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Ellie is clearly surprised that all the stuff is gone when she gets back, she pauses and reacts.
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Jul 2, 2020 19:09
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Cardiovorax posted:It has come up a few times, but according to a number of trans people who have chimed in on it, that is exactly the problem. In one sense he's a perfectly okay character, but in a different sense he's just another kind of stereotype. I mean you can easily reduce every character in The Last of Us to a single stereotype or their most basic contributions to the plot. I don’t think it’s fair to unnecessarily highlight one character’s life as being miserable when literally every character in the game is brutalized, tortured or murdered. Also the reason that gay or Asian people have finally gotten to the point that those can just be character traits that don’t directly inform the plot is only because there were enough cultural touchstones about being Gay or Asian that it became more mainstream. The only way for Trans characters to become mainstream enough that someone can be just be Trans and not have it come up in the story is for more games and movies to try and tell enough stories with Trans characters about trans issues. There’s no world were suddenly fully realized Trans characters just spring to life without a million little narratives like Lev building a foundation. I am speaking from own experience as a bisexual playing this game. 10 years ago, the main character’s lesbian girlfriend being impregnated by their childhood friend would’ve been the central tennet of the plot and probably the main reason the game was getting review bombed. Now, in 2020, that particular plot point (inter-racial love child being raised by two women) isn’t even a blip. Dina is incredible representation for us, and even she comes off as a little tropey for us. Lev is a good character, written and acted very well, and there WILL be Trans people who identify with him, and his struggle to be himself, and the sacrifices he made to get there. There are gamers out there whose literal first experience with Trans narratives will be Lev, and his depiction in this game is one of courage and triumphing over adversity. Bust Rodd fucked around with this message at 22:22 on Jul 2, 2020 |
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Jul 2, 2020 22:19
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Fellatio del Toro posted:I will defer to some excerpts from Rob Zacny who is a much better writer than me: This Zacny guy is writing as though he has only encountered human beings and their ‘emotions’ online and never had a meaningful emotional adult relationship.
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Jul 3, 2020 03:51
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That makes sense to me because I kinda feel like TLoU2 really went out of its way to make the stealth feel much better to make up for the general increase in difficulty overall. It has dramatically improved its very simple systems and a direct homage to MGS could easily be a part of that.
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Jul 3, 2020 04:48
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The voice acting thing is incredibly dumb because one side is going “ok, no more white actors playing POC roles!” and the other side is going “we as POC voice actors don’t want to stop getting cast as white characters, but we also would like to not only get cast as minorities either, so in order for any of this to matter, we need more diversity in production and writing staff or this is all meaningless!” and the response has been “Kristen Bell gave up her role, what more do you want?!”Cardiovorax posted:Are you serious and Greek people are considered black by US standards these days? Because as a European I honestly don't even want to make assumptions anymore when it comes to how crazy you guys are willing to be about race stuff like that. No Greek people are definitely white here in 2020, like Italians or Irish. stev posted:I'm not debating that it's a lovely review, it absolutely is. I just don't think Sony themselves has the right to complain about it. I think there’s a difference between an unfavorable review (game is bad) and a lovely review (reviewer fails to complete game and says objectively incorrect or untrue things about the game) and gaming journalists are seemingly totally immune to criticism and should honestly not be immune to pushback just because the company who made the game is big and successful. Bust Rodd fucked around with this message at 13:39 on Jul 3, 2020 |
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Jul 3, 2020 13:32
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The spider is keeping you safe from worse bugs. You should give it a drop of morning dew in a tiny mug and put her name on the lease!
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Jul 3, 2020 13:44
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Keep in mind the WLF base is shown to clearly have a "State-of-the-art-for-2013" fitness center and electricity, and Abby mentions the bench a lot. So she does have many modern conveniences available.
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Jul 3, 2020 15:47
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Fallen Hamprince posted:But I don't think you can say definitively "this person must be using steroids" or "this build is impossible for a woman" because its always possible that someone won the genetic lottery and can get there naturally. https://twitter.com/wordglass/status/1278172855633494017?s=21 Colleen Fotsch is a real person who Abby is based on and she seems like a serious fitness buff but obviously you can’t really tell a lot by just googling “Colleen Fotsch steroids?” so I can’t speak to her use of PED, but this build is absolutely possible for a woman.
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Jul 3, 2020 17:19
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I feel like so much of the experience of the TLoU is about the tension you are experiencing in the encounters themselves that watching an LP of it would be like watching a movie through wet swimming goggles. But I only play on harder difficulties because that’s what I’m looking for, if you play through on normal or easy just for the story I could see that not being important to you.
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Jul 3, 2020 17:53
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Cardiovorax posted:I thought the gameplay was largely speaking the least inspired part of the game, so I don't feel it's missing much. TLOU 2 is a story experience first. I think anyone can be excused for thinking this but TLoU2 is probably the best stealth game of the generation and the gameplay here has more depth than you would ever need to explore even on Hard mode.
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Jul 3, 2020 18:06
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In the same way I wouldn’t highlight Abby’s flamethrower as a good example of the stealth system...
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Jul 3, 2020 19:05
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He was probably thinking about how they were trapped in a blizzard surrounded by zombies
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Jul 3, 2020 19:59
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I recognized it immediately because my buddy worked on this Zune commercial like 12 years agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdAzcLNb1As
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Jul 3, 2020 21:57
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I have blissfully and willingly avoided any media surrounding TLoU2 and I honestly might just keep it that way. Slogging through thousands of disgusting homophobes and sexists who self-own by skipping one of the best games and stories of the generation because you are angry that a digital man was punished for his crimes by the angry daughter of the man he killed (to save his own ‘daughter’)... yeah miss me with that.
Bust Rodd fucked around with this message at 12:10 on Jul 4, 2020 |
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Jul 4, 2020 11:51
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I think “this game is trying to make you miserable” is a weird criticism because there’s a very real degree to which that is the reason so many fans want to play it. It’s the same reason people like to WATCH survivalist dramas. There are so few video games that approach adult themes and drama and the biggest ones are like GTA and the writing has never been this organic, imo. This game is catering to a more adult audience that really wants to immerse you in the misery so the moments of the game like holding your Potato looking at the sunset on the farm or any of the musical interludes hit you harder. Feature, not a bug, basically.
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Jul 4, 2020 19:13
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Oh for sure but at that point that’s not something the game is doing wrong, that’s just you consuming something that isn’t to your taste.
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Jul 4, 2020 19:27
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I was playing on Hard and my SMG ammo lasted against maybe 4 of the 50 dudes you have to kill at the resort.
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Jul 5, 2020 09:53
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I took the opportunity to post on Laura’s feed that she is awesome and amazing and Abby is so cool and I will enjoy hearing her performance for years to come! Lots and lots of fans showing love and support and really turning her experience around. We are outnumbering the trolls on twitter a lot, it’s not ALL bad!!
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Jul 5, 2020 10:30
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Kawabata posted:
I don’t agree with this assessment whatsoever. TLoU2 is an absolute emotional roller coaster. I can’t imagine beating this game and coming away thinking it all blended together. Also who cares if the stealth action game mechanics have been refined. Ever play an FPS? Same basic idea for like 30 years, just refined over time.
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Jul 5, 2020 13:08
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I think that TLoU2 genuinely has more levity and breaks from the pain than the original does. I also feel like the characters here feel like real people. Joel and Ellie in TLoU1 are basically platonic ideals of their respective archetypes (Gruff Sad Dad & Precious Chosen One) but I don’t feel like anyone in this game is reduced to a stereotype. Even Manny took me by surprise when he talked about kicking up his heels and watching anime. They give almost every character depth and dimension.
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Jul 5, 2020 13:43
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“I can’t enjoy anything happy if its in a flashback, because I know those characters won’t be happy 5-10 years later” is an extremely suspect way to engage with the story.
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Jul 5, 2020 13:52
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The sunset at the farmhouse looking out over the valley with your fat little Potato in your arms was so beautiful i just stood there for literally 5 minutes just holding them and thinking about everything Ellie had to survive to get there. I genuinely thought I was playing through the ending at that point and had a serious emotional response to that scene. Not many games make me cry but it was peaceful and beautiful and perfectly sets up exactly how hosed up and insane it is that Ellie would give this paradise up to literally wade back into Hell to commit murder.
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Jul 5, 2020 13:59
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Kawabata posted:No it's the fact that the happiness is completely removed from the current story arc and it makes it even darker by contrast, not lighter. I guess the problem is that we process emotional stimulus and time differently then. I thought all the Ellie flashbacks showing happier times with Joel and Tommy were really great little episodes into their lives together and stuff like the Birthday and the Zebra and discovering the aquarium were really happy and uplifting moments that compliment how devastating the present is. I didn't let what was happening in the present color what happened in the past, I let what happened in the past color and inform what was going on in the present so i could get all the context. Ellie callously slitting Alice's throat and then the game twisting the knife by giving you 3 days of bonding with her and seeing how important she was to the WLF crew was an incredible bit of manipulative storytelling. I HATED Ellie for a second... that's impressive! I love Ellie!
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Jul 5, 2020 14:07
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Look I don’t want to yuk anyone’s yum but if Kawabata can be said to have a posting gimmick it’s that they take a contrarian viewpoint and then slowly establish themselves as a critical genius whose prodigious intellect and wide variety books allow them get laughed out of the PS4 thread almost immediately. So engage with them only until you are done, because they will just keep posting bad faith arguments and their opinions as objective truths until you stop replying. Check their post history in like any thread if you don’t believe me.
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Jul 5, 2020 16:06
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Yeah watching someone else struggle to keep Abby or Ellie alive is a fundamentally different experience that hits different parts of your brain than doing it yourself. Edit: stumbled over my point lmao Bust Rodd fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Jul 5, 2020 |
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Jul 5, 2020 18:48
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Perfectly Safe posted:As I said, they have every reason to want revenge on Joel. But beating someone to death is something you do to someone who really deserves to suffer. Joel did what he did (under circumstances so awful they had to be contrived) to save his surrogate daughter, and Abby knows that. The guy who you beat to death is the guy who decided to gently caress everybody up because he didn't get a big enough reward, not the guy who rescues the teenage girl who doesn't even know she's on the surgeon's table. He slit her father’s throat because he was trying to save the world. He doomed all of mankind but more to the point he has killed your father, whom you idolized and adored. None of Abby’s behavior is suspect.
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Jul 6, 2020 00:19
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^^my point is that Abby doesn’t need any reason past “Joel killed my dad” to do what she did. That’s enough for MANY people. One thing I really loved about Abby’s design her braid. Wearing your hair long seems uncommon, and like her huge arms it reflects discipline. Then they bait and switch you with it at the pillars and a shiver runs down your spine when you realize... goddam the Pillars is such an amazing sequence.
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Jul 6, 2020 00:58
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Ellie is a dumb kid in TLoU1 and there is no way you can sit a little girl down, no matter how mature they appear to be, and say “we have to kill you in order to save the planet.” That’s a completely loving insane thing for a wizened adult to try and wrap their minds around, try to imagine being a traumatized teenage girl? How is that a fair question? How is putting that on Ellie any less disrespectful than what Joel did? Giving Ellie the illusion of agency isn’t any better, Ellie is never given a fair circumstance and never really has agency at any point, regardless of whether or not she was conscious and available to consent. She clearly has intense PTSD and Survivor’s guilt, putting that question on her would have broken her mind.
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Jul 6, 2020 01:09
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Perfectly Safe posted:To forego killing the guy after a quick "this is for my father" and instead beat him to death with a golf club? To effectively torture someone to death? Perfectly Safe posted:Pretty sure that being 15 and coherent is good enough in what remains of humanity. Who the hell isn't dealing with some sort of trauma at this point? Yeah I don't think that's a fair thing to ask a child to try and handle, and that's why I don't see it as a case of "Joel stealing Elli's agency vs Fireflies respecting Ellie's choice (which they don't even do!)"
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Jul 6, 2020 02:15
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Stormgale posted:I dunno if I agree with this, mostly in the other direction. I probably played death stranding very differently than most, I never failed a package delivery and basically never dealt with any of the hardships because I'm kinda obsessive about preperation and completionism. FYI this is how absolutely everyone in the PS4 thread played Death Stranding, very few of them skipped or rushed through things, so your experience seems more in line with how most people seemed to play the game and doesn’t appear to be an outlier.
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Jul 6, 2020 02:40
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Stormgale posted:I know a bunch of people talked and wrote about the joy of things going wrong. I'm just saying when you can have a very wide variety of experiences in a game (mgsv with stealth Vs Rambo) the idea that playing it gives you true understanding rings hollow. But don’t you think either the Rambo player or the stealth player will have a better understanding of the game and how it plays than someone who literally hasn’t played it and just watched someone else play or just listened to someone describe to them what was happening? I think that’s all that’s being said.
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Jul 6, 2020 02:49
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I mean let’s say instead of watching the movie Star Wars, you were stuck in a car for 3 hours and your friend just described Star Wars in painstaking detail. Would you claim to “get” the film even though you never engaged with it as a movie, only an idea? People who watch someone else playing a game are not themselves playing the game, and games (and their stories) are designed to played, in the same way that films are designed to be watched, not merely explained.
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Jul 6, 2020 03:02
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Stormgale posted:I sincerely don't think you gain any unique understanding at all from having pushed the buttons to do the things in tlou2 especially I’m not trying to sound like a broken record but this is really where the cinematic nature of video games mires the discussion a bit. Is just reading the lyrics of a new song on the radio the same as listening to it? Or reading the Cliff Notes of a novel the same as reading it? Is listening to someone explain the plot of a movie the same as watching it? I would argue NO OF COURSE NOT ABSOLUTELY NOT because in all 3 examples you have absorbed the content of the narrative without getting to experience what essentially makes it special, the pieces that forms around the narrative, the sights and sounds, melodies and harmonies, prose or clever turns of phrase, etc. When it comes to a video game with a deeply cinematic storyline, yes, I am willing to totally concede the lines begin to blur. Your partner watching over your shoulder IS getting more out of it than if someone had simply explained the narrative to them, but they are absolutely getting less out of it than you are, the player, because the gameplay is literally what makes it different from a movie or a TV show. There are emotional elements of the game that are designed around things like “surviving this encounter” or “planning your escape route” that will only impact the pilot holding the controller and that passive observers would literally never notice by simply watching over your shoulder, because all these important gameplay decisions that help draw you in to the story and characters more are happening under the hood. Not to mention that unless you are gaming democratically and each of you are voting on what to do and where to loot and who to kill, the moment to moment gameplay decisions are still only happening to one of you, and those are another component of “video games” that seek to help you feel more immersed, and this story looks and feels very different to an outside observer than someone who is immersed in it. I think someone could comprehend TLoU2’s storyline without playing it, because it’s not that complicated. I just don’t think it’s going to effect them the same way as it hits the person with the controller in their hand. Bust Rodd fucked around with this message at 12:52 on Jul 6, 2020 |
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Jul 6, 2020 12:43
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Perfectly Safe posted:I always thought that the subtext with Marlene was that she doesn't want to stop Joel. She tells him about Ellie thinking that he might do something that she won't, he does it, she goes through the motions of trying to stop him but is actually disinclined to do so. It could absolutely be nonsensical character actions - the whole final segment is based on absurd decisions being made - but I like to think that this is actually Marlene, the idealist, hitting rock bottom and saying "gently caress it". This is backed up pretty well by the additional Marlene scene in the second game
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Jul 6, 2020 13:17
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Yeah people who genuinely enjoy the stealth-action hybrid gameplay are gonna enjoy the game more than people just playing through it to experience the story, I don't think that's controversial at all. The Last of Us 2 isn't a game for everyone, and a lot of people will want to be part of the conversation even though they aren't the intended audience and that will obviously color the discourse. Also releasing a Post-Apoc survival game in the middle of a global pandemic means the reactions are all gonna be a little headspun no matter what, the planet is going crazy.
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Jul 6, 2020 13:52
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Yeah this "ludonarrative dissonance in Naughty Dog games" meme has effectively poisoned the well. The gameplay (ruthlessly executing droves of human beings you DO NOT care about to get to the ones you DO care about) is completely in line with the themes of the game, mechanically and narratively. Ellie sees all WLF members as complicit and finds evidence of their corruption the deeper into Seattle she goes, and Abby sees all Scars as subhuman animals. Killing Scars is her dayjob, she probably has more of them under her belt than infected. One thing I think people overlook is how much of Ellie's narrative is effectively fueled by adrenaline. She screams and fights like an animal possessed in the theater (if you haven't failed that fight, let her kill you a couple times, it's insane), she threatens to slit a sleeping child's throat in order to provoke Abby, and she literally actually almost kills Abby with her knife. The blade goes into her skin and muscle! If Abby didn't summon her very last force of will she would have died then and there, and without an opportunity for Ellie to become overwhelmed with emotion and escape. I think the 30-60 seconds between stabbing Abby and trying to drown her is literally the amount of time it takes for your brain to process just enough adrenaline that it can try and grab the controls back from your body and make sense of things, which is how I interpret the last fight.
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Jul 6, 2020 14:27
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I think you could even make the argument that someone watching 30 hours of gameplay would come away with a much lower opinion of the game than they would otherwise because the finetuning of the gameplay between 1 and 2 is one of the reasons people are so happy with it, it's what keeps the player engaged and playing, but is something an observer would never notice unless the streamer literally stops and points it out as it's happening because it's all under the hood. I could very easily see someone thinking the gameplay was rote and repetitive if they just watched it because the gameplay feels a lot better than it looks, IMO. Also there's the whole chestnut of like, if the streamer just sucks at video games, doesn't do any of the optional content or exploration... Wait a minute, are you folks watching at home reading the letters and notes outloud at home? Are they reading them to you? I just don't think we can keep talking about observing an LP vs playing it first hand anymore without seriously considering the impact that the lens of the person being viewed playing has. Are there many objective LPs that just present the game being played... normally without interpretation?
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Jul 6, 2020 15:42
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I don’t think enough has been said about how impactful the Dodge mechanic is to the game overall and how dramatically melee combat feels improved as a result. The Dodge is so fluid and reliable going back to the last of us one without it is going to feel like trash
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Jul 7, 2020 01:27
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Some TLoU2 thoughts: I love the observation a goon made upthread about how Tommy feels guilty for letting his guard down which is why he becomes such a bloodthirsty and obsessive psychopath. It seems pretty clear to me that Seattle taxed him and Marie's relationship and him discovering Abby's location in SB is pretty clearly signposted to be what ends their marriage. I think if you wanna get into some nitty-gritty symbolism, I think two major symbols in this game I don't see talked about are Ellie's Knife (symbolizing Ellie's youth and her past) and the guitar (symbolizing Joel, his love, and the life Ellie wanted). The knife is essentially an instrument to Ellie the same way the guitar is, and she has played it beautifully for a long time. She is never without it and never in need of another one (infinite knife kills vs Abby's slower choking takedowns) because fighting to survive is as much a part of Ellie's identity as anything else. When Ellie effectively "kills" Abby by stabbing her in the heart, she is seeing the full culmination of her childhood and her adulthood. Both of these women's lives completely revolve around this slim little blade. In this final moment, it will be with the same knife Ellie used countless times to save Joel's life that she will use to avenge him, and symbolically she does. Abby then summons her own indomitable force of will and knocks the knife away, leaving Ellie and Abby on even footing for the first time in the entire game. The drowning sequence in literature is often used as a symbolic stand-in for baptism and rebirth, and despite its extremely violent context, that makes sense to me here. Abby is reborn without hatred, her only concern is survival for her and Lev. Ellie's fingers represent her severed connection from Joel. What she loved about Joel was the humanity within him, the obvious warmth and generosity he had inside, and his own human need for love. Her loss of her ring and pinky finger means that she has to struggle with and cannot really play minor chords anymore, the sad and dulcet notes that make up the sweeter parts of the song she and Joel have been singing. I think her fingers represent, ultimately, the life that she wanted with Joel (a father). The ending sequence threw a lot of people off, Joel and Ellie seemingly resolve their differences and make their peace, so didn't Ellie really get all her closure before any of this starts anyway? That scene shows us that Ellie and Joel had finally worked through their roughest patch and their relationship was finally free to be about trust and love, no more lies or secrets. THAT was what she wanted and THAT was what she lost. Ellie's entire trip to Santa Barbera plays out like a fever dream because Ellie is acting completely irrationally pretty much as soon as she leaves Jackson. The obvious callback to Spec Ops: the Line reminded me of their late-game loading screens from that game like "How many soldiers have you murdered on this rescue mission?" or "Do you eve remember what you came here to do?"... like I just walked 1,200 miles to go murder someone but now I have to infiltrate a slaving compound and free her before i get to kill her? You really need to be the one to personally choke the life from her eyes? Ultimately Ellie's quest for revenge on Joel's behalf cost her not only cost her what was left of her sanity, or her entire perfect family in their dream home, but it ended up weakening her connection to Joel as well, because Ellie had to become the same kind of monster she's been fighting against her entire life. She would have murdered Lev in cold blood to get at Abby, for what was ultimately a completely pointlessly painful and violent gesture. Ellie doesn't get to ride off into the sunset (there is literally no sunset in the final farm scene, despite the beautiful sunset absolutely dominating the sky in the 1st farmhouse sequence), and has to spend the rest of her life thinking about what this all cost her and whether or not any of it was worth it. Bust Rodd fucked around with this message at 14:35 on Jul 7, 2020 |
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Jul 7, 2020 14:31
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Sassy Sasquatch posted:There's obvious references to that in the gameplay as well, the entire fight in the theater is mirroring Ellie's confrontation with David with a roles reversal. Oh YEAH! I distinctly remember creeping around as Abby completely terrified and spamming listening mode like "Wtf why is this so familiar it's like... OH MY GOD that's GROSS". An awesome moment for fans of the first game.
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Jul 7, 2020 15:03
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