TLOU2 Review Thread

Specter Von Baren

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I finished it earlier today.

I think the greatest bit of praise, but also the biggest criticism, I can assign to it is the fact that I found it very fun. As a matter of fact I found it to be the most enjoyable third person shooter I've gotten to play since Max Payne 3. However, if it really was Neil Druckmann's intention to make the player question video game violence on a moment to moment basis, he completely missed the mark.

That's simply not possible with those specific mechanics. Not when it's so easy and so satisyfying to shoot, stab, choke and punch your way through countless waves of zombies, soldiers and cultists. The fact enemies often yell out the names of their comrades when you kill them is kind of cute, the first few times, but wears off very quickly. That's the issue here. If you want to humanize enemy characters and question violence as core gameplay, you'd have to completely rethink the mechanical framework. Then every single combat encounter would have to be threatening, every single enemy would need to be characterized to some extent and every single fight would need to have an emotional impact.

See, that's the core issue with the game, or rather, with how it's trying to be "artistic". It substitutes actual emotional weight with "grit". And it's definitely gritty. At points almost comically so. People go through terrible things and do terrible things to each other but it's all so closely tied to the mechanical language of exciting action games and the visual language of exciting action movies, so afraid to be actually unpleasant as an experience, that it's never quite able to grow beyond banality. It's honestly a bit frustrating to see. All those absurd production values and all that lush presentation for a story that effectively boils down to two grimly determined meatheads crawling through the dirt and shooting dozens of generic soldiers and zombies to settle a score over the death of their respective daddies. I think it was the point when you were playing Ellie, chasing a single woman through a hospital with an axe in your hand like Nicholson in The Shining where I fought "This is complete shlock, isn't it?"

Abbie's storyline is kind of better, mostly on the virtue of her being an overall more likeable character and, most of all, having a more likeable supporting cast. The whole thing with Lev seemed to me like a bit to overt an attempt to recreate the relationship between Joel and Ellie from the first game but overall I can at least say I cared about the things she went through and I was sad when most of that supporting cast inevitably got killed.

So, here we are, it's a lavishly produced, excellently acted, mechanically smooth epic about what's basically the worlds most drawn out catfight. If I had to rate it on gameplay alone, it'd be a 9 out of 10, if I had to rate the story it'd be a 7/10 (and even that would be much lower if the presentation wasn't top notch), it evens out at an 8/10, which I think is a very good score. It's not my favourite game of the year (That's Final Fantasy 7 Remake) but I had a good time playing it. But if anyone tries to convince you it's some great artistic accomplishment for the medium... yeah, no, it doesn't hold a candle to even last years Death Stranding, much less games like Pathologic 2, Silent Hill 2, Silent Hill Shattered Memories or Killer 7 when it comes to genuine artistic merit. When it comes to actually being a fun game though, yeah, I guess I take it over those.
I think the game would have done better to be more like Shadow of the Colossus, based on what you're saying. Have each encounter be a unique and hand crafted one rather than creating a system and having the player play around with it in an attempt to master it. A cinematic game needs a cinematic system.
 

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How would you make a “game” out of Joel and Ellie hashing out a lie? There wouldn’t be any driving force in terms of what they’re doing besides arguing or trying to convince each other of something neither knows (a cure) was even complete true in the first place.

In terms of motivation, assuming you’re referring to the dog dying? It’s sad of course but it’s certainly not the first dog to die a cruel death in a movie either. We knew the dog all of what, 10 minutes before it happened too. I love the John Wick movies and am glad they were able to keep the scene in, but the mystique Wick’s enemies apply to his motive(s) was always more interesting than the motive itself.
I'm not really a game designer or creator so I don't know the best way to go about it. A thought just kinda just entered my mind would be the conflict of the lie leads to Ellie wanting to find the Fireflies herself and she meets Abby and her people doing the same thing. Then you can have several encounters on the trek and Ellie's decisions on how to handle them will affect team Abby's stance on Joel (when he eventually catches up to Ellie) so it's directly your choices that determine Joel's fate (which is unknown to the player obviously). The idea is directly influenced by the best part of Witcher 3 when Geralt is choosing what's best for Ciri and his choices directly affect the ending. Also, the Metro game(s?) have doing general things affect the game as well. It can't just be simple Ellie does good things for good ending and bad things for bad ending obviously. You can even have a RDR2 type camp dynamic as well. And just imagine the scene where Ellie's mask breaks and instead of it being Dina there, it's Abby and she realizes who Ellie is in that moment. The gameplay can be things that you'd face on an adventure from combat scenarios to environment puzzles to Quantic Dream-like choice sequences.

In John Wick, the scene sets up how much a piece of shit the guy is whereas in TLOU2, based on knowledge of the characters, I was like "well, he probably had it coming." Apparently, the 1st game initially had a plot similar to TLOU2 where Tess was going to be the bad guy but the team was like it's not realistic to go chasing someone down across long distances for revenge in the type of world the game is set in. And that happens in at least 3 separate instances in TLOU2.
 
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Phoenixmgs

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I think the game would have done better to be more like Shadow of the Colossus, based on what you're saying. Have each encounter be a unique and hand crafted one rather than creating a system and having the player play around with it in an attempt to master it. A cinematic game needs a cinematic system.
Yeah, I feel like a lot of games would be far better with less combat encounters but increase the stakes to the ones you do have.
 

CriticalGaming

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Neil Druckmann accidently admits that he activity worked to get the leaks taken down from youtube and where ever else. Which means he is aware and admits that they deliberately falsely DMCA'd people.
 

Casual Shinji

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Neil Druckmann accidently admits that he activity worked to get the leaks taken down from youtube and where ever else. Which means he is aware and admits that they deliberately falsely DMCA'd people.
Oooh "Cuck"mann... I get it; It's supposed to be a play on his name. Man, these people are so funny!
 
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dscross

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I finished it earlier today.

I think the greatest bit of praise, but also the biggest criticism, I can assign to it is the fact that I found it very fun. As a matter of fact I found it to be the most enjoyable third person shooter I've gotten to play since Max Payne 3. However, if it really was Neil Druckmann's intention to make the player question video game violence on a moment to moment basis, he completely missed the mark.

That's simply not possible with those specific mechanics. Not when it's so easy and so satisyfying to shoot, stab, choke and punch your way through countless waves of zombies, soldiers and cultists. The fact enemies often yell out the names of their comrades when you kill them is kind of cute, the first few times, but wears off very quickly. That's the issue here. If you want to humanize enemy characters and question violence as core gameplay, you'd have to completely rethink the mechanical framework. Then every single combat encounter would have to be threatening, every single enemy would need to be characterized to some extent and every single fight would need to have an emotional impact.

See, that's the core issue with the game, or rather, with how it's trying to be "artistic". It substitutes actual emotional weight with "grit". And it's definitely gritty. At points almost comically so. People go through terrible things and do terrible things to each other but it's all so closely tied to the mechanical language of exciting action games and the visual language of exciting action movies, so afraid to be actually unpleasant as an experience, that it's never quite able to grow beyond banality. It's honestly a bit frustrating to see. All those absurd production values and all that lush presentation for a story that effectively boils down to two grimly determined meatheads crawling through the dirt and shooting dozens of generic soldiers and zombies to settle a score over the death of their respective daddies. I think it was the point when you were playing Ellie, chasing a single woman through a hospital with an axe in your hand like Nicholson in The Shining where I thought "This is complete shlock, isn't it?"

Abbie's storyline is kind of better, mostly on the virtue of her being an overall more likeable character and, most of all, having a more likeable supporting cast. The whole thing with Lev seemed to me like a bit to overt an attempt to recreate the relationship between Joel and Ellie from the first game but overall I can at least say I cared about the things she went through and I was sad when most of that supporting cast inevitably got killed.

So, here we are, it's a lavishly produced, excellently acted, mechanically smooth epic about what's basically the worlds most drawn out catfight. If I had to rate it on gameplay alone, it'd be a 9 out of 10, if I had to rate the story it'd be a 7/10 (and even that would be much lower if the presentation wasn't top notch), it evens out at an 8/10, which I think is a very good score. It's not my favourite game of the year (That's Final Fantasy 7 Remake) but I had a good time playing it. It had two scenes that particularly stuck with me, one's the one in the hospital I already mentioned, because it was very silly, and the other one was Abby breaking a guys neck with her thighs, because it gave me an erection. But as much as I enjoyed the presentation and the combat and as much as i may fantasize about Abby holding me in her strong arms at night, if anyone tries to convince you it's some great artistic accomplishment for the medium... yeah, no. It doesn't hold a candle to even last years Death Stranding, much less games like Pathologic 2, Silent Hill 2, Silent Hill Shattered Memories or Killer 7 when it comes to genuine artistic merit. When it comes to actually being a fun game though, yeah, I guess I take it over those.
I found this to be a useful and interesting critique.
 

Phoenixmgs

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Neil Druckmann accidently admits that he activity worked to get the leaks taken down from youtube and where ever else. Which means he is aware and admits that they deliberately falsely DMCA'd people.
The video was extremely low on content. Druckmann admitted to wanting to get the initial leaks taken down but nothing about afterwards and just people discussing the leaks. And, what's the big deal in "tricking" people in trailers? It's done quite often. You can go into anything and end up hating it, you don't have some right to like everything you purchase. Entertainment is a known risk.
 

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If we're talking favourites, I see your Final Fantasy, and I'll raise you a Doom Eternal.
 

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P5R has this year down but FFVIIR was a great effort. They say you can't improve on perfection but Royal proves them wrong whoever they are.


Though the year isn't out yet, I still have very high hopes for stuff like 13 Sentinels and Ghost of Tsushima.
 

Hawki

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What's wrong with ludonarrative dissonance? Lots of games have LD. The game I've playing right now (Battlefield 3) has LD. I didn't think there was anything controversial about the term or concept.
 

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After having finshed the game myself and having watched a couple of let's plays.. is it me or is Joel kinda deified in TLoU2? I constantly see people online crying about how Joel deserved better, but the game honestly treats him with so much respect and reverance that I'd say Joel got more than he deserved. He's even given some redemption by Ellie when she says that eventhough she doesn't think she can forgive him for what he did, she'd like to try. And Jesus Christ, does he not deserve her forgiveness, but he kinda receives it anyway. He himself even knows how much he doesn't deserve it as we see him barely keep his crying old man face in check at the prospect of Ellie forgiving him.

So yeah, I'd say Joel pretty much made out better than anyone else. Definitely better than Ellie and Tommy who are just misery pits by the end.
 

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hanselthecaretaker

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What's wrong with ludonarrative dissonance? Lots of games have LD. The game I've playing right now (Battlefield 3) has LD. I didn't think there was anything controversial about the term or concept.

You'd think professional journalism would at least know what the term means. The Polygon article actually links to Clint Hocking's Bioshock critique but I guess the Polygon guy didn't actually read it.
I got the impression they thought that TLoU2 finally broke the streak of it.

The Last of Us Part 2 is the culmination of this decade of big-budget games interrogating dissonance. Naughty Dog, the creators of Uncharted, have finally bridged the gap between story and action, dragging the story kicking and screaming and gurgling on its own blood to align with what you actually do in their games: kill people. The result is surreal, an expensive narrative experiment depicting what would actually happen if a real human being behaved like a video game character.