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ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

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.

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ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

titty fat pizza posted:

I read the spoilers and they are absolute garbage loving trash. Joel deserves way better.

Joel honestly doesn't, which is the thing.

Joel is a self-admitted murderer even before the events of the first game. He was callous and cruel and tortures and kills people. The fact that we have empathy for him due to his circumstances and his relationship with his adoptive daughter doesn't change the fact that he is in fact a really bad person and doing what he feels is necessary for the survival of himself and those close to him. Basically the only meaningful difference between him and the people he kills is that he's our viewpoint character and we have more empathy for him.

Of the problems with TLOU2's leaked story "Joel dies a miserable and depressing death" is probably the least of them.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

Joel did not "redeem" himself.

The decision he made was 100% his own. Any after the fact justification doesn't change the fact he would have made the same decision even if it was a 100% success rate.

He is an unrepentant murderer who puts himself and his family above *Anything* else. And that is fine! It makes him a plausible character. A lot of people were onboard the "gently caress anyone who isn't Ellie" train. It doesn't change the fact he made the decision for himself as much as her which is why he has to lie about it in the end.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

SirKibbles posted:

The reason why you're getting this reaction is because the fireflies are terrible assholes and the developer was dumb enough to put a collectible in that says these guys don't what they're doing

The collectible doesn't even say that. At best it says they're not 100% sure it will succeed.

I feel like people went from "it wasn't a sure success and thus isn't worth Ellie's life" to "Actually it had a 100% chance to FAIL" which wasn't something the game ever said either.

It also has nothing to do with Joel's motivations. Joel has no idea what the Firefly's chance of success is when he decides to start murdering people.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

SirKibbles posted:

It changes how the player views sacrificing Ellie which is going to make the player go " Ellie would've died for nothing so it's good he didn't" because they like Ellie. It makes you agree with Joel even though for the narrative to work they need to see how this has nothing to do with that.

It's bad writing and was a mistake

And again it doesn't say that. People expand it into "actually they knew NOTHING!!!" because that way the choice is 100% justified and has no ambiguity at all.

I also suspect that TLOU2 is going to retcon it so there was a 100% chance of success (or at least Abby has good reason to feel that way) which will transform her quest from "Killing that guy who killed my dad" to "Killing that guy who killed my dad and doomed the world" because ~thematic opposites~

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

Brother Entropy posted:

thank god naughty dog is going to punish the bad fans for liking and sympathizing with the character they wrote

Killing a character off isn't meant to be punishment. If done poorly (and TLOU2 has a good chance of being done poorly) it can upset people for the wrong reasons but it isn't to punish players. The viewpoint of "you're killing the character I like as a slight to me" isn't generally one backed up unless you get an author who is so sick of being asked to write a character they just want them to go over a waterfall.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

FallenGod posted:

Actually, I killed my child to save the whole world, it was quite the moral dilemma and I really had to think on that one

*turns into a cloud of farts and huffs himself*

Both the Fireflies (and Ellie's adoptive mom) and Joel were wrong because in both cases neither of them cared about giving Ellie the agency and choice to decide for herself. Regardless of if it would have worked or not the end result is both groups (who are basically Ellie's Mom and Dad) deciding for her. Both were selfish because in both cases they made the decision based on their own emotions and personal trauma.

The final confrontation between Marlene and Joel is Marlene going "Ellie would make this decision" and Joel shooting her when she tries to talk to him about it. That basically sums up both characters. Marlene convinced herself Ellie would have sacrificed herself, Joel didn't want to hear what she thinks Ellie would do, and neither of them bothers to actually talk to the person involved about it.

SunAndSpring posted:

The Fireflies deserved to die but only because they were stupid enough to let someone tell Joel that Ellie was going to die as a result of the surgery instead of just lying about it.

This was all Marlene's fault. She thought Joel was the only other person to know what she was going through.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

FallenGod posted:

That would work better if the game took place over a longer period of time or if Ellie was an adult from the start.

As it is, you have a bunch of adults making a hard decision in place of a 14 year old, which...duh? Unless Neil Druckmann wanted gamers to debate the age of consent, which would be an unholy trainwreck.

A significant portion of TLOU is Joel gradually treating Ellie as someone who is capable of taking responsibility for serious things, eventually giving her weapons and then we come to the climactic part of the story where you literally take control of Ellie as she kills people. It is almost exclusively in self-defense but Ellie has a double digit body count (even ignoring video game stuff) by the time they reach the Fireflies.

There is no real justification for saying "Ellie can't make the decision herself" because Joel has explicitly trusted her to make the decision to pull the trigger and take someone else's life. Marlene is also probably correct in that Ellie would have chosen to sacrifice herself because she has massive survivor's guilt and is a generally good person. Joel knows Ellie well enough to know that and isn't going to give her that decision. That is also why he lies to her at the end.

It shouldn't be a decision put on a child but neither is it a decision that either of her parents are remotely justified in making without her input.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

FallenGod posted:

I know what the game is going for and I disagree with the bolded premise linking self defense and consent on other topics / in general. I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.

I mean I guess I don't get your premise then. You are also saying that if Joel had agreed then it was absolutely okay for them to kill Ellie without her consent which frankly is kind of horrific-sounding to me.

14 year olds are not literal infants. They should probably not be the be-all/end-all arbiter of everything in their life but neither should they be excluded from having an opinion on things that involve their own body and life. This is true for things like vaccine, abortion, and various other important matters. Hell if a child needs a medical procedure and their parents want to let God and Essential Oils sort it out instead, most people would consider that a form of child abuse. Teenagers are recognized as being able to consent in medical matters (though usually they need a third party or outside source to verify their decision.)

ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 00:55 on Apr 29, 2020

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

FallenGod posted:

I'm not really seeing a real world analogue for this that isn't trolley problem nonsense or some bizarre edge case like a parent consenting to separate conjoined twins but somehow against their will?


There are plenty.

Vaccinations are an easy one. There are plenty of anti-vax parents who refuse to have their kids vaccinated and in doing so risk not only their children but other people as well. I don't think anyone would argue that vaccinations should be the sole realm of the parents. (And indeed there are teenagers who actually sneak out to get vaccinations against their parent's will for this exact reason.)

Abortion is another one where it is generally recognized that a parent should not have the ability to force their child to have a child of their own without the child's consent. Another case where people are forced to sneak out against their parent's will.

There are also cases of risky but necessary operations that can have long-term impact on a child. This is another case where the patient is owed the frank discussion because they are the ones who have to live with the consequences. (Not to mention operations that are against a parent's religious beliefs or otherwise paranoid conspiracy beliefs.)

"Ellie is not allowed to make any decisions for herself ever" is infantalizing her in a way the real world doesn't people of her age.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

It seems honestly about as violent as the original TLOU it is just that the primary violence is being done to sympathetic characters this time.

Admittedly I'm not sure fond of violence but I also am probably a bit desensitized since the last violent game I played was RE3make and that has deaths where your character begs and screams as their guts are violently torn out and a completely unavoidable scene where the heroine gets a giant parasite tube forced down her throat.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

If your suspension of disbelief boils down to "these characters in a video game are not hyper-prepared super survivors" then you're basically extending that to the vast majority of movies, TV shows, and games. They are not trying to be hyper realistic but to present a fiction which sometimes is at odds with reality because what is presented visually is as much a part of creating something as what you write and presenting something visually in defiance of logic is pretty critical.

Like in a realistic setting you wouldn't have running gun fights through malls, criminals wouldn't be supergeniuses who can hack into anything, and even in 'realistic' shows that present a grounded and down to earth setting they will err on the side of what is strong visually instead of what is 100% realistic. For games this is doubly so because the games have to present mechanics for people to play and will often bend logic to allow for mechanics that can be either fun or be used as part of drawing characters into a story. (Such as Ellie's gradual development from useless to super capable being done as much in mechanics as in cutscenes.)

When creating a fictional setting that is inherently unrealistic (zombie apocalypse being a big one here) the point of it isn't to realistically model a zombie apocalypse and how it could happen. It's to present a specific setting issue that informs the characters and how they behave and feel. The Last of Us uses their zombie fiction to basically tell a story of a man who lost his daughter finding a new one and what he would do to protect her. Which boils down simply to "He would sacrifice the world, literally." As long as the setting and character arcs move towards that then it is doing its job no matter how implausible it is that Joel can be carrying a billion bullets in a setting where even one is precious.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

BOAT SHOWBOAT posted:

I'm one of the few who thinks the leaks sound awesome and can't wait to watch how it actually plays out, but I think dismissing people confused by Abby's appearance as just not being able to process a muscly/strong woman is misguided.

I've been lifting for a few years now, spent a lot of time in gyms and follow the fitness industry a little bit. Almost no one looks like Abby. A big barrier to entry for lifting for a lot of women are concerns about looking 'big and bulky' like Abby when in reality most women who consistently lift at an amateur level will start to get a physique more akin to Instagram models than the Hulk. Being as jacked as Abby is difficult for a man, let alone a woman. Most female power-lifters and Olympic lifters look nothing like Abby. A slightly higher proportion of elite Crossfitters start to approach a look like that, and some female bodybuilders. But as mentioned the training regime and nutrition regime, rare genetics, and supplement (tbh, steroid use in many cases) use necessary to achieve that look is insane even in the real world let alone a zombie (ahem "Infected") apocalypse.

You can point out Mad Max screenshots and the fact that there's a million other things you need to suspend your disbelief for in a video game, but nobody male or female in the Last of Us looks anything like Abby and it's undoubtedly jarring and out-of-place, to an extent i would think it is intentional to unnerve you.

The fact that they used a female bodybuilder for the model rather than another kind of lifter or athlete actually underscores the point of how much they wanted her look to stand out. Naughty Dog and Druckmann want this character to look absolutely terrifying so she seems like a threat when you're not playing as her. I actually hope the fact that she is so jacked leads to meaningfully different gameplay when you do play as her given the different physique.

The major thing I will say here is that I don't think we'd even be having this conversation if Abby was a male character. If a tall hulking brute showed up who was capable of throwing Joel around with ease you wouldn't be getting people going into detail about how unrealistic his physique is. Trying to frame it as "they *wanted* to unnerve you" implies that the character looks unnerving for any reason other than "is absurdly buff" which is a massive staple for these sorts of stories, just almost exclusively given to male characters.

Once you start going "well you'd need an exercise regimen and blah blah blah" then my question to you is "what about everyone else, who is living in a squalid hellhole with minimal food, and yet somehow look Hollywood pretty and healthy." When you only start to apply that level of 'realism' when it involves a woman then it really does not feel like you're making a good faith effort. I am not saying you are making a bad faith effort but "this person has a completely unreasonable body that would require massive amounts of training and strict diets" is not something applied to the vast majority of fictional characters.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

Jimbot posted:

https://twitter.com/duane_moody/status/1255614875889315840

Dunno if that's what happened but if it's true then good on them.

I think it's probably not a great idea to tank your career prospects but I respect their willingness to put their money where their mouth is if true.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

SIGSEGV posted:

They are, because the game says they are, because the game presents them as such and because other characters treat them as such, hardened bandits and smugglers. That have been doing that for twenty years. If they don't appear to be prepared for their jobs, it's a little problem.

The problem with the bandit motorized infantry battalion isn't only that they piss it away on two idiots, it's that they have it in the first place, and are maintaining it, while only preying on a few travelers a month. The math doesn't check out. If they were a polity known to be excessively territorial and aggressive, it would only have the first problem.

I could go and say, there's the problem of nobody fixing their walls, or cleaning poo poo up, or the chest height walls everywhere, but I don't, because I can accept that because it's a video game.

They are prepared for their job to the best of their ability. The characters even say as much. They are in a lovely situation where they have to take bad jobs, that's the entire opening premise of how they even get involved.

As for the second part: The setting should also very quick run out of gasoline for cars and general upkeep for almost everything. The 'math doesn't check out' applies to almost everything in this (or any) post-apocalyptic setting. "They found a way" tends to be the excuse for everything from medical care to perfectly clean well-trimmed hair to bullets being commonplace. They are not aiming for realism.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

SIGSEGV posted:

lovely jobs that they are good at, on account of taking risky jobs for twenty years.

"They found a way" would work for a few, not for a force that would already count as a village living exclusively as bandits preying on three people a month, it's not about trying for realism, it's about not insulting the player's intelligence.

They are working within the confines of the genre which very frequently features bizarrely well-equipped human villains who somehow remain stable and dangerous despite being run entirely by insane people and pulling the post-apocalyptic equivalent of building a $5 million dollar giant robot to rob banks. Again, it isn't trying to 'insult your intelligence', it's recognizing that realism and plausibility is not the inherent end goal when designing a threat to protagonists. This is doubly true for video games where they by necessity need a significant number of ever-increasing challenges as part of the basic design.

SIGSEGV posted:

Also, I disagree, the game tries for graphical realism and tries its hardest to say it is gritty and real, they even made the zombies non magical for that.

Trying for graphic realism is not the same as trying for literal realism. Even things that try very hard to be realistic do things like, for example, allow you to painlessly knock someone out for a long period of time without any ill consequences to them. That is insanely unrealistic but is a common staple of most action genres. Like Batman Begins is sort of the poster boy for "trying to be more realistic and gritty" but at the end of the day it's still about a dude in a bat suit who is implausibly jacked, doesn't appear to need sleep, can beat people up without causing brain bleeds that kill them, and has access to billions of dollars he can spend without risk.

Most zombies are non-magical these days. They're the results of viruses or mutated rabies or whatever. Even Romero's was "radiation from a passing meteorite" and not "a wizard did it." TLOU's zombies are no less magic than Resident Evil's.

ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Apr 30, 2020

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

Zeta Acosta posted:

tlou didnt need the zombie setting at all to tell the story they wanted to tell or a world ending scenario for that matter

It didn't need the zombie setting specifically but it did need a situation where the life of one person was put up against the life of the world. It could be that she's immune to Captain Trips or whatever but the zombie shorthand means they can make a physical threat to go with the world-ending danger as opposed to something amorphous. This is pretty good for a video game because it's a lot easier to emphasize danger when it has a physical presence.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

It's also worth mentioning that "is extremely smart at a branch of science" does not translate to "is a put-together and competent person." Being a genius at surgery doesn't mean you're not the kind of guy who writes his password on a sticky note taped to his computer.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

CharlestonJew posted:

this is probably how things will go down

-Abby and friends kill Joel and beat Ellie
-next couple chapters show Abby and her friends and expand on their character a bit, humanise them and show that they're probably decent people(as decent as you can be to survive the apocalypse) and may even regret what they've just done
-Ellie starts killing them one by one Predator style and Abby becomes more and more unhinged as her friends drop like flies around her
-Abby does the 2 on 1 beatdown and is ready to cut a pregnant bitch up


That sounds pretty much like what the spoilers say, yeah. Ellie supposedly kills a bunch of Abby's friends after Abby goes out of her way not to kill her which is why she is that bonkers by the end.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

Hibbloes posted:

Goes out of her way not to kill her? Have you seen the cutscene? That happening to anyone is like the beginning of their revenge story

There are multiple cutscenes. The most extreme one is at the very end of the game.

From what I understand from spoilers it is basically:

Abby and friends track down and kill Joel but do not kill Ellie.
Ellie is obviously Not Okay with that and goes after them for revenge.
Lots of people die and by the end Abby is out of control and going for revenge against Ellie. She is a heartbeat away from doing it but pulls back at the last minute.
The actual ending is Ellie going off for revenge again despite people around her begging her not to.

It's basically a cycle of "You killed MY DAD." "You killed *MY* Dad." "You killed all my friends!" "You killed and hurt my friends!" *action figures mush together, some arms fall off.*

ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 01:46 on Apr 30, 2020

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

Hibbloes posted:

yeah but i think they kinda trigger the same reaction in elly, whether you're murdering her foster dad, brutalizing her personally, or brutalizing her grilfriend, abby is kinda setting herself up for death by vengeance in a classic video game trope style. obviously i havent played it, but i cant imagine a single thing abby could do prior to any of these that make elly seem like it was a justifiable thing to let go.

that being said i cant imagine a better ending in anything for the old "best served cold" adage than just getting one upped and dying cause you went in after it

I mean that's kind of the point. Abby went after Joel because he murdered her father and people she cared about. Ellie then responds the exact same way Abby did, which makes Abby respond in kind. Abby kind of breaks off at the last moment but that just means Ellie is going after her again now. Neither of them are capable of letting go of their desire for revenge and it spills over to the people around them.

ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 02:08 on Apr 30, 2020

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

i must compose posted:

I don't get why people are hating on last of us I thought it was fun the story was alright. I don't understand what Joel did that makes him a bad guy except he like says he did some bad stuff? He is only ever really shown killing people in self defense except the end.

Joel is pretty unambigious about the fact that before he met Ellie he wasn't exactly picky about what he did to survive. He was part of a bandit group for some period of time and admits to straight up murdering people. He is softened over the course of the story by Ellie's presence but it doesn't really undo the "I murdered a lot of people" thing, especially when the ending involves him murdering a lot more people. You can argue the justification/not justification of what he did but the critical point is that to the character none of that mattered and he would have committed the same murder no matter what.

It's worth remembering that the last person Joel kills in the same he kills because "you'll come after me." Which he is not wrong about and it turns out that a different survivor comes after him instead.

Hibbloes posted:

Right, i agree with you on that completely. i kinda mean that the way abby commits these acts (brutal murder of foster father, explicit in a traumatic way) she is making sure she traumatizes elly and fertilizing the grounds of revenge. she doesn't sneak a poison pill into joel's cuppa. she's triggering elly's desire for revenge in a way that doesn't make "well, why dont you just let it go?" seem sensible to me.

It doesn't seem like she's thinking ahead. She is a traumatized person seeking a visceral revenge. She isn't thinking about a lifelong feud of ever-increasing violence, she just is thinking short-term about revenge. Which it sounds like is the exact same trap Ellie falls into because she goes out a'killin' and it ends up bringing the violence back to the people close to her at the end. Neither character is thinking of a logical sensible outcome. They're looking for an outlet for their anger.

ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 02:22 on Apr 30, 2020

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

Zeta Acosta posted:

If the story is Abby went after Joel for killing his dad only for Ellie to turn sicko and goes on a rampage and THEN Abby goes Shao Kahn on her rear end im onboard. Im day one on tlou3 if the game is Abby going after Ellie just because she doesnt know when to loving stop.

It sounds like it's the opposite. Abby goes after Joel, Ellie goes for revenge, Abby goes for revenge for that, and then the ending is Ellie abandoning her loved ones and her life to chase Abby for more revengin'.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

I mean if Joel comes back as a cyborg ninja with a katana then I will probably actually buy this game.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

FallenGod posted:

"Rules of Nature" blaring as your katana bisects a pregnant woman.

That's really more DmC.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

Hibbloes posted:

leak spoilers i think(?) i read that ellie supposedly dies to abby in the end, and while they've portrayed it as a "oh my god what have i become" bit, it seems like abby's emphasis on more dakka puts her out ahead in the cycle of vengeance. Was that a fake leak? Really if joel had gone through and cleaned out the firefly's kindercare, the idea might be less "cycles of violence are messy and uncontrollable" and more "be thorough".

I think people thought that early on but currently what I've heard it is "Abby gets into an extremely violent fight and is going to kill Ellie's girlfriend (who is also pregnant) but is stopped at the last minute by one of her surviving friends. They leave and once Ellie recovers she sets out to go after her despite her girlfriend telling her it wasn't worth it."

As far as I know there's nothing currently backing up "Ellie dies."

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

That video makes it 100% clear that Joel thought the cure was real.

ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 14:57 on Apr 30, 2020

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

RBA Starblade posted:

Which one? I've only seen the ones in German lol

Inf note: Don't link to the leak.

Linked last page.

Joel has a conversation with Tommy about what he did in what looks like the opening of the game. Joel also straight-up continues to lie to Ellie even when she questions him directly.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

Somebody fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Apr 30, 2020

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

Honestly watching through the video it feels like a lot of things are kind of overblown or taken without context. It jumps around randomly and starts mid-scene. Which makes total sense if the leaker's intention was (as rumored) to piss people off at Naughty Dog but doesn't really give a clear view of character/story.

It's also hard to get a feel for where Abby and Ellie switch off. They may not actually switch mid-story as people seem to be suspecting because there are clearly playable Ellie scenes AFTER Joel's death.

ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 15:15 on Apr 30, 2020

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

Skippy McPants posted:

It just looks like a build in progress, and he's loading segments and scenes that are closer to completion. It's hard to overstate just how janky and broken up games tend to be until they enter the final phase of production.

Nah, if you watch through for example they have one scene where it's just Ellie exploring, then it fades to the logo for a video cutting-and-joining program, and then it skips to the scene of Ellie getting beaten up by Abby.

There is a lot of loading specific bits but the bits are also spliced together.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

MeatwadIsGod posted:

This is dumb because the performances are good enough in the first game that it's obvious at the end of the game that Ellie knows Joel is lying to her about the Fireflies but accepts it anyway. I only played it once but that's still clear enough in my memory.

I mean that's the impression I get from that segment too. Ellie is confronting Joel with holes in his story and he just snaps at her and continues to lie. There's no real indication there that Ellie doesn't think Joel is hiding something from her.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

Skippy McPants posted:

I'm just saying this person might not have full builds of everything and is just randomly throwing stuff out anything that might contain the big spoilers cause they're pissed off and violently throwing spaghetti at a wall.

Oh, I misunderstood. Yeah, that is also entirely possible. I mean either way if their goal is to piss people off at Naughty Dog it's fairly effective.

Skippy McPants posted:

A theme of this game appears to be "we don't like the message you took from the first game, so here is exactly what we meant, put as bluntly as possible."

Yeah, as depressingly expected TLOU2's basic premise appears to be "gently caress ambiguity."

Abby does seem like a reasonably fun character though if people will be able to look past the whole 'caving Joel's head in with a golf club" thing. Which is a big 'if.'

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

Skippy McPants posted:

Which I'm totally on board with, btw. I couldn't care less about the quality of the games, because gently caress Naughty Dog and their abysmal business treatment of their employees.


And I still think they're gonna miss the mark, badly. Like the ending scene between Ellie and Dina is in there, and you get the impression they badly want you to think Ellie's choice is the "wrong" one but... It's like, motherfuckers do you even know how people work? Her not being able to get over watching her father figure be brutally murdered is not some scathing indictment of hate and revenge.

Again, the way things are framed, the vast majority of people are going to fall on Ellie's side and want Abby dead.

I mean I fully expect that they are going to show that Abby watched/saw Joel murder her father as well because they are clearly bluntly setting Abby up to be Opposite Ellie.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

Bonaventure posted:

a bunch of people itt saying “Ellie was a terrible person in TLOU and you’re an idiot if you didn’t see that” but I don’t really remember anything she did that was objectionable? It’s probably because I played it once 5 years ago and it mostly bored me so I wasn’t fully paying attention but all I remember about her is: she wanted to be useful but Joel kept trying to keep her from killing anyone, then she almost got eaten by cannibals and killed a dude in self-defense.

I definitely remember Joel robbing stagecoaches while wearing his signature red carnation over the clasp of his dashing capelet but I really don’t remember her doing anything bad.

Who said Ellie is a terrible person in TLOU? I genuinely can't remember even one person, let alone a bunch of people, saying that. Pretty much the entire argument is based around Joel and I don't think anyone holds Ellie at fault.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007


Oh. Well, I wouldn't take Oxxidation's post at face value in that case!

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

blackguy32 posted:

This happens I found with a lot of media. People find reasons to excuse a lot of awful stuff as long as it is the protagonist doing it.

*waves a big "Breaking Bad" flag*

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

JBP posted:

He's probably mad/sad irl

I mean it does genuinely suck for any writer to have things intended to surprise/shock being leaked without context especially when it's controversial because it means people make up their mind before they see the context and might not be open to what it does. It's not uncommon for games stuff thanks to datamining or such but it does kind of suck.

This isn't a comment on the story being good or not because that doesn't really matter. Someone who devoted years of their lives to something having it cut out from under them sucks.

On the other hand if the rumors about ND are true he's abusing his employees so welp.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

Internet Kraken posted:

When has proclaiming yourself an abuser of anything been a good look

"I'm an abuser of Nazis" works pretty well.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

The Ultimate Doge posted:

That still sounds a little hosed up, like you're torturing them or were in relationships with several where you treated them badly

Freddie Oversteegen owned though.

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ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

Zeta Acosta posted:

they straight up glenn-ed poor Joel

Careful apparently this stuff isn't allowed

Edit: Ah NM, you removed already.

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