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

The other bosses allow you to learn without immediately dying though. Even the rat king, Abby says some REALLY obvious stuff indicating the game.just wants you to run.

Literally anything in the Ellie fight to tell you what the rules were or what the game wanted you to do would have been nice.

Yeah it's different but that doesn't excuse it, it's bad game design, plain and simple, especially in such a narratively driven game.

Also Parksey, I do find it a bit odd how you're criticising the gameplay for not changing, and then when they do try and change it you don't like it :lol:

I don't really judge the boss battle attempts as them trying to change the gameplay though. As I said, they've been similarly mishandled in the Uncharted series, and the original game had them. They've become largely trite and one note too, as I explained, generally flowing the same pattern (big, bulky enemy chasing you, cramped tight surroundings, forced into combat, often fighting in the dark etc).

The boss battles in the game are nothing we haven't had to suffer through before. Even so, I would argue that if they do "mix up" the game, they do so to it's disadvantage, and don't show the game at its best.

I think there are ways to freshen up the stealth encounters that weren't really attempted here (bar "how about dogs?" and then dogs being in every WLF encounter from then on). I think there are ways to include set piece without relying on the same tricks too (I've mentioned the floor having a tendency to collapse on you and drop you right into a bug enemy, when you get jumped "surprisingly", the generator in the basement that wakes up monsters etc). These are all tropes, and some of this is unavoidable in a second game that largely just copies the first. It's all done a little too po-faced and earnestly by the developers though - I'm not wracked with tension, nerves and excitement when I fall through a hole for the 20th time now. It's predictable.

For me, though I enjoyed the game and think the stealth is still satisfying, I don't think it's possible to argue against the game being typical Naughty Dog and starting to lapse more often into the formulaic.

And enjoying the finall boss fight in Uncharted 4? Christ, you might also get joy out of watching babies get their injections, puppies locked in kennels and getting your scrotum stuck in your zip.

I did like the "open world" section though. Thought they were going to do a little.more/go a bit further with it, but they never did unfortunately.

There are a few things that change up stealth encounters. The aforementioned dogs, the much expanded use of stalkers (my personal favourite I think, until you understand the best approach is to not stealth them but bait them into rushing you in combat!), the variations on interplay between survivors and infected, the encounters involving water, and the seraphite's whistling. Obviously stealthing survivors is different to infected but that's not new to the sequel. Even at the very end of the game you've got new variations on encounters with the silenced SMG and being able to shoot out the chains on the infected to set them on the survivors. Of course it's very possible to not use those things and play the game no differently to how you were so mileage will vary.

Parksey wrote:And enjoying the finall boss fight in Uncharted 4? Christ, you might also get joy out of watching babies get their injections, puppies locked in kennels and getting your scrotum stuck in your zip.

A sword fight on a burning pirate ship full of treasure? You bet I enjoyed it.

Fade wrote:The other bosses allow you to learn without immediately dying though. Even the rat king, Abby says some REALLY obvious stuff indicating the game.just wants you to run.

Literally anything in the Ellie fight to tell you what the rules were or what the game wanted you to do would have been nice.

Yeah it's different but that doesn't excuse it, it's bad game design, plain and simple, especially in such a narratively driven game.

The instadeath is probably the main problem. It's successful in making Ellie feel dangerous, but the fight would be better tutorialised if it let you make mistakes at least once to learn the mechanics of it without dying - even if they escalated into instakills after letting you off once.

I still like the fight and think the game is much better off for it though, on balance!

Oh no are these unspoilered end-game spoilers now? :dread:

Alright, I'm done.

Whoof.

Immediate thoughts after finishing, in no particular order or form.

My big question going in was whether it justified its existence as a sequel to a game with an almost perfect narrative arc, one that did not in any way require elaboration. Did it?

Yes. And no.

Yes because the Abby sections were pretty much the game I'd have wanted, in a world catered only to me. A new story in the TLoU universe with great characters, a cracking central relationship and all the spectacle and surprises of the first. The escape through Haven was a genuinely jaw-dropping finale, and the plot progression and mission variety were spot on.

And no because this is a game with serious, serious issues that run right to the very heart of its concept. Druckmann repeatedly stated that this was a game based on "the universal hatred inherent in man", a sensation he said he experienced after seeing a video of two Israeli soldiers being lynched by Palestinians. I believe the game is based on a flawed concept from the start, and one that was only ever going to lead to a grimdark exploration of pain and suffering that the ND gamemaking formula is completely unfit to explore. This is a story based on nihilism, a deep distrust that humanity has any power over its own descent into chaos. Every positive moment is very quickly curdled over the low heat of the game's insistence on showing the player how gooseberry fool people can be. This is completely in opposition to the first game, which felt special as it balanced its darkness against light.

This game, at its core, has very little to say. It's about the folly of revenge and the act of killing, and once it's played its hand it has nowhere to go. Over, and over, and over the game launches tut-tutting judgement at the player, throwing in their face the evils of its own characters and the world they inhabit. After 5 hours this is tedious. After 30 it is, to quote one review, maddening. The fact it does this by relying on brutal imagery and shock tactics rather than any deconstruction of the characters' own actions is just another mark against it.

From a pure storytelling point of view it also fails. Twice it pulls a fakeout ending, one coming very close to the halfway point, and both completely destroy the pacing. Although I loved the Rashomon thing it was doing, both sides of the tale were far too long to be effective. After 25 hours the narrative ends, and then we're thrown back into what feels like a playable epilogue which, again, is far too long. The character work and dialogue is still top notch, and the performances by the cast are extraordinary, but where the first game moved with intent and purpose this flails around desperately trying to get you to understand what it's saying.

It an incredibly uneven game, one that I both enjoyed and disliked intently. It's a series of the Walking Dead with a AAA budget, an attempt at analysing the human propensity for pain that fails simply as it doesn't have enough to say. It's a superbly fun action game with some incredible set-pieces and its a poster child for everything that's wrong with game development.

It's a mess, but one I can't say I didn't enjoy.

Time to revisit this too!

Tafdolphin wrote:What I'm expecting going off the marketing:

- Bury Your Gays tropes all over the shop, ie "Yes we have gay characters, YES we will immediately kill and or hurt one of them for cheap emotional impact"
- Lots of torture scenes where the camera lingers on painful stuff happening. Because as previously mentioned mature = grim
- I've heard there's a transgender character so I'm expecting them to be immediately deadnamed and a bunch of hamhanded metaphors linking transgenderism to all sorts of trauma.
- Perhaps a black person?
- Lots of women getting hurt.
- Pretty, pretty graphics

No one tell me if I'm right

Frank wrote:Oh no are these unspoilered end-game spoilers now?

Sorry I thought Uncharted 4 was fair game now

Thought I'd be safe from Uncharted spoilers in a thread about a different game

Tafdolphin wrote:Alright, I'm done.

Whoof.

Immediate thoughts after finishing, in no particular order or form.

My big question going in was whether it justified its existence as a sequel to a game with an almost perfect narrative arc, one that did not in any way require elaboration. Did it?

Yes. And no.

Yes because the Abby sections were pretty much the game I'd have wanted, in a world catered only to me. A new story in the TLoU universe with great characters, a cracking central relationship and all the spectacle and surprises of the first. The escape through Haven was a genuinely jaw-dropping finale, and the plot progression and mission variety were spot on.

And no because this is a game with serious, serious issues that run right to the very heart of its concept. Druckmann repeatedly stated that this was a game based on "the universal hatred inherent in man", a sensation he said he experienced after seeing a video of two Israeli soldiers being lynched by Palestinians. I believe the game is based on a flawed concept from the start, and one that was only ever going to lead to a grimdark exploration of pain and suffering that the ND gamemaking formula is completely unfit to explore. This is a story based on nihilism, a deep distrust that humanity has any power over its own descent into chaos. Every positive moment is very quickly curdled over the low heat of the game's insistence on showing the player how gooseberry fool people can be. This is completely in opposition to the first game, which felt special as it balanced its darkness against light.

This game, at its core, has very little to say. It's about the folly of revenge and the act of killing, and once it's played its hand it has nowhere to go. Over, and over, and over the game launches tut-tutting judgement at the player, throwing in their face the evils of its own characters and the world they inhabit. After 5 hours this is tedious. After 30 it is, to quote one review, maddening. The fact it does this by relying on brutal imagery and shock tactics rather than any deconstruction of the characters' own actions is just another mark against it.

From a pure storytelling point of view it also fails. Twice it pulls a fakeout ending, one coming very close to the halfway point, and both completely destroy the pacing. Although I loved the Rashomon thing it was doing, both sides of the tale were far too long to be effective. After 25 hours the narrative ends, and then we're thrown back into what feels like a playable epilogue which, again, is far too long. The character work and dialogue is still top notch, and the performances by the cast are extraordinary, but where the first game moved with intent and purpose this flails around desperately trying to get you to understand what it's saying.

It an incredibly uneven game, one that I both enjoyed and disliked intently. It's a series of the Walking Dead with a AAA budget, an attempt at analysing the human propensity for pain that fails simply as it doesn't have enough to say. It's a superbly fun action game with some incredible set-pieces and its a poster child for everything that's wrong with game development.

It's a mess, but one I can't say I didn't enjoy.

Time to revisit this too!

Tafdolphin wrote:What I'm expecting going off the marketing:

- Bury Your Gays tropes all over the shop, ie "Yes we have gay characters, YES we will immediately kill and or hurt one of them for cheap emotional impact"
- Lots of torture scenes where the camera lingers on painful stuff happening. Because as previously mentioned mature = grim
- I've heard there's a transgender character so I'm expecting them to be immediately deadnamed and a bunch of hamhanded metaphors linking transgenderism to all sorts of trauma.
- Perhaps a black person?
- Lots of women getting hurt.
- Pretty, pretty graphics

No one tell me if I'm right

- Pleasantly surprised about the lack of Bury Your Gays. Slightly miffed that the marketing was rather cynically designed to capitalise on it
- Yup, lots of horrible violence for little to no reason outside of shock value
- Lev is a mixed bag. He's deadnamed almost immediately, and pretty much serves as a magical helper whose main role is to break other characters from their suffering.
- Several, all villainous. The black sledgehammer guy at the end was a real wtf moment to be honest, and Isaac is perhaps the only character the game doesn't at least try to give a exculpatory backstory (yes I read all the notes, no it doesn't explain his motivations)
- The final fight is incredibly difficult to get through and is two emaciated women beating each other to death. Many, many scenes revolve around women being beaten or tortured.
- Yes!

The first game balanced darkness against light? Did we play the same game?

The central theme is that Joel is a selfish piece of gooseberry fool. The only reason he opens up to Ellie is as a way to handle his grief. The first game Joel's selfishness cost humanity everything, the second game Ellie's selfishness cost herself everything.

The first game was easily just as nihilistic. People love misremembering that game apparently, both the themes and the amount of violence.

I don't really think there's an argument about the fact this game is far darker than the first. Its own director specifically stated the first was about love and the second hate.

I didn't misremember.

But that wasn't really one of my major points tbh.

Tafdolphin wrote:My big question going in was whether it justified its existence as a sequel to a game with an almost perfect narrative arc, one that did not in any way require elaboration. Did it?

Tafdolphin wrote:Yes because the Abby sections were pretty much the game I'd have wanted, in a world catered only to me. A new story in the TLoU universe with great characters, a cracking central relationship and all the spectacle and surprises of the first. The escape through Haven was a genuinely jaw-dropping finale, and the plot progression and mission variety were spot on.

Tafdolphin wrote:This game, at its core, has very little to say. It's about the folly of revenge and the act of killing, and once it's played its hand it has nowhere to go. Over, and over, and over the game launches tut-tutting judgement at the player, throwing in their face the evils of its own characters and the world they inhabit. After 5 hours this is tedious. After 30 it is, to quote one review, maddening. The fact it does this by relying on brutal imagery and shock tactics rather than any deconstruction of the characters' own actions is just another mark against it.

From a pure storytelling point of view it also fails. Twice it pulls a fakeout ending, one coming very close to the halfway point, and both completely destroy the pacing. Although I loved the Rashomon thing it was doing, both sides of the tale were far too long to be effective. After 25 hours the narrative ends, and then we're thrown back into what feels like a playable epilogue which, again, is far too long. The character work and dialogue is still top notch, and the performances by the cast are extraordinary, but where the first game moved with intent and purpose this flails around desperately trying to get you to understand what it's saying.

Do you still think having finished it that the message is to chide the player for their violent actions? I really didn't get that at all.

For me there are two main themes of the game. The first is the futility of the cycle of revenge. This plays out as a kind of tragic narrative, where Ellie repeatedly fails to address her character flaws and in doing so loses everything - the final point of realisation coming too late for herself but sparing the non-tragic other protagonist Abby. The second theme is incomplete perspective and the limitations thereof. This is wrapped not in the story but the structure of the game, and where it being a videogame is integral - something that surprised and struck me all the more for the expectation of ND's games aping film more than using the unique features of their own medium.

The game does this by exploiting the forced perspective of the genre where the player is directly controlling a single protagonist. Playing as Ellie is expected and coming from the first game the player is already on her side. When Joel is killed the player shares her motivation for enacting revenge. What I as a player am looking forward to is the catharsis of Ellie getting her revenge and righting those wrongs, as I might expect from many other classic revenge plots. Moments of possible catharsis however are then repeatedly frustrated by in-game events as you continually arrive too late to yourself kill the members of the group. When you finally do get the chance to kill one of them yourself - Nora - you have learned enough as a player and it's presented in such a way as to not give you that. Instead that's the first real disconnect from Ellie, where you realise you are playing out her story, but you don't share her motivations. Ellie's actions become more questionable and the story becomes ever more tragic as it approaches the apparent conclusion.

The game then pulls its twist - that Abby is also a playable character, and you will play out the same three days from her perspective. This forces the player into empathising with Abby, a previously hated figure, in a way that a film or any other medium cannot. While the first half with Ellie opens with a strong player connection and then erodes it, switching you to playing as the once-villain does the opposite. Of course the story and in-universe perspective of Abby also contributes to showing her as a likable protagonist rather than hated villain, but it's the playing as her that primarily forces the player's connection to her.

I genuinely thought that was a) very well done, and b) wouldn't be possible in anything other than a videogame. One of the unsettling things reading about people's reactions to that game is how many people remained hateful of Abby and unwilling to accept Ellie as a flawed and tragic character rather than a hero. For all the talk of the themes being obvious they apparently really aren't for a significant number of people.

Right, it's about Joel's love for Ellie. But that love comes from a place of selfishness, thus it's still a nihilistic game.

Abby and Lev's relationship is far less insidious than Joel and Ellie's, it comes from a place of tolerance, honesty and understanding rather than a man using a surrogate daughter to unhealthily handle his grief.

Yeah it's slightly darker but not as much as people are making out, like I've said before, the game just asks you to look at the violence in a different context and question it, therefore it comes across as darker because it forces people to consider the consequences.

The first game just glosses over the violence and acts like it's justified because you're doing it for Ellie, when in reality 90% of the stuff Joel does to other people is abhorrent.

I always remember the scene in the hospital where he shoots the guy in the stomach multiple times and just lets him slowly bleed to death.

Also, I feel like you're glossing over a lot of the characters emotional development and what messages those changes convey. You seem to be focusing way too much on the overlying themes.

Last edited by Tafdolphin on Tue Oct 20, 2020 1:08 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I tried responding to your post Orange but my post broke the forum's formatting it seems. Anyway

It's interesting that I felt no connection to Ellie at all in this game, even in the beginning. It's said early on that her and Joel have fallen out, and it's hinted at fairly heavily (enough for me to assume anyway) that this was to do with her learning the truth. This then made Joel's death scene incredibly flat for me as...he deserved to die. The flashbacks, especially the museum, are great little moments but to me they were simply that. They didn't alter my inherent feeling that Ellie was in the wrong from the start.

I also thought Abby and Lev's relationship was more interesting than Joel and Ellie's here. Hell, even Abby and Owen's hit home stronger for me.

I agree about perspectives being a key device, and I really do love the dueling stories. I can definitely see the thought behind the mirrored protagonists and I think its intentions were good and, in gaming at least, pretty unique. But they fumbled the execution and instead of an interesting twist, knowing I was going to have to play all three days again as Abby was a pretty downer moment for me. It wasn't the last time I genuinely thought the game was ending, and interrupting a climactic event to rewind the entire story was at best badly thought out and at worst game breaking.

Do you still think having finished it that the message is to chide the player for their violent actions? I really didn't get that at all.

I don't think the game is chiding the player for their actions more than it is hellbent on making sure you understand what it's trying to say. Abby's half is at its worst when it presents characters, and dogs, you've previously killed in not so much a flattering light, but an almost angelic one. The bit with Bear was, as I mentioned, a real groanworthy moment and I'm not sure it's debatable to say it's there simply to grind into the player's eyes that they killed a lovely dog and should feel bad.

For me there are two main themes of the game. The first is the futility of the cycle of revenge. This plays out as a kind of tragic narrative, where Ellie repeatedly fails to address her character flaws and in doing so loses everything - the final point of realisation coming too late for herself but sparing the non-tragic other protagonist Abby. The second theme is incomplete perspective and the limitations thereof. This is wrapped not in the story but the structure of the game, and where it being a videogame is integral - something that surprised and struck me all the more for the expectation of ND's games aping film more than using the unique features of their own medium.

Again, I don't disagree. The problem for the first theme comes from the disconnect between the player and the characters. The player is repeatedly shown, through NPC dialogue, the names the NPCs shout when their comrades are killed and the aforementioned rubbing-in during Abby's section, that Ellie's quest is flawed. Hell, we know that from the very start as we as the player are aware that Joel had his death coming. Once the game has established this as a point it feels like you've guessed the final twist of the film and now need to wait until the characters catch up. Which, amazingly, Ellie at least never does until the final moments of the game. Abby cottons onto this much earlier, which is why I think her half is more satisfying: you're not mentally jumping on the couch screaming "it was the butler wot did it!" over and over.

The game does this by exploiting the forced perspective of the genre where the player is directly controlling a single protagonist. Playing as Ellie is expected and coming from the first game the player is already on her side. When Joel is killed the player shares her motivation for enacting revenge. What I as a player am looking forward to is the catharsis of Ellie getting her revenge and righting those wrongs, as I might expect from many other classic revenge plots. Moments of possible catharsis however are then repeatedly frustrated by in-game events as you continually arrive too late to yourself kill the members of the group. When you finally do get the chance to kill one of them yourself - Nora - you have learned enough as a player and it's presented in such a way as to not give you that. Instead that's the first real disconnect from Ellie, where you realise you are playing out her story, but you don't share her motivations. Ellie's actions become more questionable and the story becomes ever more tragic as it approaches the apparent conclusion.

As mentioned, I never felt this at all. I felt that Ellie was in the wrong from the start. Does this point towards a nuanced character with multiple interpretations? Sure. But it wasn't one that made me enjoy the game.

The game then pulls its twist - that Abby is also a playable character, and you will play out the same three days from her perspective. This forces the player into empathising with Abby, a previously hated figure, in a way that a film or any other medium cannot. While the first half with Ellie opens with a strong player connection and then erodes it, switching you to playing as the once-villain does the opposite. Of course the story and in-universe perspective of Abby also contributes to showing her as a likable protagonist rather than hated villain, but it's the playing as her that primarily forces the player's connection to her.

I genuinely thought that was a) very well done, and b) wouldn't be possible in anything other than a videogame. One of the unsettling things reading about people's reactions to that game is how many people remained hateful of Abby and unwilling to accept Ellie as a flawed and tragic character rather than a hero. For all the talk of the themes being obvious they apparently really aren't for a significant number of people.

Covered this, but I the twist came too late for me and felt like restarting a game that was already pushing its length. And you absolutely can achieve this in other mediums, it's a technique directly lifted from film for example and I've read several novels with split/opposing pro/antagonists. It's new to gaming yes, but like I say I think they fumbled the execution.

What you said about Bear is quite funny because Nakey Jakey said he loved that moment because it was optional and was something he chose to do rather than something that happened in a cutscene.

I loves this game in terms of its themes.and characters but it is absolutely not a well paced game.

I also found the Abby sections a slog to play, so many times the game forced you to play 2 hour long sections that could have easily been time skipped in a cut scene.

A game has never made me feel so exhausted as the second half of LOU2 did, the constant scavenging didn't help either.

jiggles wrote:Predictions:
- Pleasantly surprised by total absence of the Bury Your Gays trope. Complains about misleading marketing campaign selling the game on the trope
- Positive on Abby’s design
- mixed on lev. Mostly decent trans depiction, but falls short of handling it as well as he would have done
- rightly calls out the shitty handling of black characters
- Marvels at the quality of the game but wrings hands at human cost of crunch needed to make a game to this standard
- Dislikes Ellie’s arc. Thinks the game is way too long. Hates everything from the farm onwards. Is appalled that the idyllic life for a queer couple is picturesque conservative Americana

Tar how did i do :lol:

I watched his video and agree with the majority of his points. But I think he over-emphasises the player's ability to choose how to engage with the combat areas. The best option is clearly to clear each and every one.

jiggles wrote:
jiggles wrote:Predictions:
- Pleasantly surprised by total absence of the Bury Your Gays trope. Complains about misleading marketing campaign selling the game on the trope
- Positive on Abby’s design
- mixed on lev. Mostly decent trans depiction, but falls short of handling it as well as he would have done
- rightly calls out the shitty handling of black characters
- Marvels at the quality of the game but wrings hands at human cost of crunch needed to make a game to this standard
- Dislikes Ellie’s arc. Thinks the game is way too long. Hates everything from the farm onwards. Is appalled that the idyllic life for a queer couple is picturesque conservative Americana

Tar how did i do

Pretty well! The farm prediction was super interesting actually, and I actually never picked up on the imagery there (although I'm sure the whole thing was inspired by Christina's World):

The safest and most efficient method is to just sneak past, saves you resources and health, you gain nothing from killing people.

Trouble is the game doesn't make it clear which areas you can sneak past or the route to the next safe area so it's kind of impossible to do on a first play through.

Fade wrote:The safest and most efficient method is to just sneak past, saves you resources and health, you gain nothing from killing people.

Trouble is the game doesn't make it clear which areas you can sneak past or the route to the next safe area.

Hard disagree. The game gives you a variety of fun weapons, squishy animations and plenty of stealth kill options to temp you to engage with its very fun combat. Each area is designed with fighting in mind, and I think the fact that sneaking is sometimes simply not an option leaves engagement as the default. Not to mention each area has oodles of supplies that are often inaccessible until you clear every hostile NPC.

Tafdolphin wrote:
Fade wrote:The safest and most efficient method is to just sneak past, saves you resources and health, you gain nothing from killing people.

Trouble is the game doesn't make it clear which areas you can sneak past or the route to the next safe area.

Hard disagree. The game gives you a variety of fun weapons, squishy animations and plenty of stealth kill options to temp you to engage with its very fun combat. Each area is designed with fighting in mind, and I think the fact that sneaking is sometimes simply not an option leaves engagement as the default. Not to mention each area has oodles of supplies that are often inaccessible until you clear every hostile NPC.

I'm just talking about from a minmaxing perspective, not a game design perspective.

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

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