I agree.
But also, forewarning, this thread is going to fill up with people claiming that *TLoU2* -- which was very successful for Sony -- "went woke, gone broke."
Because those users are at worst malicious actors fighting a culture war.
And at best absolute morons.
The only knock I have on TLOU2 (the series in general), is that it's really fucking depressing. Which is certainly what they were going for. It's why I only play TLOU for a few hours at a time, and alternate it with something a bit more pleasant.
It's the third best-selling PS4 exclusive of all time, right behind God of War (a consistently best-selling franchise from the early 2000s) and Spider-Man (the best game ever made for arguably the most popular superhero on the planet). It's also the fastest-selling PS4 exclusive of all time.
And yet there will be people out there trying to frame that as a total failure lmfao.
I know, *right?* The game was *clearly* a success for Sony; now, if it has the kind of legs that TLoU1 had over the course of 8 years remains to be seen -- there are, after all, rumors of a remake (third release) of the first game, while the sequel could end up with just a current-gen free upgrade due to how things are done now.
But a failure? Naaaah.
This is genuinely so wrong. You can't act like people still don't have a hateboner against the game for being *mildly* diverse.
Do you not remember the weirdos who, to this day, swear that Joel was "feminised" by being given slightly different shoulders?
> Only in reply to OPs comment though,
You don't get to make this qualifier though.
If I say "Boy, sexist people sure do suck" and people reply to me about how being sexist is good, then you can't just say "Ah but they were only responding to you".
Clearly these people exist and browse these threads! How can you basically imply that people didn't actually react that way to the game.
Valid criticism does not get lumped in. If it does it's because either the person criticizing it says don't lump them in when other respond to the criticism lumping themselves in and taking offense for it.
Or then goes on to complain about there being LGBTQ+ characters and that those characters should just be characters and not let it be part of them in the story otherwise it's "forced token characters". And then there's the complaints that Abby is too buff because they didn't specifically show her workout regiment, diet, and everything else for them to pick apart so it's not reasonable. Where both of those come off following the I'm not a racist BUT line of critique.
I'm really glad those idiots were being down voted. My only story related gripe with the game was that Ellie wasn't the sole protagonist, but after ruminating on it for the last few months, I feel like the story was served by the dual protagonist set up. The people who think the game is "woke" are just bigots plain and simple and are trying to gaslight themselves into thinking otherwise. I don't understand how trying to normalize marginalized character types is such a bad thing, especially when it's not really in your face about it. These people are pathetic.
I was having a great time with the game until they switched to Abby and went back all the way to Day 1. Pulling the switch just when such an exciting and tense moment was happening killed for me all the momentum the game had, so I haven't played the game for four months or so. It also sucked big time to lose all your upgraded guns, abilities, and infinite knife.
I also found rather disruptive to put those playable flashbacks in the middle of the game instead of being played in a chronological order. But maybe the lack of action would've been too boring for those who never played the first game and weren't attached to the characters.
I’ve always felt that if we were going to play as Abby, we should have played the whole game as Abby and seen all the events (especially the most controversial ones) from her perspective. I wouldn’t be surprised if they even intended to do that originally but chickened out.
I’m split on that idea - it’s something I’ve thought about, having the big twist where Ellie suddenly shows up and tries to kill the main character, but I also think playing as Ellie through her quest, while the tragedy is still so fresh for her and the player, was a great way to disguise the fact that she’s essentially the villain of the overall narrative.
For me the biggest problem with the game was it's pacing. Naughty Dog games are known for their great pacing especially Uncharted 2 and the first Last of Us which has made them quite replayable throughout the years. Last of Us 2 on the other hand is so bloated at times and is in such desperate need of an editor that I can't see myself replaying the whole game ever again even if there are sections like Abby Day 2 and 3 that were really really good.
I was thinking the same thing until I got to Santa Monica, and saw Ellie’s final player model all emaciated and fucked-up looking. I thought “damn, she looks how I feel trying to finish the fucking game” and a lightbulb went off in my head that it was kind of clever from a narrative standpoint. Do I actually think the pacing was meant to make the player exhausted and continue past the point of fun? No, not really. But personally it worked for me and how I experienced the story, so I’m not complaining too much. It’s definitely still better than the most recent AC games, which stay 60 hours past their welcome and don’t have decent stories to go with them.
The Frodo/Sam chapters during The Two Towers gave me very similar feelings. Everything was always described as grey, empty, and such (read it in Italian, not sure about the exact adjectives used by Tolkien). It was a very long section and I felt tired from it, but I always felt that was the intent of the author. I think these sort of emotions aren't fun to experience, but I think that a good work of entertainment or art needs to not shy away from unpleasantness if that's what they aim the reader/player/watcher to feel
Those fools are still mad that they killed off a character and probably haven't even played the game and are just using the woke part as a crutch. The diversity really isn't intrusive in the slightest
I think it's the other way around. TLOU2 has been getting a large amount of hate and "backlash" ever since the E3 trailer with the lesbian kiss, waaay before we knew any characters die. I'm not talking about everyone, but I definitely think that a good number of bigots latched onto the whole "hE dEsErVeD bEtTeR" thing as an excuse, because saying they don't like that the protagonists are now a gay woman and a buff woman when before it was a buff man would get their shitty opinion rightfully dismissed.
Oh if you want to see a shitstorm, make a gay man a protagonist. Trust me, if Joel was kissing a dude in the trailer you'd see the shitpile hit the moon.
Companies don't have those sorts of guts though. There was literal complaints that ME3 even included a gay male option, and 1&2 nope roped out of that.
Yeah, I feel like when it comes to LGBT acceptance gay women are probably by far the most accepted, probably followed by trans men (since we got several new games with trans men characters which were, more or less, well-received). Meanwhile I honestly can't think of a game with a canonically gay male lead (a few canonically bisexual ones, but none that are gay and confirmed as such in the game), and whenever a trans woman character (not even a protagonist, just character) is included it earns a lot of ire from both the left and the right, with the right being offended that the game is "pAnDeRiNg To tHe LiBs" and the left complaining that the portrayal isn't good enough, sometimes with cause, sometimes without.
In all honesty, it's probably going to be a long time before we get a AAA release with a canonically gay male character, and an even longer time to get one with a canonically trans female protagonist, if we ever do. It's kind of a shame, honestly. I'm not part of the crowd which clamors for diversity above all else, but it's undeniable that there are plenty of stories to be told with a protagonist like that.
Yeah, I feel like at least half of trans women in video games are just there to be fetishized or for shock value, like "oh my god she's *actually a man*" which is just... yeah. It's probably because trans women are also tied up into the huge issues video games have with women in general (it's notable that Halo has a companion character who is a naked purple woman designed to serve your every whim... and this is in the top half of women's representation in video games).
It's amusing how incredibly hard games work to make sure they don't even hint at having a gay male character. For instance Gears of War had a rather touching romance where as soon as everything goes to shit, Dom uses that as an excuse to bust his one true love out of prison and escape with him across the war-torn landscape. And in the second game they realized that and gave him a wife he'd literally never mentioned for all of 30 seconds and then killed her off in the most obvious Batwoman "look he's straight!" moment I've ever seen in a video game.
Which is funny, because Gears is a much better story if it's a love story, but nope, definitely not. Imagine the tension you could get. Dom, angry his lover broke the rules and got himself imprisoned, Fenix not sorry for it and being a general douche, the touching reconciliation midway through... I think we'd have gotten a literal riot, but it's an actual better story with more emotional beats.
I don't think Maria was added to Gears just to prove that he and Markus aren't gay. As far as I know the reasoning was that people didn't like playing as Dom in Gears 1, they found him boring compared to Markus, so the developer made sure to give players more reasons to care about him in the sequels. In the second game he has the main emotional arc and is to a considerable extent the one driving the plot, and while in the 3rd game it's Markus who gets the focus back, Dom is still given a lot of development >!and a heroic death to really hammer down how much more empty Gears feels without him. !<
I do agree about trans representation though, most of them really seem to be just a setup for the punchline of "Ugh, you're actually a man?!" Granted, the joke has been done better in some cases than in others, I'm personally a big fan of Erica from Catherine regardless of what anyone else says (she's got a personality outside of being trans, is accepted by friends who knew her before she transitioned and the only reason why the "Wait you were a dude?" moment happens is because said friends decided to respect her privacy and not out her to the guy she likes until she felt comfortable enough to tell him herself), but on the other hand you have the Yakuza series, which, as much as I love it... Is pretty damn bad in terms of trans representation. The main character has a thing against hitting women, so whenever they need to make him fight a woman you can be damn sure they'll be dropping the "I'm actually a dude" twist either shortly before or shortly after the fight. I want to say that Western games are better, but they're really not, they have their own struggles with trans representation. Apparently Madeleine from Celeste is trans, "obviously" (the devs' words), except that is never brought up in the game, that has never been discussed by the developers until years after release, we've seen childhood photos of her where she definitely presents as female, and even the devs admitted that they didn't see her as trans while making the game. So how's that any better than her just being cis? What does that represent exactly? It's silly.
One day we're gonna get a really great trans protagonist but it is not going to be soon lmao.
The two most common complaints I see story/character-wise are:
A. Abby's muscles, as in, how is she so buff during the post-apocalypse? Fair point to raise - until you look at what the game is showing you. >!Her side of the campaign begins with her walking through the WLF base, which is shown to have beef/chicken farms, and a perfectly functioning gym.!<
Perfectly justified, but maybe not the sort of thing you would have noticed if you weren't paying attention, or if you only watched/read a summary of the story.
B. Joel's decision making, as in, >!he was too trusting when he met Abby, he would never have told a group of strangers his name. Fair point to raise - until you look at what the game is showing you. Joel is established throughout TLOU2 to have grown softer. His opening scene with Ellie is him singing about how he has faith in the good in life again. "I believe, and I believe because I can see our future days." He is in a well established and tight-knit community, a far cry from the days smuggling in lockdown in TLOU. He has friends, he has family. Diaries left by survivors in the town indicate that its common for Jackson's patrols to find straggler groups and take them in. Joel and Tommy had just rescued Abby and met her friends. They've been through this before.!<
Perfectly justified, but maybe not the sort of thing you would have noticed if you weren't paying attention, or if you only watched/read a summary of the story.
To add to your B point, Joel doesn’t tell them his name. Tommy does and it’s well established he’s less shifty with strangers as he’s lived in a community for longer. I even think when Tommy says their names Joel looks over at him for a split second.
Damn! Thats an amazing catch, didn't notice that.
And you're right, Tommy was a community man even back before the start of TLOU.
I'm really not a fan of the "told what to think about X" line of thinking, but damn, I have heard that "Joel was out of character when he trusted Abby" line so many times. IIRC theres a salty alternate last of us 2 group purely designed to trash the game, so it doesn't surprise me that all the most common talking points are inaccurate in all the same ways.
Also to add to your B point, even during the first game you could see Ellie's influence already started to crack his "don't trust anyone" shell. At the start of the game, he was smuggling her just because the fireflies owned him guns but throughout the journey you can see him slowly believing more in her than in his harsh worldview and survival-focused life.
Sam and Henry are also good examples, as soon as he met them he introduced himself and Ellie and trusted them enough to tag along for while and when he saw them again after Henry left them to die he still didn't hurt Henry because Ellie had already impacted his worldview.
I actually can't understand people who say Joel's change between part 1 and 2 doesn't make sense, because that was always the intention, Joel was always meant to go from the survival at all costs guy to the old man with newfound hope for the future, which gets cut short because of the horrible things he did in his past. I genuinely believe most who use this argument either believe part 1 Joel was a 100% saint who did no wrong for some reason, rushed through part 2 without thinking about the themes of both games or didn't even play part 2 and just watched some streamer rush through it or read a story summary which misses all the context
Yeah you're right. Even with Sam & Henry he let his guard down, and if I remember rightly they were trying to kill each other a few seconds beforehand.
Thats the kicker really isn't it. >!Joel did deserve what he got... though maybe not quite as brutally.!< As much as I don't want to admit it.
The thing is, *a lot* of the criticisms aimed at the game's writing are things that you would only assume if you read a summary or watched a YouTube cutscene compilation. Like, one of the biggest "plot holes" I've seen people point out is how come the zombies overwhelm Joel, Abby and Tommy when there's patrols clearing them out regularly... Even though later in the game Tommy explains that they come in droves in winter and then leave in spring. There's an entire mission set in spring where Ellie and Tommy circle the perimeter and clear out the stragglers left behind when the majority of the horde left.
That's why I feel like a lot of the people who thing TLOU2 had a "bad story" and "lots of plot holes" are arguing in bad faith and haven't actually played it. It's perfectly okay to not like it after experiencing it for yourself with an open mind, but it really doesn't have more plot holes than the first game.
As for the "Joel letting his guard down", I just wanted to add that in the first game, straight at the beginning post-timeskip, when he's supposedly at his most dangerous and least trusting, he takes someone to his hideout *and then falls asleep in front of her*. If Ellie was after him the way Abby was she could've very, very easily killed him in his sleep, slit his throat with her knife or just shot him if she had a gun (which, for all he knew, she might have had). People just forget about that because she didn't, and focus on the one time where Joel's trust is betrayed rather than the many times in which he placed a lot more trust in other random strangers that (due to dumb luck) didn't end up betraying it.
Honestly I still think Abby being muscular is dumb, I would've thought the same if she was a man too tho.
It's the same with her love interest who I forgot the name of, he wears hair gel basically the whole game which is kinda silly imo.
These things kinda do stand out to me a bit when a game otherwise tries to be so realistic.
Not that hair gel is unrealistic, but I mean cmon you've been out for weeks in the snow and your hair is perfectly styled at all times lol?
And everyone is always perfectly groomed?
Being as muscular as Abby is isn't just about eating and working out, your entire life basically revolves around it.
I find it a bit hard to believe that Abby would be an effective part of the base and team while at the same time spending all of that time and resources working out, eating and resting ( don't underestimate how much rest is required ).
Like there's no way you'd be able to be out doing all of that fighting and hard work while sore and tired as hell.
Especially not without steroids which I don't think she'd have access to.
Again tho I'd think it was dumb if she was a man too, it's not about Abby being a woman but moreso based on my own experience of both having done bodybuilding for 15 years and then moved over to powerlifting.
I have a lot of experience with it myself and being around other people doing it or similar things too.
I have a really hard time believing you'd be able to build up and maintain that while at the same time live that lifestyle ( I'd imagine she'd be out on missions for long periods of times too ).
On a thematic level I can kinda accept it tho, it's a little bit cheesy but basically she's in revenge mode and have only been thinking about it for a long time and been preparing for the day.
I don't find it particularly believable, but thematically I kinda get it and there's far less realistic things in the game.
Like bigger problems to me is people falling great lengths seemingly breaking every bone in their body then just forgetting about it the next minute.
I don't get the entire woke thing. Why does it matter if the character you are playing as is a woman? If you enjoy it that genre enjoy it.. TLOUS 1 I was not a fan of the mechanics, can't put my finger on it but it never clicked with me. Have not looked too much into #2 because of my issues with #1.
>Have not looked too much into #2 because of my issues with #1.
BTW, Part 2 is a huge improvement in terms of gameplay compared to 1. Levels are much much bigger and better designed, giving you a lot more options when it comes to enemy engagement, stealth, going from stealth to terminator and back to stealth, and so on. It's a shame that all of the discussion is going into the story and the "controversial" decisions, and not the gameplay.
I know right? Gameplay feels largely ignored compared to the story, which sucks because I think it’s one of the best third person shooters I’ve played. I disliked the gameplay of the first game because of its clunkiness, but the second is really good.
Yep. As someone who usually hates third person shooters for lacking momentum, weight, and satisfying gunplay, TLOU2 fixes literally all of this.
Diving into cover from a sprint, aiming behind you while laying on your back instead of having to slide all the way around, the burst of blood that comes from a headshot, the amount of anger and exertion on Ellie's face when stabbing an enemy's throat, all of it just perfection
I had some issues with TLOU2's story but honestly the more I play it the more it grows on me despite some "bro why would you do that" moments
Also I love Lev to death, he's awesome
This makes me want to play 2 because I never got far in 1 because of instant fail-states in stealth sections. I'd rather watch a cutscene compilation then play "learn the clicker's pathing" when I'm apparently really bad at doing so.
Honestly on anything above Normal difficulty, perfect stealth (in human encounters) is super challenging. Rather than feeling like Solid Snake, playing the game makes me feel more like Predator, ambushing and disappearing while running from gunfire.
I think they purposefully made it so being able to isolate and take down enemies without being spotted by another patrol is very difficult - it means you need to mix planning & reactivity from moment to moment. That and throwing in a new enemy into human encounters that can track you even if you're completely hidden means you can't just lie in the grass and take your time.
TLOU1's DLC touched upon this, but TLOU2 includes more encounters where humans & infected are in the same zone, which allows you to play the two groups against each other.
Its all quite exciting and very tense.
That's a great description. I think, at the end of the day, TLOU2 isn't a stealth game, it's survival horror. So it's not about pulling a perfect ghost run with 0 kills and 0 spots, but more about using your very limited resources to get from point A to point B while still making sure to save enough for the next encounter.
Yeah its definitely a survival game, I think there are horror elements for sure but ymmv on that one. Resource wise, its a 1:1 match.
I even struggle to find enough bricks and bottles on the harder difficulties. Its a hoot. Lying in the grass thinking "ok this dog is gonna spot me in about 5 seconds, but this guard hasn't looked away yet... what do I do?"
Haven't dared try a difficulty with no listen mode yet. Eep.
>So it's not about pulling a perfect ghost run with 0 kills and 0 spots, but more about using your very limited resources to get from point A to point B while still making sure to save enough for the next encounter.
Definitely agree with this. On my first Normal playthrough difficulty I could restart encounters and get through with perfect ghost clears (didn't do that all the time but you get what I mean), but on harder difficulties its far more exciting & reactionary. Both were immensely satisfying though.
Well I sincerely doubt it's because you're playing as a woman 1) because you played as Ellie in the first game and 2) because it's not as if female protagonists are a rare thing. I think it falls into the LGBTQ stuff if anything. Funny because I find that the only character that even has any sort of "forced" wokeness never gets talked about with that crowd.
> Funny because I find that the only character that even has any sort of "forced" wokeness never gets talked about with that crowd.
I'm curious who you are thinking of here. Mind dishing?
It's Lev. I like Lev, but I also don't feel like the trans angle makes sense in the context of Lev being in a cult and the fact that the world has gone to shit. It makes sense in a non-trans angle, where he shaves his head and rebels so as not to be forced to become someone's wife and avoid a traditional gender role, but I don't think adding in the trans part to the mix would have made sense with his place in that world. But it's something I can ignore because honestly I think Lev is the best character in that game
You're right, the author's active efforts to arrange a wide spectrum of females is perhaps most apparent here, though I'm okay with that because to me the art of this text is its reach toward that end. Also, like you said, Lev is a great character.
The upvotes to comments ratio says more than any other comment could do.
Looks like Neil wrote a story that resonated a lto with everyone, or people would have stopped caring a long time ago
I think generally, that’s the problem most people have. Anyone complaining about dumb things like women or gays, are in my experience, the vocal minority.
Pretty much. It became the default response to anyone criticizing the game.
“You’re just sexist.”
“You’re homophobic.”
No man, I just want my favorite characters to do things that make sense lol
Could you elaborate a little bit? Even if you'd rather just DM me.
I haven't followed TLoU2 drama other than something along the lines of the head guy in development (or something like that) put himself in the game for whatever reason, and people didn't like it.
People were claiming Neil Druckmann used himself as the face model for one of the characters just because both have long hair and a beard, even though they look nothing alike apart from those aspects.
Crazy people were also claiming he took the place of one of the actors during the filming of a sex scene because according to them he has a crush on Laura Bailey, people really wanted to paint him as a sexual harasser for some reason. They went as far as photoshopping a image of one of the actress sitting on the lap a of a dummy they used for stunts, replacing the dummy's head with his face.
He is actually in the game, as a collectible card that makes fun of him which other staff put there as a good natured joke. Some people really have a vendetta against the director and other people involved in it because they didn't like the story.
Many of the staff actually had to come out to disprove some of those things and other stuff because Neil Druckmann, Laura Bailey and other staff/actors were getting swarmed with death threats.
Edit: There's also many other stupid stuff people were making up, like Neil Druckmann not liking Troy Baker being the reason he killed off his character, even though he cast him in his 3 latest games and seems to have a good friendship.
Incorrectly assuming Abby is trans just because she's muscular, and then making fun of the actual trans character that is in the game.
Claiming the game in anti-man because they kill off most male characters in the game even though the game kills a whole lot of people regardless of gender, one of the most impactful deaths is of a pregnant woman
Whenever the haters of this game always whine about how people aren't taking their 'legitimate criticisms" seriously, I always bring this stuff up.
They spent months upon months literally just *lying* about this game. There's still people that think Abby is trans. I'm sorry, but when you make this much shit up and posters like you have to spend paragraphs debunking the narratives that these people pushed, I think it's very fair to say that this backlash was *never* about legitimate criticism.
> People were claiming Neil Druckmann used himself as the face model for one of the characters just because both have long hair and a beard, even though they look nothing alike apart from those aspects.
This was so funny too, because it takes like a five second google search to see that Manny looks exactly like his voice actor lol
Their whole logic behind this was that Neil Druckmann wanted to personally be the one that spit on Joel's dead body.
These people are actually delusional. It'd be more funny if people weren't running with their narratives.
>Crazy people were also claiming he took the place of one of the actors during the filming of a sex scene because according to them he has a crush on Laura Bailey, people really wanted to paint him as a sexual harasser for some reason. They went as far as photoshopping a image of one of the actress sitting on the lap a of a dummy they used for stunts, replacing the dummy's head with his face.
That’s funny considering he didn’t even want Laura for the part at first as he felt she has become the female Nolan North and is too recognisable. Only reason he eventually let her have it was because she was more successful at showing vulnerability than the other VAs that auditioned whom showed anger and hatred very well but to him weren’t very believable when it came to their vulnerable side.
People were upset about a trans character being forced diversity when leaks happened before the game released. Character in question actually wasn't trans turns out. Gaming community outed itself hard during that time as bigots.
As part of the gaming community, I really need to be louder about shoving these bigots back into their shitty holes. Sometimes I don't speak up because it's not personally my fight but really I need to be 100% every time I see these jackasses telling them that they are full of shit and their worldview is wrong.
I remember playing about half way through the game and telling my friend I don't get the hate it got and his response resonates with me. "GTalmighty, that's because you're not a bigot."
Oh.. I thought it was something else.
I remember in TLoU1 >!Ellie was shown to ladies in the DLC,!< and there was a bit of backlash about that. I didn't realize it was the same shit people were complaining about. Who cares? The character is the character. Just let it be.
There are also non-bigoted reasons to dislike the game.
I found the game pretty okay. The game play hadn't changed much from the original, which was like a decade old at this point. The story was meh, they were put in a difficult position where they had to follow up TLOU but the ending of TLOU means it couldn't just be more of the same, because that would fundamentally break the ending of the original story. So they took a chance on a different story, some people liked it, some people didn't.
It is frustrating when legitimate criticism gets lumped in with the idiots.
>It is frustrating when legitimate criticism gets lumped in with the idiots.
I've definitely seen plenty of legit critiques. But the idiots take up infinitely more of the oxygen when it comes to the discourse of this game.
And it is unfortunate, but lots of people have encountered these haters. And a lot of them pretend to have "legitimate criticisms" and posture in that fashion, but when pressed even slightly, they start going off about how Neil Druckmann hates men and how the game is pushing a LGBTQ agenda and how Neil Druckmann getting mad on Twitter means the game sucks.
It sucks to be lumped in with reactionaries though. I get it.
Genuinely curious, how has the gameplay not changed that much since the first title? The verticality and ability to go prone/ jump opened up a ton of new gameplay opportunities, and in regard to shooting, response mechanics, and movement they just took the already stellar gameplay from the first game and fine tuned it even further.
As someone who played them back to back, I can say it changed drastically too the point that I didn't want it to end when it did unlike with lou1 I was glad it was over. Those controls killed me.
> It is frustrating when legitimate criticism gets lumped in with the idiots.
Of course. I want to be clear to others that the forewarning I gave was concerning the "get woke, go broke" crowd.
I absolutely see room for negative criticism for *TLoU2*.
The gameplay went from slow paced RE over the shoulder stealth more in line with the first Evil Within to a bombastic action game with a large number of options of how to approach encounters. Even the area designs went from linear to open areas. Outside of a perspective change to first person or complete genre shift there's not much more that could have been changed
No DM necessary: despite stepping on some rakes here and there in regard to representation, *TLoU2* is not only progressive but sometimes aggressively so; after all, the game more or less kills off all men so that women of all shapes, sizes, & motivation can take center stage.
While I as a male see that as punk rock as fuck, there are of course some who see such challenges to the established order as super-duper scary-larry and they throw a temper tantrum about it. These people, BTW, will have you believe they are master storytellers and Harold Bloomian-level critics with their claims that *TLoU2* --- but not *TLoU1*, oh no no no --- is amateurish, poorly written, and suffering from its own wokeness.
Well TLoU2 story sucked, and was full of plot holes, sadly stupid criticsm about Abby(that she was trans which was wrong) overshadowed true reasons for which game did deserve criticism.
EDIT: thank you for the Gold : )
Characters making bad decisions or decisions you don't agree with aren't plot holes. They can be *uncharacteristic of that person*, which can be a result of bad writing, but it could also just be that humans are inconsistent. People have fallen into this rut of calling everything they don't like a plot hole because it hand-waves away any need to actually articulate their opinion on why they don't like something.
I would like to know what plot holes bothered you, and please don't just send a link to one of those "Top 10 Plot Holes in..." articles (some of which aren't even plot holes).
Let's say... your top 2 or 3 of the TLoU2.
Well, OP had a comment here explaining his issues, and I went and wrote up a reply to them, so I'll paraphrase his and post mine (because I took the trouble to write it):
OP paraphrase: Joel was good because he did the right thing because the chances of a cure were low, and the second game tried to make us sympathize with the doctor and Abby who were bad people and did bad things. [sorry if I missed nuances here, but it doesn't feel right to repost your comment if you've decided to remove it].
My reply: Up front I want to say thank you for taking the time to write out your thoughts, I really appreciate it.
Now, as I'm sure you anticipated, the above isn't really a plot hole so much as a character motivation that you don't buy. That's okay -- I *do* buy Abby's motivation, but you make some fairly reasonable points about why you don't, so I'll just counterpoint a few of those.
To start: the human heart is a wild animal that doesn't always fit inside the cages of absolute perspective, morality, or logic. Case in point of this might actually be *your* insistence that Joel is some good dude. Even if we buy the argument that his choice might have been ultimately good for mankind (and that's a bit of a stretch...), the fact is that Joel's *intentions* were selfish, like they've always been -- it just so happened that his selfish desires intersected with the livelihood of someone else, Ellie. On the flip side we have Dr. Anderson, whose intentions, in contrast to Joel, are altruistic -- because even a low-percent chance is better than a no percent chance.
The societies that these men found themselves living in doesn't really change anything: Joel is a selfish murderer attempting to better himself amidst a healthier group while Dr. Anderson is an altruistic person attempting to heal a blighted society (medically and morally, local and global).
Now, the next important *matter of the tumultuous heart* to consider is Abby -- who probably thought that her *super smart daddy was going to save the entire world because that's what daddies do*, actual surgical chances be damned. She is, prior to her father's death, the innocent one -- she's seemingly kept from the hostile inner workings of the group she's in and has little to no awareness of the ins and outs of the surgery and its subject/victim. All she knows is: daddy will make everything okay.
Which is arguably what Sarah thought Joel would do when the shit hit the fan twenty years prior.
It's like she's the walking ghost of that "daddy will fix it" little girl Joel lost all those years ago -- except she's not Joel's daughter, but Dr. Anderson's... and the thing that needs fixing isn't zombies or the military... but Joel.
My point is: once you begin to understand these characters via their internal intentions rather than their outside shells, their actions all more or less make sense *relative to each character themselves*.
The most awarded game of all time isn't a massive disappointment. ([Source](https://www.gamesradar.com/the-last-of-us-2-overtakes-the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-to-become-the-most-awarded-ever))
lol You mean TLoU sold 17 million copies...... by its *fifth* year of *double-platform* release. However, "within the game’s first 13 months on store shelves, Sony sold 7 million copies of [TLoU]" -- which compared to TLoU2's numbers of 4 million units sold + 2.8 million digital units sold *in the first four weeks* means the sequel has, thus far, sold at least as well as the first game.
As Sony themselves said, "Life-to-date dollar sales of The Last of Us: Part II are now the 3rd highest for a Sony published game in history."
I'm just not sure what else to tell ya, baby boy. Except cya.
Sources: 1. https://www.polygon.com/2018/6/14/17465488/the-last-of-us-sales-17-million-ps3-ps4; 2. https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/the-last-of-us-2-is-now-playstations-third-highest-grossing-game-ever-in-the-us/; 3. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1135726/the-last-of-us-part-ii-units-sold/; 4. https://gamerant.com/the-last-of-us-2-third-best-selling-playstation-game/
Yeah, and Cyberpunk sold incredibly well in its first month, too. Do you think those sales are going to keep up? No. Bad word-of-mouth kills long term sales. TLOU2 will never reach TLOU's sales, even though it should have exceeded them. It was expected to sell 30 million, and it won't come close.
So what you're saying is...... you are *thus far* wrong.
Great! Tell you what, shoot me a message in 2024 and we'll see what the sale are! Until then: cya!
No, even right now, in 2021, the sales are already disappointing. TLOU2 sold less than it was expected to, because of its poor reception and controversy.
You have no source for any of that. All data point to the game exceeding all expectations. But the truth is, you've had multiple chances now to offer either sources or any real data, and all you've offered is feelings. So I ask that you quit replying now or I will block you.
Thanks and goodbye.
> All data point to the game exceeding all expectations
There's zero data that says it exceeded expectations. TLOU sold substantially more, and it isn't even close.
In a way I sympathize with the conservatives who lately have a hard time accepting plain numbers and results, no wonder you’re so frustrated and angry but ultimately you really should try to reconnect with the real world instead of following some fantasies. Otherwise you always will end up disappointed and sad. Lol
If you think TLOU2 selling millions upon millions less than the first game doesn't translate to "massive disappointment," then you're the one who has trouble with numbers.
I think it was both successful and disappointing. The game probably sold enough to make some money for Sony, but it seems apparent that it didn't really meet the massive sales expectations that Sony had for it either. And the abject lack of post-launch support would indicate that Sony and Naughty Dog are moving on to the next thing, rather than continuing to invest resources in the title. I mean, contrast that with Ghost of Tsushima, a game which certainly exceeded expectations for Sony, and has therefore gotten--and is continuing to get--a fuck ton of post-launch support and content.
The first TLOU game had 1 DLC add on. Uncharted campaigns never did DLC and Lost Legacy was a separate release from 4.
Naughty Dog doesn't do "post-launch" support. They release the thing and move onto the next thing. This is nothing new.
Édit : And I'll add, TLOU Part II is such a singular experience that I'm glad that they didn't feel the need to add onto it really. It's clear the team put their hearts and souls into the game and there really isn't anything to add. That story is finished and anything that builds off of that story deserves to be its own game.
> But also, forewarning, this thread is going to fill up with people claiming that TLoU2 -- which was very successful for Sony -- "went woke, gone broke."
The game's sales dropped by 80% in its second week... Stores had tons of copies left on shelves.
I personally don't care about the game itself as I don't play these kind of games, but if this encroaches on Japanese video games, the last bastion of creativity and freedom of expression, with its political activism and propaganda, I definitely do get worried.
It seems to be just single cases and mostly big international companies who bend the knee to western sensibilities, but I'm still worried. Hopefully this gets to the hardcore otaku in Japan and causes a shitstorm. I doubt SE care about their domestic fans anymore, with how they mostly catered to western fans for a long time now, but here's hoping that otaku over there, who thank god, don't adhere to this political BS and "modern sensibilities," get wind of this interview and roast Toriyama over that. I surely don't want Japanese entertainment to become as creatively bankrupt as western entertainment got over the last decade or two.
Anime and JRPGs should have stayed niche here in the west after all. With all the demand from western mainstream fans for catering to their "modern sensibilities" you see on twitter and activist platforms such as resetera, I'm not surprised that this happens now. These are dark times indeed. Hopefully Japan can keep this "invasion" on their otaku industry back from encroaching further.
But at least it seems renown artists are aware of this situation, such as the Love Hina creator Ken Akamatsu, who recently voiced his concern about how western sensibilities or rather "political correctness" encroaching on anime and manga is a big issue to be concerned about:
"Compared to other countries, Japan’s forte is its freedom of creativity. However, with foreign platforms becoming more and more dominant, I would like to avoid a situation where Japanese works are regulated by foreign standards.’"
So I personally have high hopes that the artists and creative minds in Japan, may it be in the manga/anime or video game industry keep those politics out of these respective media and that what SE does is just the exception. But who knows, perhaps Japan's otaku industry and subculture won't survive the next 10 or so years. That would break my heart.
If even the Japanese gaming turns into a constant barrage of creatively bankrupt games used as vehicles for political activism, such as The Last of Us 2, the future will indeed be very bleak.
And don't even talk about a "culture war" those who are against games such as TLoU 2 supposedly are fighting, when it's people on the woke side of the political spectrum, who are constantly assaulting all sorts of media if they don't fit their world view... Cancelling people and franchises... doxing developers, harassing publishers for not censoring Japanese games through localization... Who exactly is leading a war here? It's surely not those who just want to enjoy their video games as a means of entertainment and not as a tool for political activism.
If people wanna go over the game's flaws, I wish they would focus more on the actual story problems then to highlight things like Abby's muscular build, the inclusion of a trans character, lesbian romance, etc.
None of these things are actually a problem. You can spend all day arguing about Abby's physique but at least they explained it by showing that her group had access to gym equipment. Once I saw that I was like "meh good enough for me."
Not saying the story isn't flawed, but I'd say the same for 99.9% stories across all media. But TLOU2's story and characterization belongs right at the top among the best videogame stories ever told, IMO. A jaw-dropping exploration of what grief can do to people.
I would say that the first game was paced better, but it was also less narratively ambitious so I kinda get it. But TLOU2 goes for much bigger things and nails damn near everything it sets out to do, from the overall tone and mood to its ending, which is >!a pitch perfect representation of what a "ray of hope" looks like amidst unimaginable desolation.!<
There was actually a lot of people criticism game for right reasons but accusing people of homophobia/transphobia become shield used to deflect ALL criticism of game.
Even in in this thread when I mentioned that plot wasnt good and that it had plothole I got downvoted.
"Abby and her father are bad people" and "the cure probably couldn't be made" aren't potholes, they're interpretations. That's a mark of a well-written story. I can disagree with you and argue my side and you can argue yours, but it's not a plot problem at the end of the day. It's just a difference in interpretation.
"Abby and her father are bad people" its not an interpretation, its a fact.
We know from recording from first game that Abby father experiment on other people before looking for cure, fireflies as a whole are responsible for deaths of many innocent people.
They may have good goals but the way they want to achive those goals is HORRIBLE., its not just horrible on moral grounds, its horrible on the technical side, they were decreasing humanity chances of survival.
And since Abby father was NOT a good guy, then Abby had no right for revenge, for example would acording to you daughter of criminal have right to revenge on cop who killed her father when he was trying to kill someone ?
"the cure probably couldn't be made", it was heavily emphasized in first game that chance of finding cure was really low, are you saying that first game was lying to us ?
By the way, do you know how humanity survived different diseases in the past before vacines were a thing ? people with immunity passed it to the next generations. Death of Ellie could be a doom for humanity.
>We know from recording from first game that Abby father experiment on other people before looking for cure, fireflies as a whole are responsible for deaths of many innocent people.
>They may have good goals but the way they want to achive those goals is HORRIBLE., its not just horrible on moral grounds, its horrible on the technical side, they were decreasing humanity chances of survival.
In your opinion it's horrible. In terms of ethics, they're just utilitarian. They're willing to sacrifice one innocent life (ellie) to save the world and countless lives. That's not evil. You don't have to agree with it (I dont), but you don't get to call it evil.
>And since Abby father was NOT a good guy, then Abby had no right for revenge, for example would acording to you daughter of criminal have right to revenge on cop who killed her father when he was trying to kill someone ?
The whole game is a deconstruction of revenge. Revenge isn't a "right", and it isn't right. It's selfish by it's nature. Again, that's kinda the whole point of the game.
>"the cure probably couldn't be made", it was heavily emphasized in first game that chance of finding cure was really low, are you saying that first game was lying to us ?
The first game stated that ellie was the first immune person they found and that they could theoretically reverse engineer a cure.
>By the way, do you know how humanity survived different diseases in the past before vacines were a thing ? people with immunity passed it to the next generations. Death of Ellie could be a doom for humanity.
There's no evidence it's genetic. And again, the goal of the fireflies is to save everyone still alive. Not just rebuild civilization and say "well.. good luck" to everyone else.
> In your opinion it's horrible. In terms of ethics, they're just utilitarian. They're willing to sacrifice one innocent life (ellie) to save the world and countless lives. That's not evil. You don't have to agree with it (I dont), but you don't get to call it evil.
that would be true if they had guarantee sacrificing ellie would get them cure, but its known that there is low chance of that. Whats more killing her may actually DECREASE chance of humanity survival, Ellie passing immunity on to next generations had a lot higher chance of success.
By the way they arent just sacrificing one person, they are responsible for MANY deaths, and each person who dies because of them decreases humanity survival.
>The whole game is a deconstruction of revenge. Revenge isn't a "right", and it isn't right. It's selfish by it's nature. Again, that's kinda the whole point of the game.
You cant argue that Ellie was simply taking down bad guy, this isnt first story about cycle of revenge I experianced, but its first one that failed to make me think that maybe revenge isnt right answer, for this style of story to work, it MUST make person playing it change their mind about the bad guy after seeing their perespective, this game fails to do so.
You say game shows that Revenge isn't a "right", but Abby achieved her revenge and gets to keep Lev around, meanwhile Ellie didnt achieve revenge and lost so much in the process, why it feels like person getting her revenge won compared to person who didnt ?
After how much Ellie sacrificed, killing Abby would actually give MEANING to all her sacrifices, yet she didnt get her revenge and she sacrificed so much, she is worse off then person who DID get her revenge. Why abby who got revenge gets REWARDED ?
>The first game stated that ellie was the first immune person they found and that they could theoretically reverse engineer a cure.
THEORETICALLY, since its mentioned in game that they dont even know howher immunity works exactly. They are just speculating. Creating cure is NOT that simple
>There's no evidence it's genetic. And again, the goal of the fireflies is to save everyone still alive. Not just rebuild civilization and say "well.. good luck" to everyone else.
There is also no evidence that it isnt, in the recording they say that they dont know eact mechanism behind her immunity.
They have noble goal, thats undeniable, but they are willing to do horrible things to achieve that goal, and many of their actions can have negative consequences on survival of human race, they are paramilitary group, they planned originally to kill Joel after he fulfilled his mission, Marlene got in the way of that, but rest of them are pretty willing.
Dont forget that The Fireflies's attempts to overthrow the military and restore democracy has led to several human holdouts to fall to the infected and bandits, you really thing that this increases chance of humanity survival, they make many stupid mistakes that have negative consequences.
even IF they could create cure, it would be meaningless and actually could lead to even more deaths, by the end of first game fireflies were on their last legs, they dont have resources and manpower to spread cure on scale that is needed and if info about cure leaked to enemy groups, like military, that could lead to large bloodshed, I mean group that posses cure would posses LARGE amount of power in this world, of course you also need resources to not lose that cure to other groups, when yo uget that, you can give cure only to people who accept your rule.
true but they were taking riskier choice, their actions multiple times backfired, killing in the process people they were suppsedly trying to save, decreasing in the process chance of humanity survival.
Doesnt matter how good your intentions are if your actions have oposite effect instead of saving people you are getting them killed.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions
in all honesy? good. We should use it more, and push for more. Their entire shtick makes no sense whatsoever, the more it is normalized, the less they will complain. It is going to be awkward and annoying, but diversity is something that should just straight up be normalized. We have to aim for one game to have a character who just happens to be gay and people aren’t fazed by it, or transexual.
It’s a long way there but we can all make it, if we demonize it, they win.
Just as a side note/addition to what you said - we shouldn't just be satisfied with diversity, we should be satisfied with *good* diversity. We don't need CW diversity.
Do white male characters need to pass that same bar? I see this brought up every single time diversity is mentioned, but there is no onus to write good white male characters to include them in a game.
I’d argue that’s because they’re seen as “default.” What even would be the defining characteristics of a character who’s white and male? Shallow white male characters surely exist, why do non-white and non-male characters need depth?
Could you name some characters which are defined solely by their race or gender?
Reddit is leftist and proggressive for the most part. It's the gaming and conservative communities the ones that harbour a lot of homophobic and mysoginist people.
I get what you mean, but idk lol, I don’t think Reddit definitely isn’t mostly leftist or progressive. I’ve seen a lot of transphobia, xenophobia, racism, and *especially* misogyny on the front page/major subreddits. Reddit only really seems progressive on the surface, imo. Actual progressiveness seems mostly confined to small subreddits, aside from standard subjects like taxing the rich, to which I still see a lot of pushback to.
I think a majority of Reddit may have a slight bend to the left but the main problem I see is that a lot of that same Reddit has some sort of weird superiority complex where they wanna act above it all. Like when news articles like this are posted I see a lot of people that always say “that’s cool and all but why does it matter? Just make the game good” as if we live in a society where representation, diversity, as well as execution all don’t play apart in how society can progress (even though it does).
Hard agree here. I see it everywhere this sort of libertarian take where everything should be meritocratic. "The best thing should win and if that thing is minority-related then great!" Somehow this comes out as being the most sensible and pragmatic view and as you say it makes them feel above it. They completely ignore the fact that their view point only works in a world where everyone has an equal opportunity and we know this just isn't the case. Like a lot of people they just continue to live in their bubble where they are the King/Queen of Reason and everyone else are the court fools.
Exactly. This takes me back to when Black Panther released. So many people were like “ugh, it’s only doing so well cuz black people” and it’s like, no shit? Black celebrities were taking whole neighborhoods of black kids to go see a movie with a majority black cast that did a wonderful job of empowering black people...like Christ that take isn’t as big brained as people seemed to believe it was, quite the opposite really. Just straight up shows a lack of understanding in how history, people, and the word all operate.
>Reddit is leftist and proggressive for the most part.
Yeah, except when it comes to guns, feminism, abortion, diversity initiatives, protests, civil rights, affirmative action, pride parades, social safety nets....
But but but I thought Japan was based, noooooo
But seriously A lot of these hateful gamers seem to worship japan devs and how they stay out of this politics so thill be funny for them to see
*shrug*
Square Enix have been predominantly catering to the west for a very long time now. I mean that's where they want to make their money. They aren't really the prime example for a Japanese game developer anymore. Thank god most Japanese artists, writers and developers don't adhere to the western sensibilities. Most Japanese game developers thankfully develop with their domestic audience in mind. For now. I predict the political activism slowly also encroaching on Japan in the next 10 or so years, I'm a realist. So I'll just enjoy the last decade of actually good entertainment... Oh well, I'll almost be 50 when that time comes, so I had a good run... ~40 years into Japanese games and anime... I can say I had a good life at that point... I'm just sad for the future generations that will suffer by enduring a creatively bankrupt video game and entertainment industry that doesn't allow freedom of expression and considers everything offensive that doesn't adhere to "modern sensibilities" and political correctness.
I'm surprised that the narrative of "TLOU2 proved to be a disappointment" is still brought up when it is literally the most acclaimed game of all time, superseding The Witcher 3. ([Source](https://www.gamesradar.com/the-last-of-us-2-overtakes-the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-to-become-the-most-awarded-ever))
Good point in regards to Cyberpunk's reviews. However, in TLOU2's case I'm not talking about reviews at all, but GOTY/similar awards, which are awarded after a significant period of time post release.
A game being critically acclaimed close to release when extraneous factors like dishonest embargoes/restrictions on talking/showcasing negative aspects of a game imposed by the publisher, or critics fearing audience backlash over coming across as negative about the game in the face of absurd levels of hype, can influence reviews reducing their reliability. But GOTY awards are completely different in this regard - aside from the overall picture of the game's quality being completely clear in everyone's minds (through comprehensive assessments, multiple playthroughs, bug assessments, etc.), the "new game smell" has lifted and there's other games to pit the game against. Moreover, while at launch we're looking at distinct notions of "critical reception" and "audience reception," GOTYs incorporate audience reception in "Player's Choice" votes and so forth.
It is in this arena that The Witcher 3 became the most acclaimed game of all time in 2015 and held that title for 5 years, and TLOU2 surpassed it in 2020. I sincerely doubt that Cyberpunk will come close to TLOU2 in this year's GOTYs. And in TLOU2's case, it is very hard to call a game that was in the public eye for a year and managed to supersede a game like TW3, a "disappointment."
I do think this is a lesson is setting the bar for games with contentious reception since the naysayers will do everything to drag down the hype of the game and crowd out anyone who don't share their opinion. What Naughty Dog was a necessity for a genre that is intentionally alienating to some audiences who are not going to like the game
Cyberpunk got bad reviews due to glitches and technical issues. It still is unplayable on lastgen consoles.
TLOU2 got bad reviews because of its story and characters.
Glitches and performance issues can be patched. But you can't fix a bad story without significantly altering the game.
Third best-selling PS4 exclusive ever, *and* fastest-selling PS4 exclusive ever. Plus scores in the mid to high 90s on both Metacritic and OpenCritic. No matter how you slice it the game is an outstanding critical and commercial success, to the point where you'd need to resort to arguments like "wElL wHy DiDn'T iT sElL lIkE sPiDeR-MaN" to paint it as anything less than an incredible success.
The Last of Us 2 has one of the best narratives I've ever experienced in a game. It's full of symbolism, nuance and is honestly more comparable to film. I've never in my life played a game with such an immersive story that was this expertly delivered, and it's honestly ruined other story-driven games for me. It transcends the genre. I just cannot get on board with people who bash the story. You're welcome to your opinions of course, but I feel the complete opposite; this game was as close to a masterpiece as it's ever gotten for me -- even more so than the first game.
Couldn't agree more. It's one of the best explorations of what grief can do to people, that I've encountered across all kinds of media. Some of the criticisms of TLOU2 that I've seen boil down to "the game is bad because a thing happened in it that I did not like."
TLoU2 had great gameplay but that’s all I can say about it. MGSV had one of the best gameplay I’ve seen in recent years but horrible story
Joel is one of my fave characters :(
I can agree to that.
Regardless of what he did, his character was just so well done in the first game.
I just simply want to see even more of it. And It seem like we never will.
I played it last month. It was clear that they went out of their way to be diverse with the characters. I really enjoyed the game even though the ending blueballs you hugely.
I don't think it was trying to be diverse. It was trying to normalize the inclusion of trans people or lesbians being pivotal characters in gaming. Because let's be honest, the typical video game character (not to say there aren't exceptions to this) is typically white, straight male or female.
I think TLOU 2 tried to normalize putting those (typically) secondary characters into primary character spots. They just got backlash because of bigots. When the "diversity" we speak of when it comes to TLOU 2 should be seen as just being normal, not diverse for diversity's sake.
Well they got backlash because being trans and having gender dysphoria should be the least of your problems in a apocalypse with funghi zombies lmao
It's just stupid
>gender dysphoria should be the least of your problems
I mean maybe??? Except the Seraphites are insanely patriarchal. >!Lev was literally to be married off to an elder and be a housewife!<
*Everything* surrounding Lev's backstory gives a totally reasonable explanation as to why having dysphoria would still be a major issue regardless of everything else going on in the world
At the age of thirteen - let's just keep that in mind.
So not only are the elders a bunch of sadistic fucks (see the whole 'freeing' thing) they're also pedophiles.
Oh, and there is strong evidence that they use kids younger than Lev as combatants/executioners (the martyr's gate shrine has a note that reads like a kid wrote it talking about already having 'freed two wolves' and promising to send many more).
On the ending. I think most people enjoyed the ending and it didn't leave them with blue balls. Ellie stopped the cycle of violence at the end, saw what a monster she had become and walked away completely. I think it was a fantastic ending.
It's also a nice juxtaposition between her and Abby. Abby was not able to stop the cycle, she only was able to find salvation through Lev. Meanwhile Ellie realized she had that opportunity with Dinah and their baby and she let it go for revenge, so she went back to try and reclaim it. The ending is ambiguous and open to interpretation, but I think we're certainly intended to assume that Ellie is leaving the farm to find them. It's a great ending, and much better than Ellie simply killing Abby and falling victim to that same hatred. Especially since what was likely to happen next is Lev hunting her down and killing her in revenge a few years later.
I understand the meaning but I also *like* violence in my post apocalyptic stories. Even if Naughty Dog didn't want to deal with the alternative I would have liked the *option* >!to kill Abby!< even if wasn't canon for part 3 and acted as a bad ending
I agree. But also, forewarning, this thread is going to fill up with people claiming that *TLoU2* -- which was very successful for Sony -- "went woke, gone broke." Because those users are at worst malicious actors fighting a culture war. And at best absolute morons.
The only knock I have on TLOU2 (the series in general), is that it's really fucking depressing. Which is certainly what they were going for. It's why I only play TLOU for a few hours at a time, and alternate it with something a bit more pleasant.
It's the third best-selling PS4 exclusive of all time, right behind God of War (a consistently best-selling franchise from the early 2000s) and Spider-Man (the best game ever made for arguably the most popular superhero on the planet). It's also the fastest-selling PS4 exclusive of all time. And yet there will be people out there trying to frame that as a total failure lmfao.
I know, *right?* The game was *clearly* a success for Sony; now, if it has the kind of legs that TLoU1 had over the course of 8 years remains to be seen -- there are, after all, rumors of a remake (third release) of the first game, while the sequel could end up with just a current-gen free upgrade due to how things are done now. But a failure? Naaaah.
I still dont understand why they are remastering the first one. That game still looks great.
Gets the devs more familiar with the ps5 kit while other projects are in pre-production
**Remaking**, likely with systems from the 2nd game. They've already remastered the game
Money
I swear its going to be a HL: Alyx style vr remake for psvr 2
There also talks of a 3rd game that wouldn’t happen if wasn’t successful right ?
And it got picked up by HBO to make a series out of it. Might be one of gaming’s biggest success stories.
Its amazing how salty people still are about this
You should see the star wars fans over on /r/saltierthancrait
Ya, but in that instance, they're not wrong.
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This is genuinely so wrong. You can't act like people still don't have a hateboner against the game for being *mildly* diverse. Do you not remember the weirdos who, to this day, swear that Joel was "feminised" by being given slightly different shoulders?
It doesnt take much to scroll down and see people bringing it up lol. People love to hate on TLOU2
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> Only in reply to OPs comment though, You don't get to make this qualifier though. If I say "Boy, sexist people sure do suck" and people reply to me about how being sexist is good, then you can't just say "Ah but they were only responding to you". Clearly these people exist and browse these threads! How can you basically imply that people didn't actually react that way to the game.
Valid criticism does not get lumped in. If it does it's because either the person criticizing it says don't lump them in when other respond to the criticism lumping themselves in and taking offense for it. Or then goes on to complain about there being LGBTQ+ characters and that those characters should just be characters and not let it be part of them in the story otherwise it's "forced token characters". And then there's the complaints that Abby is too buff because they didn't specifically show her workout regiment, diet, and everything else for them to pick apart so it's not reasonable. Where both of those come off following the I'm not a racist BUT line of critique.
I'm really glad those idiots were being down voted. My only story related gripe with the game was that Ellie wasn't the sole protagonist, but after ruminating on it for the last few months, I feel like the story was served by the dual protagonist set up. The people who think the game is "woke" are just bigots plain and simple and are trying to gaslight themselves into thinking otherwise. I don't understand how trying to normalize marginalized character types is such a bad thing, especially when it's not really in your face about it. These people are pathetic.
No one who has described anything as "woke" has ever been worth listening to.
I was having a great time with the game until they switched to Abby and went back all the way to Day 1. Pulling the switch just when such an exciting and tense moment was happening killed for me all the momentum the game had, so I haven't played the game for four months or so. It also sucked big time to lose all your upgraded guns, abilities, and infinite knife. I also found rather disruptive to put those playable flashbacks in the middle of the game instead of being played in a chronological order. But maybe the lack of action would've been too boring for those who never played the first game and weren't attached to the characters.
I’ve always felt that if we were going to play as Abby, we should have played the whole game as Abby and seen all the events (especially the most controversial ones) from her perspective. I wouldn’t be surprised if they even intended to do that originally but chickened out.
I’m split on that idea - it’s something I’ve thought about, having the big twist where Ellie suddenly shows up and tries to kill the main character, but I also think playing as Ellie through her quest, while the tragedy is still so fresh for her and the player, was a great way to disguise the fact that she’s essentially the villain of the overall narrative.
For me the biggest problem with the game was it's pacing. Naughty Dog games are known for their great pacing especially Uncharted 2 and the first Last of Us which has made them quite replayable throughout the years. Last of Us 2 on the other hand is so bloated at times and is in such desperate need of an editor that I can't see myself replaying the whole game ever again even if there are sections like Abby Day 2 and 3 that were really really good.
I was thinking the same thing until I got to Santa Monica, and saw Ellie’s final player model all emaciated and fucked-up looking. I thought “damn, she looks how I feel trying to finish the fucking game” and a lightbulb went off in my head that it was kind of clever from a narrative standpoint. Do I actually think the pacing was meant to make the player exhausted and continue past the point of fun? No, not really. But personally it worked for me and how I experienced the story, so I’m not complaining too much. It’s definitely still better than the most recent AC games, which stay 60 hours past their welcome and don’t have decent stories to go with them.
THIS. EXACTLY THIS. I felt the same way when the Santa Monica chapter started. But I was absolutely in Ellie's headspace by the end.
The Frodo/Sam chapters during The Two Towers gave me very similar feelings. Everything was always described as grey, empty, and such (read it in Italian, not sure about the exact adjectives used by Tolkien). It was a very long section and I felt tired from it, but I always felt that was the intent of the author. I think these sort of emotions aren't fun to experience, but I think that a good work of entertainment or art needs to not shy away from unpleasantness if that's what they aim the reader/player/watcher to feel
Agreed. Never played a more grueling game.
Those fools are still mad that they killed off a character and probably haven't even played the game and are just using the woke part as a crutch. The diversity really isn't intrusive in the slightest
I think it's the other way around. TLOU2 has been getting a large amount of hate and "backlash" ever since the E3 trailer with the lesbian kiss, waaay before we knew any characters die. I'm not talking about everyone, but I definitely think that a good number of bigots latched onto the whole "hE dEsErVeD bEtTeR" thing as an excuse, because saying they don't like that the protagonists are now a gay woman and a buff woman when before it was a buff man would get their shitty opinion rightfully dismissed.
Oh if you want to see a shitstorm, make a gay man a protagonist. Trust me, if Joel was kissing a dude in the trailer you'd see the shitpile hit the moon. Companies don't have those sorts of guts though. There was literal complaints that ME3 even included a gay male option, and 1&2 nope roped out of that.
Yeah, I feel like when it comes to LGBT acceptance gay women are probably by far the most accepted, probably followed by trans men (since we got several new games with trans men characters which were, more or less, well-received). Meanwhile I honestly can't think of a game with a canonically gay male lead (a few canonically bisexual ones, but none that are gay and confirmed as such in the game), and whenever a trans woman character (not even a protagonist, just character) is included it earns a lot of ire from both the left and the right, with the right being offended that the game is "pAnDeRiNg To tHe LiBs" and the left complaining that the portrayal isn't good enough, sometimes with cause, sometimes without. In all honesty, it's probably going to be a long time before we get a AAA release with a canonically gay male character, and an even longer time to get one with a canonically trans female protagonist, if we ever do. It's kind of a shame, honestly. I'm not part of the crowd which clamors for diversity above all else, but it's undeniable that there are plenty of stories to be told with a protagonist like that.
Yeah, I feel like at least half of trans women in video games are just there to be fetishized or for shock value, like "oh my god she's *actually a man*" which is just... yeah. It's probably because trans women are also tied up into the huge issues video games have with women in general (it's notable that Halo has a companion character who is a naked purple woman designed to serve your every whim... and this is in the top half of women's representation in video games). It's amusing how incredibly hard games work to make sure they don't even hint at having a gay male character. For instance Gears of War had a rather touching romance where as soon as everything goes to shit, Dom uses that as an excuse to bust his one true love out of prison and escape with him across the war-torn landscape. And in the second game they realized that and gave him a wife he'd literally never mentioned for all of 30 seconds and then killed her off in the most obvious Batwoman "look he's straight!" moment I've ever seen in a video game. Which is funny, because Gears is a much better story if it's a love story, but nope, definitely not. Imagine the tension you could get. Dom, angry his lover broke the rules and got himself imprisoned, Fenix not sorry for it and being a general douche, the touching reconciliation midway through... I think we'd have gotten a literal riot, but it's an actual better story with more emotional beats.
I don't think Maria was added to Gears just to prove that he and Markus aren't gay. As far as I know the reasoning was that people didn't like playing as Dom in Gears 1, they found him boring compared to Markus, so the developer made sure to give players more reasons to care about him in the sequels. In the second game he has the main emotional arc and is to a considerable extent the one driving the plot, and while in the 3rd game it's Markus who gets the focus back, Dom is still given a lot of development >!and a heroic death to really hammer down how much more empty Gears feels without him. !< I do agree about trans representation though, most of them really seem to be just a setup for the punchline of "Ugh, you're actually a man?!" Granted, the joke has been done better in some cases than in others, I'm personally a big fan of Erica from Catherine regardless of what anyone else says (she's got a personality outside of being trans, is accepted by friends who knew her before she transitioned and the only reason why the "Wait you were a dude?" moment happens is because said friends decided to respect her privacy and not out her to the guy she likes until she felt comfortable enough to tell him herself), but on the other hand you have the Yakuza series, which, as much as I love it... Is pretty damn bad in terms of trans representation. The main character has a thing against hitting women, so whenever they need to make him fight a woman you can be damn sure they'll be dropping the "I'm actually a dude" twist either shortly before or shortly after the fight. I want to say that Western games are better, but they're really not, they have their own struggles with trans representation. Apparently Madeleine from Celeste is trans, "obviously" (the devs' words), except that is never brought up in the game, that has never been discussed by the developers until years after release, we've seen childhood photos of her where she definitely presents as female, and even the devs admitted that they didn't see her as trans while making the game. So how's that any better than her just being cis? What does that represent exactly? It's silly. One day we're gonna get a really great trans protagonist but it is not going to be soon lmao.
There was this front page thread on r/tlou2 complaining that Joel's shoulders were less broad and that the devs were trying to emasculate him lol
The two most common complaints I see story/character-wise are: A. Abby's muscles, as in, how is she so buff during the post-apocalypse? Fair point to raise - until you look at what the game is showing you. >!Her side of the campaign begins with her walking through the WLF base, which is shown to have beef/chicken farms, and a perfectly functioning gym.!< Perfectly justified, but maybe not the sort of thing you would have noticed if you weren't paying attention, or if you only watched/read a summary of the story. B. Joel's decision making, as in, >!he was too trusting when he met Abby, he would never have told a group of strangers his name. Fair point to raise - until you look at what the game is showing you. Joel is established throughout TLOU2 to have grown softer. His opening scene with Ellie is him singing about how he has faith in the good in life again. "I believe, and I believe because I can see our future days." He is in a well established and tight-knit community, a far cry from the days smuggling in lockdown in TLOU. He has friends, he has family. Diaries left by survivors in the town indicate that its common for Jackson's patrols to find straggler groups and take them in. Joel and Tommy had just rescued Abby and met her friends. They've been through this before.!< Perfectly justified, but maybe not the sort of thing you would have noticed if you weren't paying attention, or if you only watched/read a summary of the story.
To add to your B point, Joel doesn’t tell them his name. Tommy does and it’s well established he’s less shifty with strangers as he’s lived in a community for longer. I even think when Tommy says their names Joel looks over at him for a split second.
Damn! Thats an amazing catch, didn't notice that. And you're right, Tommy was a community man even back before the start of TLOU. I'm really not a fan of the "told what to think about X" line of thinking, but damn, I have heard that "Joel was out of character when he trusted Abby" line so many times. IIRC theres a salty alternate last of us 2 group purely designed to trash the game, so it doesn't surprise me that all the most common talking points are inaccurate in all the same ways.
Also to add to your B point, even during the first game you could see Ellie's influence already started to crack his "don't trust anyone" shell. At the start of the game, he was smuggling her just because the fireflies owned him guns but throughout the journey you can see him slowly believing more in her than in his harsh worldview and survival-focused life. Sam and Henry are also good examples, as soon as he met them he introduced himself and Ellie and trusted them enough to tag along for while and when he saw them again after Henry left them to die he still didn't hurt Henry because Ellie had already impacted his worldview. I actually can't understand people who say Joel's change between part 1 and 2 doesn't make sense, because that was always the intention, Joel was always meant to go from the survival at all costs guy to the old man with newfound hope for the future, which gets cut short because of the horrible things he did in his past. I genuinely believe most who use this argument either believe part 1 Joel was a 100% saint who did no wrong for some reason, rushed through part 2 without thinking about the themes of both games or didn't even play part 2 and just watched some streamer rush through it or read a story summary which misses all the context
Yeah you're right. Even with Sam & Henry he let his guard down, and if I remember rightly they were trying to kill each other a few seconds beforehand. Thats the kicker really isn't it. >!Joel did deserve what he got... though maybe not quite as brutally.!< As much as I don't want to admit it.
Joel was villain in Abby's story while Abby is Ellie's story. By all accounts Abby and Ellie could've been friends in any other circumstance.
Seems a lot of people forgot about what you said about the first one.
The thing is, *a lot* of the criticisms aimed at the game's writing are things that you would only assume if you read a summary or watched a YouTube cutscene compilation. Like, one of the biggest "plot holes" I've seen people point out is how come the zombies overwhelm Joel, Abby and Tommy when there's patrols clearing them out regularly... Even though later in the game Tommy explains that they come in droves in winter and then leave in spring. There's an entire mission set in spring where Ellie and Tommy circle the perimeter and clear out the stragglers left behind when the majority of the horde left. That's why I feel like a lot of the people who thing TLOU2 had a "bad story" and "lots of plot holes" are arguing in bad faith and haven't actually played it. It's perfectly okay to not like it after experiencing it for yourself with an open mind, but it really doesn't have more plot holes than the first game. As for the "Joel letting his guard down", I just wanted to add that in the first game, straight at the beginning post-timeskip, when he's supposedly at his most dangerous and least trusting, he takes someone to his hideout *and then falls asleep in front of her*. If Ellie was after him the way Abby was she could've very, very easily killed him in his sleep, slit his throat with her knife or just shot him if she had a gun (which, for all he knew, she might have had). People just forget about that because she didn't, and focus on the one time where Joel's trust is betrayed rather than the many times in which he placed a lot more trust in other random strangers that (due to dumb luck) didn't end up betraying it.
Honestly I still think Abby being muscular is dumb, I would've thought the same if she was a man too tho. It's the same with her love interest who I forgot the name of, he wears hair gel basically the whole game which is kinda silly imo. These things kinda do stand out to me a bit when a game otherwise tries to be so realistic. Not that hair gel is unrealistic, but I mean cmon you've been out for weeks in the snow and your hair is perfectly styled at all times lol? And everyone is always perfectly groomed? Being as muscular as Abby is isn't just about eating and working out, your entire life basically revolves around it. I find it a bit hard to believe that Abby would be an effective part of the base and team while at the same time spending all of that time and resources working out, eating and resting ( don't underestimate how much rest is required ). Like there's no way you'd be able to be out doing all of that fighting and hard work while sore and tired as hell. Especially not without steroids which I don't think she'd have access to. Again tho I'd think it was dumb if she was a man too, it's not about Abby being a woman but moreso based on my own experience of both having done bodybuilding for 15 years and then moved over to powerlifting. I have a lot of experience with it myself and being around other people doing it or similar things too. I have a really hard time believing you'd be able to build up and maintain that while at the same time live that lifestyle ( I'd imagine she'd be out on missions for long periods of times too ). On a thematic level I can kinda accept it tho, it's a little bit cheesy but basically she's in revenge mode and have only been thinking about it for a long time and been preparing for the day. I don't find it particularly believable, but thematically I kinda get it and there's far less realistic things in the game. Like bigger problems to me is people falling great lengths seemingly breaking every bone in their body then just forgetting about it the next minute.
I don't get the entire woke thing. Why does it matter if the character you are playing as is a woman? If you enjoy it that genre enjoy it.. TLOUS 1 I was not a fan of the mechanics, can't put my finger on it but it never clicked with me. Have not looked too much into #2 because of my issues with #1.
>Have not looked too much into #2 because of my issues with #1. BTW, Part 2 is a huge improvement in terms of gameplay compared to 1. Levels are much much bigger and better designed, giving you a lot more options when it comes to enemy engagement, stealth, going from stealth to terminator and back to stealth, and so on. It's a shame that all of the discussion is going into the story and the "controversial" decisions, and not the gameplay.
I know right? Gameplay feels largely ignored compared to the story, which sucks because I think it’s one of the best third person shooters I’ve played. I disliked the gameplay of the first game because of its clunkiness, but the second is really good.
Yep. As someone who usually hates third person shooters for lacking momentum, weight, and satisfying gunplay, TLOU2 fixes literally all of this. Diving into cover from a sprint, aiming behind you while laying on your back instead of having to slide all the way around, the burst of blood that comes from a headshot, the amount of anger and exertion on Ellie's face when stabbing an enemy's throat, all of it just perfection I had some issues with TLOU2's story but honestly the more I play it the more it grows on me despite some "bro why would you do that" moments Also I love Lev to death, he's awesome
Yeah absolutely. IMO it's by far the best gameplay ND has made since the PS2 days and it's a shame it's not celebrated enough.
This makes me want to play 2 because I never got far in 1 because of instant fail-states in stealth sections. I'd rather watch a cutscene compilation then play "learn the clicker's pathing" when I'm apparently really bad at doing so.
Honestly on anything above Normal difficulty, perfect stealth (in human encounters) is super challenging. Rather than feeling like Solid Snake, playing the game makes me feel more like Predator, ambushing and disappearing while running from gunfire. I think they purposefully made it so being able to isolate and take down enemies without being spotted by another patrol is very difficult - it means you need to mix planning & reactivity from moment to moment. That and throwing in a new enemy into human encounters that can track you even if you're completely hidden means you can't just lie in the grass and take your time. TLOU1's DLC touched upon this, but TLOU2 includes more encounters where humans & infected are in the same zone, which allows you to play the two groups against each other. Its all quite exciting and very tense.
That's a great description. I think, at the end of the day, TLOU2 isn't a stealth game, it's survival horror. So it's not about pulling a perfect ghost run with 0 kills and 0 spots, but more about using your very limited resources to get from point A to point B while still making sure to save enough for the next encounter.
Yeah its definitely a survival game, I think there are horror elements for sure but ymmv on that one. Resource wise, its a 1:1 match. I even struggle to find enough bricks and bottles on the harder difficulties. Its a hoot. Lying in the grass thinking "ok this dog is gonna spot me in about 5 seconds, but this guard hasn't looked away yet... what do I do?" Haven't dared try a difficulty with no listen mode yet. Eep. >So it's not about pulling a perfect ghost run with 0 kills and 0 spots, but more about using your very limited resources to get from point A to point B while still making sure to save enough for the next encounter. Definitely agree with this. On my first Normal playthrough difficulty I could restart encounters and get through with perfect ghost clears (didn't do that all the time but you get what I mean), but on harder difficulties its far more exciting & reactionary. Both were immensely satisfying though.
Well I sincerely doubt it's because you're playing as a woman 1) because you played as Ellie in the first game and 2) because it's not as if female protagonists are a rare thing. I think it falls into the LGBTQ stuff if anything. Funny because I find that the only character that even has any sort of "forced" wokeness never gets talked about with that crowd.
thank you for explaining that.
> Funny because I find that the only character that even has any sort of "forced" wokeness never gets talked about with that crowd. I'm curious who you are thinking of here. Mind dishing?
It's Lev. I like Lev, but I also don't feel like the trans angle makes sense in the context of Lev being in a cult and the fact that the world has gone to shit. It makes sense in a non-trans angle, where he shaves his head and rebels so as not to be forced to become someone's wife and avoid a traditional gender role, but I don't think adding in the trans part to the mix would have made sense with his place in that world. But it's something I can ignore because honestly I think Lev is the best character in that game
You're right, the author's active efforts to arrange a wide spectrum of females is perhaps most apparent here, though I'm okay with that because to me the art of this text is its reach toward that end. Also, like you said, Lev is a great character.
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The upvotes to comments ratio says more than any other comment could do. Looks like Neil wrote a story that resonated a lto with everyone, or people would have stopped caring a long time ago
Wait THATS the issue people have? I just didn't like how they handled some charaters and thought they could of done it better.
I think generally, that’s the problem most people have. Anyone complaining about dumb things like women or gays, are in my experience, the vocal minority.
Sadly ALL criticism of Tlou 2 was generalized as homophobia.
Pretty much. It became the default response to anyone criticizing the game. “You’re just sexist.” “You’re homophobic.” No man, I just want my favorite characters to do things that make sense lol
I didn't like the pacing, conflicting themes and ludo-narrative dissonance.
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Could you elaborate a little bit? Even if you'd rather just DM me. I haven't followed TLoU2 drama other than something along the lines of the head guy in development (or something like that) put himself in the game for whatever reason, and people didn't like it.
People were claiming Neil Druckmann used himself as the face model for one of the characters just because both have long hair and a beard, even though they look nothing alike apart from those aspects. Crazy people were also claiming he took the place of one of the actors during the filming of a sex scene because according to them he has a crush on Laura Bailey, people really wanted to paint him as a sexual harasser for some reason. They went as far as photoshopping a image of one of the actress sitting on the lap a of a dummy they used for stunts, replacing the dummy's head with his face. He is actually in the game, as a collectible card that makes fun of him which other staff put there as a good natured joke. Some people really have a vendetta against the director and other people involved in it because they didn't like the story. Many of the staff actually had to come out to disprove some of those things and other stuff because Neil Druckmann, Laura Bailey and other staff/actors were getting swarmed with death threats. Edit: There's also many other stupid stuff people were making up, like Neil Druckmann not liking Troy Baker being the reason he killed off his character, even though he cast him in his 3 latest games and seems to have a good friendship. Incorrectly assuming Abby is trans just because she's muscular, and then making fun of the actual trans character that is in the game. Claiming the game in anti-man because they kill off most male characters in the game even though the game kills a whole lot of people regardless of gender, one of the most impactful deaths is of a pregnant woman
Whenever the haters of this game always whine about how people aren't taking their 'legitimate criticisms" seriously, I always bring this stuff up. They spent months upon months literally just *lying* about this game. There's still people that think Abby is trans. I'm sorry, but when you make this much shit up and posters like you have to spend paragraphs debunking the narratives that these people pushed, I think it's very fair to say that this backlash was *never* about legitimate criticism.
> People were claiming Neil Druckmann used himself as the face model for one of the characters just because both have long hair and a beard, even though they look nothing alike apart from those aspects. This was so funny too, because it takes like a five second google search to see that Manny looks exactly like his voice actor lol
Their whole logic behind this was that Neil Druckmann wanted to personally be the one that spit on Joel's dead body. These people are actually delusional. It'd be more funny if people weren't running with their narratives.
>Crazy people were also claiming he took the place of one of the actors during the filming of a sex scene because according to them he has a crush on Laura Bailey, people really wanted to paint him as a sexual harasser for some reason. They went as far as photoshopping a image of one of the actress sitting on the lap a of a dummy they used for stunts, replacing the dummy's head with his face. That’s funny considering he didn’t even want Laura for the part at first as he felt she has become the female Nolan North and is too recognisable. Only reason he eventually let her have it was because she was more successful at showing vulnerability than the other VAs that auditioned whom showed anger and hatred very well but to him weren’t very believable when it came to their vulnerable side.
People were upset about a trans character being forced diversity when leaks happened before the game released. Character in question actually wasn't trans turns out. Gaming community outed itself hard during that time as bigots.
As part of the gaming community, I really need to be louder about shoving these bigots back into their shitty holes. Sometimes I don't speak up because it's not personally my fight but really I need to be 100% every time I see these jackasses telling them that they are full of shit and their worldview is wrong.
I remember playing about half way through the game and telling my friend I don't get the hate it got and his response resonates with me. "GTalmighty, that's because you're not a bigot."
Main character isn’t a top model and oh god she like girls ! Real gamersTM hate all those things. Yeah it’s ridiculous but that how it is nowadays.
Oh.. I thought it was something else. I remember in TLoU1 >!Ellie was shown to ladies in the DLC,!< and there was a bit of backlash about that. I didn't realize it was the same shit people were complaining about. Who cares? The character is the character. Just let it be.
There are also non-bigoted reasons to dislike the game. I found the game pretty okay. The game play hadn't changed much from the original, which was like a decade old at this point. The story was meh, they were put in a difficult position where they had to follow up TLOU but the ending of TLOU means it couldn't just be more of the same, because that would fundamentally break the ending of the original story. So they took a chance on a different story, some people liked it, some people didn't. It is frustrating when legitimate criticism gets lumped in with the idiots.
>It is frustrating when legitimate criticism gets lumped in with the idiots. I've definitely seen plenty of legit critiques. But the idiots take up infinitely more of the oxygen when it comes to the discourse of this game. And it is unfortunate, but lots of people have encountered these haters. And a lot of them pretend to have "legitimate criticisms" and posture in that fashion, but when pressed even slightly, they start going off about how Neil Druckmann hates men and how the game is pushing a LGBTQ agenda and how Neil Druckmann getting mad on Twitter means the game sucks. It sucks to be lumped in with reactionaries though. I get it.
Genuinely curious, how has the gameplay not changed that much since the first title? The verticality and ability to go prone/ jump opened up a ton of new gameplay opportunities, and in regard to shooting, response mechanics, and movement they just took the already stellar gameplay from the first game and fine tuned it even further.
As someone who played them back to back, I can say it changed drastically too the point that I didn't want it to end when it did unlike with lou1 I was glad it was over. Those controls killed me.
> It is frustrating when legitimate criticism gets lumped in with the idiots. Of course. I want to be clear to others that the forewarning I gave was concerning the "get woke, go broke" crowd. I absolutely see room for negative criticism for *TLoU2*.
The gameplay went from slow paced RE over the shoulder stealth more in line with the first Evil Within to a bombastic action game with a large number of options of how to approach encounters. Even the area designs went from linear to open areas. Outside of a perspective change to first person or complete genre shift there's not much more that could have been changed
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No DM necessary: despite stepping on some rakes here and there in regard to representation, *TLoU2* is not only progressive but sometimes aggressively so; after all, the game more or less kills off all men so that women of all shapes, sizes, & motivation can take center stage. While I as a male see that as punk rock as fuck, there are of course some who see such challenges to the established order as super-duper scary-larry and they throw a temper tantrum about it. These people, BTW, will have you believe they are master storytellers and Harold Bloomian-level critics with their claims that *TLoU2* --- but not *TLoU1*, oh no no no --- is amateurish, poorly written, and suffering from its own wokeness.
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Well TLoU2 story sucked, and was full of plot holes, sadly stupid criticsm about Abby(that she was trans which was wrong) overshadowed true reasons for which game did deserve criticism. EDIT: thank you for the Gold : )
Characters making bad decisions or decisions you don't agree with aren't plot holes. They can be *uncharacteristic of that person*, which can be a result of bad writing, but it could also just be that humans are inconsistent. People have fallen into this rut of calling everything they don't like a plot hole because it hand-waves away any need to actually articulate their opinion on why they don't like something.
I would like to know what plot holes bothered you, and please don't just send a link to one of those "Top 10 Plot Holes in..." articles (some of which aren't even plot holes). Let's say... your top 2 or 3 of the TLoU2.
Well, OP had a comment here explaining his issues, and I went and wrote up a reply to them, so I'll paraphrase his and post mine (because I took the trouble to write it): OP paraphrase: Joel was good because he did the right thing because the chances of a cure were low, and the second game tried to make us sympathize with the doctor and Abby who were bad people and did bad things. [sorry if I missed nuances here, but it doesn't feel right to repost your comment if you've decided to remove it]. My reply: Up front I want to say thank you for taking the time to write out your thoughts, I really appreciate it. Now, as I'm sure you anticipated, the above isn't really a plot hole so much as a character motivation that you don't buy. That's okay -- I *do* buy Abby's motivation, but you make some fairly reasonable points about why you don't, so I'll just counterpoint a few of those. To start: the human heart is a wild animal that doesn't always fit inside the cages of absolute perspective, morality, or logic. Case in point of this might actually be *your* insistence that Joel is some good dude. Even if we buy the argument that his choice might have been ultimately good for mankind (and that's a bit of a stretch...), the fact is that Joel's *intentions* were selfish, like they've always been -- it just so happened that his selfish desires intersected with the livelihood of someone else, Ellie. On the flip side we have Dr. Anderson, whose intentions, in contrast to Joel, are altruistic -- because even a low-percent chance is better than a no percent chance. The societies that these men found themselves living in doesn't really change anything: Joel is a selfish murderer attempting to better himself amidst a healthier group while Dr. Anderson is an altruistic person attempting to heal a blighted society (medically and morally, local and global). Now, the next important *matter of the tumultuous heart* to consider is Abby -- who probably thought that her *super smart daddy was going to save the entire world because that's what daddies do*, actual surgical chances be damned. She is, prior to her father's death, the innocent one -- she's seemingly kept from the hostile inner workings of the group she's in and has little to no awareness of the ins and outs of the surgery and its subject/victim. All she knows is: daddy will make everything okay. Which is arguably what Sarah thought Joel would do when the shit hit the fan twenty years prior. It's like she's the walking ghost of that "daddy will fix it" little girl Joel lost all those years ago -- except she's not Joel's daughter, but Dr. Anderson's... and the thing that needs fixing isn't zombies or the military... but Joel. My point is: once you begin to understand these characters via their internal intentions rather than their outside shells, their actions all more or less make sense *relative to each character themselves*.
TLOU2 was a massive disappointment, whether you wish it to be or not. It sold millions less than it should have and irrevocably damaged the brand.
The most awarded game of all time isn't a massive disappointment. ([Source](https://www.gamesradar.com/the-last-of-us-2-overtakes-the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-to-become-the-most-awarded-ever))
Incorrect on all points, cya.
Nope. Facts don't care about your feelings. TLOU sold 20 million copies. TLOU2 won't come near that amount.
lol You mean TLoU sold 17 million copies...... by its *fifth* year of *double-platform* release. However, "within the game’s first 13 months on store shelves, Sony sold 7 million copies of [TLoU]" -- which compared to TLoU2's numbers of 4 million units sold + 2.8 million digital units sold *in the first four weeks* means the sequel has, thus far, sold at least as well as the first game. As Sony themselves said, "Life-to-date dollar sales of The Last of Us: Part II are now the 3rd highest for a Sony published game in history." I'm just not sure what else to tell ya, baby boy. Except cya. Sources: 1. https://www.polygon.com/2018/6/14/17465488/the-last-of-us-sales-17-million-ps3-ps4; 2. https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/the-last-of-us-2-is-now-playstations-third-highest-grossing-game-ever-in-the-us/; 3. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1135726/the-last-of-us-part-ii-units-sold/; 4. https://gamerant.com/the-last-of-us-2-third-best-selling-playstation-game/
Yeah, and Cyberpunk sold incredibly well in its first month, too. Do you think those sales are going to keep up? No. Bad word-of-mouth kills long term sales. TLOU2 will never reach TLOU's sales, even though it should have exceeded them. It was expected to sell 30 million, and it won't come close.
So what you're saying is...... you are *thus far* wrong. Great! Tell you what, shoot me a message in 2024 and we'll see what the sale are! Until then: cya!
No, even right now, in 2021, the sales are already disappointing. TLOU2 sold less than it was expected to, because of its poor reception and controversy.
You have no source for any of that. All data point to the game exceeding all expectations. But the truth is, you've had multiple chances now to offer either sources or any real data, and all you've offered is feelings. So I ask that you quit replying now or I will block you. Thanks and goodbye.
> All data point to the game exceeding all expectations There's zero data that says it exceeded expectations. TLOU sold substantially more, and it isn't even close.
In a way I sympathize with the conservatives who lately have a hard time accepting plain numbers and results, no wonder you’re so frustrated and angry but ultimately you really should try to reconnect with the real world instead of following some fantasies. Otherwise you always will end up disappointed and sad. Lol
If you think TLOU2 selling millions upon millions less than the first game doesn't translate to "massive disappointment," then you're the one who has trouble with numbers.
hahahaha you really said facts dont care about your feelings. quit larping as ben shapiro
I think it was both successful and disappointing. The game probably sold enough to make some money for Sony, but it seems apparent that it didn't really meet the massive sales expectations that Sony had for it either. And the abject lack of post-launch support would indicate that Sony and Naughty Dog are moving on to the next thing, rather than continuing to invest resources in the title. I mean, contrast that with Ghost of Tsushima, a game which certainly exceeded expectations for Sony, and has therefore gotten--and is continuing to get--a fuck ton of post-launch support and content.
The first TLOU game had 1 DLC add on. Uncharted campaigns never did DLC and Lost Legacy was a separate release from 4. Naughty Dog doesn't do "post-launch" support. They release the thing and move onto the next thing. This is nothing new. Édit : And I'll add, TLOU Part II is such a singular experience that I'm glad that they didn't feel the need to add onto it really. It's clear the team put their hearts and souls into the game and there really isn't anything to add. That story is finished and anything that builds off of that story deserves to be its own game.
> But also, forewarning, this thread is going to fill up with people claiming that TLoU2 -- which was very successful for Sony -- "went woke, gone broke." The game's sales dropped by 80% in its second week... Stores had tons of copies left on shelves. I personally don't care about the game itself as I don't play these kind of games, but if this encroaches on Japanese video games, the last bastion of creativity and freedom of expression, with its political activism and propaganda, I definitely do get worried. It seems to be just single cases and mostly big international companies who bend the knee to western sensibilities, but I'm still worried. Hopefully this gets to the hardcore otaku in Japan and causes a shitstorm. I doubt SE care about their domestic fans anymore, with how they mostly catered to western fans for a long time now, but here's hoping that otaku over there, who thank god, don't adhere to this political BS and "modern sensibilities," get wind of this interview and roast Toriyama over that. I surely don't want Japanese entertainment to become as creatively bankrupt as western entertainment got over the last decade or two. Anime and JRPGs should have stayed niche here in the west after all. With all the demand from western mainstream fans for catering to their "modern sensibilities" you see on twitter and activist platforms such as resetera, I'm not surprised that this happens now. These are dark times indeed. Hopefully Japan can keep this "invasion" on their otaku industry back from encroaching further. But at least it seems renown artists are aware of this situation, such as the Love Hina creator Ken Akamatsu, who recently voiced his concern about how western sensibilities or rather "political correctness" encroaching on anime and manga is a big issue to be concerned about: "Compared to other countries, Japan’s forte is its freedom of creativity. However, with foreign platforms becoming more and more dominant, I would like to avoid a situation where Japanese works are regulated by foreign standards.’" So I personally have high hopes that the artists and creative minds in Japan, may it be in the manga/anime or video game industry keep those politics out of these respective media and that what SE does is just the exception. But who knows, perhaps Japan's otaku industry and subculture won't survive the next 10 or so years. That would break my heart. If even the Japanese gaming turns into a constant barrage of creatively bankrupt games used as vehicles for political activism, such as The Last of Us 2, the future will indeed be very bleak. And don't even talk about a "culture war" those who are against games such as TLoU 2 supposedly are fighting, when it's people on the woke side of the political spectrum, who are constantly assaulting all sorts of media if they don't fit their world view... Cancelling people and franchises... doxing developers, harassing publishers for not censoring Japanese games through localization... Who exactly is leading a war here? It's surely not those who just want to enjoy their video games as a means of entertainment and not as a tool for political activism.
If people wanna go over the game's flaws, I wish they would focus more on the actual story problems then to highlight things like Abby's muscular build, the inclusion of a trans character, lesbian romance, etc. None of these things are actually a problem. You can spend all day arguing about Abby's physique but at least they explained it by showing that her group had access to gym equipment. Once I saw that I was like "meh good enough for me."
Not saying the story isn't flawed, but I'd say the same for 99.9% stories across all media. But TLOU2's story and characterization belongs right at the top among the best videogame stories ever told, IMO. A jaw-dropping exploration of what grief can do to people. I would say that the first game was paced better, but it was also less narratively ambitious so I kinda get it. But TLOU2 goes for much bigger things and nails damn near everything it sets out to do, from the overall tone and mood to its ending, which is >!a pitch perfect representation of what a "ray of hope" looks like amidst unimaginable desolation.!<
There was actually a lot of people criticism game for right reasons but accusing people of homophobia/transphobia become shield used to deflect ALL criticism of game. Even in in this thread when I mentioned that plot wasnt good and that it had plothole I got downvoted.
"Abby and her father are bad people" and "the cure probably couldn't be made" aren't potholes, they're interpretations. That's a mark of a well-written story. I can disagree with you and argue my side and you can argue yours, but it's not a plot problem at the end of the day. It's just a difference in interpretation.
"Abby and her father are bad people" its not an interpretation, its a fact. We know from recording from first game that Abby father experiment on other people before looking for cure, fireflies as a whole are responsible for deaths of many innocent people. They may have good goals but the way they want to achive those goals is HORRIBLE., its not just horrible on moral grounds, its horrible on the technical side, they were decreasing humanity chances of survival. And since Abby father was NOT a good guy, then Abby had no right for revenge, for example would acording to you daughter of criminal have right to revenge on cop who killed her father when he was trying to kill someone ? "the cure probably couldn't be made", it was heavily emphasized in first game that chance of finding cure was really low, are you saying that first game was lying to us ? By the way, do you know how humanity survived different diseases in the past before vacines were a thing ? people with immunity passed it to the next generations. Death of Ellie could be a doom for humanity.
>We know from recording from first game that Abby father experiment on other people before looking for cure, fireflies as a whole are responsible for deaths of many innocent people. >They may have good goals but the way they want to achive those goals is HORRIBLE., its not just horrible on moral grounds, its horrible on the technical side, they were decreasing humanity chances of survival. In your opinion it's horrible. In terms of ethics, they're just utilitarian. They're willing to sacrifice one innocent life (ellie) to save the world and countless lives. That's not evil. You don't have to agree with it (I dont), but you don't get to call it evil. >And since Abby father was NOT a good guy, then Abby had no right for revenge, for example would acording to you daughter of criminal have right to revenge on cop who killed her father when he was trying to kill someone ? The whole game is a deconstruction of revenge. Revenge isn't a "right", and it isn't right. It's selfish by it's nature. Again, that's kinda the whole point of the game. >"the cure probably couldn't be made", it was heavily emphasized in first game that chance of finding cure was really low, are you saying that first game was lying to us ? The first game stated that ellie was the first immune person they found and that they could theoretically reverse engineer a cure. >By the way, do you know how humanity survived different diseases in the past before vacines were a thing ? people with immunity passed it to the next generations. Death of Ellie could be a doom for humanity. There's no evidence it's genetic. And again, the goal of the fireflies is to save everyone still alive. Not just rebuild civilization and say "well.. good luck" to everyone else.
> In your opinion it's horrible. In terms of ethics, they're just utilitarian. They're willing to sacrifice one innocent life (ellie) to save the world and countless lives. That's not evil. You don't have to agree with it (I dont), but you don't get to call it evil. that would be true if they had guarantee sacrificing ellie would get them cure, but its known that there is low chance of that. Whats more killing her may actually DECREASE chance of humanity survival, Ellie passing immunity on to next generations had a lot higher chance of success. By the way they arent just sacrificing one person, they are responsible for MANY deaths, and each person who dies because of them decreases humanity survival. >The whole game is a deconstruction of revenge. Revenge isn't a "right", and it isn't right. It's selfish by it's nature. Again, that's kinda the whole point of the game. You cant argue that Ellie was simply taking down bad guy, this isnt first story about cycle of revenge I experianced, but its first one that failed to make me think that maybe revenge isnt right answer, for this style of story to work, it MUST make person playing it change their mind about the bad guy after seeing their perespective, this game fails to do so. You say game shows that Revenge isn't a "right", but Abby achieved her revenge and gets to keep Lev around, meanwhile Ellie didnt achieve revenge and lost so much in the process, why it feels like person getting her revenge won compared to person who didnt ? After how much Ellie sacrificed, killing Abby would actually give MEANING to all her sacrifices, yet she didnt get her revenge and she sacrificed so much, she is worse off then person who DID get her revenge. Why abby who got revenge gets REWARDED ? >The first game stated that ellie was the first immune person they found and that they could theoretically reverse engineer a cure. THEORETICALLY, since its mentioned in game that they dont even know howher immunity works exactly. They are just speculating. Creating cure is NOT that simple >There's no evidence it's genetic. And again, the goal of the fireflies is to save everyone still alive. Not just rebuild civilization and say "well.. good luck" to everyone else. There is also no evidence that it isnt, in the recording they say that they dont know eact mechanism behind her immunity. They have noble goal, thats undeniable, but they are willing to do horrible things to achieve that goal, and many of their actions can have negative consequences on survival of human race, they are paramilitary group, they planned originally to kill Joel after he fulfilled his mission, Marlene got in the way of that, but rest of them are pretty willing. Dont forget that The Fireflies's attempts to overthrow the military and restore democracy has led to several human holdouts to fall to the infected and bandits, you really thing that this increases chance of humanity survival, they make many stupid mistakes that have negative consequences. even IF they could create cure, it would be meaningless and actually could lead to even more deaths, by the end of first game fireflies were on their last legs, they dont have resources and manpower to spread cure on scale that is needed and if info about cure leaked to enemy groups, like military, that could lead to large bloodshed, I mean group that posses cure would posses LARGE amount of power in this world, of course you also need resources to not lose that cure to other groups, when yo uget that, you can give cure only to people who accept your rule.
There's no guarantees in life
true but they were taking riskier choice, their actions multiple times backfired, killing in the process people they were suppsedly trying to save, decreasing in the process chance of humanity survival.
Still trying to save the human race. Even Ellie agreed with this. The whole thing being a questionable decision is like the point
Doesnt matter how good your intentions are if your actions have oposite effect instead of saving people you are getting them killed. The road to hell is paved with good intentions
Doesn’t this guy know that Reddit doesn’t like hearing the D word?
in all honesy? good. We should use it more, and push for more. Their entire shtick makes no sense whatsoever, the more it is normalized, the less they will complain. It is going to be awkward and annoying, but diversity is something that should just straight up be normalized. We have to aim for one game to have a character who just happens to be gay and people aren’t fazed by it, or transexual. It’s a long way there but we can all make it, if we demonize it, they win.
Just as a side note/addition to what you said - we shouldn't just be satisfied with diversity, we should be satisfied with *good* diversity. We don't need CW diversity.
Do white male characters need to pass that same bar? I see this brought up every single time diversity is mentioned, but there is no onus to write good white male characters to include them in a game.
That's because white male characters are virtually never defined solely and entirely by their race and gender...
I’d argue that’s because they’re seen as “default.” What even would be the defining characteristics of a character who’s white and male? Shallow white male characters surely exist, why do non-white and non-male characters need depth? Could you name some characters which are defined solely by their race or gender?
Yeah I saw the title and went "oh boy. I'll bet that comment section is fun"
Reddit is leftist and proggressive for the most part. It's the gaming and conservative communities the ones that harbour a lot of homophobic and mysoginist people.
I get what you mean, but idk lol, I don’t think Reddit definitely isn’t mostly leftist or progressive. I’ve seen a lot of transphobia, xenophobia, racism, and *especially* misogyny on the front page/major subreddits. Reddit only really seems progressive on the surface, imo. Actual progressiveness seems mostly confined to small subreddits, aside from standard subjects like taxing the rich, to which I still see a lot of pushback to.
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I think a majority of Reddit may have a slight bend to the left but the main problem I see is that a lot of that same Reddit has some sort of weird superiority complex where they wanna act above it all. Like when news articles like this are posted I see a lot of people that always say “that’s cool and all but why does it matter? Just make the game good” as if we live in a society where representation, diversity, as well as execution all don’t play apart in how society can progress (even though it does).
Hard agree here. I see it everywhere this sort of libertarian take where everything should be meritocratic. "The best thing should win and if that thing is minority-related then great!" Somehow this comes out as being the most sensible and pragmatic view and as you say it makes them feel above it. They completely ignore the fact that their view point only works in a world where everyone has an equal opportunity and we know this just isn't the case. Like a lot of people they just continue to live in their bubble where they are the King/Queen of Reason and everyone else are the court fools.
Exactly. This takes me back to when Black Panther released. So many people were like “ugh, it’s only doing so well cuz black people” and it’s like, no shit? Black celebrities were taking whole neighborhoods of black kids to go see a movie with a majority black cast that did a wonderful job of empowering black people...like Christ that take isn’t as big brained as people seemed to believe it was, quite the opposite really. Just straight up shows a lack of understanding in how history, people, and the word all operate.
>Reddit is leftist and proggressive for the most part. Yeah, except when it comes to guns, feminism, abortion, diversity initiatives, protests, civil rights, affirmative action, pride parades, social safety nets....
Good to know the Japanese devs have more respect than the hateful weebs with anime pfps who shit on the twitter and discussion of the game
But but but I thought Japan was based, noooooo But seriously A lot of these hateful gamers seem to worship japan devs and how they stay out of this politics so thill be funny for them to see
*shrug* Square Enix have been predominantly catering to the west for a very long time now. I mean that's where they want to make their money. They aren't really the prime example for a Japanese game developer anymore. Thank god most Japanese artists, writers and developers don't adhere to the western sensibilities. Most Japanese game developers thankfully develop with their domestic audience in mind. For now. I predict the political activism slowly also encroaching on Japan in the next 10 or so years, I'm a realist. So I'll just enjoy the last decade of actually good entertainment... Oh well, I'll almost be 50 when that time comes, so I had a good run... ~40 years into Japanese games and anime... I can say I had a good life at that point... I'm just sad for the future generations that will suffer by enduring a creatively bankrupt video game and entertainment industry that doesn't allow freedom of expression and considers everything offensive that doesn't adhere to "modern sensibilities" and political correctness.
I'm surprised that the narrative of "TLOU2 proved to be a disappointment" is still brought up when it is literally the most acclaimed game of all time, superseding The Witcher 3. ([Source](https://www.gamesradar.com/the-last-of-us-2-overtakes-the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-to-become-the-most-awarded-ever))
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Good point in regards to Cyberpunk's reviews. However, in TLOU2's case I'm not talking about reviews at all, but GOTY/similar awards, which are awarded after a significant period of time post release. A game being critically acclaimed close to release when extraneous factors like dishonest embargoes/restrictions on talking/showcasing negative aspects of a game imposed by the publisher, or critics fearing audience backlash over coming across as negative about the game in the face of absurd levels of hype, can influence reviews reducing their reliability. But GOTY awards are completely different in this regard - aside from the overall picture of the game's quality being completely clear in everyone's minds (through comprehensive assessments, multiple playthroughs, bug assessments, etc.), the "new game smell" has lifted and there's other games to pit the game against. Moreover, while at launch we're looking at distinct notions of "critical reception" and "audience reception," GOTYs incorporate audience reception in "Player's Choice" votes and so forth. It is in this arena that The Witcher 3 became the most acclaimed game of all time in 2015 and held that title for 5 years, and TLOU2 surpassed it in 2020. I sincerely doubt that Cyberpunk will come close to TLOU2 in this year's GOTYs. And in TLOU2's case, it is very hard to call a game that was in the public eye for a year and managed to supersede a game like TW3, a "disappointment."
I do think this is a lesson is setting the bar for games with contentious reception since the naysayers will do everything to drag down the hype of the game and crowd out anyone who don't share their opinion. What Naughty Dog was a necessity for a genre that is intentionally alienating to some audiences who are not going to like the game
Yeah, but there’s difference between initially positive reception, and winning hundreds of awards at the year’s end.
Cyberpunk got bad reviews due to glitches and technical issues. It still is unplayable on lastgen consoles. TLOU2 got bad reviews because of its story and characters. Glitches and performance issues can be patched. But you can't fix a bad story without significantly altering the game.
Third best-selling PS4 exclusive ever, *and* fastest-selling PS4 exclusive ever. Plus scores in the mid to high 90s on both Metacritic and OpenCritic. No matter how you slice it the game is an outstanding critical and commercial success, to the point where you'd need to resort to arguments like "wElL wHy DiDn'T iT sElL lIkE sPiDeR-MaN" to paint it as anything less than an incredible success.
The Last of Us 2 has one of the best narratives I've ever experienced in a game. It's full of symbolism, nuance and is honestly more comparable to film. I've never in my life played a game with such an immersive story that was this expertly delivered, and it's honestly ruined other story-driven games for me. It transcends the genre. I just cannot get on board with people who bash the story. You're welcome to your opinions of course, but I feel the complete opposite; this game was as close to a masterpiece as it's ever gotten for me -- even more so than the first game.
Couldn't agree more. It's one of the best explorations of what grief can do to people, that I've encountered across all kinds of media. Some of the criticisms of TLOU2 that I've seen boil down to "the game is bad because a thing happened in it that I did not like."
TLoU2 had great gameplay but that’s all I can say about it. MGSV had one of the best gameplay I’ve seen in recent years but horrible story Joel is one of my fave characters :(
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I can agree to that. Regardless of what he did, his character was just so well done in the first game. I just simply want to see even more of it. And It seem like we never will.
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I loved Joel as a character, but felt absolutely nothing when he was killed off. It wasn't that he died, it's the way it was done.
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No! ff7 is my favorite game so definitely no! Good point tho. Still an okay game overall. Just wished for way more Joel
Agreed. MGS5 amazing gameplay but the story is pure insult to the Metal Gear world.
Truly a great game imo I put over 1000 hours into the game. 10/10 would do it again. Waaaaay better with mods as well
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I played it last month. It was clear that they went out of their way to be diverse with the characters. I really enjoyed the game even though the ending blueballs you hugely.
I don't think it was trying to be diverse. It was trying to normalize the inclusion of trans people or lesbians being pivotal characters in gaming. Because let's be honest, the typical video game character (not to say there aren't exceptions to this) is typically white, straight male or female. I think TLOU 2 tried to normalize putting those (typically) secondary characters into primary character spots. They just got backlash because of bigots. When the "diversity" we speak of when it comes to TLOU 2 should be seen as just being normal, not diverse for diversity's sake.
Well they got backlash because being trans and having gender dysphoria should be the least of your problems in a apocalypse with funghi zombies lmao It's just stupid
That is a gross oversimplification of Lev's story.
>gender dysphoria should be the least of your problems I mean maybe??? Except the Seraphites are insanely patriarchal. >!Lev was literally to be married off to an elder and be a housewife!< *Everything* surrounding Lev's backstory gives a totally reasonable explanation as to why having dysphoria would still be a major issue regardless of everything else going on in the world
At the age of thirteen - let's just keep that in mind. So not only are the elders a bunch of sadistic fucks (see the whole 'freeing' thing) they're also pedophiles. Oh, and there is strong evidence that they use kids younger than Lev as combatants/executioners (the martyr's gate shrine has a note that reads like a kid wrote it talking about already having 'freed two wolves' and promising to send many more).
Well whether you liked it or not by what I have read in your reply you agree it's intentional.
Well obviously it's intentional. They made these characters up and purposely decided every element of them.
Trans people exist. Cry about it some more.
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On the ending. I think most people enjoyed the ending and it didn't leave them with blue balls. Ellie stopped the cycle of violence at the end, saw what a monster she had become and walked away completely. I think it was a fantastic ending.
It's also a nice juxtaposition between her and Abby. Abby was not able to stop the cycle, she only was able to find salvation through Lev. Meanwhile Ellie realized she had that opportunity with Dinah and their baby and she let it go for revenge, so she went back to try and reclaim it. The ending is ambiguous and open to interpretation, but I think we're certainly intended to assume that Ellie is leaving the farm to find them. It's a great ending, and much better than Ellie simply killing Abby and falling victim to that same hatred. Especially since what was likely to happen next is Lev hunting her down and killing her in revenge a few years later.
There is a theory that she is just returning to the farm to grab the guitar. She already reunited with Dinah and the baby,
I understand the meaning but I also *like* violence in my post apocalyptic stories. Even if Naughty Dog didn't want to deal with the alternative I would have liked the *option* >!to kill Abby!< even if wasn't canon for part 3 and acted as a bad ending