In order for the dead family bit to hold any sort of emotional weight to it you had to actually give a damn about either the family or Talion. The game killed off the family as soon as it was introduced and Talion never does anythin remotely worth giving a damn about. The game told us how sad and depressed he was and how we should feel sorry for him, but it never gives us a reason to outside of the fact that somethin bad happened to him.Haru17 said:Very well, but as important as original writing is execution and Shadow of Mordor really leaned into the whole dead family thing. Except the ending, that entire game shows how exhausted Talion was and how he just wanted to die and meet his family again in Tolkein heaven.Evonisia said:I think what Yahtzee is trying to say when he complains about the brood factor is that he doesn't think those games have done it right. He said that the main character of Shadow of Mordor was completely generic, hence why should he care when he's delving into a tone that is at this point a massive cliché. He didn't like the main characters of The Last of Us, either.Haru17 said:And I find it kind of pathetic that Yahtzee has to knock games for taking themselves seriously. I mean, Dark Souls takes itself SO seriously, but is never critiqued for it (but that game doesn't have much work put into a sequence of cutscenes that tell a story, so it must be some sort of narrative revolution, I guess).
Knocking games that earn their serious tone through character development and world building, like The Last of Us and Shadow of Mordor, is really profoundly unfair. Not everyone wants to be a jokey action-adventure romp, even if the Tomb Raider reboot might have benefited from doing so. Just stop giving games shit for having the tone they choose if they pull it off reasonable.
He has liked unbelievably grim video games such as Limbo, Amnesia, Spec Ops: The Line, Batman: Arkham Asylum and City, FarCry 3 (the rather depressing character building part) and Silent Hills 1, 2, 3, 4, Shattered Memories and Downpour.
And I really can't forgive such a negative review of the Last of Us, purely because it told an unhappy story via cutscenes. I mean, it's basically the best video game story of it's kind and he shat all over it for being sad, like real life is such a fucking joyride.
You make a person care about a character by making us care about the character. You don't make use care about a character simply because you tell us to care about them.