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homeless poster posted:i never got the implication that joy mutants explicitly wanted to kill women. there's no women in the game, and they're homicidal enough, but nothing leapt out at their violence being a side effect of hating women. There's a bit of evidence from The Doctor in Olathe 'burbs and his last note. But in general, Joy brings out latent desire in people, which tends to eventually translate into murderous carnage. Henry Wyatt defends the only memory of his brother he has left (the record), while Brad continues to pursue Buddy (while calling her Lisa). [/quote] Obviously violence/hatred towards women is a huge part of the themes of Lisa, but the idea that they are programmed to attack/kill women is reaching a bit. For Brad, joy was pretty much a way to give him a drug addiction that was relevant to the setting. He was downing pain-killers before the White Flash and generally running away from things in his life [spoiler]and it's heavily implied that he skipped Lisa's funeral because of his guilt. You're meant to be sympathetic to where Brad is, but disgusted by how all his choices, or lack of choices, led him there. Sticky explicitly calls him out on failing to actually move on with his life. And in case Brad's past isn't horrible enough, he totally found Dusty post-maiming and walked away leaving Dusty alone and blaming himself. That is some stone-cold poo poo to do to your son. quote:I'm about to start playing this game not knowing what to expect. Terrible, wonderful, hilarious things. Don't get frustrated if a party member dies/leaves or something, the game gives you far more resources than necessary for even a beginner RPG player to clear the game and most side content. Don't play Pain mode right away.
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Aug 21, 2015 17:57
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Has anyone figured out the No Friends achievement? It's the only one lacking from my list
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Aug 26, 2015 04:46
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I went into Lisa the Joyful with high hopes, was let down, brought back up and I'm left a little confused as to what the whole purpose of DLC was. In terms of story, the game tied up a lot of loose ends tightly, but it felt tacked on top of another game. The purpose of the story AS you play it is for Buddy to kill all the warlords of Olathe in some drug-fueled obsession with power and "Queenhood" but the plot of Lisa the Painful seems really ill-fitting like it was forced on the player in sectioned, sliced and packaged pieces to string you along. It seems like Dingaling didn't have much confidence in the story he presented as the framing, which is probably a good assessment because aside from some vignettes there's really no story, character, or purpose to what Buddy is doing. Maybe one of the warlords has anything like the charm or quirkiness of the bosses in Lisa the Painful, and it was that Vega bro which had the whole flashing gimmick feel almost half-assed and lazy compared to some of the genuinely funny and weird poo poo Dingaling had in the last game. Nothing really feels like it has a purpose other than to buy time for the plot that LtP didn't finish to play out. And even then, much of what happens is so conveniently timed and melodramatic that it feels more like a fanfiction than a continuation of the story. It doesn't help that Buddy is terminally unlikable in this game, though it's not the main reason the story falls flat. In terms of gameplay, the game has none of the openness that made Lisa approachable and fun. It feels like there's two settings - Press the Buttons Endlessly and Take Joy To Win. There's no middle ground or any point in the game where you feel like you have options. Actually, since Buddy is TP-based, you literally have no options at any given point in a fight. Either you can use your poo poo normal attack, the obviously better skills, or items to stay alive/get more skills. Once you give up on avoiding Joy, the game is just about keeping yourself alive and refreshing the joy buff. The gameplay is probably the worst part of the DLC because it's inarguably poo poo. I really liked the ending though. As messy as it ended up being, it feels like the only part of the DLC that was properly planned out. The whole bit with the Yado Throne was pretty fitting for what we know of the character, the Buzzo part was similarly fitting and a good send-off to a character that had previously been rather weak. And the final bit with Dream Brad was probably one of the better things the game has done. The actual ending branches were kinda ho-hum, but did a good job giving you some perspective on the characters, though the Father ending didn't feel necessary (there was already some conjecture that Brad was complicit in the abuse, that ending was just on the nose about it) So in the end? It's not a shitshow, but it's not a great end product. Lisa the Joyful reads like a hasty conclusion written out from fan theories while the gameplay is below the golden standard of poo poo RMVX games. If you really liked Lisa and wanted a proper conclusion, it's pretty good for that. But on it's own it's a pretty embarrassing product.
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Aug 26, 2015 07:21
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Anatharon posted:Let me start off with the best points: The music is fantastic. LtP and LtF had good music but LtJ is almost entirely better all around there. Music owns.  The final boss songs in particular were really well done.quote:When the game DOES take time to focus on characters, they're all stronger than the characterization they got in LtP, which was pretty scant in general. I think the Rando campfire conversations were the best parts for that. Pretty much. My main objection was how cleanly everything had to come to a head when the main game was anything but. It felt like the characters had an overwhelming compulsion to convene and monologue. And while the monologues were generally good, it still feels out of place a lot of the time. quote:There's a few that are really opinion based, but I don't really like how Buddy's basically only got 2 moves. I'm not a fan of the 'being entirely alone' thing, though it has to be that way for the narrative. Not having any equipment other than being able to swipe Rando's belt buckle contributed to the game feeling really small, I think. The areas were also typically not very memorable. I don't think anyone can defend the gameplay. It's incredibly lazy. While LtP by no means some watershed moment in the low-budget RPG industry, I've definitely played drunken RMVX purchases more thoughtfully planned out than LtJ's gameplay. It felt like complete filler in the worst sense. There's no brain to it, no thought. It's just a complete waste of time to even have combat at all. And the new mechanics, in genera, were not implemented well at all. Jumping and masks were a let-down, but timed hits was aggressively a pain in the rear end. quote:Rando dying felt like such a forgone conclusion, I was let down that it actually happened. Basically the entire time until he actually DOES die I was wondering where he would bite it, which kind of took away from my enjoyment of his scenes. They just felt way too obvious. A lot of elements felt contrived to deliver on that "Depressing is meaningful" thing that, while it was a big draw to Lisa standing out, wasn't at all a factor in why it was good. I can't critique LtJ too hard on the story arc because I generally liked it, but it veered way too hard into Angst is Art at many points where I had to ask why it loving mattered at all. The ending salvaged a lot of this, but it still stinks of lazy writing.
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Aug 26, 2015 08:01
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Relin posted:There's no indication in anything Brad says that he touched Lisa. He's not an unreliable narrator even if he hallucinates. I won't believe that he did anything more than watch unless the dev states otherwise~ Implications and suggestive tone in the narrative are meaningless, obv. Just like no one is dead until you see them explicitly die on-screen, Brad getting his drink on courtesy of his father and told that "Martial arts is bullshit, here's how to be a real man" before going into his sister's room indicates to me that what his dad really meant is "Hey, beer is a great way to be a man! Let's go tell your sister all about it!" Marty's attempted redemption gets more abhorrent the more you learn about what he was like. Brad abused Lisa too, and if he didn't do it sexually, he did it in other ways (which are more explicit, like abandoning her.) The game has dark themes and they aren't hidden behind veils of nuance and subtlety. I don't know how much more explicit the game can get without saying "Brad raped Lisa" Frankly it makes Brad's Trial by Wulin Fire all the more cathartic. Brad did nothing wrong by cleaning Olathe the gently caress up. 
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Aug 26, 2015 15:01
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Kaboom Dragoon posted:I always thought Sticky's dialogue was a 'suicide by cop' kinda thing. That or he was hoping either his words or his death might shock Brad out of his rampage. Both Rick and Sticky do that. They both knew when Brad found then it would only be a matter of time until Brad figures out they helped kill Cheeks and kidnap Buddy, so they might as well say what they really feel before Brad hulks out and immolates them. Given Brad is junkie, and after his "lesson" to Buddy at the start of LtJ, anyone could spot that Brad cannot be reasoned with wrt his daughter.
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Aug 26, 2015 18:29
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quote:whether it's implied or outright stated, if brad really did assault/molest/rape lisa then the entirety of LtP is a huge narrative sham. the whole arc of that game is that brad is flawed but more or less a victim of circumstances, and although he doesn't make the best decision all the time, he's generally an anti-hero who tries to do what's right. if instead of that he basically did one of the worst things possible that you can do to another person, then the whole idea of him trying to find redemption is completely meaningless. at least for me, the idea that someone who did that thing can find redemption on any level is asinine; in that case buzzo is actually the hero of the narrative. Brad isn't a victim when he's essentially drugged and coerced into committing an unforgivable act against his sister? I don't see how the narrative falls apart if you accept that Brad raped Lisa. Brad is not meant to be a hero, and he's barely in the realm of anti-hero. His whole arc is about finding meaning and redemption because of his intense guilt, either survivor's guilt or perpetrator's guilt. Whether or not he committed the act or not, you're presuming not that a rapist can seek redemption, but assuming that a rapist can't want to find redemption in his rape. In Brad's case, either way you swing it, the final message of his story is that the reality of your past can and will deny you the chance to ever better yourself. Brad didn't find redemption, he found failure and he found death. Whether or not he was seeking it out as a rapist or simply as a fellow victim is not really the issue. That being said, his behavior and outlook wrt Buddy strongly supports that he was complicit in abuse on some level, and Marty's behavior towards Brad does not rule out the sexual aspect. And Buddy's outlook towards Brad is probably where the real question of redemption is decided. In Buddy's mind, Brad wasn't worthy of redemption, but the finale does indicate he's worthy of some form of forgiveness, though it's hesitant and complex in how it evolves. Brad wasn't trying to be a bad person, but he ended up being a bad person regardless. This plays well into the themes of the game and the context of The Father scene: You can do horrible things not because of your intent, but because of factors that you can't control. In Brad's case, he was manipulated by an intensely abusive home environment and a father that wanted to destroy him piece by piece. By that same logic, Buddy is unworthy of redemption because her ruthlessness (fostered by Brad) led her to become a power-hungry, violent maniac. And if you take that position, I can't exactly disagree with you, but I would argue that you're missing the point of Brad's arc because of a (and I'm not saying it's unwarranted) knee-jerk exceptionalism for rape independent of the context that said rape is presented. To be clear: I'm not apologizing for what Brad did, but you're oversimplifying the context of it to paint Brad as unsympathetic when Brad being unsympathetic is a huge part of what his character and the entire game is about. The game is about Perverts and a Sea of Dipshits and a Desire for Skin. Buzzo did nothing wrong. tl;dr: Whether or not Brad is sympathetic is your personal choice, but he doesn't need to be sympathetic for the plot to work or be good. Golden Goat posted:Finished it, how do I get the other endings? There's technically two endings and three post-game scripts. The ending split is obvious You Leave Them or Join Them. The post-scripts depend on side stuff you did before the ending and there's a priority. So in ascending priority of endings, theres: Yado: Beat the game normally. Lisa: Get the 2nd TNT from Disco Mountain (path is in the Dice cave), blow up the rock in the 2nd hub, beat the optional boss Harry. Continue on till you get to a shack and enter the secret entrance on the right. Once inside you'll see cloths draped over the floor. The 12th cloth (tablecloths don't count) leads to a room with a punching bag. Punch the bag over and over until another passage opens up, where you'll find a Joy Mask. With the mask on, go to the area where the Bar/Band are hanging out and go to the far left of the map where you'll see a diagonal cloud. Jump off the cliff and enter the Joy Lab. Once you examine the coffin at the end, you have unlocked the Lisa ending. Beat the game normally to get it. Father: Get the Joy Mask as above but examine Rando's corpse. Beat the game normally after doing so. Hope that helps! edit: Godamn, when you write it out it seems like a straight up SS Anne style secret. Amgard fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Aug 26, 2015 |
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Aug 26, 2015 21:38
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homeless poster posted:i don't know man, that sounds like the disasterous "legitimate rape" talking point to me. if you can't see that there isn't a forgivable context for raping someone then i don't know what to say. doing something because you're coerced or held at gun point or whatever is still the cowardly way out, and i don't feel like that excuses the action. Perhaps you're confusing legitimate rape with excusable rape, though even if you are I'm still at a loss of what talking point you're accusing me of. Actually, let's reframe for a second because you either can't or won't understand the point I was trying to make. I was not trying to say that Brad raping/molesting Lisa is okay because he was forced into it, and I'm not saying he should be forgiven for it. The game doesn't even allow Brad forgiveness for his treatment of Buddy or the explicit failure to protect Lisa, which are far less severe than a rape. I'm saying that Brad's quest for redemption and his desire to make amends for how he treated Lisa is not incompatible with or irrelevant because he raped her. Your original point is that (quoting): if brad really did assault/molest/rape lisa then the entirety of LtP is a huge narrative sham. based on a subjective interpretation of Brad's moral value. In fact, you based the purpose of the narrative as relying on Brad being quote:flawed but more or less a victim of circumstances, and although he doesn't make the best decision all the time, he's generally an anti-hero who tries to do what's right Which I argued is neither what the game tries to argue nor supported by Brad's arc as laid out in the writing and presentation of the game. Brad's potential for sympathy is very much a subjective interpretation of his present and past situation. It's up to the player to decide if Brad is worthy of sympathy. You argue he isn't, I abstain on the matter because of my main point that Brad's quest for redemption does not require that we sympathize with him, just how we respond to it. Lisa The Painful is, in many ways, a complex character drama about personal change, the scars of abuse, and how abuse prevents people from moving on, accepting their failures, and trying to make correct decisions. Your basis is flawed because Brad doesn't try to do what's right in any absolute sense. He tries to do what he feels is right based on the scars that abuse has left him, of which his rape of Lisa is very much a scar that affects him. Lisa bears the majority of that pain, to be sure, given that she killed herself over it. But you can't argue that what Brad was forced (and all text and context points to him being forced) to engage in doesn't play a part in the person he is in the game proper. Your stance is essentially "The plot is meaningless because I can't feel bad for Brad", but a huge point of the story is that feeling bad for Brad isn't relevant, it's observing how he's unable to overcome his problems and change in the way that he wants to that allows the game to hammer its themes home. Brad is a scummy piece of poo poo, or he's a misunderstood victim - his actions play out the same either way and the result is the same. Want a corroborating example of this? Please refer to Buzzo. quote:still though, knee-jerk exceptionalism for rape. amazing Discounting the rape, Brad abandoned his mutilated son, ran away from his sister-in-need, became a drug addict and alcoholic, tormented his daughter emotionally and mentally by lying to her for her entire life, killed dozens upon dozens of people from crimes ranging from sexual assault to merely being an inconvenient obstacle, betrayed and murdered his closest allies, killed his father and closest friends, tortured people and didn't question his moral position until the very last moment that he realized that it didn't win him what he wants. If you're going to argue all of that above is sympathetic behavior and a rape that he was drugged, beaten, and forced to commit (as a child) is the tipping point to make him a horrible monster: congratulations! You're making a very clear and very obvious moral exception for the rape. I'm not even going to begrudge you this, because it's not an unusual or alien position to take. But if you're going to take issue with it, at least recognize what you're doing. quote:One thing worth remembering is that Joy makes you express your 'innermost desires' or whatever and she hallucinates Brad and Rando basically saying "wow we were wrong, you're the best Buddy! You're always right! Now let's go for cake, and ice cream!". It's hard to know how Buddy REALLY felt about Brad, I think, because their relationship was pretty complicated. That's why I hesitate to say she forgives him. The Battle Inside Her Mind sequence definitely lays out that Buddy is capable and willing to understand the good and the bad that is Brad, and the Leave Them ending does open the door to her coming to peace with what she suffered under him and come to accept him as her father (of a sorts) Nothing about Lisa is concretely solved, and Buddy definitely comes into her own as a complex character (one of the things the DLC does very well, mind you.) I like to think she does come to forgive him, in part because she suffered a similar journey that he did and learned more about what Brad's demons were from Rando/Buzzo. Plus it makes for a little bit of a tenderhearted conclusion to an otherwise bittersweet story. Amgard fucked around with this message at 23:41 on Aug 26, 2015 |
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Aug 26, 2015 23:37
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homeless poster posted:. doing something because you're coerced or held at gun point or whatever is still the cowardly way out, and i don't feel like that excuses the action. Oh my god I completely missed this... 
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Aug 27, 2015 02:05
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homeless poster: if someone is raped by gunpoint, are they a coward? Back on topic: I'm doing a Pain Mode run for the cheevo. Assuming I don't want to use the cheap-as-poo poo crew (Birdie, Harvey, Fly, Carp), what's an interesting and fun setup that you guys have discovered? Running Terry/Beastborn/Tiger and I'm pretty eh on it.
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Aug 27, 2015 02:29
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Turtlicious posted:If I watched Slowbeef's LP of Lisa, (I bought it because it was that good,) should I still play through it? Does it benefit from multiple play throughs? From a story perspective? No, the game is exceedingly linear and all the options presented have minimal effect on the story (at best it adds a boss fight through normal play, and 2-3 new ones in Pain mode). From a gameplay perspective? The game throws a LOT of characters at you, and does a good job of making gameplay robust enough that going back through the game with a different approach adds some spice to it. Unfortunately, the game isn't hard so I'd say the replayability is dependent on whether you prefer challenge or experimentation. You can get both with Pain Mode I suppose.
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Aug 27, 2015 23:27
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Internet Kraken posted:I really question how she's out of character at all. What exactly does she do that conflicts with what she said in LISA? She's not out of character at all, just pushed further along her path of self-reliance into violent independence. What bugs people is that she doesn't defend herself or show initiative in the main game, then suddenly becomes an action survivor in literally the course of a night - which is jarring. It would've made more sense if she was on her own for a few weeks rather than going to sleep a passive victim and waking up as anime ninja.
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Aug 28, 2015 02:34
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Internet Kraken posted:Yeah I feel like if joy could bring long dead people back to life, even as twisted zombies, that would been mentioned somewhere in the game. Well that is what it essentially does. Joy only mutates on the death of the person using it. If you so some plot gymnastics and assume Buzzo knew Yado when he was still a child, and that Sweetheart was part of the reason that Buzzo chose to work with him, and even that Buzzo and Yado supplied Lisa (and this could make a good case that Yado wanted to test Joy on the side). I mean, The Doctor in Olathe Neighbourhood suggests that Joy was mutating before the white flash, so there's a possibility Lisa had some and it spurred on her crazy-as-poo poo behaviour. The more you entertain the theory, the more it does sort of work. 
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Aug 28, 2015 15:08
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Oxxidation posted:No it doesn't, a ton of minor characters in the Painful mutated out of the blue/ Maybe you can transform before death, but the game is pretty explicit that if you've had any joy and you die: you mutate.
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Aug 29, 2015 01:13
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My first run had my quickly luck into the best party of Fly, Birdie and Harvey. Then I realized that Fly is a huge jerk and swapped him out for Shocklord. Shocklord is the best. 
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Sep 1, 2015 16:44
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VaginalErection posted:Actually, I think the message is far more nihilistic. Buddy never manages to break the cycle of abuse, especially once you pick up on the implication of who the father of her child is and how she accomplished getting pregnant. Yeah, who's the father? The ending shows Buddy significantly older with an infant child, ruling out anyone we know. Y'know, because everyone we know is dead.
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Sep 4, 2015 19:01
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Ezzer posted:I don't think he hates fans as much as insufferable kickstarter backers with dumb characters Garth was pretty dumb. The rest stuck out like a sore thumb but I quite enjoyed Jack and Yazan being weirdos. I never used Sonny or RT ever though.
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Sep 19, 2015 18:23
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Anatharon posted:Keep in mind The Joyful is pretty much devoid of that latter part. I'm in the awkward position of agreeing with you completely while also arguing that you're kind of missing the point of LtJ. If Brad was the struggle to retain one's moral compass in the face of an uncaring, abusive, toxic world - then Buddy is the madness of that world made manifest. Brad's heroism and his villainy are simultaneously made from his experiences before the White Flash. His desire to protect Buddy at all costs, and the bodies that pile up because of it, are a direct result of his failure to protect Lisa. As such, Brad is a man we know either personally or abstractly, and we are able to identify with him closely even when he does terrible things. We put ourselves in the strange and uncomfortable position of rooting for a monster and hoping he doesn't have to pursue this dark path, but we're powerless to stop him. It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion. And let's not fool ourselves: Brad is a bad dude. He has moments of heroism and he is undoubtedly altruistic at many points - but his drive was born out of a deep and incurable brokenness that will let him discard his allies, brutally, the moment they try to stop him. Brad is a villain protagonist, despite feeble gestures otherwise. Buddy, by contrast, is incomparable to what we would call a "real world" character. She is, both literally and figuratively, a deity in the world of Lisa. She decides the future of humanity, whether war or peace happens, who lives and who dies. Despite the fact she's a 12(???) year old girl, she wields an unfathomable existential power over all humanity - even more than Dr. Yado, who literally considers himself a god. But Yado, as Buzzo so helpfully tosses out, has no power over the future of people. He can make mutants, and he can destroy humanity, but humanity isn't going to fight wars over him or rally behind him. He is a force of entropy and the signal of the end of humanity, something that Buddy ends up combating as part of her ultimate decision. So what's Buddy's ultimate decision? It's pretty weighty, but it asks "How do I exercise that power?". Part of why Buddy seems unapproachable as a protagonist like Brad is that she wasn't raised in a world that accepts the same moral fundamentals that we do. And while her flashback schooling by Brad in the beginning of LtJ seems a bit like a post-hoc characterization given her more reserved conduct in LtP, it also makes more sense. Buddy IS the future of everything, whether or not Brad accepts it, and that means she can't sit aside and watch other people decide the future of humanity - she has to intervene, whether violently or peacefully. To her, and to the world she's raised in, peace doesn't make a whole lot of sense (and I'll talk about where peace failed in just a moment with Rando.) Her lust for power was driven, in part, by the addiction of Joy and Joy's side-effect of magnifying, for lack of a better term, "raw intent." That intent wouldn't be there unless she truly wanted to be Queen, though Joy does affect how she approaches and feels about it. When you consolidate the necessary megalomania that The Future of Humanity would feel, the madness of a drug designed to make you mad, and the rearing of a violent man who taught her to be violent, you get Buddy in a nutshell. A twisted, destructive psychopath who has no choice but to act in a big way. I felt a lot of the way you did about Buddy and LtJ, pretty much through to the endgame. I felt the game was very directionless, overly brutal, and lacked a lot of the character and charm that LtP brought. I also feel that the endgame, from Rando's death to the credits, completely reversed my opinion of the game. It's still, by all counts, an extremely hacked RPG video game: it's not very fun, it's very very tedious, there's no choice for the player (either meaningful or meaningless, which is pretty impressive), and the story cleans up a bit TOO nicely - but it also follows the questions LtP asked to a T, explores the characters of Brad/Buddy/Rando/Buzzo and leaves you with a feeling that the choices they made were ultimately more important than the choices the player has made. Brad's tragic end in LtP was one way to end Brad's story, but LtJ explored Brad's legacy in a way that added an immense amount of complexity to why he became the sad husk he ended up being. It also, without reservation, explored the weakening mind of a scared girl who was both coerced and made the choice to wage a violent war for power. If LtP is about how broken people create broken people, LtJ looks at how broken people create broken societies. It's only through an incredibly monumental moment (some would argue it's a contrived one) that Buddy can make the choice to "Join Them" or "Leave Them". It's salvation in its most transparent form, with Buzzo giving Buddy the means to escape a cycle of abuse and violence and build a new world. So while Buddy is a difficult protagonist to stomach, I think she's excellently written, compelling, and altogether disturbing - which I argue is the REAL strength of LtJ - I finished that then realized I didn't talk about Rando, so I'll do that briefly. Rando has the "Peacemaker" job, but despite how admirable he is, no one could fail more at his job than he has. Rando is the epitome of the "passive actor" through all levels of the story. In Lisa the Painful, the most significant thing he ever does, through the course of the entire game, is give Brad some Rando Rations after Hub 1. Beyond that, anything the Rando Army does is either defensive (defending Buddy/Rando from Brad. Fighting the Buzzo gang), or completely against Rando's wishes and out of his control (attacking Brad after he received said rations). Buddy was "kidnapped" by Rick and Sticky, Buddy traveled to meet Rando herself, and so on. Rando's showdown with Brad is even inevitable, Rando has no choice whether or not to fight. Even his origin story is to sit idly until Brad accepts him, to be victimized when Buzzo brutalized, and to be abandoned when Brad rejects him. While Rando assists Buddy in LtJ, it's entirely according to her ambitions. He tells her how to find the warlords of Olathe, and he protects her from Bolo. Even when he arranges Buddy's second "kidnapping", his co-conspirators are in more control than he is (to be fair, he is badly wounded at the time), of which he immediately distances himself, playing again a passive actor. For Rando, peace is done through inaction, and it results in just as much trouble happening as Brad and Buddy cause actively. Even in his death, the question of his fate is left entirely to the Player and Buddy, both in the hanging scene and after with his mercy-death. As such, Rando does serve as a good foil to Buddy and Brad: how peace is a poor excuse for inaction. Rando has his heart in the right place, but never uses what he has to change the world - and it ends up getting him killed. I like Rando's character a lot, he's certainly the most likable character in Lisa - but he's a tragic figure who engineers his own failures because he doesn't have the raw intent and the will to act like Brad and Buddy do. Anyway, sorry for the huge high-school level analysis. I have mixed feelings about LtJ but I think what it set out to do is something it definitely succeeded at. It's a logical extension of the themes of the game wrapped up in a very feverish, maddened conclusion that cleans up the story very nicely. Maybe a bit TOO clean, though. Also HM2 was great for the music alone.
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Oct 23, 2015 16:51
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Whalley posted:Brad's a bad guy. It's right there from the start, in the most blatant narrative form possible - we're introduced to him in gameplay by having him kill a dog. It's a technique used in the opening scene of House of Cards, too. It's kind of a whole thing - if you have a character that you want people to know, deep down, that they're Not A Good Person, you have them kill a dog. Buddy's just the detritus of a bad person trying to convince himself he's good. Bad guys can do good things. And good guys can do bad things for the wrong reason. You take that back. Cheese Legs was a loving lovely dog for putting Ter-bear up in that tree.
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Oct 24, 2015 03:42
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quote:Getting personal, I'm honestly wondering if being a woman might have something to do with my reaction to LtJ vs. the more vehement views of Buddy, here. I think there's a lot of interpretation going around with Buddy, and a huge reason people jump to demonize her is, yes, absolutely because she's a woman. Another big issue, which I think is less subtle but no less insidious is that she's honest in her actions when Brad isn't. Brad can do some pretty horrid stuff, and if you recall you DO destroy three of the major leader gangs (Hawk's, the Bath house boys, Buffalo Van Dyke's gang) through the course of LtP with absolutely no fanfare or emotional weight. If Rando wasn't around to moralize with the first three warlords, you'd hardly know that killing them was supposed to be a bad thing because you were doing that all through LtP and no one seemed to care. When Buddy becomes morally accountable for her actions, the playerbase switches gear to demonize her for actions she's committing with foresight rather than Brad's committed out of hindsight or ignorance. There's pretty clearly a double standard between Buddy and Brad. Part of it is gender stereotypes, but part of it is also how their actions are framed and understood in the story. quote:True, the dudes in the game don't really have a choice in the matter, either, since Buddy is literally their only option when it comes to girls, but that, too, is besides the point. Asking a teenager to take on the mantel of 'savior of the human race' is a shitshow, bottom line. Not telling her why she's in that role to begin with (and I understand Brad's aversion to it, don't get me wrong) is going to exacerbate her reaction. More to the point, who wouldn't cry their eyes out when they learn the truth about their existence? So, what, you either stay in a loving cave your entire life, or you have to pop out babies like crazy? Wouldn't you start crying? What other person aside from a literal messiah actually accepted that kind of burden outright? This is keeping in mind that she was groomed to be a post-apocalyptic spinster. Interestingly she embraces the role of messiah (though she seems to gloss over the whole brood mare thing, making the ending seem a bit  . What's interesting is rather than frame Buddy's circumstances as one of victimhood, he focuses on the incredible toll that recognizing that burden would have on her mental state. Joy obvious plays a part in making her a whacked-out psycho killer, but as I said in a previous post: Joy magnifies the want to do something you already wanted to do. So while what you're describing is absolutely the case, also consider how Dingaling purposefully steered us away from the "Brood mare" angle to the "Messiah Complex", which I think says more about how LtJ tried to be more mature and forthright in its presentation over LtP - which had to take refuge in absurdity to avoid tackling the difficult issues.quote:Then, oh, then, her lovely "grandpa" gave her craploads of Joy, on top of that, practically ensuring that she's non-viable for anything but mutants (eventually) anyway. Im not sure where you got that interpretation of the scene, to be honest. Marty explicitly asks what the pills are (implying he's never seen them before) and tells Buddy that she shouldn't take them. As perfectly terrible as Marty is through the whole series, he gets a pass on this one. Buddy got addicted on her own, and the big options for how is either by raiding Brad's stash before she fled or from Buzzo. Not to dismiss your analysis at all. You've touched up nicely on the double standard revolving around Buddy, which I think a lot of posters in the thread have trouble getting past. Between being an altogether less naive character than Brad and being a woman, she's held to a standard that we don't afford even some of the shittier characters. No one would cry that the plot of LtP sucks because Brad is a jerk, even though him being a jerk is why everything ends up going to poo poo anyway. And if Buzzo was ninja-running around Olathe stabbing Gary the Hot Soup, people would be excited rather than complain he's had a character shift. Some people have trouble with dominant female protagonists, and some people just aren't used to them existing. Buddy is her own complexity, being a violent murderer is just part of it. But if you let Buddy kill non-Joy Chester, you and Buddy are literally irredeemable monsters.
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Oct 27, 2015 14:51
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quote:I mean, Brad just beats up Hawke and you can even talk to him after. In fact his gang thanks you for taking him down a peg because he's kind of a jerk. Same with Buff Van Dyke's gang. The Devil's Bath House Boys you do kill, though. Well I meant moreso that he destroys their gangs. Killing is just a bonus. Also I killed Buffalo in my last playthrough by taking him to endgame, so I'm a jerk. There is absolutely a difference between Brad's way of killing and Buddy's way of killing - but a big part of it is that they're different characters. Buddy was explicitly taught by Brad to kill people she doesn't trust. Add in the revelation that she is literally the most important human of all time and history holy poo poo and a drug that amplifies her intentions and you have someone who would either kill because it's necessary (which she does) or because it's convenient (which she also does). Frankly, I'd peg more of peoples dislike of Buddy on her gender and her past characterization than because it's somehow unthinkable compared to what Brad did. And I will admit her past characterization is at odds with her in LtJ (which is unequivocally a misstep on Ding's part)
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Oct 28, 2015 17:48
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Fat and Useless posted:Which made people not want to use it! I got up to Big L before I used a single Joy, and I was able to push him down to near death before he smoked me. Use the loving Joy.
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Nov 6, 2015 16:09
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drguildo posted:Does anybody have any thoughts on a tier list? I've only played through the game a couple of times so I'm not exactly an expert but I'd say Fly would go in the God-tier along with maybe Jack, Carp and Harvey. poo poo-tier maybe Garth, Fardy, Percy... I like Shocklord a lot and he's excellent at dealing big damage to large groups but that's all he really does. Buckets seems great but you have to keep pouring joy down his throat. Birdie and Terry seem to be a popular combo because of Gasoline Spit but my main problem with that is you have to get Terry to level 25 to start tearing poo poo up. Honest question: What about Jack is that great and worth using? I tried him and, while he's not bad by any means, I found him a one-trick pony whose trick is shared by a lot of other, stronger picks (Mad Dog, RT, even Percy). Am I missing something? Maybe Magic Hat? It'd be a slog for me to go back to the game and try every character out, but if I had to eyeball the high-lows, it'd be something like. Top: Birdie, Fly, Harvey (One-man shutdown machine) High: RT, Mad Dog, Olan (Lots of options and plays well with anyone) Mid: Ajeet, Shocklord, Nern, Terry (Kind of needs a gimmicky purpose, but viable and fun) Low: Sonny, Fardy, Buckets, Ollie (Okay but kind of a pain in the rear end to make work) poo poo-Tier: Dick, Clint, Garth (Pain in the rear end, not worth the trouble) I kind of wish Lisa was a harder game that forced you down to a lot smaller rosters as you played on, but that would necessitate something like runoff XP. It's just too easy to make party picks all that important.
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Dec 16, 2015 16:35
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Mr. Lobe posted:This post is wrong because Terry is not in the highest tier of all, the HintLord tier. I'm sorry, Terry didn't make the cut. 
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Dec 16, 2015 23:16
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