Wait. A sequel game set in a dystopian time frame, when a pandemic on steroids is going on, with everyone trying their damndest to survive, doesn't have pleasant game play/storylines? That's a surprise, after playing TLOU1?
Ok.
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Of course in 2023, his star has grown considerably from the HBO series, his appearances on the after show, and starring in the podcast. My comment about people only knowing Drukmann due to the gamergate community was specifically targeted to the audience in 2020. I should have been more clear with that.
Even if you had "been clear with that", this is absolute ####ing nonsense. The entire "Druckmann is full of himself" thing was a meme long before the second game even came out - for one thing, they released a documentary on the making of the first game in 2014 where they basically fawn over him for the entire thing and talk about how much artistry they all displayed, which left a bad taste in a lot of peoples' mouths, even though everyone basically acknowledges that the first game was largely very well written and very well done. I assume the reason that you think it started in 2020 is that that was when you first personally noticed it, and the reason you think it came from the #######s who review-bombed the game is because those are the first people you personally noticed saying it, as if you'd been following this stuff from the start I'd think you'd know how to spell the guy's name by now... Well, if so, you're wrong.
In short, no, everyone does not need to be constantly aware of the things that bother you personally, nor do they need to trip over themselves to disassociate totally innocuous comments from people that they have no connection with. It absolutely comes across as accusatory, and you know that, apparently, which is why you acknowledged that it is "uncomfortable". Deliberately making things uncomfortable for others by introducing your own discomfort, derived from a misinterpretation of the motives underlying other peoples' comments, is not "important" for you to do, it's not laudable, it's being confrontational with people who have done nothing to deserve it. Be charitable and assume the best of people you're dealing with until they give you a good reason to think otherwise - any other approach, you're just a jerk.
Quote:
Originally Posted by I_H8_Crawford
I actually wonder if I would have been good with TLOU2 if they switched the order of the stories.
Start with Abby, don't reveal who her father was (show her relationship with him however), its a mystery as to who is killing all her friends, and you get to build a bond with her and the new characters. End her story at the same spot in the theatre right before confrontation with Ellie, and then jump back to Wyoming and the golf club.
Yep - this was what I suggested in the original thread for the game after I played it on release.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague
So, after thinking about it, here's how I would have written this game, if they wanted to do more or less the same thematically.
Spoiler!
Open the game with the same thing - Joel tells Tommy the truth, ride through jackson, goes to see Ellie, promises to teach her guitar.
Then it's all Abby all the time. We get no indication about why we've switched to Abby, or her relationship to Joel, we're just playing as her through a campaign that is based on the Wolves' losing struggle against the Scars. Throughout these chapters the scars will be protrayed as an insane cult, much as they initially were in the real game. This will allow the player to get to know the "Salt Lake" crew in a setting where they're completely sympathetic. Hopefully make Owen a bit less of a ######bag, or at least a bit more of a lovable ######bag, a la Drake. Show, instead of telling us, Mel's general fragility, so we can recoil more at her reaction to what they're going to do. Throughout this chapter, Joel is never mentioned by name, but more slightly hinted at as someone who the crew is looking for for "what he did", but always in a way as to suggest first and foremost that they're talking about one of the Scars. You can say they're former fireflies, and that the fireflies got wiped out and there are rumours about other Firefly cells, but just in a sort of vague way. Incidentally, this also allows us to get to know Isaac, who is portrayed as a beleaguered leader who has lost his family to his enemy, who wishes he could just have a peace pact but knows it failed before and that his enemy isn't the sort that listens to reason. These are the good guys.
In between each of these chapters, we get the flashbacks with Ellie and Joel (the museum, the search for the strings, and Ellie finding out about what Joel did in Salt Lake), plus some of the end game stuff - the scene with Seth, and the follow up with Joel on the deck where Ellie says she wants to try to forgive him. You also get the flashbacks that show Abbey's relationship with Owen, starting at the ferris wheel and moving into the aquarium.
Then they find out that the guy they've been after is "out east". I don't even know if the trip to Wyoming (which shouldn't be explicitly where they're going) needs to be a chapter or cutscenes, but when you get to the snowstorm part with Abbey, she encounters four people in snow goggles and heavy coats, so you can't see that it's Joel, Tommy and two other people (who die as they're fleeing the infected), and their coats / scarves / whatever muffle their voices. Things cut from Abby just as they enter the lodge..... and go to the beginning of Ellie's story.
Now you get Ellie finding the lodge and walking in them killing Joel. The "it's like you've heard of us or something" scene happens immediately before so as not to give too much time to the dread of what's about to happen. You now get the flashback to young Abbey and her dad at the zoo, and the reveal of St. Mercy's.
Then Ellie's revenge plot plays out as usual - although preferably Day 1 and Day 2 can be a bit shorter by cutting off at least one or two stages of "elude or kill the bad guys". Hopefully, having this here will diminish gamer fatigue, because there's some excitement to getting to play as Ellie finally. The big change is that all the PTSD scenes of her getting flashbacks to Joel's death happen while you're playing through it, not in the end game. This should give a much more palpable sense that Ellie is losing it, and also, because you've actually been given a reason to give a #### about the people you're torturing and murdering, make it a much more conflicted task for the player. The flashbacks during this - since all the Ellie / Joel stuff was shown during Abbey's first chapter - are flashbacks to scenes in the hospital involving Marlene and Abbey's dad, including the scenes from the real game about their conflict leading to the operation on Ellie that Joel stopped. Also, the Wolves are treated more sympathetically as you kill them - pleading for their lives and trying to justify themselves to Ellie as she cuts into them, or beats them with a pipe, and so on. I'm fine with this being super uncomfortable.
The second half of the real game - all the stuff with Abby and the Scars - is much shorter and does not involve the trip back to the hospital or climbing over buildings, or her detour to have sex with Owen. She's looking for Owen, she gets caught, hanged, Lev and Yara save her, she doesn't leave them, they spend far less time at the aquarium and both Yara and Lev agree that they have to go save their mom upon learning that the Wolves are going to attack the island. All of that plays out as before. The part on the Scar island plays more into "these people are just living their lives and the wolves are about to commit genocide", culminating with a scene where Isaac is clearly the bad guy, ordering the killing of unarmed prisoners.
Then we go back to the standoff at the theatre. At this point, the game steals from Nier Automata - make your choice, Ellie or Abbey. If you pick Ellie and win, she kills Abbey, brutally, and that's the end of the game - we get cutscenes from Ellie and Dina at the farm, exactly the same, except this time her PTSD episodes don't revolve around seeing Joel die anymore, they revolve around what she did to Nora, Mel, Owen, Abbey. The implication is that she's haunted and bitter and eventually leaves Dina because she can't look at her anymore. That's the end of Ellie's story, and it's a clearly bad one. You want justice for Joel? You can have it, but you're supposed to hate what it does to Ellie.
If you pick Abbey, she lets Ellie and Dina live. You get the first scene on the farm with Ellie and Dina with the sheep and the barn, but the PSTD episode is less severe than in the real game. Dina comforts her, they go back inside, you get a closing scene with the kitchen, and the implication is that Ellie is going to live happily ever after with Dina, haunted by what she's done, but able to cope with the support of her family. Then you get to do the mini-chapter with Abbey and Lev in Santa Barbara. The game closes on the scene where they're talking on the radio. I'm not really convinced if it just should just end with the other end of the line making a noise that sounds like, but isn't clearly, a voice, or if it ends with the other side picking up and saying "hello?", or if the whole conversation should play out, confirming that there are still fireflies. I tend to think the latter, but it all works.
Roll credits. That's the end. No slavers or whatever. You could do something like that for a DLC, but you'd play as Abby.
I'm pretty confident that that would have fixed this game completely. It adds a big, brand new chunk in the beginning half of the game, but shortens the rest and removes the final chapter more or less completely. It gives the player choice and consequences, and creates greater stakes. The ending now makes sense in light of what the game is, apparently, trying to convey. It works both as a straight ending if there is no LOU III, and if there is, well, really easy to pick up where we left off with two different stories, "what happened to Abbey and Lev" and "What happened to Ellie". (Abbey's ending would be the canon).
I'm sure there are other ways you could re-write this and fix it, but this one took less than 24 hours to occur to me and I don't do this for a living. Surely Druckmann and co. could have done better with 7 years to work on it. I dunno.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
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Even if you had "been clear with that", this is absolute ####ing nonsense. The entire "Druckmann is full of himself" thing was a meme long before the second game even came out - for one thing, they released a documentary on the making of the first game in 2014 where they basically fawn over him for the entire thing and talk about how much artistry they all displayed, which left a bad taste in a lot of peoples' mouths, even though everyone basically acknowledges that the first game was largely very well written and very well done. I assume the reason that you think it started in 2020 is that that was when you first personally noticed it, and the reason you think it came from the #######s who review-bombed the game is because those are the first people you personally noticed saying it, as if you'd been following this stuff from the start I'd think you'd know how to spell the guy's name by now... Well, if so, you're wrong.
In short, no, everyone does not need to be constantly aware of the things that bother you personally, nor do they need to trip over themselves to disassociate totally innocuous comments from people that they have no connection with. It absolutely comes across as accusatory, and you know that, apparently, which is why you acknowledged that it is "uncomfortable". Deliberately making things uncomfortable for others by introducing your own discomfort, derived from a misinterpretation of the motives underlying other peoples' comments, is not "important" for you to do, it's not laudable, it's being confrontational with people who have done nothing to deserve it. Be charitable and assume the best of people you're dealing with until they give you a good reason to think otherwise - any other approach, you're just a jerk.
Yep - this was what I suggested in the original thread for the game after I played it on release.
I'm sorry, I just don't agree with you. I, again, am going to repeat the point that we do not live in a bubble here and we should be aware of where many of these talking points come from, especially if they originate from alt-right groups that wish harm on certain groups of people. While the documentary did have... interesting reactions, the real hate and harassment came from TLOU2 and trying to change that narrative is disingenuous.
I do believe that making people aware of these things is important, especially if there's a risk it could cause others to feel unsafe. It's not about me at all. You can disagree with that position all you want, and you're more than welcome to have that stance.
Considering it feels like you're more interested in making this a personal attack and not a discussion about the subject, I don't think there's anything more that needs to be said here.
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Last edited by Cole436; 04-05-2023 at 12:55 PM.
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Uh... Thank you for graciously acknowledging my right to hold my own viewpoints? How magnanimous... Sheesh.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
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I'm sorry, I just don't agree with you. I, again, am going to repeat the point that we do not live in a bubble here and we should be aware of where many of these talking points come from, especially if they originate from alt-right groups that wish harm on certain groups of people. While the documentary did have... interesting reactions, the real hate and harassment came from TLOU2 and trying to change that narrative is disingenuous.
I do believe that making people aware of these things is important, especially if there's a risk it could cause others to feel unsafe. It's not about me at all. You can disagree with that position all you want, and you're more than welcome to have that stance.
Considering it feels like you're more interested in making this a personal attack and not a discussion about the subject, I don't think there's anything more that needs to be said here.
Look, I understand your point. If this was a political thread and someone came in and started slinging slurs about Obama/Trudeau, you could likely make an assumption that someone that is more liberal in their leanings might feel like this is an unsafe space for open discourse.
That said, any discerning and scrutinizing person should be able to tell the difference between an extremist or bigoted take on those politicians and someone who is actually debating the merits of their policies and positions and yes, even egos as public figures.
It would absurd to go around policing forums and asking people to be careful about posting criticism of Trudeau because another hate-speech group also isn't a fan of him.
We cannot baby people who cannot think for themselves nor fence off areas of discussion out of fear of saying something politically incorrect or offending someone - especially in a place like CP where I've observed time and time again that the general population of posters are reasonable, open-minded, and do not live in a vacuum. Being in the political climate of this province, a lot of interesting characters have come out of the woodwork in recent months and I've seen this forum collectively discredit and shout them down each and every time. We police ourselves extremely diligently and responsibly.
What is fatiguing as PepsiFree brought up is that in every thread where some criticism of the game, show, or creators have come up, you keep bringing up the anti-LGBTQ people as the main reason this game is disliked when that is a gross oversimplification and probably factually wrong. The game (including the first, and there was plenty of criticism back then as well) is bad for completely other reasons. They are valid viewpoints and its fatiguing to be constantly smothered by this talk of those viewpoints being invalid because only LGBTQ haters hate the game.
He's at this point said twice he wants to drop it so maybe that's the way to go, although I note the parting shot about "personal attacks" and the concomitant selfrighteous lack of introspection or any ability to critically evaluate whether his approach might have something wrong with it. If that's where he wants to leave it, fine, whatever, it's not like anyone's mind is likely to be changed by any of this back-and-forth.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
Look, I understand your point. If this was a political thread and someone came in and started slinging slurs about Obama/Trudeau, you could likely make an assumption that someone that is more liberal in their leanings might feel like this is an unsafe space for open discourse.
That said, any discerning and scrutinizing person should be able to tell the difference between an extremist or bigoted take on those politicians and someone who is actually debating the merits of their policies and positions and yes, even egos as public figures.
It would absurd to go around policing forums and asking people to be careful about posting criticism of Trudeau because another hate-speech group also isn't a fan of him.
We cannot baby people who cannot think for themselves nor fence off areas of discussion out of fear of saying something politically incorrect or offending someone - especially in a place like CP where I've observed time and time again that the general population of posters are reasonable, open-minded, and do not live in a vacuum. Being in the political climate of this province, a lot of interesting characters have come out of the woodwork in recent months and I've seen this forum collectively discredit and shout them down each and every time. We police ourselves extremely diligently and responsibly.
What is fatiguing as PepsiFree brought up is that in every thread where some criticism of the game, show, or creators have come up, you keep bringing up the anti-LGBTQ people as the main reason this game is disliked when that is a gross oversimplification and probably factually wrong. The game (including the first, and there was plenty of criticism back then as well) is bad for completely other reasons. They are valid viewpoints and its fatiguing to be constantly smothered by this talk of those viewpoints being invalid because only LGBTQ haters hate the game.
I'm sorry, can you please give me a single example where I once stated the bolded?
I understand what you're saying with the rest of the post, but I also just want it to be understood that the type of post you had in many different and popular websites is often a dogwhistle for anti-semetism. That's all I wanted to bring to attention.
dipping my toes in more broadly that the information war online has been won and dictated by bad actors on the (far) right, incels, etc. For example my cousin's kids use terms like Chad all the time, which first started in incel circles that moved into wider internet Gen Z speak. Now, I don't think those kids are high school incels (I think) but I think being aware of how the 'manosphere' leaks out into other discourse is of value. That's how these things get mainstreamed.
This is why I cringe whenever I heard stuff bts about creatives of properties they don't like. Most rumors are just started by bigots.
like, I don't really dig modern star wars, but I don't think Favreau and Kennedy are 'at war' if that was the case she'd just fire him like the others!
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Locke
Thats why Flames fans make ideal Star Trek fans. We've really been taught to embrace the self-loathing and extreme criticism.
like, I don't really dig modern star wars, but I don't think Favreau and Kennedy are 'at war' if that was the case she'd just fire him like the others!
Stuff like this is just standard gossip column fare. The venue used to be the cover of magazines at the checkout at the supermarket, now it's twitter... can be safely ignored as a waste of time that's not worth thinking about.
EDIT: Also I'm now too old to understand internet speak, I guess, but wasn't chad originally a negative term in the incel context and now it's been rehabilitated to be a good thing? Again, probably not worth much energy.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
Last edited by CorsiHockeyLeague; 04-05-2023 at 02:02 PM.
Stuff like this is just standard gossip column fare. The venue used to be the cover of magazines at the checkout at the supermarket, now it's twitter... can be safely ignored as a waste of time that's not worth thinking about.
EDIT: Also I'm now too old to understand internet speak, I guess, but wasn't chad originally a negative term in the incel context and now it's been rehabilitated to be a good thing? Again, probably not worth much energy.
I get what you're saying, but I'm talking about a specific modern practice. And even then there is/was a different between People and Us Weekley verses some low rent tabloid.
the meaning hasn't totally changed, a Chad is type of traditionally masculine, alpha type.
EDIT: For what it's worth I don't really like Star Trek: Discovery but I'm careful how I talk about it because of the discourse about it since preproduction as 'woke'
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by Locke
Thats why Flames fans make ideal Star Trek fans. We've really been taught to embrace the self-loathing and extreme criticism.
I get that, my understanding was that incels thought Chad was a bad thing to be, and then the general consensus response on the internet was "well, incels are laughable idiots, so if they think it's a bad thing to be it must be a good thing to be", and now if someone calls someone a Chad it's generally a compliment.
I could be wrong about some or all of that as I am apparently, as noted, old and out of touch now. I thought I could make it through my 30's before this happened but apparently not.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
I could be wrong about some or all of that as I am apparently, as noted, old and out of touch now. I thought I could make it through my 30's before this happened but apparently not.
Welcome to the club; we have cookies!
...but don't eat too many, you need to watch your blood sugar.
Even if you had "been clear with that", this is absolute ####ing nonsense. The entire "Druckmann is full of himself" thing was a meme long before the second game even came out - for one thing, they released a documentary on the making of the first game in 2014 where they basically fawn over him for the entire thing and talk about how much artistry they all displayed, which left a bad taste in a lot of peoples' mouths, even though everyone basically acknowledges that the first game was largely very well written and very well done. I assume the reason that you think it started in 2020 is that that was when you first personally noticed it, and the reason you think it came from the #######s who review-bombed the game is because those are the first people you personally noticed saying it, as if you'd been following this stuff from the start I'd think you'd know how to spell the guy's name by now... Well, if so, you're wrong.
In short, no, everyone does not need to be constantly aware of the things that bother you personally, nor do they need to trip over themselves to disassociate totally innocuous comments from people that they have no connection with. It absolutely comes across as accusatory, and you know that, apparently, which is why you acknowledged that it is "uncomfortable". Deliberately making things uncomfortable for others by introducing your own discomfort, derived from a misinterpretation of the motives underlying other peoples' comments, is not "important" for you to do, it's not laudable, it's being confrontational with people who have done nothing to deserve it. Be charitable and assume the best of people you're dealing with until they give you a good reason to think otherwise - any other approach, you're just a jerk.
Yep - this was what I suggested in the original thread for the game after I played it on release.
I have to give you props as I totally remember when you posted that. It seems somewhat obvious that it would have made gamers more accepting of Abby but it seems to me at least that they went away from that on purpose because they wanted gamers to feel the discomfort of playing what they knew would be perceived as an extremely dislikeable character. I feel that's maybe more palpable in a movie where you are an observer for 30-45 minutes of her storyline rather than a video game where you are committing hours and hours playing the role of a character that is not likeable.
This modded version looks more related to game Tommy than game Joel does in the game.
I was having a LOT of issues with the controller setup when I tried playing TLOU1. So, the girl moved me to TLOU2 and there are a lot more ways to change the controls around for the way my brain works and that made a world of difference.
I played through once with her helping me the whole way (a lot, a huge amount really). Then I started playing it through again, a bit more on my own but still with her helping me a lot. I effed up and deleted my entire saved game and had to start again from the beginning BUT it's given me a lot of "practice" at things. When I first started, I would have never tried playing any of the game without her there, but with this second-but-third run through, she's been taking her system out to the living room tv and leaving it hooked up for me and I've started playing on my own until she's up and around for the day.
I've managed to learn enough so that I don't run around quite so much, looking like a demented giraffe on crack and I've managed to kill most of the runners/stalkers/clickers/bloaters/shamblers, without dying too many times; usually only happens once, then I figure it out/remember what I'm supposed to do. I used to hate the cut-scene parts, I just wanted to keep going with the killing everything, haha. I was also a bit frustrated the first time through, with the resource management but I've grown to appreciate both, so much more now.
My favorite thing is to stealth kill everything if I possibly can - the girl says I waste too much time stealthing and should just shoot but I like saving my ammo and stealth killing. It used to be I couldn't swim without dying, or run where I was supposed to - I usually ended up going in circles, lmao, and getting killed but I've got the hang of it now. I also couldn't avoid getting my face eaten by the dogs, at the beginning, but I have learned to kill them first, then going after the WLF guys. I rather love the silencers for that, followed by the bow/arrows.
I have become pretty close to addicted to this game. I really want a TLOU3 and I want DLC for Catalina Island - Abby & Lev's story feels unfinished on that front and I hate loose threads. My kids laugh at me because I spend time thinking about playing it, how to play differently/better. My eldest wants me to try Far Cry next (don't ask me which one, I have no idea, I only know there are several). I'm going to need my own PS4/5 soon.
It's really too bad that our location doesn't work for season two. But you have to look back with fondness that such a monstrous television series called Calgary and area home. Hopefully the effects of that are felt for decades to come in the local film industry.
and I've managed to kill most of the runners/stalkers/clickers/bloaters/shamblers, without dying too many times; usually only happens once, then I figure it out/remember what I'm supposed to do. I used to hate the cut-scene parts, I just wanted to keep going with the killing everything, haha. I was also a bit frustrated the first time through, with the resource management but I've grown to appreciate both, so much more now. 
