Agent Escalus posted:

I'm hoping the unmarked leak that I saw when it got posted elsewhere is fake, because if the plot/main enemy of the game is a "Christian" group who goes around murdering anyone they deem sinners because they blame them for the outbreak, then gently caress that garbage, doubly so if the part about Ellie's lover getting killed for being gay and they kill Joel too and it turns out Ellie's mom was a member as well is accurate.

MeatwadIsGod posted:

If I remember correctly the descent into madness in Spec Ops was also reflected in the mechanics, where your squadmates would listen to your commands less and less until eventually they refused to follow your orders. Even if I thought some parts of Spec Ops were hamfisted, that's good poo poo.

Tenzarin posted:

Mafia 3 signs of the times dlc was pretty much also the same premise as the watchmen season 1. Also the questline for John Donovan, or was that his frame story, was tight as gently caress and the ending of it was so good.

Ham posted:

Mafia 3 is a horrible game and shame on you.

Tenzarin posted:

I cleaned up New Bordeaux and rebuilt the fair grounds. I was a fair but tough kingpin? Mafia, were they really a mafia? It was like just 5 people.

exquisite tea posted:

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.

SUNKOS posted:

I was cautiously optimistic for TLOU2 and had some stuff spoiled for me in the comments of a completely unrelated Twitter post. I just wanted to see the bigger version of some cool art and there the gifs and videos were in the sidebar with the comments. My reaction was just "Is that real?" to "That's really dumb" and that was that vv

SUNKOS posted:

I'm just interested if there's more gameplay because replaying TLOU1 reminds you of how much freakin' walking around there is. Uncharted 4 really suffered for this as well which sucked because the combat was fun but you mostly walked around which made me wish I'd just bought something else and watched a playthrough on YouTube or something. I'm expecting more of the same with TLOU2, a hell of a lot of walking around and maybe three or four really well-designed combat encounters that are super fun and make you realize how much potential was wasted.

I'd love to be surprised as well but it looks like they've been really unimaginative with the infected in TLOU2 and are still sticking to humanoid designs. We've seen one new type of clicker and another bloater type that just spews gas but I was hoping we'd see freaky stuff like this concept art for the first game:

Stux posted:

it will probably be polished and competent and sell well and be generally liked because thats what happens 9 times out of 10 with stuff like this despite how people online feel

ImpAtom posted:

They could also show the actual option to sneak past without killing which they don't actually do. They just show a large wave of murder and considering this is the same game franchise that has DLC Executions it has me trending to believe that they showed it off because they thought it was cool and gritty, not because they wanted to show you what NOT to do.

sebmojo posted:

Tlou had genuinely horrific violence, like significantly more than most games imo.

Harrow posted:

If I'm honest, the idea that the game has very realistic violence isn't what bothers me. Hell, I think it's about right for TLoU. I just don't really want to play a game that grim right now, or really any time soon. I also actively wanted there not to be a sequel to the first game from the moment I finished it so I'm perhaps not the audience for a sequel in the first place.

I hope it's really good! It's just not an experience I'm going to put into my brain any time soon no matter how good it is. I wouldn't want to replay the first game, either, FWIW, even though I thought it was very good.

Mae posted:

I liked the dialogue and was sad when Ellie brutally murdered them.

I think that means that the devices they're using are working.

Bonaventure posted:

Danger posted:

No. It's that "Ellie or whoever kills a dog but the game says killing dogs is bad? Plot hole" isn't a critique.

Right. Like "the game says killing is bad and it makes the killing gross and doing the killing becomes tedious and boring" all seems pretty consistent.
But again, I don't know I haven't played the game.

Stux posted:

[checking my watch] ah its still weird people are drawing the line at dogs and not humans

Bonaventure posted:

Neil Druckmann: anyway we make you kill dogs in this game... it’s really grisly; we watched a lot of reference videos to get the viscera gleaming just right. It’s gonna make you feel like poo poo when you do it, haha ; we put in so much effort, in this dog killing. “Do you feel like a hero yet?” Haha I just came up with that myself, anyway thanks for the interview

Stux: why do people in this thread talk about dogs so much

Bonaventure posted:

Neil why does your golf ball have Joel’s face painted on it

Sassy Sasquatch posted:

Yeah but Polygon didn't like the game so y'know... it might actually be decent?

Dewgy posted:

It’s probably not something that happens at the same time even if the article phrases it like “shoot dog, relive dog memories” like how it worked with the conspiracy guys in Prototype.

CharlieFoxtrot posted:

Just like with the rest of 2020, I am just surprised that my initial speculation of "Joel is dead" significantly undershot how bonkers the discourse around this game ended up being

sockpuppetclock posted:

https://twitter.com/leighalexander/status/1271000364834328576
(twitter thread)

exquisite tea posted:

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.

RevolverDivider posted:

you are a sociopath

Bonaventure posted:

Ellie should murder a giraffe

Endorph posted:

Does some guy actually call ellie a dyke after the woke gay kiss

Endorph posted:

Lol

Also it was probably posted in this thread but


Now im not saying violent revenge murder is good but i think its less bad than lynchings?

Panzeh posted:

That's kinda stretching it- the stuff about comparing the zombie apocalypse to the Inquisition or the Holocaust is supported by the text of the game, though a bit reductive of the scene, but "there's possibly gas in the synagogue(which was being used by the WLF)" being turned into "haha the jews are hoarding gas in the apocalypse" is kinda bizarre to me.

CharlestonJew posted:

people are incredibly dumb and while there's a lot about this game to legitimately criticize, there's a lot of people that are grasping at straws, misinterpreting information like a bad game of telephone, or just straight up making poo poo up, both in this thread and in the internet at large

Panzeh posted:

I think different people look for different things from their games and that's fine. The things that I found incredibly grating and ok boomer in Death Stranding other people found really profound. That's just how it is.

Starks posted:

The stupid thing about gamers is that a lot of them only remember to be woke when it's a game they don't actually want to buy. I don't remember nearly as much controversy or calls for boycott over RDR2 despite the fact that the actual gameplay is more violent (not the cutscenes), there's lots of dog murder, Game of Thrones style character shock deaths, and it also had terrible working conditions. I'm not saying that the criticisms of TLOU2 are wrong but there's clearly a large chunk of people that wouldn't be complaining about the violence/labour issues if they thought the game or the story would be good. There's plenty of bad faith to go around.

I guess we'll see when the next God of War/Witcher 4/GTA come out.

Eimi posted:

https://twitter.com/RLewisReports/status/1274197145441013760?s=20

Irony Be My Shield posted:

I don't think this is an Andromeda or Anthem situation, the game looks and plays OK and has a reasonable amount of content. It's just the writing isn't anywhere close to what the rapturous early reviews and developer interviews promised.

Brother Entropy posted:

it's bioshock infinite again

AceOfFlames posted:

Ended up reading a wiki synopsis of this game. It sounds grim as hell, but honestly, I think Joel had it coming. I loving hated the ending of TLOU1 and thought Joel was the world's biggest monster for dooming humanity all in the name of a single person. I don't care if she was his surrogate daughter. I would happily sacrifice any number of my family members if it meant saving the world because it is the right thing to do. No life is inherently worth more than other, especially the whole world's.

Ironslave posted:

Also the first thing they jump to when handed the only known example of asymptomatic infection is to try and kill her and cut her open in the belief they can just pull the "cure" out of her. I have a friend who is a biologist who went positively apoplectic at how idiotic and unscientific their methodology was. "Let's cut the goose open and get all the eggs at once" was invoked.

SIGSEGV posted:

You don't need to be a biologist to see that, the end of TLOU was clearly supposed to invoke "Joel is a monster who saved his surrogate daughter and hosed over the world in the process." while what the actual text supports is that Joel did nothing wrong in killing the fireflies and saving Ellie and that the only thing he could have done better is kill more fireflies.

Zeta Acosta posted:

I dont think the game wanted to be nihilistic, i think it hosed up the message it wanted to tell beyond people bad and we are the monster all along.

In It For The Tank posted:

Assuming that we can't just axe the story and start again from scratch, a potentially more interesting way to tell the same story while maintaining the unusual non-linear, multi-protagonist story structure would be to start with Abby on Seattle Day 1.

Things proceed like the game but explicit references to Joel's murder would be removed so Abby and her friends only vaguely reference recently tracking down some evil bastard and taking revenge. Intersperse the story with scenes with Abby and her dad showing how much they love each other, which gradually hint more and more that he was the Firefly surgeon until it is revealed just before you get to the theatre on Day 3. There, you confront Ellie and you're like "woah wtf".

Then time rewinds to show Ellie's story and you see Abby and her friends, who you have presumably grown to like in the first half of the game, brutally torture and kill Joel. The game proceeds with Ellie's perspective and you end the game with her putting her switchblade through Abby's heart in the theatre and cut out the unnecessary coda with the Rattlers. Or not, who cares.

By putting Abby murdering Joel first, they permanently turned much of the audience (if the general user reaction is to be believed) against her. Try as they might, walking back from that and earning the audience's empathy requires much better writing than what they gave us. So, since they were committed to the ill-advised dual-protagonist story structure, a better option probably would have been to just tell Abby's story first and make the audience root for her until they pull the rug out from under you and then switch to Ellie.

Danger posted:

I don’t buy this. Abby was the much more interesting and empathetic character. A lot of the backlash I’m seeing is literally people on Reddit saying Joel was a “father figure” for them which is loving weird as hell.

Mulva posted:

No, I totally didn't give a poo poo about Abby. And I thought Joel earned a bullet for the terrible things he did in his life. It's just that this carries over to, say, the woman that brutally tortured a man to death in front of his loved ones. Joel earned his, she earned hers. I don't care about her tragic backstory and how she's a decent person under it all. You don't get to beat a man's head in in front of his family and pretend you get a life after. You don't.