Took me a while to finish as I'm a completionist and it became a chore to finish this game as I would go days without wanting to play it but I had to see it through. At the end of the day this game is proof that critics get things wrong as I don't understand how anyone could give this game 10/10 given the gameplay itself was as generic as you will see lacking any variety. The gameplay boiled down to spending hours looting abandoned buildings mixed with the odd repetitive encounter against zombies or humans and after about 15 hours it felt like a chore to get see things through. It's one thing to sit and watch a depressing movie for a couple of hours and another to spend 25-30 hours or more playing a depressing downer of a game. Games still need to have an element of fun and there's very little here once you get into the repetitive cycle of moving from one environment to the other. After the credits rolled I realized that the best ending for the first game was for Joel to let the doctors operate on Ellie because letting her live was bad for everyone including gamers that were hoping for a sequel that was at least on the same level of the first game.
This game will get all the glory but Days Gone was a far superior game.
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Took me a while to finish as I'm a completionist and it became a chore to finish this game as I would go days without wanting to play it but I had to see it through. At the end of the day this game is proof that critics get things wrong as I don't understand how anyone could give this game 10/10 given the gameplay itself was as generic as you will see lacking any variety. The gameplay boiled down to spending hours looting abandoned buildings mixed with the odd repetitive encounter against zombies or humans and after about 15 hours it felt like a chore to get see things through. It's one thing to sit and watch a depressing movie for a couple of hours and another to spend 25-30 hours or more playing a depressing downer of a game. Games still need to have an element of fun and there's very little here once you get into the repetitive cycle of moving from one environment to the other. After the credits rolled I realized that the best ending for the first game was for Joel to let the doctors operate on Ellie because letting her live was bad for everyone including gamers that were hoping for a sequel that was at least on the same level of the first game.
This game will get all the glory but Days Gone was a far superior game.
I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on the gameplay in the first game, if you played it.
After playing part 1 and part 2 back to back I feel really strongly that the sequel surpasses the original in everything gameplay related.
Divisive game no doubt, but I can easily see why so many people gave it a 10/10. This game pushes the genre forward and will talked about for years to come. I didn’t find it anywhere near as bleak as you did either. There was plenty of touching moments and even humor to properly balance and pace the game.
I wonder if the “completionist” style of gameplay might have slowed things down for you? I took my time, but didn’t search every nook and cranny and found it moved at a great pace.
The enemy encounters have a ton of variety based on how you want to play the game too. The combat was extremely varied from my perspective and the encounters are often broken up by story, platforming, mild puzzle solving, or big action set pieces.
That’s video games, it’s cool to see how we had such different experiences with the same game. Easily my game of the year so far.
I tried Days Gone, but couldn’t push through it as I found it extremely repetitive and similar to most open world games except with blah characters and weak writing.
I thought the mass exodus was because of the crunch on this game.
Which i always find so ridiculous as a thing to complain about... you make video games for a living. Yeah, sometimes there are going to be long hours where you work until midnight for weeks straight... apparently every few years, for Naughty Dog, when they're finishing a big project like this one. Well... welcome to the world. I do that multiple times a year, every time I have a hearing or a significant deadline. There are lots of jobs that have demanding periods like that.
I think most of the crunch / deadline type issues in those creative type industries are self-made. We’re watching the Frozen II making of and it’s ridiculous. They were working on the movie for like 4 years and did 80% of the work in the last 9 months before it came out. Not sure what they were doing the rest of the time before that...
I think most of the crunch / deadline type issues in those creative type industries are self-made. We’re watching the Frozen II making of and it’s ridiculous. They were working on the movie for like 4 years and did 80% of the work in the last 9 months before it came out. Not sure what they were doing the rest of the time before that...
Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. I worked on a show where for the Christmas episode we had it finished and the creators of the show decided at the last minute they wanted the Christmas tree to look different. So we had to wait for the modeling department to change it, the animators to update their scenes, and then rush to render and comp it on time.
Then there was another show where not only did the ocean system we used randomly flip out but for some reason the modeling department fell behind and put us way behind schedule. That pissed me off because I was trying to get back into the modeling department and they could have easily got people with modeling experience to help out. We pretty much spent 4-6 weeks just sitting with nothing to do and waiting for shots and then barely met the deadline. That was the worst experience I've had so far. I basically had an hour or two to myself before having to go to bed to do it all over again. There was alot of weekend OT and alot of bickering at each other.
I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on the gameplay in the first game, if you played it.
After playing part 1 and part 2 back to back I feel really strongly that the sequel surpasses the original in everything gameplay related.
Divisive game no doubt, but I can easily see why so many people gave it a 10/10. This game pushes the genre forward and will talked about for years to come. I didn’t find it anywhere near as bleak as you did either. There was plenty of touching moments and even humor to properly balance and pace the game.
I wonder if the “completionist” style of gameplay might have slowed things down for you? I took my time, but didn’t search every nook and cranny and found it moved at a great pace.
The enemy encounters have a ton of variety based on how you want to play the game too. The combat was extremely varied from my perspective and the encounters are often broken up by story, platforming, mild puzzle solving, or big action set pieces.
That’s video games, it’s cool to see how we had such different experiences with the same game. Easily my game of the year so far.
I tried Days Gone, but couldn’t push through it as I found it extremely repetitive and similar to most open world games except with blah characters and weak writing.
The thing about the first game is that it was the first experience in this universe. Joel and Ellie were extremely compelling characters trying to navigate through this new world of clickers, runners and people surviving in a post apocalyptic world. Also I don't think gameplay was ever a strong suit of the original as it was polished and just good enough to be a vessel for the story. You wanted to keep going to see if Joel and Ellie could make a go of it in this world together.
This sequel didn't bring much new to the gameplay which as I stated before was not the strength of the first game so you are left with this bitter revenge story featuring unlikeable characters (I think someone noted in previous posts the only likeable character was Dina to which I agree) that you don't really care about unlike the first game where Joel and Ellie were dear to our hearts. The first half of the game was not as good as the original but still very good until the halfway mark where things take a turn for the worse.
Spoiler!
The wheels really fall off with the jarring switch to the Abby storyline at the climax of Ellie's playthrough. It was bad enough that they gave her a totally distracting woman on steroids physique but worse was that it was extremely difficult to get into her storyline. It got to the point where I just didn't want to play anymore as the joy had been sucked out of whatever was left from the original game. While I did come around to feeling sympathetic for her character and why she killed Joel, she still didn't come off as a likeable character that I wanted to play. The part where you have to play her trying to kill Ellie was preposterous to me as nobody wants to play this character trying to kill Ellie but we have to because the writers are forcing their heavy handed story about the circle of revenge and people being inherently bad. At the end of the game you are left with this empty feeling that Joel is dead, Ellie has lost everything (Joel and Dina), and a thoroughly beat down Abby & Lev sailing away to their next life and death encounter with evil people trying to kill them because in Naughty Dog's post apocalyptic world murder is second nature for all humans. As I said before if this was the outcome of Joel saving Ellie from the surgery then it simply wasn't worth it because the outcome was disappointing all around.
Another note is that Naughty Dog really needs to get away from the time shifting thing that's starting to creep into their games. There were several times in this game where they abruptly go back in time and those moments largely don't work because you know the future already and you just want to power through to get back to the main storyline.
Last edited by Erick Estrada; 07-16-2020 at 08:03 AM.
Thought it was an amazing game that is worthy of praise - it's definitely one of the best games to come out on the PS4.
The graphics, gameplay, music and animations were all top notch.
I thought the story was pretty good as well (not quite as a good as TLOU 1), and a touch long, but it wasn't bad and full of plot holes (like the vocal minority seems to think on the internet).
The thing about the first game is that it was the first experience in this universe. Joel and Ellie were extremely compelling characters trying to navigate through this new world of clickers, runners and people surviving in a post apocalyptic world. Also I don't think gameplay was ever a strong suit of the original as it was polished and just good enough to be a vessel for the story. You wanted to keep going to see if Joel and Ellie could make a go of it in this world together.
This sequel didn't bring much new to the gameplay which as I stated before was not the strength of the first game so you are left with this bitter revenge story featuring unlikeable characters (I think someone noted in previous posts the only likeable character was Dina to which I agree) that you don't really care about unlike the first game where Joel and Ellie were dear to our hearts. The first half of the game was not as good as the original but still very good until the halfway mark where things take a turn for the worse.
Spoiler!
The wheels really fall off with the jarring switch to the Abby storyline at the climax of Ellie's playthrough. It was bad enough that they gave her a totally distracting woman on steroids physique but worse was that it was extremely difficult to get into her storyline. It got to the point where I just didn't want to play anymore as the joy had been sucked out of whatever was left from the original game. While I did come around to feeling sympathetic for her character and why she killed Joel, she still didn't come off as a likeable character that I wanted to play. The part where you have to play her trying to kill Ellie was preposterous to me as nobody wants to play this character trying to kill Ellie but we have to because the writers are forcing their heavy handed story about the circle of revenge and people being inherently bad. At the end of the game you are left with this empty feeling that Joel is dead, Ellie has lost everything (Joel and Dina), and a thoroughly beat down Abby & Lev sailing away to their next life and death encounter with evil people trying to kill them because in Naughty Dog's post apocalyptic world murder is second nature for all humans. As I said before if this was the outcome of Joel saving Ellie from the surgery then it simply wasn't worth it because the outcome was disappointing all around.
Another note is that Naughty Dog really needs to get away from the time shifting thing that's starting to creep into their games. There were several times in this game where they abruptly go back in time and those moments largely don't work because you know the future already and you just want to power through to get back to the main storyline.
I totally see where you are coming from- all valid critiques, but it seems most of your issues with the game stem from the characters and story.
Spoiler!
It took me a while to come around when you start playing as Abby, but eventually I was all in. I think it's a disservice to call her a distracting woman on steroids. To me she was a powerful and sympathetic character. The fact they were able to flesh out her back story had me roped in as I really didn't know where the story was going to go. I had no issues with the Abby vs Ellie scenes as you end up playing them from both perspectives.
You can call it heavy handed storytelling, but I much prefer a game with this level of detail and care put into it's world and cinematics that they follow through and tell the story they wanted to tell
As far as likeable characters I found Lev, Yara, Dina, Manny, Jesse, Tommy, and Mel to easily fall into that category. Abby, Ellie, Owen, Joel, are all very conflicted characters, but there is enough there to dig into. The only evil character from my perspective is Issac. All in all I think that's kind of the point- there is no black and white in this world, everything is grey and muddy. Mindsets are ingrained in people and it's hard to change them. Maybe, I'm a bit blinded by the production value, acting, visuals, audio, etc, but I loved this game and the story had me guessing the whole time.
In terms of gameplay in comparison to the first one the sequel surpasses it in every way. For the most part this game avoided lame puzzles to break up the action (why couldn't Ellie swim in the first game?). The environments were much larger with sprawling paths which give the player the choice on how to attack each situation.
In basically every encounter you can choose to go completely stealth, go in guns blazing, just sneak by, or a combination of all of the above. Ellie as a character is much more nimble than Joel was. Jumping, running, and going prone totally change the encounters. The first game is basically a real loose controlling cover shooter.
The lack of resources really put a survival horror spin on this one and make every encounter feel like you're just getting by. I had multiple times where i had to throw a bottle to stun the last enemy and charge at them with a melee to finish them off. The AI is also way smarter than the first game (although not perfect), making playing stealth much more fun. The little things like how the call out the names of their friends really adds a realistic feel to everything. I found it very satisfying when you have one bullet left and are able to pull off a clean headshot. The way these mechanics and production value comes together just works for me.
Certain combat sequences surprised me with the level of detail in the animations as well such as being pulled out from under a truck when you're hiding or feeding a runner to clicker in order to escape. The attention to detail in each interaction including the animation of Ellie's face when she is taking somebody out is unparalleled. Each kill has an impact on her it feels like.
I also didn't have an issue with any of the flashbacks- I was always excited to play them to get a greater sense of where these characters came from and especially to see what had happened between Joel and Ellie in between games. I found these moments were usually heartwarming and really broke up the violence and bleakness of the main path.
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I think there's no argument against TLOU2 being a technical achievement. It looks great, it sounds great, and all of the motions feel incredibly realistic.
That said, when you look at the gameplay from a functional level, they didn't really do anything unexpected or interesting. It plays exactly like you expect a Naughty Dog game to play, and didn't improve much on the experience of TLOU1 (though I did find much of the play more seamless, which is a worthy improvement). Naughty Dog has a formula, and it's not one I'm particularly a huge fan of. Don't mind it, but I don't think it's better than any of the common formulas you see with Ubisoft, or Sucker Punch, or Rockstar. It just is what it is, and if you like it, you like it, but you know exactly what to expect.
Story-wise I sit closer to EE. I didn't find it bleak necessarily, there was some levity, I just didn't care about any of these people. Joel was the emotional driver of the first one, and they did a good job of setting up his reason for being. There was nuance to it and an arc, you went from experience a man who lost his daughter, to trying to survive, to having to take care of this girl while fighting parental feelings and the baggage of losing his daughter. There was a depth to that. TLOU2 doesn't have that depth, because it puts commentary over emotional depth. It's not so much a human story as it is a high-level story about cycles of violence, which is fine, but not as engaging. The one excuse I don't really buy is that Naughty Dog told the story they wanted to tell. Most publishers and most storytellers are able to do this, but it has no relevance to the quality of the story told.
I mentioned it before, but I also just found it boring. I generally have a problem where I "see" the design of a game and have trouble getting lost in it, so all the formulas were really obvious to me. "Oh, here are a group of bad guys, this is their movement pattern, these are my options" or "I have to drop down into this basement, so I will have to fight something to move through it, there is blood on the walls, so something is going to jump out at me, I'm in an area with a ton of resupplies, this means the next area will require me to use a lot of them." All those little obvious formulas made it feel more on-rails than I think ND wanted it to feel.
When you have a game where the formulas are fairly apparent, the message is surface level and without much nuance, and the characters are all generally unlikeable (or uninspiring, or cliche, or whatever you want to call them) then it's hard to overcome technical achievement for me. Full respect to anyone who had a different experience, because how we interpret these things is always going to be subjective, but for me it was just a boring slog that I wanted to love, was dying to find something to like, and just ended up feeling pretty empty about the experience. I didn't have fun, feel anything, or learn anything, and I want a story that does at least one of those things.
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Yeah I don't have any problem with people that loved it. As a wise old PM once said "People experience things differently" so I get that this story may be engaging for some. My issue is more with the reviewers that have a bit of a responsibility to be objective and review all aspects of the game as it really was boring at times and as said above by Pepsi, the gameplay itself is no better than anything Ubisoft, Rockstar, etc games have done that haven't received perfect scores. Even if I loved this story I would have a difficult time giving it a score higher than a 9.0 based on the gameplay as I have played a lot of very good games that never got boring and lost its momentum like this. I just think if you are going to give a 10 score you are saying the game was perfect and could not be improved on and I just don't understand how anyone could say that about this game.
Last edited by Erick Estrada; 07-16-2020 at 12:28 PM.
I really don't get why we keep dancing around certain information even though it's basically revealed in the first 30 minutes of the game... so I'll summarize my annoyance with TLOU2 as:
I like pickles, I like eggs. I don't like pickled eggs.
I really have no issues with the components of the game at all (which is what many others complain about). I just don't like how they combined it together and delivered it. The delivery for me dropped the game from a solid 9.5 to a 7.5.
. The one excuse I don't really buy is that Naughty Dog told the story they wanted to tell. Most publishers and most storytellers are able to do this, but it has no relevance to the quality of the story told.
I think based on your post generally, I enjoyed it more than you did, because I was able to immerse myself in the gameplay more than it sounds like you did. I also did care, to some extent, about a few of the characters. Just nowhere near as much as TLOU1 made me care about Joel and Ellie.
But on the quoted, yes. Yes, a thousand times yes. I am fine with Naughty Dog telling the story they wanted to tell. But in this case, the story they wanted to tell was told poorly. I'm not even aware of what plot holes bax was referring to. The central issue wasn't logic, it was structural. The whole thing is structurally disjointed and badly paced, especially in the second half. It just didn't work.
I have to think that if TLOU2 were a released as a movie, this would be the main complaint of professional critics. Having a good story to tell, or a good point to make, is only half the battle. If you tell it poorly, or can't communicate it effectively, it really doesn't matter what you're trying to say.
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I think there's no argument against TLOU2 being a technical achievement. It looks great, it sounds great, and all of the motions feel incredibly realistic.
That said, when you look at the gameplay from a functional level, they didn't really do anything unexpected or interesting. It plays exactly like you expect a Naughty Dog game to play, and didn't improve much on the experience of TLOU1 (though I did find much of the play more seamless, which is a worthy improvement). Naughty Dog has a formula, and it's not one I'm particularly a huge fan of. Don't mind it, but I don't think it's better than any of the common formulas you see with Ubisoft, or Sucker Punch, or Rockstar. It just is what it is, and if you like it, you like it, but you know exactly what to expect.
Story-wise I sit closer to EE. I didn't find it bleak necessarily, there was some levity, I just didn't care about any of these people. Joel was the emotional driver of the first one, and they did a good job of setting up his reason for being. There was nuance to it and an arc, you went from experience a man who lost his daughter, to trying to survive, to having to take care of this girl while fighting parental feelings and the baggage of losing his daughter. There was a depth to that. TLOU2 doesn't have that depth, because it puts commentary over emotional depth. It's not so much a human story as it is a high-level story about cycles of violence, which is fine, but not as engaging. The one excuse I don't really buy is that Naughty Dog told the story they wanted to tell. Most publishers and most storytellers are able to do this, but it has no relevance to the quality of the story told.
I mentioned it before, but I also just found it boring. I generally have a problem where I "see" the design of a game and have trouble getting lost in it, so all the formulas were really obvious to me. "Oh, here are a group of bad guys, this is their movement pattern, these are my options" or "I have to drop down into this basement, so I will have to fight something to move through it, there is blood on the walls, so something is going to jump out at me, I'm in an area with a ton of resupplies, this means the next area will require me to use a lot of them." All those little obvious formulas made it feel more on-rails than I think ND wanted it to feel.
When you have a game where the formulas are fairly apparent, the message is surface level and without much nuance, and the characters are all generally unlikeable (or uninspiring, or cliche, or whatever you want to call them) then it's hard to overcome technical achievement for me. Full respect to anyone who had a different experience, because how we interpret these things is always going to be subjective, but for me it was just a boring slog that I wanted to love, was dying to find something to like, and just ended up feeling pretty empty about the experience. I didn't have fun, feel anything, or learn anything, and I want a story that does at least one of those things.
I'll start by just saying I totally respect your opinion. It's been really interesting to me seeing the reaction to this game and how far it has pushed people in both directions.
In regards to the gameplay formula you mentioned, I see where you are coming from, but I don't see games in the same way that you do. I don't really notice the 'design' in the same terms you do. The acting, cinematics, visuals, audio, and writing in general really wrapped me up in this game. It's the guitar stuff, it's the little conversations between characters when you are just walking, etc that made me buy into the gameplay.
I can agree it doesn't really do anything unexpected in terms of gameplay, but like I said before it absolutely improves on every single aspect of it which is enough for me since I enjoyed the first game. I think the combat is extremely varied and even just seeing some of the sequences people have stringed together online I feel like even after finishing the game I'm not even close to mastering the combat.
With all of that being said, I haven't played a Naughty Dog game that I haven't been a fan of so this type of third person cinematic adventure obviously resonates me. For some perspective I also loved God of War and Spiderman, but struggled to get into Days Gone and AC: Odyssey.
Spoiler!
I'll disagree that with you that TLOU2 doesn't have depth. It's a much bigger story that flips things around on you juggles with your expectations. The Ellie arc is more clear- it's a revenge tail that turns into a personal struggle of what loss and violence can do to oneself. She has motivations, relationships, etc that are very fleshed out especially when considering the first game.
You mention there isn't a human element to this story and it's just about the circle of violence, but I will disagree with that. We have two personal revenge stories that intertwine with eachother on the surface, but there is much more than that. You have the kind of awkward three way relationship between Dina, Ellie, and Jessie, you have stories about loss and grieving, you have Lev struggling with his personal identity in a very rigid society, you have Abby's arc from transforming to basically a blood thirsty soldier to a caring free thinker. There were massive human elements to this story from my perspective. I didn't see any commentary to SJW stuff that people are talking about.
Last point I'll mention is that I keep hearing that the characters weren't likeable, which I disagree with. Abby, Ellie, Lev, Yara, Manny, Jesse, Tommy, Dina, Nora, and Mel were all likeable for a variety of reasons and to different degrees. I thought all characters felt pretty fleshed out and memorable. The only one I didn't really click with with Owen- he felt more like a vessel to the story for me
This is all subjective though and I guess that's what makes it so great to discuss. I definitely had fun with this game- I wanted to replay it almost immediately after finishing it to master the combat and see what I missed story wise through my first play through. I connected with most of the characters and felt true suspense through most of my play through not knowing which direction the story was going to go in,
I think based on your post generally, I enjoyed it more than you did, because I was able to immerse myself in the gameplay more than it sounds like you did. I also did care, to some extent, about a few of the characters. Just nowhere near as much as TLOU1 made me care about Joel and Ellie.
But on the quoted, yes. Yes, a thousand times yes. I am fine with Naughty Dog telling the story they wanted to tell. But in this case, the story they wanted to tell was told poorly. I'm not even aware of what plot holes bax was referring to. The central issue wasn't logic, it was structural. The whole thing is structurally disjointed and badly paced, especially in the second half. It just didn't work.
I have to think that if TLOU2 were a released as a movie, this would be the main complaint of professional critics. Having a good story to tell, or a good point to make, is only half the battle. If you tell it poorly, or can't communicate it effectively, it really doesn't matter what you're trying to say.
Fair complaints, but even then I would argue this is all subjective. I though it was brilliant how the game effectively asks you to put away your biases and view the larger story from more than one perspective. It challenges the player in ways that not many games do and I loved the duality and dichotomy of the stories. Going back to the first game I love the ambiguity of who is 'good' and 'bad' in a classic sense. You could argue that Joel is the bad guy of the first game- in fact after replaying it you notice it hints at that quite a bit.
To me the first game is a very simple tale and this one is much more complex. It definitely could be paced differently in some sections while achieving the same message, but i would much rather have a developer like Naughty Dog try something new and innovative even if it doesn't stick the landing completely opposed telling a story that we have seen before that is more predictable or safe.
I'll just spoiler my whole post here to save time.
Spoiler!
Quote:
Originally Posted by bax
I'll disagree that with you that TLOU2 doesn't have depth. It's a much bigger story that flips things around on you juggles with your expectations. The Ellie arc is more clear- it's a revenge tail that turns into a personal struggle of what loss and violence can do to oneself. She has motivations, relationships, etc that are very fleshed out especially when considering the first game.
Sure, but they're pretty one-dimensional, and they're undermined by the gameplay itself. She feels really bad about what she's doing, but then proceeds to go out and slit ten more throats. Seriously? It was difficult to beat Nora to death with a pipe, but it's easy as pie to just murder a bunch of guards in cold blood? Why, because you don't know their names? Completely contradicts what the game is trying to do. And why is she suddenly having PTSD flashbacks to Joel's death only at the end of the game? Why not during the Seattle piece, when it was fresh for her? If the implication is that her revenge spree is causing her to deteriorate psychologically, shouldn't those be the incidents she has trouble coping with once the killing spree is over? And what were they trying to say by sending her halfway across the country to find Abbey again in California only to let her go?
Ellie was a great character in the first one, and she's very well acted here. But her motivations range from simplistic to suddenly totally unclear, and at no point is she in any way complicated. She wants revenge but she's conflicted about it, except during actual gameplay sequences. Cool?
Quote:
You have the kind of awkward three way relationship between Dina, Ellie, and Jessie
I liked Dina and Ellie's relationship, just as I liked what was starting between Ellie and Riley before fate intervened there. Those interactions were some of the better parts of the game. But they're tangential. You could have used them - hey, here's this new person, your revenge story could lead to you losing this, this isn't what Joel would want, but at best that theme is on the backburner, incomplete and underdeveloped, until the end of the game.
As for Jessie, he was a completely undeveloped character. I have no idea why anyone would care about him. Him getting shot provoked very little response in me.
Quote:
you have stories about loss and grieving
What stories about loss and grieving? Tommy's descent into what he's become by the end of the game might have been interesting... we get basically none of it. There isn't even a mourning period for the player for Joel - basically immediately after he dies you're packing up and heading to Seattle. And Ellie is immediately just on her revenge tour - she doesn't cope with her loss at all.
There was certainly a really good opportunity for a story about grief here. They didn't tell one.
Quote:
you have Lev struggling with his personal identity in a very rigid society
We get almost no insight into that society. There are hints, but it isn't explored. Which scars outside of Lev even have cutscene lines in the game? There was the scene with the hanging, but other than that, I can't remember any.
Lev was the stand-in for Ellie here in Abbey's "hey I'm Joel now, see the parallels" journey to caring for someone that fate has inserted into her life. But Ellie was just such a compelling, interesting, believable, complete character. I cared about Lev only marginally more than I did about Jessie, which is to say, not very much. What character traits can you even ascribe to Lev, aside from his gender? Quiet, certainly. Doesn't trust new people easily I guess? I'm not sure what else, but based on what happened during the game I don't even really care that much, to be honest.
Quote:
you have Abby's arc from transforming to basically a blood thirsty soldier to a caring free thinker. There were massive human elements to this story from my perspective. I didn't see any commentary to SJW stuff that people are talking about.
Presumably because the SJW stuff isn't important. It was a bit weird that they decided to have an incredibly exaggerated muscle-bound woman as the secondary main character, as opposed to making her a bit more "Linda Hamilton in T2" level of buff, but that's at most a very minor gripe as far as the decisions made on this thing. And it does make the gameplay sequences where she's smashing people's heads into walls more reasonable.
As for her arc, it was basically Joel again, but we've already seen that play out last time, and this time it was rushed. And most importantly, that only worked well the first time because of how good Ellie was as a foil. Joel was also a more likable, more believable character in that role than Abbey is.
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Last point I'll mention is that I keep hearing that the characters weren't likeable, which I disagree with. Abby, Ellie, Lev, Yara, Manny, Jesse, Tommy, Dina, Nora, and Mel were all likeable for a variety of reasons and to different degrees.
I barely remember half of these people, and I certainly didn't care about them. They mainly had limited screen time, outside of Dina, Abbey and Lev, and Tommy if you carry over your pre-existing relationship with that character. I'm not sure how you managed to give a crap about any of the others. I mean, how on Earth did you manage to like Nora? She's got a bit of an attitude... other than that, what about her is there even to latch on to in order to have an opinion about her?
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This is all subjective though and I guess that's what makes it so great to discuss. I definitely had fun with this game- I wanted to replay it almost immediately after finishing it to master the combat and see what I missed story wise through my first play through. I connected with most of the characters and felt true suspense through most of my play through not knowing which direction the story was going to go in,
I didn't really know what was going to happen either. I thought, for example, that Ellie was going to die in the theatre scene that ended up being a cliffhanger. I also enjoyed a lot of the game - as I said earlier, I thought I got my money's worth out of it just from the first half, before the Abbey part even started. And portion that had its moments, too.
The thing is that it sounds like some of the people criticizing the game hated it, and I'm sure some did. But for the most part, it seems to me that the people who have criticisms, even multiple, strong criticisms, actually thought it was a good, or even an excellent, game. I certainly fall into that category. The reason I care enough to gripe about it on an internet forum is that it had so much potential to be so much better, even without changing the overall point of the story they wanted to tell. It's the disappointment about what could have been.
__________________ "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; 07-16-2020 at 01:08 PM.
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I'll disagree that with you that TLOU2 doesn't have depth. It's a much bigger story that flips things around on you juggles with your expectations. The Ellie arc is more clear- it's a revenge tail that turns into a personal struggle of what loss and violence can do to oneself. She has motivations, relationships, etc that are very fleshed out especially when considering the first game.
You mention there isn't a human element to this story and it's just about the circle of violence, but I will disagree with that. We have two personal revenge stories that intertwine with eachother on the surface, but there is much more than that. You have the kind of awkward three way relationship between Dina, Ellie, and Jessie, you have stories about loss and grieving, you have Lev struggling with his personal identity in a very rigid society, you have Abby's arc from transforming to basically a blood thirsty soldier to a caring free thinker. There were massive human elements to this story from my perspective. I didn't see any commentary to SJW stuff that people are talking about.
Just to touch on this part, I think that the number of different stories and characters is partially what added to the lack of depth for me. You aren't really given a big opportunity to dive into any of these stories or these people, they're just people with their own problems mentioned as almost an aside, but you don't really get into them as characters and what it means. It seems like quantity over quality, and the characters feel underdeveloped.
I also didn't buy the Ellie/Dina relationship, personally. The dialogue between them didn't feel natural and their relationship on an emotional level felt juvenile, but using language that was overtly mature. It was a weird juxtaposition.
Regarding the SJW stuff, yeah, I agree and don't really buy that at all. I don't know why some clowns are making it out as an issue, I didn't feel they were trying to push any social agenda, and quite frankly I find it extremely insulting when people label any story with gay characters as pushing a social agenda, as though our stories aren't relevant to the world. It's gross and dumb.
And all that said, I appreciate that the game is at least worthy of discussion, and that a few of us can actually talk about it from entirely different perspectives without any of us being necessarily wrong.
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Just to touch on this part, I think that the number of different stories and characters is partially what added to the lack of depth for me. You aren't really given a big opportunity to dive into any of these stories or these people, they're just people with their own problems mentioned as almost an aside, but you don't really get into them as characters and what it means. It seems like quantity over quality, and the characters feel underdeveloped.
I also didn't buy the Ellie/Dina relationship, personally. The dialogue between them didn't feel natural and their relationship on an emotional level felt juvenile, but using language that was overtly mature. It was a weird juxtaposition.
Regarding the SJW stuff, yeah, I agree and don't really buy that at all. I don't know why some clowns are making it out as an issue, I didn't feel they were trying to push any social agenda, and quite frankly I find it extremely insulting when people label any story with gay characters as pushing a social agenda, as though our stories aren't relevant to the world. It's gross and dumb.
And all that said, I appreciate that the game is at least worthy of discussion, and that a few of us can actually talk about it from entirely different perspectives without any of us being necessarily wrong.
I'll spoil my response here just to be safe:
Spoiler!
I can totally understand some of the relationships and stories not feeling fleshed out for some players, but I personally didn't have those issues. I though Abby story especially was great. Her revenge parallels with Ellie, her relationship with her father and what that turned her into (she is so muscular because she's literally been preparing to go after Joel since she was a kid), her transformation within the Lev's story, her relationship with Owen, etc.
With that being said, I do wish I would have gotten a bit more from Lev and Manny- he was a particular favourite of mine. I do think the multiple characters and relationships really does showcase what The Last of Us universe is all about. There is no good guys and bad guys, everything is a weird shade of grey and this apocalypse has turned people into something else.
I disagree entirely on the Dina and Ellie relationship- I thought that might have been some of the strongest writing in the game the way they go back and forth, but again all subjective. It does make for good discussion.
Improvements from the first to the second game that I appreciated:
1. Variety of weapons. Ellie's kit was very similar to Joel's in the first game, so mixing it up with Abby's was a refeshing change. I found Abby's kit more compelling over all. Pipe bombs and incendiary rounds!
2. NPC vs. NPC battles. They dabbled with this in the Left Behind DLC, but I liked having the ability to instigate fights between infected and non-infected, and either stealth or fight my way through the chaos. It was a really fun mechanic. Bonus points with the tethered infected in California that you could release.
3. Visuals. The first game was already a technical achievement in its own right, but it was a generation ago, and the Remastered version was a step up but not even close to what they did in this one. They had the most subtle of details down -- blood melting ice, backpack zippers jostling with movement. Very subtle but added to the atmosphere.
4. The story - I struggle to put this as something 2 did better than 1, because it's better in ways and worse in others. In the first game, I felt that Joel was the clear protagonist and everyone else was the bad guy, even the Fireflies who had a clear, noble goal. In the second game, pacing aside, it let you see that was Joel did wasn't as clear cut as it may seem. There was no more good and bad, there were just different people with different motivations.
5. The dogs - In the first game, it was too easy to just move about unseen and pick people off. The dogs forced you to keep moving, forced you to stay on your toes rather than being able to just wait for the perfect opportunity to strike.
6. The stalkers - I don't even remember these guys from the first game, but they were the WORST in the second game and, at least for me, added a true sense of dread and stress. You often couldn't see/sense them, they would appear out of nowhere, and were just creepy overall. Got many chills in my spine fighting these guys.
7. Humanizing the NPCs - I thought it was neat and a nice touch that they would drop names and people would react strongly to NPC deaths. Made you realize that these weren't just drones, they were actually people.
8. The environments - I liked the scale of the areas. The openness of Seattle, the size/scope of the first Seraphites stage (the park/parkade area), the village on fire/WLF vs. Seraphite fight. It was a visual treat, and they all served to differentiate the gameplay throughout. The WLF/Seraphite stage especially, since everyone was out to get you and Lev. I found it neat how you had to be strategic about who you killed, because killing too many on one side would turn the tide of the battle and leave you with more of the other side to kill.
9. The intermezzi - It was a treat to go through parts like Ellie playing Take On Me in its entirety and Ellie/Joel visiting the museum. They just added a lot more flavour to the game and made you remember why you loved these characters in the first place.
I'll just spoiler my whole post here to save time.
Spoiler!
Sure, but they're pretty one-dimensional, and they're undermined by the gameplay itself. She feels really bad about what she's doing, but then proceeds to go out and slit ten more throats. Seriously? It was difficult to beat Nora to death with a pipe, but it's easy as pie to just murder a bunch of guards in cold blood? Why, because you don't know their names? Completely contradicts what the game is trying to do. And why is she suddenly having PTSD flashbacks to Joel's death only at the end of the game? Why not during the Seattle piece, when it was fresh for her? If the implication is that her revenge spree is causing her to deteriorate psychologically, shouldn't those be the incidents she has trouble coping with once the killing spree is over? And what were they trying to say by sending her halfway across the country to find Abbey again in California only to let her go?
Ellie was a great character in the first one, and she's very well acted here. But her motivations range from simplistic to suddenly totally unclear, and at no point is she in any way complicated. She wants revenge but she's conflicted about it, except during actual gameplay sequences. Cool?
I liked Dina and Ellie's relationship, just as I liked what was starting between Ellie and Riley before fate intervened there. Those interactions were some of the better parts of the game. But they're tangential. You could have used them - hey, here's this new person, your revenge story could lead to you losing this, this isn't what Joel would want, but at best that theme is on the backburner, incomplete and underdeveloped, until the end of the game.
As for Jessie, he was a completely undeveloped character. I have no idea why anyone would care about him. Him getting shot provoked very little response in me.
What stories about loss and grieving? Tommy's descent into what he's become by the end of the game might have been interesting... we get basically none of it. There isn't even a mourning period for the player for Joel - basically immediately after he dies you're packing up and heading to Seattle. And Ellie is immediately just on her revenge tour - she doesn't cope with her loss at all.
There was certainly a really good opportunity for a story about grief here. They didn't tell one.
We get almost no insight into that society. There are hints, but it isn't explored. Which scars outside of Lev even have cutscene lines in the game? There was the scene with the hanging, but other than that, I can't remember any.
Lev was the stand-in for Ellie here in Abbey's "hey I'm Joel now, see the parallels" journey to caring for someone that fate has inserted into her life. But Ellie was just such a compelling, interesting, believable, complete character. I cared about Lev only marginally more than I did about Jessie, which is to say, not very much. What character traits can you even ascribe to Lev, aside from his gender? Quiet, certainly. Doesn't trust new people easily I guess? I'm not sure what else, but based on what happened during the game I don't even really care that much, to be honest.
Presumably because the SJW stuff isn't important. It was a bit weird that they decided to have an incredibly exaggerated muscle-bound woman as the secondary main character, as opposed to making her a bit more "Linda Hamilton in T2" level of buff, but that's at most a very minor gripe as far as the decisions made on this thing. And it does make the gameplay sequences where she's smashing people's heads into walls more reasonable.
As for her arc, it was basically Joel again, but we've already seen that play out last time, and this time it was rushed. And most importantly, that only worked well the first time because of how good Ellie was as a foil. Joel was also a more likable, more believable character in that role than Abbey is.
I barely remember half of these people, and I certainly didn't care about them. They mainly had limited screen time, outside of Dina, Abbey and Lev, and Tommy if you carry over your pre-existing relationship with that character. I'm not sure how you managed to give a crap about any of the others. I mean, how on Earth did you manage to like Nora? She's got a bit of an attitude... other than that, what about her is there even to latch on to in order to have an opinion about her?
I didn't really know what was going to happen either. I thought, for example, that Ellie was going to die in the theatre scene that ended up being a cliffhanger. I also enjoyed a lot of the game - as I said earlier, I thought I got my money's worth out of it just from the first half, before the Abbey part even started. And portion that had its moments, too.
The thing is that it sounds like some of the people criticizing the game hated it, and I'm sure some did. But for the most part, it seems to me that the people who have criticisms, even multiple, strong criticisms, actually thought it was a good, or even an excellent, game. I certainly fall into that category. The reason I care enough to gripe about it on an internet forum is that it had so much potential to be so much better, even without changing the overall point of the story they wanted to tell. It's the disappointment about what could have been.
Spoiler!
I think a lot of the California piece is up for interpretation. Abby prepared her whole life to go after Joel, hence why she is so muscular. I presume these PTSD flashbacks are to show that Ellie can't live with this dangling thread. Another theory is that the "boogeyman" is still out there. What if Abby has a change of heart?
At the beginning of the game Ellie is hellbent on revenge. There is little remorse until the game gets moving along. I think this showcases the ambiguity of the world, there really is no good and bad. The more people she takes down on her journey the bigger the toll it takes on her climaxing with Nora. Her own actions ask the question was any of this worth it? The California gang is meant to look inherently terrible with the jail cells, pillars, and locked up infected.
Ellie is so conflicted because it's clear that if she had a normalish life she would be an artist, or a musician, etc, but she can't have that because of what she's been born into. Her journal is ranges from poems, to lyrics, to drawings, to remarks about her PTSD (even in the Seattle stages). At the end on the farm she has a room full of paintings and music and she is finally living her life. but once again she gets pulled back in.
Jessie mattered within the story because he clearly cares about Ellie and Dina, despite all of the drama. He was trusted by Joel to look out for Ellie on their patrols and goes as far to following Ellie to Seattle. He isn't major character, but he served his purpose and I enjoyed him.
As for loss and grieving I think it's all pretty obvious. Ellie loses Joel, her relationship with Dina, and Jessie. The mourning of Joel takes place throughout the entire game. It hits harder at the end when you get flashbacks to that night in Jackson, but also through the museum flashbacks. We get to see some moments when he was at his best, it'a almost like a tribute.
Then there is Abby losing her father, her losing her relationship with Owen, her friends being killed, her will to keep Lev alive. The only moment of loss that I thought needed more fleshing out was with Lev and his mother. I also liked how they brought Jessie back into the fold at the end with the notes between Dina and his mom.
You don't need to have cutscenes to convey the story. The Scars story, their way of life, their beliefs are plastered throughout the game. It's good indirect storytelling. Maybe the left behind notes aren't the best mechanism, but I felt it gave me more than enough information to understand what is happening on their land and between them and the WLF.
You might not have liked Lev as a character, but to me his traits were bold, courageous, brave and human. He cares deeply about those around him. We only got him for only half the game, but a moment that stands out to me is when he is pressing Abby along the rooftops as she's afraid of heights and then they fall into the pool. That entire sequence really humanizes Abby and provides some awesome moments of those two characters bonding. Part of his story is intrinsically tied to the war between the WLF and the Scars. There was a truce at one point, peace was possible. It goes hand in hand with Abby and the crew being Firely's and then falling into the WLF. They intended to do good things. Obviously we have had triple the amount of time with Ellie, but I thought his character was great in the overarching themes of the story.
This shouldn't be a gripe at all. As I said she's been training since the death of her father to be a soldier and to take down Joel. That's been her only motivation up until this point so I like the fact she was so powerful.
Disagree on your comparison between Joel and Abby as well. Joel always was a bad guy. He was a former smuggler who murdered in cold blood long before he even met Ellie. He even mentions when they get attacked in the first game that he's "been on both sides of it".
I think Abby is harder sell because you are initially led to believe she is the villain, but it worked for me at least and thought she had a more complex arc than Joel. She has essentially lived through the same arc as Ellie and Joel.
Nora was the WLF member that helped free Abby from imprisonment with the WLF after things had gone south. She played a hand in getting medical supplies to save Yara. She also worked directly under Abby's dad at the Salt Lake facility and was a former Firefly.
She was a brief character, but served her purpose. I'm not sure how much more you could add to her story without it feeling bloated.
Great game though and like I've already mentioned it really generates great discussion as there is valid criticisms of it, but large parts of the game can be interpreted completely differently.
Improvements from the first to the second game that I appreciated:
1. Variety of weapons. Ellie's kit was very similar to Joel's in the first game, so mixing it up with Abby's was a refeshing change. I found Abby's kit more compelling over all. Pipe bombs and incendiary rounds!
2. NPC vs. NPC battles. They dabbled with this in the Left Behind DLC, but I liked having the ability to instigate fights between infected and non-infected, and either stealth or fight my way through the chaos. It was a really fun mechanic. Bonus points with the tethered infected in California that you could release.
3. Visuals. The first game was already a technical achievement in its own right, but it was a generation ago, and the Remastered version was a step up but not even close to what they did in this one. They had the most subtle of details down -- blood melting ice, backpack zippers jostling with movement. Very subtle but added to the atmosphere.
4. The story - I struggle to put this as something 2 did better than 1, because it's better in ways and worse in others. In the first game, I felt that Joel was the clear protagonist and everyone else was the bad guy, even the Fireflies who had a clear, noble goal. In the second game, pacing aside, it let you see that was Joel did wasn't as clear cut as it may seem. There was no more good and bad, there were just different people with different motivations.
5. The dogs - In the first game, it was too easy to just move about unseen and pick people off. The dogs forced you to keep moving, forced you to stay on your toes rather than being able to just wait for the perfect opportunity to strike.
6. The stalkers - I don't even remember these guys from the first game, but they were the WORST in the second game and, at least for me, added a true sense of dread and stress. You often couldn't see/sense them, they would appear out of nowhere, and were just creepy overall. Got many chills in my spine fighting these guys.
7. Humanizing the NPCs - I thought it was neat and a nice touch that they would drop names and people would react strongly to NPC deaths. Made you realize that these weren't just drones, they were actually people.
8. The environments - I liked the scale of the areas. The openness of Seattle, the size/scope of the first Seraphites stage (the park/parkade area), the village on fire/WLF vs. Seraphite fight. It was a visual treat, and they all served to differentiate the gameplay throughout. The WLF/Seraphite stage especially, since everyone was out to get you and Lev. I found it neat how you had to be strategic about who you killed, because killing too many on one side would turn the tide of the battle and leave you with more of the other side to kill.
9. The intermezzi - It was a treat to go through parts like Ellie playing Take On Me in its entirety and Ellie/Joel visiting the museum. They just added a lot more flavour to the game and made you remember why you loved these characters in the first place.
10. Clicker penises.
A lot of great points here that I failed to mention when I was writing about the gameplay above. Nothing groundbreaking, but an improvement in every sense gameplay wise on the original.
