fraught and violent and beautiful...
it's clever, self-conscious writing and it works dammit
more general gameplay stuff:
i'm playing through on hard, and the combat areas are starting to flourish. i don't know why but at the point where you
switch over to abby, i feel way more comfortable being a bad-ass killing machine. she got that ellen ripley energy
i do love that almost all the encounters can be circumvented without being 'cleared' and i feel like i still have that mindset to a certain degree, after smash-and-bolting through TLOU on grounded. the combat is brilliantly immersive and really the pinnacle of naughty dog's engine, which has always been exciting and strategic on the higher difficulty settings. i am resisting the temptation to want to record all my brilliant strategic moves (finaly executed right after 50 fails) because they come so often. i'm going to save it for some survival difficulty clips
one thing i don't like too much this time around is the under-bench scavenging. it's kinda endless and feels less purposeful than it ever was in the original game. but you gotta do it. honestly it's probably my biggest gripe with the game and it's a relatively small one
I've come across four encounters so far that I was like "okay, I should just stealth this and walk past them all and waiiit a minute that's how they're gonna' make me miss some gear. Everyone has to die."
I've half-beaten at least 4 sections with pure non-lethal stealth before stopping, changing my mind and clearing the whole zone.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
Hey at any point do you gut an ammo capacity upgrade or nah? Having 6 loaded and 6 reserve kinda sucks.
Nothing that really increases capacity, although there are upgrades that allow you to craft alternate ammo for some weapons, which essentially doubles the ammo a single weapon can use (if you swap to the alternate ammo). Some of those upgrades also increase capacity for the alt ammo.
That's kinda what I figured. I feel like the carryable ammo has been cut from the first game so while it's easier to find on lower difficulty, I still end up burning through most of my guns in a firefight.
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited June 2020
So now I've finished it, I do think there is a major divide between how a lot of reviewers described this game to how it actually plays and actually accomplishes its story beats. A lot of reviewers said it was an endlessly bleak, nihilistic game that was filled with extreme violence. I kind of had this impression the game would be Spec Ops the Line in some ways, which is a game that heavily criticizes you (the player) for incredibly heinous things that happen. I'll be forever scarred by the white phosphorous scene and the way the game reacts to it. The Last of Us 2 does, to a degree, revel in making you do awful shit and then watch as you just have to go along for the ride. There is a fantastic example of this towards the end of the first half of the game and this was the bit of violence that did manage to get to me/trigger me:
Making you control Ellie to kill Mel, who the player knows is pregnant but Ellie does not was brutal. Having lost multiple children to miscarriages, this particular act of violence did heavily get to me as it triggered some very awful memories of what happened to us. I had to stop playing and just go away from the game for a while. In many ways, this was direct meta-commentary where the developers can use information you know but the character doesn't against the player. The scene was, particularly for me, highly horrifying but there is no way around it. There are many other instances that feel the same way in this game, but that one stood out for me as well executed.
In terms of violence, is the game horribly more violent than the first one? Yes and no. There are a couple of extremely brutal fights, which are easily on the level of David/Ellie from the first game and easily exceed it in terms of how messed up both combatants get. Otherwise I don't really feel the day to day combat and such is really significantly worse than the first game. There are a few deaths to enemies that just frankly look nasty - the dogs eating you in particular is disturbing - but I was prepared for horrific unseen levels of violence. What I got was stuff I had seen from other games, albeit in more limited scenes, or things on par with some movies or other violent media. I feel this aspect of the game was heavily over-weighted by reviewers and I'm trying to process why.
It's also been called bleak and nihilistic, when in reality I feel this game had more moments of levity and even optimism at times than the first game did. The first game, no matter where you were in the story, always had this pall hanging over it about what might happen to Ellie, was anything you were doing even with any point? Then you get to those Giraffes and it's like amazing, because it's a small moment of optimism in a bleak game. Last of Us 2 has more than a few moments where it slows things down and lets you experience either life in happier times, or just outright has moments of optimism/joy. Of course it then regularly tears these things down and destroys them afterwards, but it isn't all endless nihilistic darkness. I do understand an argument that says most of these scenes are undermined by the way characters can't let go of their past trauma. As a - HUGE SPOILER - prime example:
Ellie is content, has a life and is living with someone who she loves. I thought the whole thing was so perfect, I had assumed Ellie was unconscious and dreaming the whole thing after Abby had beaten the ever loving shit out of her. But nope! Tommy comes and with one map promising a "lead", off Ellie goes destroying that entire future she had built. That was truly one of the most tragic and awful things that happens in the entire game.
But can I just completely congratulate this game on one particular thing, that I was 100% certain was going to happen and couldn't believe it didn't:
They absolutely didn't just murder or butcher Dina for horror/shock effect. I had, from the initial trailers - nice deception there btw Naughty Dog - thought that Dina was going to be murdered by homophobic bigots and was going cross country with Joel to get revenge. So I got caught very off guard by the entire thing. I spent 90% of the game just waiting for the moment they would deliberately murder Dina, plus kid, for shock value but it never actually happened. Then Ellie almost got a happy ending with the woman she loved. Almost!!!
Having played the whole game, largely in 4 very long sessions, I enjoyed the entire game from beginning to end except for having to do some really awful shit now and again. The core gameplay is fantastic and easily better than the first game. There are more options for evading enemies, stealth feels much better rewarded, enemy variety is better leading to more dynamic encounters etc. I never found the game a slog and the last part of the game was a nice change of scenery, plus it really didn't wear out its welcome that much. It was great being able to use all that upgraded character and weapons stuff to the best use by the end of the game. Once you do get the ending:
The Last of Us 2 fucks with you just like the first game. In the first game, I didn't want Joel to selfishly condemn all of humanity when there was the possibility of giving them a chance. Ellie, who finally gets to properly confront Joel on this, says as much and tells him what her choice was clearly. HER CHOICE. Joel removed that from Ellie and by extension, the game removed that choice from us as the player. The parallel to the ending of the second game is obvious, where even as much as I like Abby, I as the player wanted to kill her because I wanted revenge for Joel. Ellie, like Joel in the first game, removes that choice from me as the player because I'm not really making her decisions. I like to think that Ellie looked at Lev and Abby, feeling something of the bond she and Joel had when they traveled together. Perhaps that's what sparked that little bit of humanity and the memory of her last conversation with Joel about forgiveness.
One reviewer I usually respect a lot in particular wrote that the game criticized it for being bleak, nihilistic and titled the review "We're better than this". I agree, as a player I would not have let Abby walk away from our encounter. Ellie, as a character, decided to let Abby go and end the cycle of revenge that characterized the motivation for the storytelling in Last of Us 2. Abby, I don't think ever states to Ellie that Joel had killed her father - but Ellie doesn't really need that to see what's she is doing accomplishes absolutely nothing - other than condemning Lev to die as well. In many ways, I wonder if Ellie even truly intended to win that final fight and even cared about walking away. In the end she was better and maybe that was the point.
I feel this game was excellent and it did not disappoint me. I'm also glad I had the time I did to play through it, because experiencing the story naturally was infinitely better than having someone ruin it for me. Most importantly, someone earlier in the thread just watched the ending and was like "lol wtf how does that work?" but without the context of the rest of the game it does indeed make no sense. This isn't like Mass Effect 3, where an RPG that was always about how your choices (as a player) effected the game world would resolve. This is a story about a character who makes their own choices in a horrible series of situations.
And when it came down to it at the end, she made a choice that was better than what I would have done.
My main criticism of the game remains, in that they've tried very hard to humanize and make you feel bad for killing enemies - but the system itself just doesn't work very well. In the final combat scene of the game, 7 of the enemies I killed were Judy. It was just plain comical by the end of it. Yes, I get why you tried this and initially, I thought this worked brilliantly. But once it breaks, which it frequently likes to do, it breaks extremely badly and actually has the opposite effect on immersion. There were times I was left wondering if people of the same name were grouped up into units deliberately? It honestly didn't work out as well as they intended, which given the massive level of craft displayed across the whole game is pretty disappointing.
I'm not going to play this again for a while, I'm going to start something else more action adventury or whatever. Or maybe I will just remember to actually play Animal Crossing for a bit. I definitely need something that isn't this for a while.
If there's one thing I don't like it's how badly the AI zombies and soldiers are with handling eachother. Set a group of clickers on a group of humans? Chances are the two groups just start chasing eachother in literal circles for several minutes while you wait behind cover for anything to happen.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Also I really hate how there are sometimes not clear divides between areas. I missed exploring some parts of Seattle because I didn't realize I was locking myself out of the more open areas by going down a certain drop or through some doors. Generally they aren't *too* bad about this for the most part, but there were a few times it's frustrating. I also really dislike that their save system doesn't just save you where you are, but rather at very arbitrary points. Like @Chance above, I had to reload around 30 minutes of gameplay because I realized that something I picked up wasn't in my inventory anymore due to me reloading the wrong checkpoint (I reloaded the encounter and not the checkpoint, failing to remember it wouldn't keep any collectibles and items progress).
One thing I'm appreciative of so far is that the game throws in a few little on the rails or infinite ammo segments to let you have a moment or two of mindlessly blasting stuff. It's a very nice change of pace from making every shot count and then having to scavenge ammo. I've only encountered 2 so far so they're spaced out enough to just be a fun little treat.
The pacing of this game feels absolutely spot on thus far. I'm only on "Seattle Day 2" so I'm sure that could change at any moment but, for now, nothing has anything really felt extraneous or sloppy. The story beats are hitting where they need to. The acting and the facial capture is so good that even if it wasn't I might not even notice.
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I know you won't be taking further questions, but I can't help myself. Why is she awesome?
"For a few seconds Oskar saw through Eli's eyes. And what he saw was...himself. Only much better, more handsome, stronger than what he thought of himself. Seen with love."
--John Ajvide Lindqvist, Let the Right One In (Page 446).
It is humanising her actions very well. In many ways her motivations are not very different from Ellie’s.
Like sure, Ellie would have volunteered, but they didn't know that. She arrived there unconscious. And there are files in the game that tell us they were ready to kill her regardless. So even if Ellie had arrived there conscious, and didn't want to go through with that procedure they would have forcefully sedated her and killed her anyway, and killed Joel because he would have obviously tried to save her. Hell they wanted to kill Joel anyway.
Like before they had any idea that he would be opposed to what they were going to do with Ellie, they wanted to just straight up murder the man who risked his life and went through hell getting their prized specimen all the way across a post apocalyptic wasteland.
If that's not possible, then maybe just let your gunfights be your video game gunfights and realize that it's fine for some obvious game aspects to exist outside of the narrative.
Because the last few hours of their game are an absolute slog of an area that didn't even need to be in the game. Just encounter after encounter after encounter with no story and you just want to get to the next cutscene and get this story resolved and it just drags.
PSN:Furlion
Even though I feel like a dick cause they’re doggos, if you place a mine trap along the path of your scent trail you can blow them up pretty easily. They also seem to go down with one melee swing. I’m playing on Easy/Light though so might be different on higher difficulties.
Same as the first game, I don't find the controls responsive enough to give me the kinda twitch reactions to get out the tight spots you find yourself in. I'm playing on easier modes so I can take a little more damage when I inevitably fuck up and walk into a dog or something.
Edit: SIX JUDYS!!!
Too bad they weren’t Karens!
In many ways, the way I feel about the game:
I suspect Ellie spared Abby because of her thoughts with Joel. In that she might be breaking the cycle of violence and revenge caused by Joel’s killing. Lev trying to go after Ellie for killing Abby maybe?
I am very curious where they might go after this. A post-game DLC would be really welcome.
I would have preferred if
When Abby was hanging there it perfectly paralleled how Abby had Joel wounded and at her mercy. That would have been the better moment for her to make that decision.
I think it would have better because then she could have come home, still lost everything, gotten out the guitar, sat there with it, but then choose not to play it at all, sit it by the window and leave.
Because that part of her life is over.
I grin ear-to-ear, save, and get some sleep.
Today I pick back up in Chinatown, am quite sure I've got everything, and I bail to the next area. Takes some real stealth to get through this, but I clear it and... wait... where's my shotgun?!
I saved it AFTER I picked it up, but it saved the entire Chinatown area as if my involvement with it ended after opening the safe. Then I look up where I got the shotgun just to be sure and see I missed Abby's hunting pistol. So I'm reloading an old manual save at the boat repair that I feel super-lucky to have.
Just got the skill where Abby will chain finishers, too.
Damn.
Shoot the dog. Use a silencer.
Once a dude came around a truck, really reefing on the leash for his dog. I was super-impressed with the animation, and put an arrow into the dog (I was prone, in the grass, about 20 feet away). The dude did not even notice.
Just dropped the leash and kept walkin'. Now that's obviously an example of the AI screwing up, but yeah.
Silencer. Headshot. I am the predator.
Sadly it’s also now my no.1 strategy. The variables in this game are crazy and let’s not forget sweet rope physics.
I have resumed question period.
My only disappointment with Abby so far is that her Frig'd Dad has led us into another trope-y conversation:
"Oh Owen, I love you so much, and this beautiful aquarium you've dragged me to really is just as magical as it was when Joel and Ellie met the giraffes in the first game or Ellie and Riley went to the mall in the first game's DLC, or Ellie and Joel went to the Museum earlier in this game and so doesn't feel totally forced at all, but I just can't think about kissing when my father's killer is still at large. That's really the priority in our world, and like Neve Campbell in Scream, I'm sorry if my problems don't fit into your perfect, magical life, but my trauma has left me kinda' frigid, which is the most meaningful way emotional problems can affect a woman! In a way that inconveniences my male partner's libido!"
That felt hollow and Druckmann'd as fuck. But I like Abby, as we're meant to, I think.
And just tooling around as her in-game is awesome. This remains the awesome stealth-action game I wanted, I'm just peeved I lost my bow.
Saw a twitter thread yesterday about the team of people it took to make the rope work like it does, started by the animator who was in charge of Ellie spooling it up as she walks towards it and unspooling it as she walks away.
Unsavory rumors around that studio lately, but you can't argue with their results.
I wish we got to use it more often.
I feel a need for more traversal puzzles.
He obviously didn't play TLoU Part I DLC.
So some things might become clearer as I piece everything together but:
They definitely did not seem that interested in the Ellie side of the tale. Her half of the story is very much both incomplete and impotent because Tommy is always ahead of you killing everyone you are after. I think Ellie only killed two out of about 10. It focused more on her and Dina and to a lesser extent Jesse, and I just didn't find either character interesting. Dina particularly comes across as a big burden when you realize she's let you drag her out there while pregnant. Someone also saw the Departed because there are a few established characters just straight murdered in a split second with no build up. Every flashback between Joel and Ellie just makes you wish you were continuing the adventures of Joel and Ellie. Tommy also got done dirty, he's having a huge impact on the story but you never see him, he gets massively injured, and then is a dick to Ellie to wrap his story up.
Ellie's PTSD from witnessing Joel's death was pretty well done. The sniffing his jacket I can relate to. I didn't really buy into Abby's segment because it's never clear if it's going to be a brief thing or not. I won't say I liked any of her supporting cast any better at the end except Owen. I didn't really clock who Alice was until Abby followed my path into the Aquarium and I realized it was the dog I killed (no choice given). It does add some context to Owen who is clearly struggling a lot and isn't really in love with Mel, and instead of going down to Santa Barbara he just got offed alongside his baby mama. Pretty rough way to go, but then he would have likely died in Santa Barbara too. They did turn me around on Abby, at least to the point that during the end fight I did not want her or Ellie to die. It's one of those times I wish Naughty Dog could take their foot of the gas and let us actually make a choice. The Californian location was a nice change of pace after 16 hours of rain and gloom.
I'm not sure where the ending leads. Abby's at least seems to be set for DLC, for them finding Catalina and the Fireflys. Ellie's, I think leaving the guitar behind (with the Firefly logo on) is her moving on from her guilt (I assume for all the time she spent mad at Joel, only to try making up and then I think it's the next day he dies), but also her responsibility as saviour of the world. I get it would be hard to basically be The Chosen One, and now you're just no one. Her quest for revenge has also cost her the ability to play the guitar anyway. By seeking revenge so relentlessly she's cut her self off from that connection to Joel via him teaching her guitar. She probably couldn't even pass that skill on now. Not well anyway. It almost seems open to a Last of Us 3. It's definitely more ambiguous than even the first game. There there's an uneasy truce between Ellie and Joel and they're going to be together and safe in Jackson. Here, I can only assume that Ellie returns to Jackson to see if she can repair her relationship with Dina but it's left up in the air.
It's a good game. I cannot imagine ever wanting to slog through the entire thing again though. Not because of the subject matter but just because it is very deliberately slow paced and I don't have time for that. I'm kinda burnt out on slow ponderous walks in games now.
not playing out exactly as i expected, which is good. the perspective swap thing was easy to see coming. what i didn't anticipate was owen
owen is the straight up heart and soul of this game, and if there's a candle of redeeming light to come out of this, it's owen's doing. a brilliant performance, a wonderfully written character, and an alternate vision of a world where you don't just take up the call to fight.
someone commented that the tropey nature of the wild-animal date experience was getting formulaic, but i kinda disagree. i think naughty dog really cleverly subverted that set-up to shortcut our empathy to owen. we earned our love of ellie and joel through moments like the giraffe in salt lake city; putting us there with another set of characters so efficiently makes us understand their backstory, their relationship. we start at the emotional high-point of a different game with different main characters, equally fraught and violent and beautiful...
it's clever, self-conscious writing and it works dammit
more general gameplay stuff:
i'm playing through on hard, and the combat areas are starting to flourish. i don't know why but at the point where you
i do love that almost all the encounters can be circumvented without being 'cleared' and i feel like i still have that mindset to a certain degree, after smash-and-bolting through TLOU on grounded. the combat is brilliantly immersive and really the pinnacle of naughty dog's engine, which has always been exciting and strategic on the higher difficulty settings. i am resisting the temptation to want to record all my brilliant strategic moves (finaly executed right after 50 fails) because they come so often. i'm going to save it for some survival difficulty clips
one thing i don't like too much this time around is the under-bench scavenging. it's kinda endless and feels less purposeful than it ever was in the original game. but you gotta do it. honestly it's probably my biggest gripe with the game and it's a relatively small one
I've half-beaten at least 4 sections with pure non-lethal stealth before stopping, changing my mind and clearing the whole zone.
Stealth always first choice but sometimes things can go wrong and then it just turns up to 11.
So far all I have seen are upgrades for the individual guns to let you hold a few more rounds.
PSN:Furlion
In terms of violence, is the game horribly more violent than the first one? Yes and no. There are a couple of extremely brutal fights, which are easily on the level of David/Ellie from the first game and easily exceed it in terms of how messed up both combatants get. Otherwise I don't really feel the day to day combat and such is really significantly worse than the first game. There are a few deaths to enemies that just frankly look nasty - the dogs eating you in particular is disturbing - but I was prepared for horrific unseen levels of violence. What I got was stuff I had seen from other games, albeit in more limited scenes, or things on par with some movies or other violent media. I feel this aspect of the game was heavily over-weighted by reviewers and I'm trying to process why.
It's also been called bleak and nihilistic, when in reality I feel this game had more moments of levity and even optimism at times than the first game did. The first game, no matter where you were in the story, always had this pall hanging over it about what might happen to Ellie, was anything you were doing even with any point? Then you get to those Giraffes and it's like amazing, because it's a small moment of optimism in a bleak game. Last of Us 2 has more than a few moments where it slows things down and lets you experience either life in happier times, or just outright has moments of optimism/joy. Of course it then regularly tears these things down and destroys them afterwards, but it isn't all endless nihilistic darkness. I do understand an argument that says most of these scenes are undermined by the way characters can't let go of their past trauma. As a - HUGE SPOILER - prime example:
But can I just completely congratulate this game on one particular thing, that I was 100% certain was going to happen and couldn't believe it didn't:
Having played the whole game, largely in 4 very long sessions, I enjoyed the entire game from beginning to end except for having to do some really awful shit now and again. The core gameplay is fantastic and easily better than the first game. There are more options for evading enemies, stealth feels much better rewarded, enemy variety is better leading to more dynamic encounters etc. I never found the game a slog and the last part of the game was a nice change of scenery, plus it really didn't wear out its welcome that much. It was great being able to use all that upgraded character and weapons stuff to the best use by the end of the game. Once you do get the ending:
One reviewer I usually respect a lot in particular wrote that the game criticized it for being bleak, nihilistic and titled the review "We're better than this". I agree, as a player I would not have let Abby walk away from our encounter. Ellie, as a character, decided to let Abby go and end the cycle of revenge that characterized the motivation for the storytelling in Last of Us 2. Abby, I don't think ever states to Ellie that Joel had killed her father - but Ellie doesn't really need that to see what's she is doing accomplishes absolutely nothing - other than condemning Lev to die as well. In many ways, I wonder if Ellie even truly intended to win that final fight and even cared about walking away. In the end she was better and maybe that was the point.
I feel this game was excellent and it did not disappoint me. I'm also glad I had the time I did to play through it, because experiencing the story naturally was infinitely better than having someone ruin it for me. Most importantly, someone earlier in the thread just watched the ending and was like "lol wtf how does that work?" but without the context of the rest of the game it does indeed make no sense. This isn't like Mass Effect 3, where an RPG that was always about how your choices (as a player) effected the game world would resolve. This is a story about a character who makes their own choices in a horrible series of situations.
And when it came down to it at the end, she made a choice that was better than what I would have done.
My main criticism of the game remains, in that they've tried very hard to humanize and make you feel bad for killing enemies - but the system itself just doesn't work very well. In the final combat scene of the game, 7 of the enemies I killed were Judy. It was just plain comical by the end of it. Yes, I get why you tried this and initially, I thought this worked brilliantly. But once it breaks, which it frequently likes to do, it breaks extremely badly and actually has the opposite effect on immersion. There were times I was left wondering if people of the same name were grouped up into units deliberately? It honestly didn't work out as well as they intended, which given the massive level of craft displayed across the whole game is pretty disappointing.
I'm not going to play this again for a while, I'm going to start something else more action adventury or whatever. Or maybe I will just remember to actually play Animal Crossing for a bit. I definitely need something that isn't this for a while.
The pacing of this game feels absolutely spot on thus far. I'm only on "Seattle Day 2" so I'm sure that could change at any moment but, for now, nothing has anything really felt extraneous or sloppy. The story beats are hitting where they need to. The acting and the facial capture is so good that even if it wasn't I might not even notice.