|
I beat this game last night and now I'm looking at a lot of takes on YouTube and one thing that blows me away constantly is the people cheering for Ellie to kill Abby in the last scene and then being mad that she doesn't. I get the take that the game can be annoying in that the player has learned the lesson that maybe this violence isn't helping anyone long before Ellie does (That didn't really take too much away from the game experience for me because I recognised that it wasn't my story but Ellie's and she's reached total psychopath levels by the end. I get why people might have rolled eyes at Ellie's terminator like single mindedness though). That whole "Ellie should have killed Abby, Joel deserved better than this!" just seems baffling to me. By the end of the game I absolutely didn't want to kill Abby and I thought it would be weird that anyone would still want the game to end that way, I mean even if not for Abby's sake at least Lev's. Lev's like the only character left by the end of the game that might be considered a decent person. Gameplaywise it was fun to go all out at the end like the first game but I did think the entire Rattler thing was an unnecessary extra, feels like the story beats that followed might have been better done during the showdown at the cinema. I thought the game was pretty great though, I'm glad we got to revisit that world and those characters again.
|
#
¿
Jul 1, 2020 02:46
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 17, 2024 00:43 |
|
|
Eimi posted:Because the game's manipulation to try and get you to like Abby is really blatant and some people react to that by hating Abby. I am one of them. She feels like a writer's pet character, so special and wholesome and just look at how dirty Ellie is, she's bad, she shoots the dog Abby petted. It's just so hilariously one sided and obvious. Also the game ignores that what Abby did to Joel is way more hosed up than what Joel did and she gets off scott free morally for that one. I don't know if it's manipulation for the game to tell Abby's side of the story. She has people she loves and cares about just like Ellie and Joel did, she also does some pretty horrific stuff, just like Ellie and Joel did. If anything I'd say it was less game manipulation and more a fair treatment of everyone. Since we see them all do the same stuff, murdering and torturing people who have people that love them. I don't think it's one sided. Abby's redemption arc, so to speak, doesn't even really kick off until Yara and Lev show up. I understand some people hate Abby because she killed their game dad but I really wonder if a part of it is that it's easier for gamers to hate Abby so much because she doesn't fit the body archetype of what a woman in a game is allowed to look like. Morally she doesn't get off scott free either, the torture and how that makes her feel is pretty explicitly stated to be her main motivation for trying to help Yara and Lev, she's absolutely trying to make up for the fact that she's done something unforgivable. If you wanted her punished in the game for it she also had her friends all brutally murdered, was enslaved and crucified and then forced to face one of her victims and be beaten to a pulp/almost drowned. All this horrible stuff that happens to her stems from what she did to Joel. She really doesn't get off scott free morally or literally for what she did.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 1, 2020 06:18
|
|
|
Gologle posted:The real hosed up part of this and the last game is that people are still having kids in the post apocalypse. Kind of love the way the other characters response to both people in this game announcing their pregnancies was more or less "Are you loving serious you loving idiot?"
|
|
#
¿
Jul 2, 2020 02:10
|
|
|
precision posted:I mean, that's a completely different crowd of people, and also an actual valid complaint Nah, they're talking about the crowd of people that complained about her because she could beat up Nathan Drake who are totally the same. Those that complained about Nandine being voiced by a white woman (especially in the next game where she co-stars with another woman of colour voice by a white woman) are on the money though.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 9, 2020 06:24
|
|
|
I was really bummed when Jesse died, he seemed like a pretty nice guy. I lent my PS4 and TLOU2 to my friend and a large part of why I don't miss it is that he's giving me regular updates and I have someone non toxic to discuss the game with. This thread has been okay but there's still been a whole lot of bad. There's been so many dumb arguments but I think my favourite has been the "Joel was a tactical genius and never would have trusted those strangers" as though it's not a good idea to be as friendly and diplomatic as possible to a group of heavily armed people you're stuck in a cabin with.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 9, 2020 13:16
|
|
|
I just watched the horde sequence again and it's clearly stated that the horses weren't going to make it all the way back to Jacksonville and Joel made it clear that the house they were in wasn't going to hold them off. Abby's solution is their only lifeboat in a lovely situation and they grab onto it. I think after that acting friendly and accommodating to the heavily armed group that has helped pull you out of shark infested waters is the right move whether you're a gruff no nonsense survivor or someone completely naive. The only scenario where that isn't a good idea is the extremely unlikely one where they're looking specifically for you to kill. Joel acting the way he did isn't just compatible with a Joel that has had years to acclimatise to peace it's compatible with the 'super smart survivour' Joel from before TLOU 1 who recognises this isn't a situation you can be a prick for no good reason and hope to live through. Unless these super Joel fans wanted their idol to be a complete idiot? I wonder if this argument would have been completely avoided if they had scripted it so that Joel was being really cagey (which is stupid in that sort of situation) and then Tommy was the one who said "I'm Tom Miller and this is my brother Joel" Though it absolutely wouldn't of because I suspect most people's problem with this scene is actually that Joel got killed by a girl.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2020 04:24
|
|
|
one place I do find a bit like the writers just up and dropped a major world building point from the first game is how well both Jacksonville, The WLF and even the Scars seem to be doing in the food department. I mean in the first game you've got all that stuff about the military running out of rations, the entire Pittsburgh takeover happening because of the food shortages, the cannibals and a whole lot of other things and in this game it's like in the 4 years between everyone's worked out farming or something and everyone's getting fed.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 11, 2020 16:32
|
|
|
I guess there's a good chance circumstances could have been different in Boston and Pittsburgh and I'm entirely prepared to believe David's community was made up of a collection of people that knew jack poo poo about how to keep themselves alive and therefore resorted to cannibalism but it was a little jarring to see how thoroughly incompetent the military in the QZs must have been at keeping their populations fed compared to the WLFs. I just got the vibe in The Last of Us it was implied that the world was running out of resources and even the might of the military wasn't able to secure enough land to keep people fed. All the quarantine zones, hunter run cities and even Jacksonville were all futile efforts to keep to lights on long enough for everyone to fade away... hence the title of the game. Ellie being the cure really was humanities only shot at not going extinct in a few more decades. Then in TLOU2 it seems like 4 years passed and we've discovered that there's a bunch communities, even religious zealot death cults who seem to be making it out okay in the apocalypse, things are certainly harder than they were before the fungus but there seems to be a legitimate shot at a future for the next generations. Not saying it's a major plothole or anything stupid like that, it's entirely possible the military was just completely incompetent at running the country (very believable actually) and people were better off breaking out on their own in the end, I was just very taken aback by the big meat selection at the stadium in this game compared to the rat BBQ seller guy in the first one. The Neal! fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Jul 12, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Jul 12, 2020 04:07
|
|
|
Sassy Sasquatch posted:They only have a brief onscreen interaction but the text explicitly mentions Marlene has been Ellie’s surrogate mom since birth in TLOU. Ellie is understandably pretty pissed and worried at her handing her off to two complete strangers. I’ll just repost the scene because funnily enough it also shows Joel is not ambush proof. I dunno if that's completely accurate. I think the whole Marlene/Ellie relationship is pretty one sided. As in, Marlene has been keeping tabs on Ellie but hasn't been raising her or anything and Ellie barely even knew about her. I think, according to the American Dreams prequel comic, Ellie's first actual interaction with Marlene is not THAT long before TLOU where Marlene fake threatens to kill her friend and then reveals that she was friends with Ellie's dead mum and hands her a knife. Then nothing till Ellie gets bit, then a not designated yet probably short time between that and handing Ellie off to Joel. So Joel murdering her is not winning him any points but it's more like he killed a long estranged aunt than her adoptive mum. I mean, I wouldn't forgive him but it's the apocalypse, so I guess people are more or less desensitised to people they know murdering other people they know.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 16, 2020 04:01
|
|
|
Bust Rodd posted:I doubt they are cops because it’s been over 30 years since Cops have existed and some of those rattlers look to be Ellie’s age. oh right, that is a VERY good point.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 20, 2020 14:53
|
|
|
Dr. Fishopolis posted:e: 3 complaints actually, why the gently caress did the Seraphites care about gender that much? If they were like post-apocalyptic bible thumpers or something it would make sense but society has collapsed and reformed a bunch of times by now. Without that background it seems like it's saying that transphobia is an inherent human problem and not a societal choice, which ignores a lot of human history. I suppose you could argue that their whole "science and technology is evil" philosophy goes hand in hand with the idea that sex=gender but I think the truth is more that Druckmann has written them as an extremely problematic allegory of Palestinians and so has decided that religious fundamentalism as he understands it today would apply to them.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 7, 2020 03:01
|
|
|
Bust Rodd posted:I don’t see it at all I didn't either until I read Druckmann's quote that the story was directly inspired by his own childhood prejudice growing up in Israel. I think this Vice article does a nice job of showcasing some of the parallels: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bv8da4/the-not-so-hidden-israeli-politics-of-the-last-of-us-part-ii After that it seemed EXTREMELY unsubtle to me that the WLF were the IDF and the Scars were Palestinians as Druckmann understands them and the alegory, boy does it have problems. Honestly I loved the hell out of the game while I was playing it but since reading a lot of Druckmann's own quotes about it I'm 'death of the author'ing this thing as hard as I can because I REALLY hate his takes on his game.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 7, 2020 04:03
|
|
|
BeanpolePeckerwood posted:why would anyone ever read vice or base their opinions on anything that comes out of that shithole I'm not a huge fan of Vice either and feel free to take the article with as many grains of salt as you please but it'd be mad to say that the parallels the article discusses don't exist. It's clear in the visuals, some of the characters' dialogues and Druckmann's own statements.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 7, 2020 05:16
|
|
|
Bust Rodd posted:Extending that to mean that you think Neil’s explicitly writing an anti-Palestinian take into his AAA video game to paint them as terrorists seems like an absolutely insane leap of logic to me personally. I read the article you posted and it just seems like Neil wrote about things he was familiar with, like using tunnels to evade checkpoints, or a religious community valuing martyrdom (you know, the way all Christians do, for example). Not at all what I'm saying, I really don't think Druckmann's intention was to make it anti-Palestinian, I think he really wanted to do a there's 'bad on both sides' take and I just don't think he's put enough thought or work in to avoid this allegory from being problematic as hell. You've got the WLF, who have the clear IDF parallels. We do see them as facists, they torture people and they're militaristic but we also get to know a lot of them from Abby's friends, Diego's father, video game girl and we do see their perspective on the conflict quite a bit. We see them looking after people, running schools, we get a lot of time with them. Then you get the Scars and oh boy, backwards religious fundamentalists who mutilate their enemies, take child brides and the only Scars that aren't trying to murder you in the game are two teenagers actively trying to escape their lifestyle (people that have rejected them really). We're led to the conclusion that a key issue in the conflict is that the Scars refuse to just stay on their own self sufficient island (land) which is just... yikes, if we're working with the Israel and Palestine allegory here. I don't think Druckmann intended it to be anti-Palestinian at all, I just think that if you go in to tell a Israel/Palestine conflict, as Druckmann himself states he was doing, and then it ends up looking like this, its got problems. The Neal! fucked around with this message at 06:15 on Sep 7, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Sep 7, 2020 06:03
|
|
|
It's like with the issues the game has with Trans people. I love Lev and on the surface it's a great thing for diversity to see a trans character in a triple A game but then you finish the game and you go and read some of the takes coming out of the trans community and realise that the last thing a lot of trans people wanted to see was another trans character whose main point of conflict in the game comes from the fact that they're trans. I do think Druckmann writes his games with complicated issues with the best intentions. I also think that you need to do a lot of work and listen to more voices outside of your own understanding to better balance your writing when you want to delve into complicated topics that aren't part of your own lived experience. I don't feel I've seen enough evidence that Druckmann does that in his games.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 7, 2020 06:12
|
|
|
Bust Rodd posted:I just read the Vice article and the article linked in that article and Neil doesn’t say in either of those articles that he is trying to tell and Israel Palestine story. I guess maybe I should listen to the podcast, although since this is the TLoU2 thread, it would probably be more appropriate to find a YouTuber who listened to the whole thing and metastasize my own opinion through their subjective lens. Druckmann also said he threw out everything the consultant said so he could just focus on Lev as a character but it is my sincere hope he misspoke there. You raise a good point but I think the main conceit was that he could have had a story for a trans character and not made them suffer for being trans (so maybe made it more about running from the Scar community for another reason) and then possibly actually pleased everyone? Except Transphobes I suppose but gently caress those people.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 7, 2020 06:31
|
|
|
Phobophilia posted:I think the issue is that the WLF/Seraphites conflict doesn't so much resemble the actual Israeli/Palestinian conflict as is (people being colonized out of their homes by a ethnonationalists), in so much it resembles the mythology of the I/P conflict as told within liberal Israeli culture: two equally capable and morally ambiguous sides carrying out an eternal war with no clear beginning, one side secular, the other side religious. yeah you've articulated my problem with it far better than I did, thanks.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 7, 2020 07:07
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 17, 2024 00:43 |
|
|
RareAcumen posted:Anything's possible in this world. Tommy and his friends managed to get electricity going again for an entire town. All it takes is slowly making the right decisions. Cave in every corpse's head so you can be sure they're not zombies playing dead, remove the bodies, get holes in houses patched up, clean out the rubble, save whatever books you can find, eventually progress can be made. I think that's true for the 2nd game, but I think that it's a little disconnected from the world they presented in the 1st one. In the 1st game the QZ is so starved there's hour long lines for rat BBQ, Pittsburg community rob and murder anyone that comes around and still look like they're ready to murder each other over a can of beans, another community have resorted to cannabilism and still can't consistently get enough meat to sustain themselves (there's a note with WE HAVE TO DO BETTER written on it). Tommy (who seems to be doing the best out of everyone) describes his community as something like 15 families strong which translates to gently caress all people. The impression I got was that it was only a matter of time before people went extinct and everyone kind of knew it (they were the literal 'Last of Us'). Cure was the last chance to save the world and Joel didn't give a gently caress because there was no circumstance or stakes that would have made him okay with letting his replacement daughter die. 2nd game makes it a little more ambiguous because after the 5 years(?) following the first game Tommy's community is huge and trading coffee with travelling groups, it's burrito night at the stadium and farming is going good on cult island. I can totally believe that the military were fucks and useless at keeping a city alive and those other communities from the first game were in really tough times that year but I still think naughty dog were trying to present a different situation for the world in the 1st game than the one you see in the 2nd. I don't think the change in world state really effects the rational behind Joel's choice but it sure does make it easier for people to say "maybe the fireflies were wrong to say killing Ellie to get the cure out of her brain wasn't the last hope for humanity". The Neal! fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Jul 20, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Jul 20, 2021 01:52
|
|