I'm kind if a hoarder so I'm taking this slow trying to find all the secrets. It almost makes it too slow with all the empty buildings and effort required to find all the loot. Maybe 1/2 way through and so far it's a very good game but not as good as the first and not a 10/10 game to the point I've progressed.
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
Last edited by CorsiHockeyLeague; 06-28-2020 at 09:45 PM.
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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.
Yea something like this would have made the game so much better. I didn't hate the events of the game, just the way they told it could have been better.
Spoiler!
Although I'd skip the choice at the end, that's not Naughty Dog's style. Just have it end similar, with both staying alive and Ellie getting a "happy" ending on the farm, and Abby going off to find the Fireflies with Lev.
I got the platinum trophy today, and unlike the first game, I probably won't go back to this one. It's not offensively bad like some people seem to think, but nothing I need to replay.
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by CroFlames
Before you call me a pessimist or a downer, the Flames made me this way. Blame them.
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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.
I agree what that thematically what they were trying to do with TLOU2 was fine. But the story telling was a mess to the point the ending felt like constant side quests and the ordering of the story could really have improved the experience and helped to fix the storytelling.
Overall, it was a good game. But it's kinda annoying that with what NG had to play with here, just minor tweaks to what they were working with could have turned this game from a good game at the end to something great or fantastic. The game started off great and then it's obvious it got distracted and rushed just a little bit past half way through.
The ending is also open ended which is confusing. Is this supposed to be the foundation for an extra DLC chapter? TLOU3?
Some of the basic fundamental decisions for story delivery in the game are just inexplicably odd. All the issues by the end have nothing to do with unrealistic expectations from TLOU1 vs 2 anymore. Heck, I feel like with the most minor of tweaks, we would all be kinda sitting here talking about how the game was fantastic and the concerns were overblown vs how the game just kinda went off a cliff after a certain period of time.
So the question becomes: How did this game get so many 10/10 scores when it's clearly not as good as the original?
I'm 15-20 hours in so still not finished, but here is my opinion so far after replaying the original right before the release.
The gameplay is part 2 is much more varied than the original. Each combat sequence has multiple ways to approach it with far more paths to take. Sometimes you can just sneak/run and avoid combat all together. The dodge, prone, and speed of Ellie combined with the smarter AI make this game more fun in my opinion.
There are so many buildings to explore and loot which can be completely avoided if that's not your thing. The enemies are much more varied this time around as well. The first game felt like you were fighting the same people over and over.
The first game is a lot more walk into a room and try to clear out every enemy. There wasn't a ton of choice in the gameplay and the controls always felt a bit off given how lumbering Joel was.
The original story was expertly told and a joy from start to finish, but to me anyways it held onto a lot of apocalypse/zombie tropes. Jump scares, cannibal groups, the whole story segment with Sam. It was all very well done, but stuff that had been done before in The Walking Dead and other movies/shows.
I'll reserve judgment for the story in part 2 until I finish it, but I will say it's kept me guessing and surprised me a ton which I didn't expect. The original story was very clear and simple. The sequel is much more muddy. For me anyways I would say so far it's on par with the original.
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"Some of [the fans of the original game] are not going to like this game, and not like where it goes, and not like what it says or the fate of characters that they love," Druckmann said. "I'd rather have people passionately hate it than just be like, 'Yeah, it was OK.'"
We stand up for the cause, because I think those people who don’t understand it, well, you have two choices: either accept it or don’t buy the game. I’m fine with either or. It’s just not OK.”
and if one is asking how battlefield 5 is doing nowadays when it was supposed to be a continuous live service?
How about other similar metacritic scores? Mass Effect 3 which suffered the same early plot leak as this game has an 89 critic and 5.9 user score.
also there may have been brigading of the title due to worker treatment at Naughty Dog, because workers are cheap and they can work them worse than truck drivers.
Other points, look for "The Last of Us 2 memes" and you can generate general opinions from what is highlighted. Spoiler warning of course.
Don't listen to me, I'm going to deploy white phosphorus again in Spec Ops the Line.
Yea something like this would have made the game so much better. I didn't hate the events of the game, just the way they told it could have been better.
Spoiler!
Although I'd skip the choice at the end, that's not Naughty Dog's style. Just have it end similar, with both staying alive and Ellie getting a "happy" ending on the farm, and Abby going off to find the Fireflies with Lev.
I hear what you're saying.
Spoiler!
I just figured if they were going to rip off Nier anyway with the "in the second half of the game you hate everything you're doing because you're sort of the bad guy" thing (which this game does less effectively than Nier, somehow), might as well do the ending of Automata while you're at it.
In seriousness I was responding to the complaint about Joel's choice in TLOU 1 losing meaning somehow from some players because of how he died and the way this game ended. Well, here, you get to choose what happens now. But there are consequences to satisfying your bloodlust and you're really not going to like them.
On reflection I think I would actually have the Ellie ending show her committing suicide (not on screen or anything. Maybe she plays the guitar in an empty house, puts it down, camera on guitar, gunshot). Just unambiguously bad news if the player chooses that route.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bax
The original story was expertly told and a joy from start to finish, but to me anyways it held onto a lot of apocalypse/zombie tropes. Jump scares, cannibal groups, the whole story segment with Sam. It was all very well done, but stuff that had been done before in The Walking Dead and other movies/shows.
This misses the whole central point of the story in the first game, which is about the way the events of the game change the two central characters, and how that leads to the choice Joel makes at the end of the game. None of that has anything to do with apocalypse / zombie tropes. That was literally why it was so good. The zombie apocalypse stuff was just the setting for a story about two people. In this one, I only really care about one of the characters (two if you count Dina, I like Dina) and I don't really know what she's going through or what I'm supposed to be getting out of my experience playing as her.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bax
Overall, it was a good game. But it's kinda annoying that with what NG had to play with here, just minor tweaks to what they were working with could have turned this game from a good game at the end to something great or fantastic.
Yup. Exactly my issue. Just a missed opportunity. That said, I think that about most very good games. It's just that this is a bigger opportunity missed by a wider margin than some. When the target is "best game ever made", you set yourself up for a big gap between expectations and results.
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TL;DR - I think the content of TLOU2 was fine. But the delivery of it ended up causing the game to self injure itself after a while. The game has all the potential to be a flawed masterpiece, but definitely not in its current form.
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Sorry for the wall of text. I have adult ADD and Covid isn't highly conducive to my reigning it in lately.
I am trying to work on being more concise, but I kinda always end up grasping ideas that are a little out there and often feel I need to explain how I got out there so as not to distract from discussion or make others feel like I am a troll.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Erick Estrada
So the question becomes: How did this game get so many 10/10 scores when it's clearly not as good as the original?
Most would summarize it down to paid reviews and bias. Self contained, IMO, TLOU2 had all the elements necessary to be a flawed masterpiece. But in its current state, I agree with many that I cannot consider it to be a masterpiece as many reviewers had stated and I cannot agree with many reviewers it is the best game of the generation/PS4.
ND was selective in who they rolled out the initial copies to. They probably selected people better aligned with their... approach and thought process which would be the bias part.
The payment claims aren't as obvious, but basically, being in ND's good graces so that the reviewers could get early access was kinda a form of payment (ie: Clicks from videos, blogs, interviews etc.). So if the reviewers reviewed well, they likely could get access again, but if not, they would be black listed by ND.
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In a different direction, I'd like to parallel Druckmann and Hideo Kojima.
I get that many really didn't get the concept of Death Stranding and thought it was stupid. But I followed the launch closely and it had a fantastic reddit thread about it (unlike the dirty angry reddit cesspools for many other games). Yes, Kojima has a reputation for being a video game bad boy/overrated and being self obsessed and making claims like, "I want to try and create a new genre, but I'm unsure how it will be received and I am sure it will be controversial", but even he didn't make comments like Druckmann like, "I cried through a second play through" or "I want gamers to passionately love it or hate it" which to me sounded like pure self masturbation. I can't pinpoint the difference, but I didn't hate Kojima's approach, but Druckmann's approach rubbed me the wrong way constantly. I wasn't sure I was reading too far into that tweet by Druckmann before the game's release, but I think in hindsight, my hunch is correct.
There's a lot of talk that Druckmann and some other individual at ND pushed a special SJW agenda. TBH, I didn't really feel the SJW part actually distracted from the game at all. But something definitely did go sideways in terms of what they wanted to achieve story telling wise and many blame Druckmann for that. I also agree that less would have been more. I did read a user comment that said something along the lines of, "When all the characters are sock puppets with messages, it makes to much noise and you start noticing the puppet master rather than the sock puppets or the messages." I can agree with that.
There's also the comments about how many reviewers hated how the game progressed, but understood it by the end. Unless I'm mistaking what they were hinting at, I can't help but think they're grasping at straws or exhibiting something akin to Stockholm syndrome. There is no way that this game should be this deeply loved in its current state as it exhibits issues in story telling should have disappeared from the industry even before TLOU1. I have no issues that Druckmann wanted to push narrative in TLOU2. His content was fine, not what I would have done, but his delivery, not content was the problem.
The alternate character side of the story wan't bad, but when we already know the end story from playing the game up to day 3 from Ellie's perspective, this obviously just turns into a huge side quest feeling thing from the get go. That's shooting yourself in the foot. It either should have been in the opposite order, or both stories better intertwined. Or, reveal the end story from the alternate character's side, not Ellie's.
For me at least, I felt that the story telling issues dropped the game from an overall 8.5-9.0/10 to around a 7.0/10. It's mind boggling that the game was so messy by the end and that the game kept self spoiling its own plot which frustrated the experience at the end and turned 10 ish hours of game play into a side quest/drag. This shouldn't happen at all. Shuffling the order would have made that 10 hours worth while and logical. Not pointless and dreary.
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I forget which older game had a feature where you could play the game with a re-ordered chapter set up (I want to say beyond two souls, but don't quote me). I think TLOU2 would benefit immensely from something like that. I hope they consider adding it in as an update or something.
The game ends in a manner that heavily hints at a DLC/sequel. I really hope it happens and the DLC can address the major problems with the way this game was delivered.
Lol I'm coming up on the halfway point and am excited to see how this goes off the rails now.
I wouldn't say it goes off the rails, honestly. More just trends gradually slightly downward in quality rather than building to a crescendo of greatness.
__________________ "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
The Following User Says Thank You to CorsiHockeyLeague For This Useful Post:
Having finished the game, I have to agree 100% with Corsi's revamped structure.
From my perspective:
Things that got better
- visuals and audio
- the environment/open feeling of the world
Things that stayed the same
- gameplay
Things that got worse
- the story structure
- the overall pacing
I wouldn't say it's a bad game, but I'll never play it again. I know that Druckmann tried to hedge his bets by saying that some people wont like the story or what happens to the characters, but the problems are a lot deeper than that. The problems with the story isn't that it's not likeable or that disagreeable choices are made, I want them to take big risks with that stuff. The problem is that you just end up not really caring. It doesn't seem to matter and the messages that are supposed to be there are just kind of lifeless.
And the pacing. Wow. There are a lot of times where the game is just downright boring and predictable. The repetitiveness of it really shines through, which indicates deeper problems with the pacing to me.
It's not really scary, or thrilling, or emotional, or depressing, or exciting, or even fun. The game sort of just exists. It's beautiful, no doubt, but finishing it became a task instead of an experience.
The Following User Says Thank You to PepsiFree For This Useful Post:
I just figured if they were going to rip off Nier anyway with the "in the second half of the game you hate everything you're doing because you're sort of the bad guy" thing (which this game does less effectively than Nier, somehow), might as well do the ending of Automata while you're at it.
In seriousness I was responding to the complaint about Joel's choice in TLOU 1 losing meaning somehow from some players because of how he died and the way this game ended. Well, here, you get to choose what happens now. But there are consequences to satisfying your bloodlust and you're really not going to like them.
On reflection I think I would actually have the Ellie ending show her committing suicide (not on screen or anything. Maybe she plays the guitar in an empty house, puts it down, camera on guitar, gunshot). Just unambiguously bad news if the player chooses that route.
This misses the whole central point of the story in the first game, which is about the way the events of the game change the two central characters, and how that leads to the choice Joel makes at the end of the game. None of that has anything to do with apocalypse / zombie tropes. That was literally why it was so good. The zombie apocalypse stuff was just the setting for a story about two people. In this one, I only really care about one of the characters (two if you count Dina, I like Dina) and I don't really know what she's going through or what I'm supposed to be getting out of my experience playing as her.
Yup. Exactly my issue. Just a missed opportunity. That said, I think that about most very good games. It's just that this is a bigger opportunity missed by a wider margin than some. When the target is "best game ever made", you set yourself up for a big gap between expectations and results.
I agree the story was expertly told and had really strong writing, but nothing about it was particularly groundbreaking or new. In addition to the tropes of the world I mentioned above Joel and Ellie's personal story closely resembles that of The Road.
It's still amazing and one of my favorite games from the generation, but I don't think it stands on it's story alone.
Just finished the game. Loved every second of it. What a story! Thought it was better than the first one actually. Funny the comment about not caring because I found myself caring a lot about the outcome. That was a spectacular game.
Spoiler!
Loved the switch between Ellie and Abbie's storylines in Seattle. I felt extremely conflicted when Ellie decided to go back after Abbie in California. You went from hating Abbie to liking Abbie and liking Ellie to hating Ellie yet it still compelled me to want to see their stories through.
I would have liked one more day in Seattle and more to do in California.
I have been/(made the massive mistake of) reading some of the user reviews on Metacritic, especially the overly negative ones, and most just revolve around the death of Joel and not being able to play as Joel. Someone wrote they wanted to "quit gaming all together" because of the death of Joel! Lol. I loved that part of the game, it genuinely left me shocked, gutted, surprised and in denial, I was like surely Joel will come back at some point right!? I truly have not had those feelings playing a video game in my life. And it formed the entire premise of the story. Everyone loved Joel and Ellies relationship, and you wanted Ellie to avenge his death. It was a simple revenge story that eventually got twisted around so much that it forced you to care for, sometimes hate, and root for both Joel's Killer/Abbie and Ellie. Not an easy task in my opinion. I expected one thing and got something completely different. Which is not a lot most video games can say. There is so much to unpack in this game I need some time to think about it.
I also imagine a bunch of video game fan bois just didn't like a story that was centered around two strong female characters either coupled with some user reviews complaining about the director pushing a "trans"/"gay" agenda, it's starting to come pretty clear where some of these negative perspectives are rooted.
I can see how this game got 10/10 scores, because its ####ing awesome.
Last edited by flames_fan_down_under; 07-03-2020 at 03:10 PM.
The Following User Says Thank You to flames_fan_down_under For This Useful Post:
Ah, no thanks. I wouldn't want a Mass Effect 3 "pick your token red, green or blue ending" crammed into a fully developed story to satisfy people's revenge/hollywood trope expectations.
Glad Naughty Dog got to do what they wanted to fulfill their narrative story vision for Part 2 just like they did for Part 1. Even if it made me uncomfortable as hell experiencing it unfold.
The Following User Says Thank You to chemgear For This Useful Post:
I also imagine a bunch of video game fan bois just didn't like a story that was centered around two strong female characters either coupled with some user reviews complaining about the director pushing a "trans"/"gay" agenda, it's starting to come pretty clear where some of these negative perspectives are rooted.
Voice actor (for the FICTIONAL character) of Abby. People are disgusting.
