Then I guess it depends on the difficulty, because I played it on Survivor and it took me an hour to get past that suburb area from the press demo.
TLOU2 Review Thread
- Thread starter Phoenixmgs
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Even on tip top ultra hard, you can prone crawl passed just about everything. With maybe some pauses to kill dogs. I didn't play on super hard, but I played on the level below that, and I just skipped most things because I no longer needed anything in the area.
Writer talks about story for a horse’s mouth perspective -
venturebeat.com
Naughty Dog’s narrative lead explains the story of The Last of Us Part II
Dean Takahashi of GamesBeat played The Last of Us Part II a couple of times, and then he interviewed narrative lead Halley Gross about the story.
venturebeat.com
Bunch of fluff honestly. And Dean "can't play cuphead" Takahashi doesn't ask any follow up questions and just takes the PR-filled answers as they come. I have so many follow up questions to her answers that it makes me want to scream.Writer talks about story for a horse’s mouth perspective -
Naughty Dog’s narrative lead explains the story of The Last of Us Part II
Dean Takahashi of GamesBeat played The Last of Us Part II a couple of times, and then he interviewed narrative lead Halley Gross about the story.
For example this question:
GamesBeat: When the characters are redeemed, what do they gain? Why is that bringing closure to a story for them, when before this they seemed to have lost so much … lost everything? Are we supposed to feel good that they’re redeemed, or just feel like that redemption goes along with all this other bad stuff?
Gross: I don’t think we want to be prescriptive about how you should feel about their redemption. It’s more focused on the fact that — especially focusing on the Abby narrative, she wasn't sleeping . She wasn’t happy. Where Ellie’s story ends is where Abby’s story starts. She has this big moment. She confronts her demons, literally, and then she’s left with that empty feeling, this inability to sleep. She’s ostracized herself from her friends. Through her relationship with Lev and Yara, she is able to sleep. She’s able to find a way to see beyond her ego. It pulls her out and makes her supplementary member of society, in a way that she hadn’t been before. However you feel that is valid.
She wasn't sleeping? When we jump back to Abby for the second half of the game she's literally woken up by Manny because SHE WAS FUCKING SLEEPING!
When you're lead writer can't even get her own story straight you know you are in some shit. There is only a passive mention of her not being able to sleep with Mel in the back of the truck. That's it. Beyond that it never comes up again because the writers have no idea how to make a character consistant. If she has these problems, then why the fuck don't they ever show it? Why do we never see the repercussions of their choices actually affect them?
They talk about how Ellie is so consumed with revenge and yet her revenge is barely a focus through her whole trip to Seattle. She banters with Dina like they're just out of a morning walk. Then when she kills a pregnant lady she is ready to give it up without a fight or even a question. That's not how all consuming revenge works. You want us to feel this story but when the characters don't "feel" it, then how is the audience supposed to?
A good story allows you to connect and empathize with the characters, but every person in this world is such a shallow and weak character that there is no depth or emotional conflict for you to relate to. Everybody is so violent out the gate that you can't really feel any hardship from them, because they slaughter people and then go about their day talking about lunch or whatever the fuck. They wanted to send a message about violence, and yet they have every character act so bloodthristy that they go onto to making joke ten seconds after murdering a dozen people.
Everything about this story doesn't work. And while you could've salvaged it by simply changing the order in which things happen, I think the story is so flawed at its core it would never have worked.
Well sure, if you don't make any mistakes. But it's not like being prone completely obscures you from all sight, even when you're in the grass. When enemies get within a 3 metre radius they'll spot you. And getting into an open fire fight on Survivor is kinda a death sentence.
Yeah but if you just hug the walls you wont encounter enemies that close. Prone keeps you hidden from enemies on overlooking positions like porches or balconies. It's a very very easy game to break.
It almost sounds like she got Ellie and Abby confused, because the former is who really “couldn’t sleep”. I’m pretty much done with everything but the ending; heading to Abby’s holding cell, and I can safely say I personally would’ve rather just had the bulk of the whole game be Abby’s story, and tie in a surprise reveal at the end of Ellie’s confrontation for her killing Joel. Ellie’s half was dry and felt like filler next to Abby’s, with only a couple escape sequences to spice things up. Abby’s actually had emotional weight and thematic resonance beyond mere revenge. Adding the Lev and Yara dimension felt more human than anything before it, with Abby basically changing her whole outlook on things along the way. Plus she actually had more of the signature Naughty Dog set piece moments and location variety that helped the pacing.
The prologue and epilogue could’ve basically just been bookends of Ellie and Joel trying to reconcile their relationship over the lie, followed by a dramatic reveal of Ellie’s confrontation of Abby being Joel’s Killer and culminate with giving the player the choice of whether to kill Abby or not. I won’t go into the details of getting there, but with good writing that should’ve been enough for the player to struggle with their decision, what feels right or wrong, etc. without dragging this whole thing out into a mind numbing, soul sucking slog.
The frustrating thing is that when it’s good, it outshines the original in almost every way.
*edit* just finished the story and yeah, Ellie certainly bottomed out and went a wee bit overboard there especially at the end. I guess the moral for her would be to stop learning the bloody hard way. Wonder how she and Abby would’ve faired if they had the benefit of a normal, emotionally healthy upbringing.
It’s kinda pointless to mull over these flawed characters and their motives so my main criticism still lies with the bloated structure and pacing, but the excessive brutality was a bit too on the nose as well at times. The main redeeming factors for me were the audiovisual elements and some of the set piece moments like the chase sequences and the sniper fight with Tommy. In terms of general attention to detail, animation quality, sound design (aside from a weird fidelity glitch in some firefights or explosions) and of course character performances it’s easily up there with God of War and Red Dead: Redemption 2. I guess I find more value in those things than most, because the narrative was pretty whatever to me seeing as it’s highly subjective.
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Well I thought it was alright anyway. Not even that depressing tbh. I mean, people are still joking with each other and rembering good times, it's hardly anywhere near what films have done with uncompromisingly exploring despair, nor even the weight of waking up to this reality everyday. The psychology of gamers and their relationship to the characters they play is always baffling to me.
Well there are titles like This Is The Police 2 if you want uncompromising despair
That does look interesting, will have to give it a go when money is being kind again. Also This War of Mine is pretty close, it can be draining especially when you know everything's slowly falling downhill and you will have to restart it all again one way or another. Oh and frostpunk!
I was gonna mention This War of Mine, which I still haven't been able to get into nearly as much as I want to because of how bleak it is.
Nah, is one ultimate uncompromising despair, play Radiant Silvergun. Once you're finished with that, immediately go to Ikaruga for some bittersweetness.
Yeah, true, I got The Little Ones version and have yet to reach any progression where the buggers materialise at all. Usually one failed go is enough before feeling the need to seek more instant gratification. At least a few weeks break between each attempt must be had at least too! Imma bad at the videogame.
Well, it's probably one of the better examples of playable instruments in a game, and a nice use of the touchpad I didn't actively hate. The only issue is slight delay when trying to strum every now and then, possibly due to the nature of the touchpad being harder to know what pressure it needs. I do have a soft spot for in-game playable instruments and is why Ocarina of Time was so beloved at the time when it was fairly unseen elsewhere.
This will be probably be the last thing I have to say on this topic, but this artist brings up a very good point with Sony's Double Standard and hypocrisy when it comes to sex and violence in video games.
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*Looks at Sakura Wars, Persona 5 Royal, SAO Alicization, Azur Lane Crosswave and fanservice being allowed*This will be probably be the last thing I have to say on this topic, but this artist brings uo a very good point with Sony's Double Standard and hypocrisy when it comes to sex and violence in video games.
I don't see double standards, all I see is weebs complaining about how they don't have the same privileges during the Vita Era and angry that while mature depiction of sex is allowed, their distorted perception of sexual content isn't..
And they made up of the beginning bulk of chuds complaining about the game so fuck them.
I'm talking about that awkward sex scene in The last of us part II. The guy in the Deviantart page makes a similar comment I just said. He was never dead set against last of us, but he never cared much for it either. So I highly doubt he's with one of those chud's you're talkin about. I don't care much for most of anime games either, but I just do find it funny that Sony gets all PC censor happy, yet Nintendo releases most of these games unensored. Sony and naughty dog, are happy to glorify the gory violence and tell you how horrible person you are for committing that, yet anime tittiesmakes them panic and can lose their minds. That is double standard and hypocrisy. it's ironic, because Sony always prided themselves as the edgy kid on the block back in the 90s and throughout most of the 2000s. and they're sure as hell are not as mature or enlightened as they think they are.
And for the record I was referring to other games before those that came out that you have listed. Also, devil May Cry 5 had some of this really minor nudity censored. Then later uncensored aside for one scene. no that was more of a weird decision on capcom's part for some weird reason.
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The artist of this cartoon also stated that in that scene you can clearly see everything, which you can't, only some quick boob, and that it's also a self-insert from Druckmann, which it isn't (if we're going by the assumption that he apparently has a thing for Laura Bailey and wanted her in a sex scene), since Bailey didn't mo-cap that scene. But then Druckmann was apparently also a self-insert for the guy who spit on Joel's corpse eventhough he looks nothing like him other than having a manbun.
This guy also has his character wear a T-shirt spelling 'Sony' as 'Soyny', which says enough. And looking through more of his work it's clear he's pretty much a cartoonist version of The Quartering, Yellowflash or any other idiot complaining about "SJWs" and "forced diversity".
As for the censoring... I'm biased on that since I think the amount of sexual pandering from Japan has already ruined anime. And not even sex, but the weird voyeuristic, accidental boob grab type stuff. Japanese anime and games never seem to want to commit to letting two characters actually have sex, they only allow them to weirdly dance around it with this creepy shit. Which is probably why that sex scene in TLoU2 was censored in Japan.