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a new study bible!
Feb 2, 2009



BIG DICK NICK
A Philadelphia Legend
Fly Eagles Fly


I just finished this game and I am not happy with it.

Thanks for reading.

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a new study bible!
Feb 2, 2009



BIG DICK NICK
A Philadelphia Legend
Fly Eagles Fly


Anyone who considers this game progressive hasn't played it.

Edit: or if one does, he probably has a baby brain, I guess.

a new study bible! fucked around with this message at 13:53 on Jun 29, 2020

a new study bible!
Feb 2, 2009



BIG DICK NICK
A Philadelphia Legend
Fly Eagles Fly


Necrothatcher posted:

I played it and thought it was progressive.

Cool.

a new study bible!
Feb 2, 2009



BIG DICK NICK
A Philadelphia Legend
Fly Eagles Fly


JBP posted:

What are the regressive mistakes this game makes?

Short list:

  • I think that it's obvious that Abby is the character that they player is supposed to empathize with the most. Problem is she's a war criminal. Abby shows no qualms about being a happy and productive member of an apartheid state, using hidden explosives to kill civilians, or unquestioningly taking orders from a torturer.
  • Abby is only forced to come to terms with her engagement in these activities in the lightest possible method. She is never directly confronted by Lev or Owen. She never has to actually confront Isaac. The light bit of introspection she does with regards to this only comes because she personally meets and interacts with a Seraphite, and she only does that because she wants to steal Owen from Mel. Naughty Dog is taking all these efforts to justify how Abby isn't some monstrous psycho who was just killing Joel for fun, but she kills lots of people for fun everyday.
  • On that topic, the game justifies Abby by showing us scenes of her dad and what a good guy he was. Except that he still was prepared to murder an unconscious teenager. Ellie never consented to be killed to make a cure, so the whole zoo flashback fell completely flat. Why do I care that he is going to free a zebra when he is prepared to murder a child? In the flashback Abby says that she would want to sacrifice herself, but that isn't Abby's decision to make. This is important because it cuts the legs from under how the game wants to justify Abby- her father wasn't murdered by Joel. Joel was literally defending an unconscious child from death.
  • Despite being a story about two women who are bent on destroying each other, almost all of the complication and plot is still driven forward by men. Part of this is the game's obsession with motherhood and crafting parallels with Abby and Ellie.

a new study bible!
Feb 2, 2009



BIG DICK NICK
A Philadelphia Legend
Fly Eagles Fly


I think there are some interesting comments to be made about class identity and how Jackson contrasts against the stadium, but those are kind of predicated on accepting that there is a discrepancy in how the protagonists are favored by the audience/Naughty Dog.

a new study bible!
Feb 2, 2009



BIG DICK NICK
A Philadelphia Legend
Fly Eagles Fly


Dapper_Swindler posted:

both ellie and abby are both super broken people in a hell world. none of them are really good people and are flawed as gently caress and dont act rationally. i dont think that makes it a chud game though.

I don't think it's a chud game at all! Sorry to give that impression. I was really responding to the uninformed chud comments that call this game SJW propaganda. It's pretty neoliberal.

a new study bible!
Feb 2, 2009



BIG DICK NICK
A Philadelphia Legend
Fly Eagles Fly


veni veni veni posted:

I think you are missing the forest for the trees here by expecting a character to be wholly good in a series that entirely revolves extremely flawed characters.

Because of how the game is structured and written Naughty Dog is asking the audience to make a comparison between our two central characters. I think it matters when one is clearly preferred to the other, especially considering the backstories of these two.

a new study bible!
Feb 2, 2009



BIG DICK NICK
A Philadelphia Legend
Fly Eagles Fly


The point is that they are literally both sides-ing a conflict that has a clear moral and immoral position.

a new study bible!
Feb 2, 2009



BIG DICK NICK
A Philadelphia Legend
Fly Eagles Fly


Mae posted:

Here's what I think one of the problems with Abby's reception is: Abby was meant to be most like the "Joel is so dumb for not sacrificing Ellie to sacrifice humanity" crowd, but those people ALSO don't like her bringing justice on her terms, because they think it's bad to kill their protagonist. There's like 2 levels of dissonance there, from people who only look at plot in terms of tactical realism and hype expectation.

IDK I may be off base against what you are writing, so please forgive if I'm only tangentially responding. That said, I don't think it is fair to expect people to come into the game as neutral parties. The players have a history with Ellie, so of course they are going to sympathize with her. Which is why I am so annoyed with how she is depicted as being wholly selfish and reckless. It feels like Ellie was completely neutered (forgive the phrase) in lieu of making a larger point on how the world lacks moral absolutes.

My biggest problem is that the game goes too hard in making us not like Ellie. In the final section I actually died during the QTE because I stopped mashing square when Ellie was inserting the knife into Abby's chest. It was clear that the game didn't want me to kill her, and I actually thought that the QTE would fail if I finished her off. Ellie frees Abby yes, but it's kind of pathetic that Ellie even takes that fight. All game we see Abby presented as Ellie's superior in pretty much every measurable aspect, so slashing up an emaciated and humiliated Abby, regardless of how it ends only humiliates Ellie.


I'm sure that someone can make the case that this is the point of the entire game, but I think it could be done better.

a new study bible!
Feb 2, 2009



BIG DICK NICK
A Philadelphia Legend
Fly Eagles Fly


I hope Naughty Dog makes a third game in the series where you play as David, the pedophile from the first game. We can pet the heckin pupperinos that he keeps back at his house and learn that there is no such thing as good or bad in the apocalypse.

a new study bible!
Feb 2, 2009



BIG DICK NICK
A Philadelphia Legend
Fly Eagles Fly


veni veni veni posted:

I’m confused because you just said the game was “Both siding” it and now you are unhappy about it being so one sided.

It's gratuitously denigrating Ellie (one sided) to make the player sympathize with a war criminal (both sides).

BeanpolePeckerwood posted:

Perhaps unintentional, but you are completely misusing this term.

I don't think I am, but if you want to argue over the definition of a term I am happy to. I don't think it's coincidental that the character who is actually sympathetic also lives in a major city, in a sports stadium (a symbol of capital), kills the underclass for profit, and has a father who is a doctor.

a new study bible!
Feb 2, 2009



BIG DICK NICK
A Philadelphia Legend
Fly Eagles Fly


Abby is the free market.

a new study bible!
Feb 2, 2009



BIG DICK NICK
A Philadelphia Legend
Fly Eagles Fly


BeanpolePeckerwood posted:

Okay. The problem with using a term that defines free-market capitalism for discussing the themes of this game is that in its timeline there is no capital, and there is no market. If you're using the term to talk about political allegory, or what 2LOU's creator's are trying to say about 'our world' through the text of this imaginary future...then fine. I do think you should choose, though.

I dig what you are saying. I have been thinking all day about how to express why I am upset by this game, and part of my specific trouble is that I think there's a meta-commentary to be made regarding the specific decisions that ND made with both characters, where they live, and how they fit into their respective societies. That's why I mentioned that it matters whether ND favors a specific character.

This is separate from my story criticism, but also once you get into meta poo poo it all becomes blended. Apologies.

JBP posted:

The WLF is very clearly an allegory for the Ustaša I believe this very strongly because it's something I am personally interested in.

Authorial intent doesn't matter. I'd read your thesis.

a new study bible!
Feb 2, 2009



BIG DICK NICK
A Philadelphia Legend
Fly Eagles Fly


I legit think that Naughty Dog is trying to make a commentary on the heartland vs coastal elites and the American political divide.

a new study bible!
Feb 2, 2009



BIG DICK NICK
A Philadelphia Legend
Fly Eagles Fly


I also think it's kind of hosed up that Naughty Dog chose to have the slang term for the Seraphites be "scars," considering that Lev is the most significant Seraphite and is trans. I think if you applied a similar treatment to other marginalized groups it would be less accepted. I know that Lev hasn't had any surgeries or whatever, but it seems to walk the line of what is appropriate IMO.

a new study bible!
Feb 2, 2009



BIG DICK NICK
A Philadelphia Legend
Fly Eagles Fly


JBP posted:

They cut up their faces in ritual ceremony.

I'd ave called em face choppers

Choppers is a cooler term anyway

a new study bible!
Feb 2, 2009



BIG DICK NICK
A Philadelphia Legend
Fly Eagles Fly


veni veni veni posted:

For the record a new study bible!, this isn't directly aimed at you, or suggesting that you encompass everything I'm going to talk about in this post. But your posts did get me thinking about something I have noticed a lot of in the past week, which is that this game/series seems to be a nightmare for people who are expecting to be told who to root for or are looking for black and white answers.

You can trace this back to the ending of the first game. Probably the most argued about ending in a video game ever. Most people seem to fall in two camps. Camp 1 thinks Joel is a selfish/awful person who was the real badguy. Camp 2 thinks Joel did nothing wrong and was 100% the good guy. The beauty of the ending is that both/neither of these things are true, and ultimately both Joel and the Fireflies were doing what they thought was right for their own reasons, and unfortunately those reasons clashed. it's really impossible to say anyone was 100% right or wrong in the end. Now we have TLOU 2, which is pretty much a 30 hour long version of the ending of TLOU 1 and it's driving people nuts. Ultimately the game is about humanizing characters on both sides of a conflict. It's not about who is right and wrong and there is no one to root for. It's not about the organizations people affiliate with or even the actions they take, it's about the motivations behind the actions, and how those motivations affect the player perception of the story. People want easy answers though, so they project either what they want or don't want on to the game depending on their angle. Unfortunately for them, it's a game with a whole lot of questions that don't have right or wrong answers, and the sooner someone can accept that the more they should be able to appreciate the story.

I can agree that I would have liked this story to take a more defined position. Back in the day, I thought that TLOU was the best game I had ever played specifically because of the ending, but I never really considered it to be very ambiguous. I just always kind of assumed that Ellie immediately sniffed out Joel's bullshit but also recognized that going back was impossible. I appreciated that the game didn't need to say it. I think that this game lacks a lot of that subtlety, but I also haven't replayed TLOU, so maybe I'm just remembering it differently.

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a new study bible!
Feb 2, 2009



BIG DICK NICK
A Philadelphia Legend
Fly Eagles Fly


On a positive note, I really loved Abby's character design. Her model was great. and seeing her braidless, starved, and sunburned at the end of the game was probably the strongest image in the entire game for me. It resonated even more than Joel's corpse.

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