The Last of Us 2: Remember that time Lowtax posted ITT? [Spoiler Chat]

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > The Last of Us 2: Remember that time Lowtax posted ITT? [Spoiler Chat]

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

In retrospect, "we're postponing the game indefinitely, oh by the way go home and continue to crunch with no end in sight" was probably not the best move by Naughty Dog.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2020 10:14

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 10:00

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Barudak posted:

Im curious how fast the leakers career is completely destroyed

Most careers in programming are far more high-paying and less stressful than games if you have any talent at all, the people who bother to stay in the industry are already there out of passion.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2020 12:14

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

I read the leaks on reddit and well, I can see why ND very much didn't want this to get spoiled. Whole lotta people are not gonna be down for this ride if they know what happens.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2020 12:49

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

The script was probably finalized at least 18 months ago, there are edits and rewrites like in any other medium but the bulk of video game work is done on art assets and not making the thing look like crap.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2020 14:08

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Terminal autist posted:

Just to be clear everyone getting worked up over the spoilers played the first game right? The game where the opening protag is a little girl who gets killed minutes later, the post apocalyptic mp game that will sell you "execution dlc". I have sympathy for the LGBTQ portrayal but still wanna hold out for the whole picture a lot of people are playing telephone. IMO this just seems par the course for edgy pretentious poo poo they're gonna have to up the edge somehow most of these beats were pretty evident since they started showing the game

There's a difference between "bleak" and plain old mean-spirited, which is why Eli Roth is a lovely director and many people are not gonna respond well to this story.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2020 15:21

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Panzeh posted:

I don't know whether this is really good or bad- the stuff in between is more important than the plot summary, especially in this context.

I agree that the execution could definitely frame some of these plot beats better, but I'm already coming from the standpoint of "did TLOU2 even need to be made" and it's hard to see myself pushing through this narrative, even if there are some sick-nasty slo-mo kill shots.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2020 15:53

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Discendo Vox posted:

Am I correct in recalling that the original TLoU writers left after that game?

Neil Druckmann is the creative director and lead writer for both games.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2020 21:08

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

ImpAtom posted:

Honestly the vast majority of this doesn't sound inaccurate for a LToU sequel in terms of themes and ideas.

"The consequences of Joel's murder spree come back to roost" feels entirely reasonable, as does him meeting a depressing violent and meaningless death. It basically recasts Joel as one of the bandits and... that is what Joel was, he even admits it. He's just a bandit we get to follow and empathize with and see him grow attached to a child. Joel kind of was destined for a horrible violent death because of the kind of person he is and I sort of prefer "is killed like any other random enemy" in terms of TLOU's themes. A game about following the consequences of what your morally grey protagonist did in a previous game could be pretty effective if done well.

Where it sounds like they're making a mistake is splitting the protagonists. If you're going to do this you really need to do it wholeheartedly and stick with the new character for the entire game. You have to build empathy before, not after. I don't even necessarily think the level of violence is inappropriate considering a lot of what happened in TLOU1, a good chunk of which people ended up cheering for or empathizing with. But if you don't build that empathy it is going to bounce hard. People tend to not like bait and switch protagonist situations and killing the protagonist of previous games so it'll be something to see what people think of this one.

It's also nice that apparently they don't murder the lesbian couple so uh... I guess that beat my expectations there.

I do think the problem is that this boils down to "TLOU had a bittersweet ending and anything revisiting that ending is inherently going to be darker and more depressing because it sure isn't getting happier" and I'm pretty sure a lot of people right now are not particularly eager for a more depressing and edgy TLOU. God knows I'm not. I wasn't even particularly hyped at the idea of a TLOU2 period and pretty much for exactly this reason, especially once they made it clear it was revisiting the setting.

TLOU2 didn't have to be a more depressing game than the first. TLOU2 didn't have to be about Ellie and Joel. It didn't have to be about anything related to the first game at all in fact, and regardless of commercial incentives, it didn't even have to be made. There's no determinism here. Naughty Dog could have made their sequel about literally anything, and this is the one story they chose to tell. So I think it's right for people to question the ethos of its creators instead of asking "well what did you expect," because this result is only one of many possibilities that also include there not being a TLOU2.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2020 13:07

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

I'm sure TLOU2 will still review pretty well but it does appear to make some decisions that even undiscerning game journalists hate with the downer ending and forced protagonist switch. Naughty Dog must have been confident that their storytelling would carry this because on its face these narrative choices are going to be really unpopular with people.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2020 14:18

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Doc M posted:

I fully expect TLOU2 to win several awards for Best Writing as reviewers fall over each other to praise the deep, thought-provoking storyline and Naughty Dog's brave decision to go ahead with a story they knew would be controversial among their fans.

In a brief defense of video game critics, the only place I really see "millions of people hate this, therefore by definition it must be good" broadly applied as a critical lens is on the Something Awful forums.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2020 16:22

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

The Lats of Us

# ¿ Apr 28, 2020 17:49

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

The level of violence in MK runs from gross-out to just plain goofy, but the overall tone of the games is like an Evil Dead movie. It's way different in feeling and scope from showing two people realistically getting beaten to within an inch of their lives in a grounded work of fiction.

# ¿ Apr 29, 2020 03:14

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

MK11 is a game where Shao Kahn bashes your head in with a hammer so hard it flies out of your rear end. Gory yes but also extremely goofy.

# ¿ Apr 29, 2020 13:03

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Discussing the cold logistics of the Fireflies developing a cure from Ellie is kind of like asking "who is the alien" at the end of Annihilation. You're free to wonder I guess, but that's not really what the story is asking from you at that point.

# ¿ Apr 29, 2020 22:54

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

I didn't feel like I was the intended audience for SpecOps so I felt kind of detached from what it was trying to do. Generally speaking when I play narrative video games I don't really "see myself" in the protagonist so much as I participate in the retelling of a story.

# ¿ May 1, 2020 15:29

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

CharlestonJew posted:

it's just such a weird thing to ban, it's not like the full game got leaked and you can download and play it for free, it's just some cutscenes. it's like if we banned discussion of the panama papers because they weren't obtained with the owners' consent

I have to believe this is due in part to the controversial nature of the leaked gameplay. Like if some cutscenes from FF7R got spoilered a couple months beforehand some people might be pissed, but a lot would be saying "this looks awesome can't wait."

# ¿ May 4, 2020 15:44

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

I don't object to the concept of depicting bleak or extraordinarily violent themes in a video game but the way ND has chosen to represent TLOU2 to the press and fans is... not what I would have chosen.

# ¿ May 7, 2020 19:51

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Stux posted:

i feel like being heavy handed is partially justified though when most big budget games are explicitly "the violence is good" and games that try subtlety in the big budget space then have issues themselves. i never thought tlou1 was particularly subtle but ive been shocked by how much was blanked out for some people, games like DS being insanely polarising, people either getting mad with or ignoring what spec ops was doing etc. i think part of why tlou2 prerelease stuff is looking so heavy handed might in fact be a direct reaction to how people read tlou1 even.

i mean being hostile to nd is like who cares, the studio sucks its run by trash people who treat their devs like garbage, the studio deserves scorn. but i guess for me its more like im insanely tired with where big budget games have gone so anything that is looking to do anything else at this point is like ok, sure, lets see. again it could absolutely turn out as garbage and insanely dumb but the actual people who work on the games in ND and arent out giving interviews are generally good at what they do.

Sounds like the marketing is doing its job.

# ¿ May 9, 2020 20:06

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Sometimes the act of getting wrapped up in a really involving story is itself enjoyable and that's somewhat ruined when you unwittingly find out the ending in advance. This isn't a particularly recent or unrelatable phenomenon.

# ¿ May 25, 2020 22:34

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

LITERALLY MY FETISH posted:

yeah but you're not gonna get that from tlou2

Not my place to decide that for other people since taken to its logical extension there's probably some goon out there who thinks they're above every single story ever told or that ever will be told.

# ¿ May 25, 2020 22:41

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Lurdiak posted:

The only reason "spoiler culture" has become such a thing is because the modern internet allows such instant dissemination of information that it's much easier to just tell millions of people the ending to a movie that has been out for 2 hours than it was in past decades. Even in the early 2000s it's not like some dingus posting about the ending to Attack of the Clones on a message board with 200 members was going to do much.

It is really annoying that youtube's algorithm can somehow find 3 seconds of an unlicensed song to take down within minutes of it being published yet can't seem to block spoilerific titles from entering your recommended feed the second a game or Netflix series goes live.

# ¿ May 26, 2020 01:20

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Anybody still posting itt should be familiar with the concept of not doing things for enjoyment.

# ¿ May 28, 2020 14:27

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

The issue isn't that AAA single-player games like Death Stranding or Assassin's Creed can't sell well, it's a question of scale. EA could lose every single licensed franchise it has besides FIFA and still profit $700 mil a year from cards, and it can keep churning out a new game every year. Large single-player projects usually don't have that kind of microtransaction tail attached, or if they do, it's nowhere near FIFA levels of grift. Star Wars Battlefront II, a huge pariah that even got national media attention for having such blatant P2W mechanics only sold... 9 million copies, about the same as critically acclaimed God of War did in the same year. You also presumably need stuff like writers and time to come up with new ideas, characters, gameplay mechanics etc. which all have a labor cost. In the last few years we've seen a general trend towards first-party studios only having the development time and budget to put out maybe 1-2 AAA projects over the entire console generation, which I would expect to continue.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2020 13:22

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Dapper_Swindler posted:

https://twitter.com/leighalexander/status/1271109095102263296

https://twitter.com/leighalexander/status/1271101665094127626

i dont like alexander because she is also a pretentious shithead just as much as the people she mocks but lol. also she can dish it but cant take it, what a shock.

These tweets annoy me because TLOU2 is easily attackable from just like, a purely literary and thematic standpoint instead of resorting to some dumbass "toys for children" argument if you're in any way capable of critical analysis.

# ¿ Jun 12, 2020 23:10

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

It would probably be best for your mental health and mine if people stopped posting poo poo from total loving nobodies on twitter all the time.

# ¿ Jun 12, 2020 23:13

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Is misery porn like when the girl and guy are doing it and the girl is crying because she just finished reading a really sad book?

# ¿ Jun 13, 2020 01:39

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

achtungnight posted:

It�s games like this that make me glad I�m a cat person. Nobody I know of has ever made a game where you have to kill cats and then feel bad about it afterwards.

I wanna play that cyberpunk cat game.

# ¿ Jun 13, 2020 11:22

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

r u ready to WALK posted:

oh poo poo someone leaked the ending

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWHx7peNbTs

Whoa, I knew people warned me that it was violent but this is incredibly hosed up.

# ¿ Jun 13, 2020 11:36

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Archer666 posted:

It's always fun when people tweet like that, and then the message of the game ends up being some shallow bullshit that you could read off the back of a box of raisins.

Regardless of how I personally feel about TLOU2 I do find it mentally exhausting how people find the need to immediately rank every new consumer product�s role within ~the discourse~ before it has even come out. It�s tedious how even the most disposable entertainment is given this haughty air of significance, and is impossible for me to take seriously.

# ¿ Jun 15, 2020 08:39

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Zeta Acosta posted:

https://www.fanbyte.com/trending/attaching-real-world-guilt-to-the-last-of-us-part-iis-violence-is-bullshit/

Really interesting article.

I always object to didacticism in narrative video games because I never really view myself as personally expressing my own ethos so much as I am actively participating in the retelling of a story. The fourth wall breaks in SpecOps didn't work for me, the ending of Prey didn't work for me, and I always kind of roll my eyes when it happens.

# ¿ Jun 15, 2020 23:11

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Don't

post

poo poo

from

twitter

nobodies!!!

# ¿ Jun 16, 2020 13:37

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

So well-known and influential you misspelled her name!

# ¿ Jun 16, 2020 14:13

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

My reasons for no twitter poo poo are purely ideological: Everytime you repost some blazing hot take from offsite, you're outsourcing a bad post that could be manufactured right here on the good old SA forums.

# ¿ Jun 16, 2020 14:23

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

I will never understand people who think game developers exist to personally spite them.

# ¿ Jun 17, 2020 21:12

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

CountryMatters posted:

If you don't play the miserable dog murder game where a pregnant lesbian is brutally beaten with a golf club, that also was created with the worst employment practices in the games industry, then the chuds will win. You don't want the chuds to win, do you?

I feel like there needs to be a word for the phenomenon where people shape their entire political identity around passive enjoyment of a consumer product, where the focus is no longer placed upon the actual values expressed by that individual but in the expected and uncomfortable alignment of social groups behind a flimsily constructed piece of entertainment that can in no way support the weight of the greater dialogue surrounding it.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2020 09:32

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

FalconImpala posted:

Do you ever wonder if people - independent of their beliefs - give so much of a poo poo about politics in fictional media because real-life politics are alienating, depressing, soul-crushingly unrepresentative and make you feel powerless?

Yes, I think that's exactly what leads people to define their political identities by their consumer purchases to begin with.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2020 10:10

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

There's also Janeva from Horizon Zero Dawn, kind of a blink and you'll miss it situation though since he's only a minor NPC.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2020 23:56

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

It annoys me how people online have to arrive at insane conclusions like "the developer put himself in the game to personally spite you" instead of just like, criticizing the thing using the abundant examples within the text of the game itself.

# ¿ Jun 19, 2020 12:15

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Even if "Neil Druckmann personally modeled himself in TLOU2 to spite you, the gamer who he individually knew would hate this" wasn't a completely insane conclusion that relies on thinking all men with a man bun apparently look the same, it's an unproductive argument because there's absolutely nothing you can do with it. Let's assume he did do that purely to spite you, #1 Team Joel fan. Okay, so what. What higher understanding is being achieved from looking at the world in this way? It's just an unhealthy kind of relationship to have with media in all instances where it comes up.

# ¿ Jun 19, 2020 12:54

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 10:00

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Iran literally means "land of the Aryans." It's basically the home of OG white people! (also Druckmann is Israeli)

# ¿ Jun 19, 2020 12:59

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > The Last of Us 2: Remember that time Lowtax posted ITT? [Spoiler Chat]