The Last of Us II - 60 fps PS5 patch out now

Knoyleo wrote:

Fade wrote:The 3 main characters in the trailer were women. And they were all shown in leadership positions.

Being hanged and having your arm broken with a hammer are leadership positions?

The evil woman was in control of the guy that got killed

The woman who had her arm broken ordered the guy who saved her to cut the hanging woman down, against just his wishes.

Then when the hanging woman was cut down she took lead of the situation.

Making a point that they are female is just really strawberry floating patronising.

And the fact they were injured is irrelevant. Did Joel somehow become less of a mentor/leader to Ellie when he came to harm? Leadship isn't about whether or not you get injured, it's about commanding respect.

OrangeRakoon wrote:She looked nothing like Ellie, that is not Ellie

Judging by the comment "She's one if them" it's obvious she was a member of some fanatical group of some such and obviously did something to piss them off, hence the lynching, but no definitely not Ellie.

They've confirmed that it isn't Ellie. She's played by Laura Bailey, while Ashley Johnson is reprising her role as Ellie, and she doesn't have Ellie's tattoo. Neil Druckmann has also gone as far as to say they aren't revealing where or when this scene is taking place, so the running theory is that it's her mother (which is also hinted by the YouTube description saying they're "keeping mum" on who the characters are).

I'm not sure I buy it 100%, though. A lot of people are using the "knife to the belly" threat as a hint that the character is pregnant, and therefore of course it's her mum, but before she's put on the noose, there are men hung with their intestines cut out, so I'm thinking there's red herrings all over it.

Of course, if they were to go full "Godfather" with their Part II and have half the story be a flashback to the parent of the main protagonist, I would be extremely strawberry floating into that, because it opens the story up to much more narrative possibilities than simply following an Ellie revenge story for the death of Joel.

jiggles wrote:

Saint of Killers wrote:I looked up conflating 'equality' and 'equity' and I think the argument is that because women start from a disadvantaged position to begin with, their being tortured is not the same as men being tortured.

Is this true in The Last of Us, though? It's a post-apocalyptic game in which modern society no longer exists. Every female character after the fall in the series, every last one, has shown themselves to be either in a position of power or extremely capable. The constant parallels between Ellie and Sarah, with Joel commenting how alike they are, is making the point that Sarah's perceived "weakness" isn't because of the person she is, but rather as a product of a societal norm that no longer exists.

Pressing reset to "reroll" gender roles is a common narrative device to hammer home the point that the only reason they are the way they are today is because as a society we chose them that way. The women in our world can be equal to men, if we, as a society, just choose to have it that way.

That context is unfortunately missing from a quick trailer shown at a multi-game conference. What you end up with on its surface is a really grim video that mainly focuses on torture, commited solely on women.

At the very least it's a bad misstep on Naughty Dog's judgement even if everything is given some grounding and relevance in the full game.

Cuttooth wrote:

jiggles wrote:

Saint of Killers wrote:I looked up conflating 'equality' and 'equity' and I think the argument is that because women start from a disadvantaged position to begin with, their being tortured is not the same as men being tortured.

Is this true in The Last of Us, though? It's a post-apocalyptic game in which modern society no longer exists. Every female character after the fall in the series, every last one, has shown themselves to be either in a position of power or extremely capable. The constant parallels between Ellie and Sarah, with Joel commenting how alike they are, is making the point that Sarah's perceived "weakness" isn't because of the person she is, but rather as a product of a societal norm that no longer exists.

Pressing reset to "reroll" gender roles is a common narrative device to hammer home the point that the only reason they are the way they are today is because as a society we chose them that way. The women in our world can be equal to men, if we, as a society, just choose to have it that way.

That context is unfortunately missing from a quick trailer shown at a multi-game conference. What you end up with on its surface is a really grim video that mainly focuses on torture, commited solely on women.

At the very least it's a bad misstep on Naughty Dog's judgement even if everything is given some grounding and relevance in the full game.

I agree 100%. It's a cheap trick going for shock value to market the thing, and it's a shame they apparently couldn't find something better to show. Divisive and shocking marketing can work, and has worked for them in the past, but this is video is only really for the people already invested enough that they were going to buy the thing anyway, to others, it just looks like torture porn. It doesn't sell the game to new people at all, it just makes people talk about it.

Cuttooth wrote:

jiggles wrote:

Saint of Killers wrote:I looked up conflating 'equality' and 'equity' and I think the argument is that because women start from a disadvantaged position to begin with, their being tortured is not the same as men being tortured.

Is this true in The Last of Us, though? It's a post-apocalyptic game in which modern society no longer exists. Every female character after the fall in the series, every last one, has shown themselves to be either in a position of power or extremely capable. The constant parallels between Ellie and Sarah, with Joel commenting how alike they are, is making the point that Sarah's perceived "weakness" isn't because of the person she is, but rather as a product of a societal norm that no longer exists.

Pressing reset to "reroll" gender roles is a common narrative device to hammer home the point that the only reason they are the way they are today is because as a society we chose them that way. The women in our world can be equal to men, if we, as a society, just choose to have it that way.

That context is unfortunately missing from a quick trailer shown at a multi-game conference. What you end up with on its surface is a really grim video that mainly focuses on torture, commited solely on women.

At the very least it's a bad misstep on Naughty Dog's judgement even if everything is given some grounding and relevance in the full game.

Why do people keep mentioning that they are women, like it's some kind of negative? Serious question. Especially considering that they're doing it to each other.

The torture scene was uncomfortable in GTA5 because it was a torture scene. Not because of the person who was being tortured.

Fade wrote:Why do people keep mentioning that they are women, like it's some kind of negative? Serious question.

Because violence against women is (get this) some kind of negative. If you don't have the context of the series (which, btw, nobody did at all until the title card in the very last frame), it's extremely problematic imagery to see two male brutes pin down a woman and break her arm with a hammer.

Well, it's problematic either way, but with context there can at least be some level of justification.

jiggles wrote:If you don't have the context of the series (which, btw, nobody did at all until the title card in the very last frame)

This is interesting because for myself (and for anyone else specifically watching the trailer, not streaming the show), I was going in with full context that this was a Last of Us Part II trailer.

My main takeaways from the trailer were thus:

1) The graphics look incredible
2) Damn this is brutal, they weren't lying when they said this game's theme was "hate"
3) No Joel or Ellie, are any of these three characters (especially the bow kid) going to be playable?
4) I like the tense over-the-shoulder and panning around camera
5) There's some kind of murderous cult being established as antagonists

Thoughts on gender didn't even enter into it. It wasn't any kind of focus that violence was being carried out specifically towards women. I find it a strange thing to come away thinking.

jiggles wrote:

Fade wrote:Why do people keep mentioning that they are women, like it's some kind of negative? Serious question.

Because violence against women is (get this) some kind of negative. If you don't have the context of the series (which, btw, nobody did at all until the title card in the very last frame), it's extremely problematic imagery to see two male brutes pin down a woman and break her arm with a hammer.

Well, it's problematic either way, but with context there can at least be some level of justification.

Violence against anyone is some kind of negative though.

And all the violence was enacted because of the orders of another female. And the two guys and the woman who enacted it were killed.

I mean the 3 people who were murdered, nah that's fine, but woman getting her arm broken? Totally over the line, it's not like that happened to Robert in the first game and people didn't care.

Some tweets, starting with a thread:

twitter.com/MikeDiver/status/925357778658582528

twitter.com/austin_walker/status/925358536087035904

twitter.com/dannyodwyer/status/925041761663291393

And a follow-up to that one:

twitter.com/dannyodwyer/status/925341992313290752

twitter.com/9_volt88/status/925357958506205184

twitter.com/keethulhu/status/925049964123906048

It seems like context is the big issue here. As a fan of the original game who has been keeping up on news of the sequel and who went into the trailer knowing what it was, the trailer succeeded in furthering my interest in the game.

That's a completely different context to someone unfamiliar with the first game, not knowing what it's a trailer for, in the middle of a general games stream without adequate content warning. I can 100% see it being problematic there. But still not really as a gendered argument - I'd want that content warning regardless of who the violence is against.

They are not the only tweets I have seen.

Sorry if you think I am calling you sexist/misogynistic Taf, but I really can’t see from that video that there is a sex issue.

It’s a trailer for a game set in a violent post apocalyptic world. A woman gets dragged in and hung up and gets a knife put to her stomach. Another woman is dragged in and gets her arm brutally broken.

None of that is nice and none of it is justifiable in our world. Of course it isn’t.

But none of it was related to the sex of the characters either. It could have just as easily been a scene composed solely of men.

There’s a debate there over violent imagery in games, but I don’t see that there’s one to be had about misogyny.

You obviously feel differently, but I just don’t see that a violent scene is any better or worse just because women are involved.

KjGarly wrote:

Moggy wrote:

KjGarly wrote:After reading the last couple of pages and finally getting round to watching the trailer myself all I have to say is your all a bunch of strawberry floating wet blankets

If you think that we are all wet blankets then I don’t think you did read the last couple of pages.

My apologies.

*The select few who took offence by the trailer and were upset by 2 split arses getting the beat down orchestrated by another split arse who later gets a face full of hammer from one of the tortured split arse because, you know, women shouldn't be leading groups of men ordering them to maim other women. They should be in the kitchen, doing the cleaning and sorting out a glass of chocolate milk for the hard working man after a bit of man on man maiming and torture. Your more fanny than fanny!

By the way I think it's Ellie getting hung. Wasn't she a bit on the muscular side in the first trailer when she's sitting there playing the guitar? Just watched first trailer again, not her then.

"Split arse"?

The strawberry floating state of this.

I read that and just wonder where the mincemeat and sausage is, bizarre abstraction imo.

Moggy wrote:They are not the only tweets I have seen.

Sorry if you think I am calling you sexist/misogynistic Taf, but I really can’t see from that video that there is a sex issue.

It’s a trailer for a game set in a violent post apocalyptic world. A woman gets dragged in and hung up and gets a knife put to her stomach. Another woman is dragged in and gets her arm brutally broken.

None of that is nice and none of it is justifiable in our world. Of course it isn’t.

But none of it was related to the sex of the characters either. It could have just as easily been a scene composed solely of men.

There’s a debate there over violent imagery in games, but I don’t see that there’s one to be had about misogyny.

You obviously feel differently, but I just don’t see that a violent scene is any better or worse just because women are involved.

We can deffo agree to disagree. I have a real problem with the violence against women depicted in that trailer and am not alone in thinking there's serious issues there,, but there are obviously people on the other side too.

I know I go off on this stuff pretty strongly and I also know this undercuts my arguments sometimes as I come across as a zealot. That's something I'll try to work on. Because I'm not. Generally.

What a really annoys me though is people breezing in and calling those who do have a problem with it 'wet blankets' or telling us to 'get a grip.' It's childish, arrogant and furthers the discussion not one iota.

Anyway.

Tafdolphin wrote:

Moggy wrote:They are not the only tweets I have seen.

Sorry if you think I am calling you sexist/misogynistic Taf, but I really can’t see from that video that there is a sex issue.

It’s a trailer for a game set in a violent post apocalyptic world. A woman gets dragged in and hung up and gets a knife put to her stomach. Another woman is dragged in and gets her arm brutally broken.

None of that is nice and none of it is justifiable in our world. Of course it isn’t.

But none of it was related to the sex of the characters either. It could have just as easily been a scene composed solely of men.

There’s a debate there over violent imagery in games, but I don’t see that there’s one to be had about misogyny.

You obviously feel differently, but I just don’t see that a violent scene is any better or worse just because women are involved.

We can deffo agree to disagree. I have a real problem with the votive against women in that trailer and am not alone, but there are obviously people on the other side too.

I know I go off on this stuff pretty strongly and I know this undercuts my arguments sometimes as I come across as a zealot. That's something I'll try to work on.

What annoys me is people breezing in and calling people who do have a problem with it 'wet blankets' or telling us to 'get a grip.'

Anyway.

I think we can agree that Kjgarly made a complete numpty out of himself in this thread though.

Split arse?

It's probably one of the worst posts I've seen on GR. Just an abhorrent world view.

The problem with the trailer is that it doesn't offer any reason for the violence. We don't know who these characters are, we don't know where they fit in the larger TLOU story, they're just there and there to be incredibly, gratuitously violent toward each other. If this were one of a series of short film type videos building up to Part 2 with these little snapshots of that world beyond Joel and Ellie it would almost be fine but it's the game's second trailer and the first we've seen of the game for nearly a year.

What does the trailer tell us about TLOU 2 exactly? That's it looks good and is violent? We knew that'd be the case, and yet this trailer is trying to tell us those are reasons to buy the game. It's super weird, because those aren't the reasons people reacted so well to the first game. It was the story and the characters, and this trailer was devoid of both without context.

"The problem with the trailer is that it doesn't offer any reason for the violence"

Other than highlighting the kind of brutal, cold, post apocalyptic world we've come to know through TLoU? What exactly was everyone expecting? Roasting marshmallows around a cosy campfire singing Kumbaya?