TLOU2 Review Thread

Phoenixmgs

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I got the impression from Skill Up especially that TLoU2 wasn’t going to jive with him regardless based on tone and adjectives alone. Although he did admit to not being especially fond of the original either, at least in terms of gameplay.
He doesn't really enjoy the gameplay much (as it's "fine" to him), but that was known. He said that if you like TLOU1, then you'll like the gameplay of TLOU2 because it is better but only slightly. He liked the story and characters from the 1st game so I don't see why he'd be predetermined to go into TLOU2 in the mindset that "this is going to suck" storywise and then puts too much weight onto the negatives thereby not liking the story (aka self-fulfilling prophecy).

I really like the demo of Desperados 3. Generally shy away from RTS stuff due to the steep learning curve with the amount of hotkey commands and busywork type of gameplay, but this feels different. Almost like if Shadowrun was more robust in its systems and not turn based.

Having said that, it’s really tough to compare it to a completely different game design like third person survival ie TLoU2. Is there more depth and variety of tactics in D3? Of course, but at the same time it will never have anywhere near the level of immersion and “on the ground” feel.
I'm not sure why Desperados 3 (or these style games) are described as RTS or RTT games. It basically plays like a typical stealth game but it's isometric and the fact that you can switch between characters. Well over 90% of the time you're just moving one character at a time through the level (hiding in bushes, taking the upper path on rooftops, etc.) just like you would in say Splinter Cell. With the multiple characters, there's times when you obviously want more than one character to do be acting at the same time, which is the only times I feel the RTS/RTT description even fits at all. However, you have the Showdown mechanic so you never have be fast with the mouse and keyboard to be able to input commands super fast or anything and the game plays perfectly fine with a controller.

The reason I chose to play Desperados 3 over TLOU2 is because I know Desperados 3 is giving me top-notch core gameplay of its ilk whereas TLOU gameplay is probably a 7/10 for me and it has to be uplifted by things like a compelling story that are a far from a given. Both games are obviously not at all like a 1:1 comparison to where anyone would ever say Desperados 3 is a better TLOU like say how people are calling Temtem a better Pokemon, but both are generally stealth games.
 
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Dwarvenhobble

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For all the talk about agenda I wonder if the games staunchest critics don't have one too.
Oh I have an agenda. My Agenda is wanting people to judge based on the execution not on if it appeals to political positions by merely including groups that people believe need inclusion just for the sake of having them there so everyone can see them because somehow you think people don't know they exist or something......

To me as an example Gone Home doesn't matter much that it's a story about lesbians. The game still has issues and I can happily call out the story as cliche and unoriginal because it is.


Ellie's rival would always been very controversial due to what she did and how the game expects you to see her favorable. But I rather doubt that the backlash against the character would be so severe if she wasn't a woman, and a woman that looked rather manly to boot.
Based on yet more recent leaks there may be a reason for her look.............


And for all the talk about leftist agenda plaguing the game I can't say the game comes off as particularly bold.
That's the thing. It's NOT. People praising it are celebrating it based on preconceptions that it will annoy political opponents. It's like a certain series I watched the other year that had a big long major plot arc for an entire season where the big reveal was one of the lead characters is gay. I watched it and they revealed the truth and I basically went "Yeh so what's the big reveal again" and waiting thinking there was going to be more only for the show to basically go "No that's it he's gay that's our big plot arc, that's the big secret aren't you so shocked?" and I was just sitting there feeling like clearly they were aiming this at the kind of person who'd either be outraged at the reveal or emphatically whooping going "Wooo representation wooo" To me it did neither because it's not a shocking move for a character to come out as gay. Hell in the UK since 2007 there have been plotlines more about people trying to deal with the conflict of their religious beliefs with the fact their friend is gay or other such similar plotlines.

Hell it's also worth pointing out the first Lesbian kiss in a film happened in the 1930s
 

hanselthecaretaker

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Oh I have an agenda. My Agenda is wanting people to judge based on the execution not on if it appeals to political positions by merely including groups that people believe need inclusion just for the sake of having them there so everyone can see them because somehow you think people don't know they exist or something......

To me as an example Gone Home doesn't matter much that it's a story about lesbians. The game still has issues and I can happily call out the story as cliche and unoriginal because it is.



Based on yet more recent leaks there may be a reason for her look.............



That's the thing. It's NOT. People praising it are celebrating it based on preconceptions that it will annoy political opponents. It's like a certain series I watched the other year that had a big long major plot arc for an entire season where the big reveal was one of the lead characters is gay. I watched it and they revealed the truth and I basically went "Yeh so what's the big reveal again" and waiting thinking there was going to be more only for the show to basically go "No that's it he's gay that's our big plot arc, that's the big secret aren't you so shocked?" and I was just sitting there feeling like clearly they were aiming this at the kind of person who'd either be outraged at the reveal or emphatically whooping going "Wooo representation wooo" To me it did neither because it's not a shocking move for a character to come out as gay. Hell in the UK since 2007 there have been plotlines more about people trying to deal with the conflict of their religious beliefs with the fact their friend is gay or other such similar plotlines.

Hell it's also worth pointing out the first Lesbian kiss in a film happened in the 1930s
That might be an oversight or oversimplification in this case though, as apparently the issues people are complaining about from the leaks aren’t even accurate or significant to the overall plot. Which makes me half wonder if it was a trolling attempt.
 

Dwarvenhobble

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That might be an oversight or oversimplification in this case though, as apparently the issues people are complaining about from the leaks aren’t even accurate or significant to the overall plot. Which makes me half wonder if it was a trolling attempt.
A lot of the issues I've seen people complaining about have been related more to the plot and some about how this feels like an exercise in filling out a diversity checklist in some cases.
 

hanselthecaretaker

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A lot of the issues I've seen people complaining about have been related more to the plot and some about how this feels like an exercise in filling out a diversity checklist in some cases.
Well it’s true that even the developer stated they wanted to broaden the diversity spectrum -

At Naughty Dog, says Druckmann, the goal of deepening narratives in videogames has wedded itself naturally to the studio's commitment to represent diversity in game characters—which in turn has attracted new talent. To help him cowrite The Last of Us Part II, in 2016 Druckmann brought in a television and film screenwriter named Halley Gross. “Our goal is absolutely to create the most multifaceted characters you've seen in games,” says Gross, who spent 13 months working on the first season of HBO's Westworld. By comparison, she has spent three and a half years writing The Last of Us Part II. And she and Druckmann have drawn extensively from the rest of the team, Gross reports; queer staffers have helped in the writing of queer characters, adding dimension and complexity: “I think we're doing right by the LGBTQ+ community, who have often been drawn with a broader brush.”

How people interpret that is up to them personally and how well the story is told I suppose.
 

Dwarvenhobble

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Well it’s true that even the developer stated they wanted to broaden the diversity spectrum -

At Naughty Dog, says Druckmann, the goal of deepening narratives in videogames has wedded itself naturally to the studio's commitment to represent diversity in game characters—which in turn has attracted new talent. To help him cowrite The Last of Us Part II, in 2016 Druckmann brought in a television and film screenwriter named Halley Gross. “Our goal is absolutely to create the most multifaceted characters you've seen in games,” says Gross, who spent 13 months working on the first season of HBO's Westworld. By comparison, she has spent three and a half years writing The Last of Us Part II. And she and Druckmann have drawn extensively from the rest of the team, Gross reports; queer staffers have helped in the writing of queer characters, adding dimension and complexity: “I think we're doing right by the LGBTQ+ community, who have often been drawn with a broader brush.”

How people interpret that is up to them personally and how well the story is told I suppose.
Thing is I think from everything I've heard if this were a teenage male instead of Ellie and some other male character instead of Abby it would be getting called derivative, formulaic and somewhat predictable and nothing special really.
 

Dreiko

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Dreiko, that is kind of missing the point of the game. It isn't some over the top action game but a down to earth one.
There's no such thing a down to earth action game. There's just varying degrees of unrealism. You don't need the arm cannon/crossbow to shoot magic demonbane bombs, it can just shoot normal crossbow bolts. Definitely more realistic of a weapon than golf clubs anyhow haha.
 

Specter Von Baren

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There's no such thing a down to earth action game. There's just varying degrees of unrealism. You don't need the arm cannon/crossbow to shoot magic demonbane bombs, it can just shoot normal crossbow bolts. Definitely more realistic of a weapon than golf clubs anyhow haha.
Not to mention, if the kind of death toll that Ellie is going to enact in this game is anywhere close to what has been implied then we're already out of the gate in over the top action.
 

Gyrobot

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Ok reading about the reviews and some of the additional leaks that have come out the reviews make much more sense.
This isn't a fun game

To avoid spoiling much else I'm putting the rest of my thoughts in the spoiler box on this post

(The Spoiler section below contains unconfirmed leaked info on The Last of Us Part II's ending along with spoilers for the Gone Girl, The Mist, Million Dollar Baby and the indie game LISA open at your own risk)

This is end game stuff after the other leaked info. All you need to know before this point is Abby, who is the daughter of one of the doctors Joel killed in The Last of US has killed Joel in revenge for him killing her father.

Dina (girl from the trailer) and Ellie are together on a farm raising Dina's child together along with the child's father Tommy. Ellie is suffering PTSD from having to watch Joel be brutally killed by Abby. Tommy comes in with information about where Abby is.

Dina tries to convince Ellie not to go but she does anyway.

Abby has been captured by one of the groups in the area and Ellie kills basically all of them.

She gets to the beach where the last members of the group are about to crucify Abby.

Ellie kills them and pulls down Abbey who asks if Ellie has come to help save her. Ellie then says no she just wanted to kill Abby herself.

They fight and Ellie gets the upper hand eventually and is about to kill Abby but he has a hallucination of Joel playing the guitar and this gives Abby time to jump onto a boat and start sailing away.

Ellie goes back to the farm where Dina and Tommy were only to find it empty with both them and the baby gone.

Ellie then goes to her room to get her guitar and prepares to play to help calm herself. Only to find that because she lost 2 finders in the fight with Abby she can no longer even play the guitar.


It's the type of media I'd describe as Hopedeath (A term I made up because I'm sure there is a proper one but I don't know it).
It's like the Indie game LISA or the films, Million Dollar Baby, The Mist or Gone Girl.
It's an ending where the protagonist is left totally hopeless. Or the story makes everything seem pointless and hopeless and futile.
It's not Misery Porn because that is often about overcoming horrible problems.
It's not Grimdark because that's edgy violent stuff with dystopia stuff thrown in quite often but even then generally there are victories in the bleak setting and hope however fleeting it may seem by the end.

If the ending is true it will piss people off because Joel saved Ellie in the first game so she could live and grow up and what happens when she grows up? She loses everything and ends the game in a position where everything is utterly hopeless, she's lost the girl she loves; she's lost her group as such; She's lost Joel; She lost the ability to do one of the things Joel taught her that reminds her of him in the form of playing the guitar. It's making it seem like the ending of The Last of Us Part 1 was picking you up jut so Part II could make sure your hopes could be made to fall from a greater height as the only thing worse than no hope is often false hope. If the ending is true it leaves Ellie basically destroyed on so many levels and it's such a depressing hopeless ending people won't enjoy it.

I wouldn't even say it's compelling as an ending as such to want to get toward.
This isn't even a "uuuhhh this games not fun" thing. Plenty of stuff can not be fun to see in films or play but it can be compelling to see a person overcome the challenges and get a happy or at least somewhat ambiguous ending. An outright everything is ruined, they failed and lost everything ending? They're very rare and often you really have to be in the right frame of mind to be able to appreciate such things and given all that's going on in the world that ain't now for a lot of people even those that can or would put themselves through it at other more stable less unpredictable times and tumultuous times.

Well that's what I've gotta say on it.
Isn't that the whole point of misery porn is seeing failure?
 

CriticalGaming

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Heh now that would be a very fun thing to see :whistle:
Ah shit. my fucking phone autocorrected.

would have been good to see any of this scene though. it's all just briefly explained in dialog, you dont get to see any of this.
 

Eacaraxe

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I couldn't help myself but look up "that" scene. Potentially NSFW technical details ahead.

Did Naughty Dog have one person -- one single, solitary, person -- on their dev team whose experience with anal sex exceeded "saw it in porn"? Because holy hell, that's not just bad form, that's a good way to earn yourself the world's most awkward urgent care visit.
 

SilentPony

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I couldn't help myself but look up "that" scene. Potentially NSFW technical details ahead.

Did Naughty Dog have one person -- one single, solitary, person -- on their dev team whose experience with anal sex exceeded "saw it in porn"? Because holy hell, that's not just bad form, that's a good way to earn yourself the world's most awkward urgent care visit.
I'm...I'm lost. What?
 

Specter Von Baren

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I couldn't help myself but look up "that" scene. Potentially NSFW technical details ahead.

Did Naughty Dog have one person -- one single, solitary, person -- on their dev team whose experience with anal sex exceeded "saw it in porn"? Because holy hell, that's not just bad form, that's a good way to earn yourself the world's most awkward urgent care visit.
 

hanselthecaretaker

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Thing is I think from everything I've heard if this were a teenage male instead of Ellie and some other male character instead of Abby it would be getting called derivative, formulaic and somewhat predictable and nothing special really.
They probably thought as much too. I’ll be finding out for myself in a few short hours how much and what kind of thought they put into it beyond that.