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He's right, though? Tactical realism complaints are dumb.
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Jul 11, 2020 00:29
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"I don't care about this, so you shouldn't either" it always a stupid thing to say.
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Jul 11, 2020 00:31
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Bloodcider posted:I haven't finished the game yet and I think I've got a ways to go. Do you unlock anything afterwards like in their other games, like costumes and filters etc? Yes, there's a lot of concept art and an very detailed model viewer where you can unlock stuff with earned points
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Jul 11, 2020 01:35
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one place I do find a bit like the writers just up and dropped a major world building point from the first game is how well both Jacksonville, The WLF and even the Scars seem to be doing in the food department. I mean in the first game you've got all that stuff about the military running out of rations, the entire Pittsburgh takeover happening because of the food shortages, the cannibals and a whole lot of other things and in this game it's like in the 4 years between everyone's worked out farming or something and everyone's getting fed.
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Jul 11, 2020 16:32
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Well, the east coast is a lot more densely populated than Colorado or Washington, that partially explains it. Plus all those Walmart warehouses and military bases
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Jul 11, 2020 16:45
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Jackson seemed to be okay on the food front, with their big thing in 1 being power. Presumably there are big farms around there but we only really see it in Winter
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Jul 11, 2020 16:50
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Yeah, Jackson would definitely have plenty of farm food. If nothing else they'd have all the potatoes and steak they could eat
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Jul 11, 2020 16:55
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Everybody's eating bigot sandwiches.
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Jul 11, 2020 16:58
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It might be clunky writing but Joel acting like he was sure Jesse and Ellie had a crush on each other and Ellie being like “uhhh” puts a smile on face every time I think about it. Seattle is shown to have subsistence farming, but it’s also pretty clear that there is a much larger WLF infrastructure than were shown (“I’ve never seen the base so packed”), so there’s likely much larger farms and mills and dairies outside of the base
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Jul 11, 2020 21:22
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The Neal! posted:one place I do find a bit like the writers just up and dropped a major world building point from the first game is how well both Jacksonville, The WLF and even the Scars seem to be doing in the food department. Yeah. I don't think it's unreasonable to think that a community could overcome the food problem pretty easily - you've got modern agricultural techniques still available to deal with medieval demand - but they really noticeably didn't address it at all. We're to suppose, I think, that there's a ton of game around, certainly on the basis of the amount of meat present in the MLF stadium, but we never actually see any deer. It feels like a bit of a worldbuilding omission. I think the distinction between the factions met in the first game and those in the second is one of vision, fundamentally. If you're going to start to actually produce food then you have to switch your thinking from "survive" to "future", which is, under the circumstances, understandably difficult. David's group is just not cooperative enough to do anything proactive - he makes it very clear that his position and the degree of control that he has is perilously held. And the military is similarly loving up, having not really changed what it's doing since the outbreak - it's still just maintaining order and control while the infrastructure supporting it crumbles. Jackson, the MLF and the Seraphites, by contrast, are all thinking about tomorrow (so are the slavers, come to think of it - they've got their agriculture sorted out, for sure). The point is that I don't think that things have changed - we're just seeing a different aspect of the world in this story, with bigger, more established factions. One thing I really like, and the thing that they do appear to have applied thought to, is that there's no beer; everyone drinks spirits. And honestly, it must have taken some consideration to not have Joel wandering around with a cold one in his hand at any point, because Joel's definitely that kind of guy. First post-outbreak scene of the original game has Tess pour herself the sort of glass of whiskey that would gently caress me up for the rest of the day at what we can only assume to be around 11am. And why not? I did some back-of-the-napkin calculations, and Jack Daniels alone has at least 25 million gallons of bourbon in barrels at any given time. That's a lot of booze that'd still be around long after all the food and medicine have turned to dust.
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Jul 12, 2020 04:06
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I guess there's a good chance circumstances could have been different in Boston and Pittsburgh and I'm entirely prepared to believe David's community was made up of a collection of people that knew jack poo poo about how to keep themselves alive and therefore resorted to cannibalism but it was a little jarring to see how thoroughly incompetent the military in the QZs must have been at keeping their populations fed compared to the WLFs. I just got the vibe in The Last of Us it was implied that the world was running out of resources and even the might of the military wasn't able to secure enough land to keep people fed. All the quarantine zones, hunter run cities and even Jacksonville were all futile efforts to keep to lights on long enough for everyone to fade away... hence the title of the game. Ellie being the cure really was humanities only shot at not going extinct in a few more decades. Then in TLOU2 it seems like 4 years passed and we've discovered that there's a bunch communities, even religious zealot death cults who seem to be making it out okay in the apocalypse, things are certainly harder than they were before the fungus but there seems to be a legitimate shot at a future for the next generations. Not saying it's a major plothole or anything stupid like that, it's entirely possible the military was just completely incompetent at running the country (very believable actually) and people were better off breaking out on their own in the end, I was just very taken aback by the big meat selection at the stadium in this game compared to the rat BBQ seller guy in the first one. The Neal! fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Jul 12, 2020 |
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Jul 12, 2020 04:07
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One day someone's gonna make a zombie game where you get to zoom out the camera into an RTS game and see how the community keeps functioning. This meat hall produces 240 lbs of edible meat a day and 355 lbs if they've got Stephan, Troy and Vicky on the same shift. The purification center cleanses over 800 gallons of water a day and if we get blah blah blah we can increase that over 2 thousand easily. Stuff like that. Gimme a 600 page novel about how your fortresses keep functioning.
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Jul 12, 2020 04:56
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I just beat the game so now I can read the spoiler thread and while I'm sure this has been discussed in here I think the thing that bugs me the most is the morally correct solution to all this stuff is simply that: the fireflies should have asked Ellie if she was cool with dying for a vaccine. Harvesting her brain while she is unconscious is *not cool* and Joel arguably was justifiable in response. From there on out the story is basically "an eye for an eye." I just feel like the game tries to emphasise this classic moral dilemna of sacrificing 1 to save a thousand but its not Joel that sets this all in motion its the fireflies robbing Ellie of her right to decide whether she wants to die for humanity. At the flashback at the end she even says this to Joel and blames him for taking away the choice from her, but he didnt, the fireflies did. Anyways game was great of course - I especially like the detail of playing the guitar for the last time w two fingers missing..
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Jul 12, 2020 05:35
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untzthatshit posted:I just beat the game so now I can read the spoiler thread and while I'm sure this has been discussed in here I think the thing that bugs me the most is the morally correct solution to all this stuff is simply that: the fireflies should have asked Ellie if she was cool with dying for a vaccine. Harvesting her brain while she is unconscious is *not cool* and Joel arguably was justifiable in response. From there on out the story is basically "an eye for an eye." I just feel like the game tries to emphasise this classic moral dilemna of sacrificing 1 to save a thousand but its not Joel that sets this all in motion its the fireflies robbing Ellie of her right to decide whether she wants to die for humanity. At the flashback at the end she even says this to Joel and blames him for taking away the choice from her, but he didnt, the fireflies did. Well he never on screen explained that he was resuscitating her and then got knocked out and all that contrived nonsense that lead to that.
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Jul 12, 2020 05:46
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From the fireflies standpoint, its much easier to justify your actions and assume ellie wants to sacrifice herself rather than risking the chance she says no and then killing her anyway and knowing for sure that you murdered a girl If I was ellie I would have said no, tbh. The humans in the game don't deserve a cure, they should have to earn survival. But thats just me. DeadFatDuckFat fucked around with this message at 06:06 on Jul 12, 2020 |
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Jul 12, 2020 06:03
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Oh for sure, the fireflies didnt ask for a reason. I just feel like plotwise this point is sort of glossed over and we skip ahead to what Joel did and makes that the focus and the catalyst for everything else that happens. I guess im basically saying fireflies suck! And that I expected more people in this sequel to say "Fireflies suck" Edit: Here is what I think I am really trying to get at - the first game was an adventure that was immersive and easy to identify with because it made sense. Life is full of zombies but we meet someone who is immune to them so lets take her across the country to these doctors who may be able to cure the zombies! Along the way we will meet interesting characters and encounters and even though the ending is a bit twisted and sad and unexpected, it was still a fun adventure and a good game w an engaging plot. TLOU2 plot is just a chain of events that basically boils down to "you took my tooth so I will take your tooth" over and over again, and the first instigating action was something that could have easily been avoided had someone simply said can we please hsrvest your brain, and accepted Ellies answer whether yes or no. Its, to me anyways, just not as satisfying of a plot to follow. Its just all revenge porn and revenge is being enacted on the wrong people the whole time...Obviously I didnt expect TLOU2 to be the feel good hit of summer 2020 but it just feels really empty when you get to the end. untzthatshit fucked around with this message at 06:43 on Jul 12, 2020 |
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Jul 12, 2020 06:28
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I do think it's kind of dark Ellie's takeaway from it comes down to "My life doesn't matter now because I didn't die". I also wonder what Isaac's reaction would have been if he found out the reason he's losing so much more Wolves is Abby brought a Tommy/Ellie murder tornado following her.
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Jul 12, 2020 06:37
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RareAcumen posted:One day someone's gonna make a zombie game where you get to zoom out the camera into an RTS game and see how the community keeps functioning. This meat hall produces 240 lbs of edible meat a day and 355 lbs if they've got Stephan, Troy and Vicky on the same shift. I mean, World War Z is basically this. A good half of the book is characters chatting about logistics. There've been numerous attempts to make management/sim style games about running a survivor group in the post-apocalypse, but so far as I know there's not yet been a really good one.
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Jul 12, 2020 07:00
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Skippy McPants posted:I mean, World War Z is basically this. A good half of the book is characters chatting about logistics. Just watch Colonial House on PBS. Chop wood, try to keep your chickens alive, chop wood, subsistence farm, darn and mend, chop wood, subsistence farm, forever. I do love the visual shorthand for farming in pretty much all shows/games is a few tomato plants, maybe some grapes, a cucumber and/or pumpkin plant, a few pole beans, and an apple tree or three. No starches, nothing filling, just watery veg and fruit to poo poo yourself to death with.
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Jul 12, 2020 11:36
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The Neal! posted:I guess there's a good chance circumstances could have been different in Boston and Pittsburgh and I'm entirely prepared to believe David's community was made up of a collection of people that knew jack poo poo about how to keep themselves alive and therefore resorted to cannibalism but it was a little jarring to see how thoroughly incompetent the military in the QZs must have been at keeping their populations fed compared to the WLFs. Yeah, you're not wrong. It's just that there is room for communities that are actually well run within the world described in TLOU, and the ones we see just aren't. The apparatus supporting the civilian population collapsing under a military dictatorship is such an accessible idea that we understand it without it even needing to be explored, and in a way it's quite tidy that the Fireflies essentially have two strategies for saving humankind - find a cure and get rid of the military. It's also notable that Isaac was originally FEDRA but rebelled when he saw how badly they were loving everything up and, basically, did a better job once he was in charge. Certainly agree with your observation about there's an overall thematic shift. The implied consequence of the world being as it is shifts from "humanity's slowly disappearing" to "humanity is retreating to isolated fiefdoms in order to prevail" between the two games. In defence of the way that this is done, we can accept that Jacksonville has flourished because they established a reliable, plentiful power supply in the first game, and Maria is characterised as being really competent. And so it's reasonably straightforward to imagine that other communities exist that have done similar things. Secure a plentiful supply of a key resource, have a plan, prevail. Skippy McPants posted:I mean, World War Z is basically this. A good half of the book is characters chatting about logistics. Yeah. I've been thinking about root beer during this whole discussion. For what it's worth, they did do a thoughtful job around what communities do and don't have. Jacksonville's defining resource is power, so the luxuries they're able to have are electrical appliances (most prominently, TVs and gaming consoles). The place is extravagantly lit. But everything else has a rather 19th century feel to it, particularly with everyone rolling around on horseback. Rimworld, incidentally, has some of what you'd want from an apocalypse resource management game (and there is actually a zombie mod for it), but it's essentially Dwarf Fortress in space. I'd love for Supply Chain Management - Zombie Apocalypse Edition to exist, though.
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Jul 12, 2020 12:13
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The opening of TLoU shows that Boston under military regime is utter dogshit with people trading guns for meal tickets because the Govt was comically inept and badly managed before a zombie outbreak. The wider WLF infrastructure overall seemed better organized. The “resources” that we lost in the apocalypse were things like electricity, communications technology, airplanes, etc, but things like meat, vegetables, and clean water are probably a lot easier to get back under control. I also continue to maintain that sitting a 14 year old trauma victim down, who watched their mother and best friend die and who clearly suffers from extreme survivor’s guilt, and politely asking them “may we please remove your brain to save the world?” is not a question that respects the child or gives them agency. It puts a mind-snapping amount of emotional and psychological pressure on someone whose mind is a paper doll, fluttering in a hurricane. This is a question most HEALTHY ADULT people couldn’t handle, it’s absolutely not fair to Ellie.
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Jul 12, 2020 13:11
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Bust Rodd posted:I also continue to maintain that sitting a 14 year old trauma victim down, who watched their mother and best friend die and who clearly suffers from extreme survivor’s guilt, and politely asking them “may we please remove your brain to save the world?” is not a question that respects the child or gives them agency. It puts a mind-snapping amount of emotional and psychological pressure on someone whose mind is a paper doll, fluttering in a hurricane. This is a question most HEALTHY ADULT people couldn’t handle, it’s absolutely not fair to Ellie.
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Jul 12, 2020 14:06
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Perfectly Safe posted:This whole setup is a narrative ploy rather than a realistic scenario that should never have been further explored anyway Right exactly, the plot of TLOU2 is just harder to identify with and enjoy because its a series of bad decisions sparked by this one event that never shluld have happened the way it did except to serve the purpose of setting up this subsequent narrative of back and forth revenge. Like by the time I got to the first Ellie Vs Abby rumble in the theatre, I died as Abby several times and kept thinking "great, so just kill Abby here and end the story why am I forced to keep playing I dont really care who wins at this point." Maybe I am just tired of revenge based media because I feel like thats what a lot of movies and shows and games have been about lately but its just not as compelling an adventure as the first one was, where there was a little bit of hope that something good laid at the end. The farmhouse seemed like maybe that was something to hope for, a happy ending letting go of the obsession to kill Abby and raising a family but then Ellie leaves it all behind and by the time she gets back theyve left her and she cant even play the guitar...
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Jul 12, 2020 14:21
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It’s not supposed to be a happy ending. This game would be, uh, extremely misguided if Ellie got a happy ending after all of this. Im also extremely confused by this “what SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED” language. This is a story, with flawed characters behaving selfishly in realistic ways, and the story we have is based on the human decisions they made. There are so many people approaching the narrative from the positions of emotionless Utilitarianism and completely ignoring the very real and very human elements at work. The Last of Us is not a story about Ellie’s journey to accept her role as the savior of mankind, it’s about Joel’s journey to accept love into his heart again because this girl NEEDS someone to look after her and not just view her as “precious cargo”, shuffling her off from babysitter to delivery man until her usefulness is at it’s peak. Ellie’s growth comes from suddenly WANTING TO LIVE instead of WAITING TO DIE, and the reason she wants to live is, unsurprisingly, the life that Joel hints at them having together as a family.
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Jul 12, 2020 14:32
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Bust Rodd posted:
That should probably read "what I THINK should have happened". Anyways yeah I get it it's bleak, that's the whole thing and every review mentioned how unforgivingly loving dark it was so it's not like I was unaware going in. Obviously I liked the game enough to bother sharing my thoughts on it I just ultimately didn't like it as much as the first one am trying to articulate why I think that was. untzthatshit fucked around with this message at 15:00 on Jul 12, 2020 |
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Jul 12, 2020 14:51
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untzthatshit posted:Right exactly, the plot of TLOU2 is just harder to identify with and enjoy because its a series of bad decisions sparked by this one event that never shluld have happened the way it did except to serve the purpose of setting up this subsequent narrative of back and forth revenge. It happened the way it happened to set up the big ending to TLOU - Joel ends up on a course of action that's simultaneously terrible and understandable. It wasn't done to set up a sequel. e: I mean, honestly, if they were setting up a sequel, then they probably would have given the surgeon more of a speaking part. TLOU2 is "you monster, unnamed surgeon was my father!". Fallout 5 is going to have a character taking revenge on all vault dwellers for the death of his mother. "Raider Survivalist was her name, you bastards!". Perfectly Safe fucked around with this message at 15:21 on Jul 12, 2020 |
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Jul 12, 2020 15:13
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The whole Ellie bracelet theory kind of hints that the ending isn't that bleak after all, but still largely open to interpretation.
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Jul 12, 2020 15:38
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And really, is it a stretch to imagine Dina taking Ellie back? Their relationship seemed pretty durable.
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Jul 12, 2020 16:49
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precision posted:And really, is it a stretch to imagine Dina taking Ellie back? Their relationship seemed pretty durable.
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Jul 12, 2020 16:53
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I dunno, it's the apocalypse, I think you'd be more likely to forgive things by virtue of how few people exist. At the least I could see Dina letting Ellie help raise the babby
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Jul 12, 2020 17:33
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Dina posts in E/N after Ellie leaves and follows the goon advice to 
biceps crimes fucked around with this message at 17:44 on Jul 12, 2020 |
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Jul 12, 2020 17:39
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Ah, the old zombie stuck in a well in-joke.
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Jul 13, 2020 00:31
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untzthatshit posted:Right exactly, the plot of TLOU2 is just harder to identify with and enjoy because its a series of bad decisions sparked by this one event that never shluld have happened the way it did except to serve the purpose of setting up this subsequent narrative of back and forth revenge. Can you elaborate on why you think its hard to identify with? I see people make bad decisions all the time for dumb reasons, and holy poo poo have I seen people refuse to let something go and try to get revenge on each other. People be grudgin
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Jul 13, 2020 00:56
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Bust Rodd posted:It’s not supposed to be a happy ending. This game would be, uh, extremely misguided if Ellie got a happy ending after all of this. Sure, but the ending the game has is so thoroughly, unmitigatedly bleak - effectively making the entire 25 hour slog for naught, because Ellie changes her mind for no reason at the last second, after sustaining a life-ruining injury - that I can definitely understand people rebelling a bit.
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Jul 13, 2020 07:39
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Flesnolk posted:Sure, but the ending the game has is so thoroughly, unmitigatedly bleak  I literally can't imagine a happier ending. I was sure more people were gonna be dead
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Jul 13, 2020 17:28
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The main problem is the theme of "revenge BAD" becomes very, very clear in the first half when we learn Ellie knew about St. Mary's Hospital and keeps going anyway, and gets Jesse killed as a consequence. I knew in the first half that hunting Abby was a bad idea, and technically did not need 12 hours of playing Abby to get the point. I still enjoyed it for the adventure and some cool moments but the critics have valid points.
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Jul 13, 2020 17:33
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So they just don’t assign any value to Abby’s story or her journey of redemption or her characterization or... I think one issue is this pervasive idea that this game is about one central thing, and not actually a much deeper story talking about different things at once. TLoU1 as is extremely one note, but the storyline here is substantially more complicated on a lot of levels, and trying to homogenize everything into a mono-message isn’t gonna cleanly translate any one idea.
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Jul 13, 2020 17:38
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It's a video game, Bust Rodd. There is no depth.
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Jul 13, 2020 20:53
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Bust Rodd posted:So they just don’t assign any value to Abby’s story or her journey of redemption or her characterization or... I think parts of Abby's story could be trimmed (I think the section up until the FOB is a tutorial but I think the fob onwards would have made a better introduction, straight into Isaac, Owen's missing, go learn about the scar monument, some light infected action). Conversely I can also say I think the focus of Abby's story could have been better, Abby's story is (to me) about her letting go of hate and maybe trying to do something good in the world again. I'm not sure the owen flashbacks are a good space of time for that, i'd much rather see more time between when we last see her at Jackson to understand her changes then.
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Jul 13, 2020 21:05
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I don't think anything should have been trimmed In fact, give me the 5 Day Version
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Jul 13, 2020 21:15
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