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

The game needed the prompt. You control Ellie when she’s stealthing around like Batman, so you control her when she does heinous gooseberry fool to people that don’t deserve it. A lot of people brushed off Joel’s torture scene or him executing Marlene in the first game because they didn’t make you do it. There’s a difference in the relationship between the player and the actions of a character when you’re in control vs when you’re watching a cutscene. When you have to pause and process it. Recognise that you don’t want to do it, you don’t want the character to do it, then be let down by the character that, no, they do it, they have to do it, it’s who they are. Just because you’re in control of them doesn’t mean you shouldn’t hate their guts.

I don’t remember the game ever telling you off for doing it though. You’re supposed to be uncomfortable with it but you’re supposed to be uncomfortable with all the violence. The ending of the first game was trying to highlight that Joel’s actions were dead wrong and selfish, but he couldn’t help himself. Just like Ellie can’t help herself. The whole theme of the game is hate, and you’re supposed to grow to hate someone you loved.

To say it’s doing any of this in an uninteresting way is, in my opinion, missing the point. The way you’ve come off of that moment sounds pretty much note perfect. If you forget about the urge to critique the work and just experience the emotions you’re getting from the story as a player (which will be mostly negative) you might find the whole experience is elevated.

Fade wrote:If anything there should have been a prompt for you to fight Ellie's rage but then it still wins out.

That’s honestly, without exaggeration, one of the worst ideas I’ve ever heard. Not only does it completely insult the intelligence of the player and fly in the face of the game’s entire structure by gamifying a character’s emotion, but it lays the responsibility of her actions at their feet! She only did this because you didn’t mash the button hard enough! YOU FAILED!

An absolute stinker. Find the nearest person and ask them to smack you.

Calm down mate.

Right but in those situations you still have the agency to not kill most people.

Every other time Ellie kills someone in a cutscene it's just her doing it. It's her emotions taking over effectively.

Button prompts like that are stupid because all they really are is a play/pause button. There's no interactivity there. Just reminds me of David Cage games where you're asked to move the analogue stick to pick up a pepper shaker it something :lol:

For me that moment was important in making clear that while you are playing as Ellie you aren't responsible for her actions. It was a significant moment in my wants breaking from alignment with Ellie's.

Remove the button presses and it would lessen that disconnect.

I'll probably finish this over the weekend, so I'll keep those points in mind.

Perhaps the game wasn't really telling me off and I was just feeling defensive over being made to do something I didn't want to, but I suppose it was an effective moment in, as ORKN said, making me realise that I could no longer excuse Ellie's actions as driven by survival and that we clearly didn't have aligned goals anymore. It's definitely an interesting idea to have control of a character who I don't want to be associated with.

Also, strawberry floating hell, some of the absolute braindead hot takes about the size of Abby's arms and Ellie not being pretty enough that I've seen around the net are more depressing than the strawberry floating game is. Absolute galaxy-brain takes, one and all.

'iT's tEh ApOcAlYpSe wHeRe's tHe GyMs aNd FoOd lol'

Literally the first thing you do as Abby is walk past a gym on the way to get multiple burritos you absolute dipshits.

One of the worst things that happened on outbreak day was all objects that could be used to lift like a bro, losing all mass. Everything became weightless. Also people are only capable of exercising in a gym, so nobody is able to do press ups or anything like that without a mirror to stand in front of.

A true vision of hell and a warning for us all.

I really wanted the firefly steelbook but honestly couldn’t justify £100 for a steelbook. Already have the game and I thought it was insulting to not even have a disc copy inside from Sony..

Finally finished the PS5 version of the Last of Us. Still hate the winter part with a passion. It’s my least favourite part of the game. The final hospital level though still feels and looks glorious.

Started to play through Left Behind but again I find that part quite repetitive and slow now. Was nice when it was new but I feel I’ve done it, I know the story and it’s just not compelling gameplay wise to go back through. Does look nice though with the updated graphics.

One thing I hated with the remake is that they didn’t include some of the gameplay mechanics from Part 2

I've only played Left Behind once but I remember liking the gameplay for introducing human/infected interplay in encounters? Granted that has probably just been bettered by the sequel now.

Skarjo wrote:
Also, strawberry floating hell, some of the absolute braindead hot takes about the size of Abby's arms

To be honest, I heard there was a trans character in the game that everyone was mad over and assumed it was Abby because of how swole she was. :fp:

aayl1 wrote:
Skarjo wrote:
Also, strawberry floating hell, some of the absolute braindead hot takes about the size of Abby's arms

To be honest, I heard there was a trans character in the game that everyone was mad over and assumed it was Abby because of how swole she was.

I made this mistake too :slol:

What are we like eh

The funniest part was seeing all the transphobes also making that mistake, showing up they clearly hadn't played the game despite getting mad on the internet about it

aayl1 wrote:
Skarjo wrote:
Also, strawberry floating hell, some of the absolute braindead hot takes about the size of Abby's arms

To be honest, I heard there was a trans character in the game that everyone was mad over and assumed it was Abby because of how swole she was.

Soon as I saw her I just wanted a hug.

You'd feel so safe!

Skarjo wrote:
aayl1 wrote:
Skarjo wrote:
Also, strawberry floating hell, some of the absolute braindead hot takes about the size of Abby's arms

To be honest, I heard there was a trans character in the game that everyone was mad over and assumed it was Abby because of how swole she was.

Soon as I saw her I just wanted a hug.

You'd feel so safe!

death by snu snu

Finished this last night.

I did really enjoy it, and the futility and bleakness of the ending really did hit home for me. But I did find that the game got in its own way a lot. Massive bags of ludonarrative dissonance hung off most of the gameplay, and I think it was overly long for how focused and specific the story and message were. Lots of lengthy sequences that didn't serve the narrative and were just there to pad out the gameplay hours in a way that felt repetitive and unnecessary after a while. It outstayed its welcome by at least 3 or 4 hours, and possibly more. There were many occasions where I simply thought 'this should be over now'.

Also, it's about as subtle as a sack of doorknobs to a toddler's face about the message which did make the fact that you were so often made to play in a way that the story itself is directly criticising a bit frustrating. I understand the central message that murder bad revenge bad maybe the real monster was the friends we made along the way etc, and I do get that it would have been difficult if not impossible to maintain this message if non-lethal approaches to the set pieces were possible, but I still couldn't shift the feeling that it was forcing me to do all these things that I didn't want to do and then telling me off for it. I don't know how you'd solve that problem, in fairness, but it still felt like a problem. Like, I do get that dishing out that much violence should feel uncomfortable and thus this game is probably achieving its goal in making you feel as such, but it was a little too gleeful in having you shiv like 30 mooks to death and then get all high and mighty about a couple of named character deaths showing that all those people you killed were, like, people with friends and family, man, and then immediately put you in another set piece to shiv another 30 mooks with no opportunity to do anything else.

But the final story beats were fantastic, and the ending was beautifully bleak. I do somewhat think that the whole franchise is probably better suited to a filmic format, so I'm even more excited for the rest of the show.

Skarjo wrote:it was a little too gleeful in having you shiv like 30 mooks to death and then get all high and mighty about a couple of named character deaths showing that all those people you killed were, like, people with friends and family, man

Just one point, all those “mooks” you mention are also named characters. Every human and canine enemy in the game has a name, and their comrades will call them by it! They’re not just soundbytes of “she got Jason!” or whatever played randomly when you go killing randos. If you kill Jason you kill Jason, and if you kill Steven you kill Steven, and the people that they were dear to react emotionally to it. It’s kind of amazing.

jiggles wrote:
Skarjo wrote:it was a little too gleeful in having you shiv like 30 mooks to death and then get all high and mighty about a couple of named character deaths showing that all those people you killed were, like, people with friends and family, man

Just one point, all those “mooks” you mention are also named characters. Every human and canine enemy in the game has a name, and their comrades will call them by it! They’re not just soundbytes of “she got Jason!” or whatever played randomly when you go killing randos. If you kill Jason you kill Jason, and if you kill Steven you kill Steven, and the people that they were dear to react emotionally to it. It’s kind of amazing.

Yea, well, Jason was a dick anyway.

Oh also it can get in the bin for all the stupid fakeout endings.

Felt like watching Lord of the Rings again being desperate for a piss and then endings just kept coming.

The problem with making you feel bad about killing NPCs in a game is that unless you spend a lot of time building them up or hit a particularly raw moment with the player then personally I'm not going to give a gooseberry fool. You put me in location X and tell me I have to get to Y but in the way are a bunch of one legged ballerina single mothers who have one day left before retirement and I'll strawberry float them up like the Doom Slayer. You can give them names and pets all you like and make them scream out the names of their ancestors when I blow their other leg off but they're still just digital characters I have no connection to and no reason to care about. It's like asking me to feel bad for clearing Tetris lines. I've never really understood the handwringing over it. If you then try and make me feel bad about all that killing especially when delivering as thickheaded message as duh violence and revenge are bad then as happened with TLOU2 I'm more likely to just bounce off it and wish you'd told a more interesting story.

The only kills that had the slightest impact were Norah in the hospital and the girl playing PSP. I'd have preferred to let both just be, but the game specifically makes you kill them which makes the delivery of the message after that even more alienating. Really if it had deliberately let you allow some to live the payoff would have been better as it makes your role in killing others more personal and the feeling becomes more 'these ones deserved to die did they...do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends. My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play in it, for good or evil, before this is over.'

I always thought of the name calls etc. as an immersion thing and not an emotional manipulation thing. It makes the combat more fun!

Maybe I really am the monster (for not taking the game to have any commentary on the possibility of me being a monster).

Skarjo wrote:Lots of lengthy sequences that didn't serve the narrative and were just there to pad out the gameplay hours in a way that felt repetitive and unnecessary after a while. It outstayed its welcome by at least 3 or 4 hours, and possibly more. There were many occasions where I simply thought 'this should be over now'.

I completely agree with unnecessary, maybe even most of the segments could be cut and the narrative would probably only improve from better pacing! I disagree with repetitive, at least in the encounter design, because I found there to be some new varation in approach in almost every one. Granted it is not required to engage with every encounter differently! Even as far as the epilogue (where it has undoubtedly been a slog and you want a narrative conclusion) the game gives you a new gun and sets up the chained infected that you can release and set against the raiders.

Skarjo wrote:I understand the central message that murder bad revenge bad ... But the final story beats were fantastic, and the ending was beautifully bleak. I do somewhat think that the whole franchise is probably better suited to a filmic format, so I'm even more excited for the rest of the show.

What makes the game so good to me, and better than the first which I agree would translate to film (and does, I'm enjoying the current show!), is the exploration of the player's empathy with the player character and how that restricted perspective shapes the player's understanding of the game world and their desires for what should happen in it. The whole protagonist flip and near doubling of game length against expectations was something I thought was great and isn't possible to replicate in film. Where the first game is gaming-aping-film (with incredible production values), the second game does something unique to games as a medium by exploiting that unique player/player-character relationship.

I'm curious as to how the show is going to handle the second season.

I wonder if they'll half and half it like the game or cut back and forth between Ellie and Abby like some other shows do split storylines.

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

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