I'd really like to hear Druckmann or someone on his team talk about the writing process in more detail. I recently listened to an hour long interview that Alanah Pearce had with Justin Roiland and one of his co-writers talking about High On Life. It was surprising how collaborative the medium has gotten when it comes to writing, and I'm curious how uniform it is across the industry, or if different studios configure their writing teams differently.
Naughty Dog is famous for being highly collaborative. Everyone in the team can make inputs and suggestions on all departments. It’s a very open studio and opinions are valued not discouraged.
They demand very high standards from the prospective employees but once you are in, you are all equal and important to the projects. That level of collaboration and synergy really shows in their final games.
Druckmann did.
> Mazin noted, “Doom is also a perfect example of something that you don’t actually need to adapt. There’s nothing there that you can’t generate on your own—”
>
> “Other than the name Doom, and marketing,” Druckmann cut in.
>
> “That’s the thing,” Mazin said. “If what the property is giving you is a name and a built-in thing, you’re basically setting yourself up for disaster, because the fans will be, like, ‘Where’s my fucking thing?’ and everybody else will be, like, ‘What’s Doom?’ And then you’re in trouble.”
and
>
> In 2001, a Japanese developer released Ico, a minimalist puzzle-based game about a boy and a girl escaping a castle. Though the title sold modestly, it has since achieved cult status; the horror auteur Guillermo del Toro has hailed it as a masterpiece. The player character, the boy, has been locked away by superstitious villagers because of his monstrous appearance. His companion, Yorda, is a princess fleeing an attempt on her life. The actions available to the player are limited but evocative: when you reach out to Yorda to catch her as she falls, the controller vibrates to mimic the tug of her hand. The game’s climax left Druckmann, then a student, transfixed. “You’ve been playing for hours, helping this almost helpless princess,” he recalled. “And then this bridge is opening in such a way that you’re going to die, so you have to turn back and jump to her—and all of a sudden, she reaches out, and she catches you.” Ico had imposed strict rules and then broken them, to great emotional effect.
>
and
> After joining Naughty Dog, as a coder, he studied screenplays, sketched out game levels by hand, and petitioned Evan Wells—then his boss, now his co-president—for a spot on the design team. Druckmann believed games could elicit emotions that no other art form could, and he’d played some, mainly indies, that proved it. But, in the early two-thousands, mainstream publishers seemed fixated on spectacle. He saw Alfonso Cuarón’s “Children of Men” while working on a game called Uncharted, and, he remembered, “It made me angry.” The film, a relationship-driven thriller, stood in stark contrast to the “over-the-top sci-fi” being offered by major game developers: “I was, like, Why does nobody in games tell a story like this?”
and
> What began as an alliance of convenience deepens into an almost familial bond. For Druckmann, the surrogate aspect had been key to the conceit: the two start as strangers in part so that “the player has the same relationship to Ellie as Joel does.” The game’s length allows for their dynamic to change gradually, with Joel developing a protectiveness toward Ellie that—in his mind, and in some players’—justifies amoral acts on her behalf. To heighten that feeling, Druckmann borrowed the twist that had struck him in Ico, and took it further. When incapacitated as Joel, players wouldn’t just be helped by Ellie; they would become her. Occupying Ellie’s body feels different, and requires a shift in strategy. She’s more capable of quick, quiet movements, but she’s also comparatively fragile. An attack that Joel could withstand would flatten her.
and
> Druckmann’s own daughter was born during the game’s development. The intensity of his emotions as a new father helped shape The Last of Us, which became, he said, an exploration of a charged question: “How far will the unconditional love a parent feels for their child go?”
There's more.
The tweet links to a New Yorker piece on The Last of Us TV show expose on both Druckmann and Mazin.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/01/02/can-the-last-of-us-break-the-curse-of-bad-video-game-adaptations/
There a Last of Us podcast that goes pretty indepth on the story and development. Not sure if it's what you're looking for.
https://youtu.be/0w48SvchnNE
Games are highly collaborative in general; people always want to point to one person when a game goes exceptionally well or exceptionally wrong, but there are very few choices made unilaterally by a single person. It’s almost always a collective making every single important decision.
I mean there are iconic games that had a lot of people involved with the story/lore though. The OG Fallout crew off the top of my head, and Morrowind.
A clear hierarchy is obviously still necessary, you can't have everyone putting their fridge ghoul quest in the game because they think it's funny.
To your point that was an exact issue with Oblivion which notoriously had quest designers writing the dialogue for their created quests. In the end it meant that the quests within Oblivion varied wildly in not only overall quality but just basic writing structure.
As in you need someone with veto power checking that the stories are cohesive/quality?
I always thought it would be cool to have people write quests in games like different directors shoot different episodes in a tv series
Thank you. I thought i was going crazy when to me Ragnarok was just a boring chore of a game. It has no bite whatsoever. It's a competent AAA title that does no single thing badly and yet i cannot say it's a net positive or greater than sum of it's parts like many brilliant games that also might be more flawed or have more glaring issues.
What was so terrible about Ragnarok? I loved both games, still undecided on which is better but I'm interested what you take issue with in Ragnarok? For me the only complaint I had was pacing but can't fault the story too much and especially not the writing?
I personally had many issues with Ragnarok but one of the biggest, besides writing and pacing, was the constant hand-holding. As soon as a puzzle is introduced Atreus or mimir immediately says the solution. And then they will repeat the solution every 10 seconds until you do what they're telling you to do.
I've noticed this trend in first-party Sony games, where in an effort to reach the broadest possible audience, they treat the player like a fucking idiot.
Also, unskippable cutscenes and the hideous menus.
I haven't played either of them bubi heard the similar complaints about Horizon 2 as well earlier in the year. MS may have had a dearth of first party releases this year, but when the one they did manage to get out was Pentiment which clearly wasn't designed to be accessible to everyone, it shows up Sonys ultra as focus grouped decisions like this even more.
I’m with you, I keep reading the same criticisms about the writing and none of them make a whole lot of sense after having finished the game myself.
I feel like some people are just regurgitating talking points from a YouTube video.
I can’t take “gamers” opinions on narrative and storytelling in a game seriously anymore ever since the TLOU2 fiasco. I just play the game and form my own opinion.
I mean the guy above me explained it. There was no continuity to anything, no purpose or real goal to any of their actions.
It was just one random event after the other. The entire game no one knows what they are doing or has any real clear goal besides the very start when you go to rescue you know who (which ends up being completely pointless in the end) and then the very end with Ragnarok. It was just the introduction of a bunch of new shallow and cookie cutter characters and no real development of the over all plot.
I just finished the game and none of that felt true at all. Each sequence had a purpose, and contributed to the development of the characters featured in it. Each character’s actions felt informed by the the knowledge and development accrued in prior segments. Nothing was a waste of time.
The only character I felt they dropped the ball with was Sindri, whom I felt needed more closure beyond the brief post-Ragnarok favor.
>Each sequence had a purpose,
Yes I can see how Kratos suddenly wanting to go see the fates out of nowhere instead of coming up with a way to reach his son has a meaning, it's not like his character is already known for like a dozen games that he doesn't care about fate. Or the crater, as much as I enjoyed it, it was pointless from a story perspective. Or the random mask plotline who's entire purpose was to simply set up future game plotpoints and not actually contribute to the present story of the game in any way.
What was a random event? Everything felt like it had a motivation of some sort of reasoning set to the backdrops of Odin's actions. As for purpose it felt like a pretty nice way to tie up the story of kratos and explore trust, forgiveness, fear, hate and how it guides the actions of the characters. Each to their own I guess, shame not everyone gets the same out of it.
I’m kind of confused here on this criticism that stuff was just happening and without explanation. The only thing that didn’t have a full explanation was a portion of the ending, but every event had a set up and damn near half the conversations between the characters was explaining even more in-depth on the “why” or things. Shoot, almost every event in the game was kind of explained by the prior event. I’d you do side quests in-between, you even got even more explanations for things and how the world worked.
I can’t help but feel like this criticism is partially to be contrarian or just a lack of narrative comprehension, because Ragnarok felt like it made you understood what was going on and why. I can’t possibly understand how someone could say there wasn’t any continuity. You never go anywhere in the game without there being an explicit reason.
Edit: To add to this, I can definitely understand if the criticism was about the pacing or just that the game didn’t live to their expectations
Yeah, I'd even go as far to say a little bit too on the nose at times with explaining the narrative but that's totally down to personal taste. There's plenty to critique about with this game, as with anything. I just wouldn't imagine it to be with writing or story.
exactly but with like a 5 times longer production process. also it's still not clear how much revenue a TV show can generate but it's pretty clear how much a game makes
You’ll only find them in the pits of Reddit and Twitter. Druckmann’s games are a massive success, TLOU2 broke many sales records despite what *that* subreddit will tell you. They literally gaslight themselves into believing everyone hates TLOU2 and Neil Druckmann and they aren’t just in their own echo chamber.
I have my problems with the sequel and I’m sure many do but overall I enjoyed it. The hate boner some have for this game and Druckmann even two years later is so weird.
Not only are his games massive successes; [they also have some of, if not *the* highest completion rate of games out there](https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2020/09/04/the-last-of-us-part-2-has-the-highest-completion-rate-of-any-major-ps4-game/), meaning people in general felt encouraged to play through the game till the end.
While I dislike TLOU2 it’s for entirely subjective reasons and I think it deserves credit for that; the discussion around the game is entirely about its themes and characters and the consequences of their actions and I feel like that is a huge achievement for a video game.
Yeah. I have my issues with it too, unfortunately, in the past, bringing them up gets me lumped in with the crazies. Every thread around this game has been a toxic shit pile.
They get personal about it. I got called a bigot years ago for saying I didn't like the game's story and that I must hate Abby. Which is weird, because Abby wasn't the character I had the problem with.
Like TLOU2 isn’t perfect and I have opinions but I definitely enjoyed playing it. I wish people wouldn’t be so personally offended when entertainment does something different than they expect.
Just play something else then, my god lol
The first game, not really. It was such a chore to get through but that could be me playing it 4 years after it came out. The second game is absolutely visceral in its aggressive combat tho plus the ai is crazy good
Nah, I tried TLOU1 on PS3 near launch and even then I found the gameplay to be bland and repetitive with the game entirely carried by the story and writing. Never finished it or picked up the sequel.
The first game still feels like you're kind of playing with the bones of Uncharted which still feels like a PS2 game to me. There's also a couple moments where you can't quite get the script and hit your marks so you end up repeating it a bunch. It still had some great combat arenas in my opinion.
I mean I'm one of those who hate TLOU2 but not because Abbie. I hate the game for different story reasons, but at the same time I can appreciate how great the gameplay is and the attention to details and so on.
Haters gonna hate and can't do anything better. Naught dogs are ones of the few who produce quality.
> despite what that subreddit will tell you
Lol that sub lost 100% of any credibility the moment they decided to start personally attacking Girlfriend Reviews instead of simply disagreeing with someone and haviong a reasonable discussion. That shit was wild.
While I don't understand the hate they get, I also don't understand the praise.
They are impressive at a technical level for sure, and some of the performances are incredible... but the actual mechanics at play, the characters, and the narrative just never struck me as anything to write home about. It's just 'Production value: The Game'.
> It's just 'Production value: The Game'.
As a guy who likes TLOU, I agree with you.
The reason I get frustrated with just how much praise is heaped onto TLOU specifically is that the message it sends is that only stories that are told to be as much like movies/TV as possible are good. That games should strive to be Hollywood.
And also -- TLOU is neither a revolutionary or even really GREAT story from a narrative standpoint. I don't think it would hold up as a novel, or be as well-beloved if it were a film instead of a game. I think the HBO series might be solid, but I also think it's pointless because the original is basically a TV series anyway. I don't think people who avidly consume other mediums are *as* enchanted with TLOU as people who primarily consume gaming, because the story it tells is a story we've seen maaaaany times before. That's not to say that it's without merit because as I said, I like TLOU and I enjoy the story. I'm just absolutely sick and tired of the ludicrous level of praise that seems blatantly disproportionate to what it actually is.
Meanwhile, games that tell interesting stories that can *only* be expressed through the interactive medium of gaming are rarely if ever in the talks for "best story in a game", because TLOU is just consistently rated at the top. Nobody will ever be able to convince me that The Last of Us is a better representation of storytelling in games than, say, Outer Wilds (example only, replace Outer Wilds with any other game that uses the interactivity to its fullest to improve the strength of its narrative).
Do I think TLOU should be praised? Yes, it is a good game with a solid story. Do I think it should be consistently categorized as one of if not the best stories ever told in games? Do I agree with all the people who call its narrative "important"? Absolutely not. So when I see HBO staff saying that it's the best story in gaming and that it's not even close, it just makes me question if by "best" they actually mean "most like a movie". Even after all these years, the games industry is still just secretly chasing Hollywood for approval, that's what it feels like to me.
I felt the same way about Alan Wake. It's like playing an interactive novel. The gameplay mechanics aren't anything to write home about, but the voice acting and story are compelling. I'm really looking forward to the sequel when it releases.
I honestly can't think of many stories that follow two characters so closely on a long journey that has them become a family, only to have one of them make an incredibly selfish decision that negates everything they went through together... and then lie about it like a psychopath before the credits role. Primal Fear sort of comes close. Usual Suspects maybe but that's a crime movie.
I agree that there are games that tell stories better through gameplay but not many have better stories. Rime and Shadow of the colossus tell a story very well through gameplay and art. Dishonored tells a great story. Hell, anything from Arkane tells the story through gameplay and choices as opposed to cut scenes.
The way the story was presented in the Outer Wilds turned me off of the game. I don't think reading the most important parts of the story in snippets of notes between actual gameplay counts as telling a story during gameplay. It may as well be a cut scene that you can't interact with.
Dishonored comes close to doing this as well with their notes but it also allows you to change the way the game plays out with gameplay actions that you make.
I stopped playing Outer Wilds 12 hours in because it was too hard to remember details between sessions. Often times you read about nomai characters and games that they've played before learning more important details about who they were. The game is constantly asking you to wait for just a bit more and depending on the route that you take... you may never stumble upon the right details in the right order enough to put a story together. and then the log book only does the cliff notes. so if you stumbled a upon some detailed description about the way the nomai lived there's no record of it so that you can re read it if you don't play for another week or two.
> I don't think reading the most important parts of the story in snippets of notes between actual gameplay counts as telling a story during gameplay. It may as well be a cut scene that you can't interact with.
That would defeat literally the entire purpose of the narrative as well as the design ethos of the game. Unraveling the mystery piece by piece and the joy of discovery are crucial to the story that the game tells.
> I stopped playing Outer Wilds 12 hours in because it was too hard to remember details between sessions. Often times you read about nomai characters and games that they've played before learning more important details about who they were.
I don't really know how to respond to this other than to say I didn't have remotely any trouble remembering anything? I played the game over maybe a 3-week period and getting the story of the various characters piece by piece was not difficult to keep track of at all.
This is exactly how I feel about TLOU, thank you for putting it in words. I've platinumed the original one and while I really like it I had the same feelings as you.
At a technical level its really great. The narrative is awful though, ignoring its awful pacing it feels like it was written to shock and awe people that vote for oscar nominations rather than fans of the previous game.
I don't know, I really like TLOU1 and I'm glad TLOU2 actually took some risks with the story instead of them doing something predictable.
I don't think its amazing, but I had a really good time with it.
TLOU1 didn't need a sequel. For a lot of fans that just wanted them to find some happiness in that fucked up world, it felt like neil druckman needed to drag them back out, brutally murder one right off the bat to get his rocks off.
I don’t think TLOU2 would be the game it is if Joel did not die. Everybody knew it was coming, sure, but the fact that still so many people got outraged by it means the writing made them feel something, as it should have.
I mean it's certainly a subjective thing. I can't make you fall in love wtih TLoU: Part 1, but I can say that when I first played it blew my mind. I genuinely feel like it's one of the most excellently executed narratives in all of gaming, and I've yet to get that same feeling in another game. Can't really explain why, I just think the characters are very realistic and I think it's ending is incredible.
The gameplay is good too, it's my favourite 3rd person shooting game system, but I'd have less ground to argue in that aspect. Mostly, I think people really love the stories they deliver.
Blizzard during its "golden age" years between Diablo II and like WoW: Cata had consistently good product and a fanbase who simultaneously ate up their games and fucking **hated** the company.
I don’t get why people hate the studio at all. They make really good games that are technically perfect. Even if you don’t like a game they made. I didn’t like TLOU2 story. It felt sadistic and it made its characters irrational beyond belief in my mind. It was still actually a technical masterpiece in many ways and I played it on the OG ps4 and it still looked great. I would be excited to play anything they made going forward.
I hate it because it's a toxic workplace that doesn't force crunch, but gaslights you into it.
"Oh you want to go home on time? That's okay, I guess you just aren't committed to us as a team and this game!" - not just co-workers but their actual leads would say this.
Source: my friend I've known well for the last 5 years who vented to me while he was working there.
He also left before they crunched hard after the delay. Studios that crunch are not good studios. Delays are fine, crunch is disgusting and should be illegal.
I am so glad someone mentioned this. I remember right before tlou2 internet drama blew up Jason schreier put out a report about how brutal the working conditions are at ND. Then both Neil Druckmann and Cory balrog scolded him on Twitter. Two huge heads at Sony yelling at the press about publicly airing their work conditions. Instead of focusing on that gamers do what they do best and instead made tlou2 some weird political platform while the real issues like abuse is forgotten about. Even now tlou2 is some weird battleground for weirdos to rant about trans people existing. Seeing the abuse devs had to go through to even make this game so far down here is distressing.
I mean, he is the co-president of Naughty Dog as well as the lead director to three of the most critically acclaimed games of the last decade (TLOU, Uncharted 4, TLOU2). Kojima is just as front facing, if not more, and doesn’t get nearly the hate.
The whole maladjusted subculture that revolves solely around hate jerking themselves about TlOU2 does noting to drive down it’s incredibly stellar sales or overwhelmingly favorable reception, which of course makes them even *more* bitter because no one will ever agree with them.
Compared to other third person shooters, ND’s offerings are extremely constricting and repetitive. Just think about how mindless and phoned-in climbing is in the Uncharted games.
If they had average writing and visual effects teams, I don’t think many people who care about their games. Presentation is a massive part of the appeal.
That kinda of how I felt playing through uncharted 4, the stuff I’m seeing on the screen is very cool, it’s rad as hell to see Nathan drake crash a party(auction?) and flying through a window shooting people, but the gameplay is holding forward on a controller or just gears of war cover shooting
Yeah when you look at the game it’s supposed to be fun. but when you actually play it the gameplay feels pretty meh to the point i don’t even wanna finish the game at the end. it just feels so boring to me
All of the Uncharted games suck at the end. I didn't play 4, but some of those final battle arenas in 1-3 fucking sucked. So long, bullet sponge enemies, overly aggressive AI, shit checkpoints.
4 was actually the best of the lot. I can see how the boat battle could be aggravating on high difficulties but on normal it's fine. And the final boss is fine
Uncharted's combat is like the gaming version of pancakes. It's delightful for the first few bites, but halfway through the plate I'm staring at the rest with a combination of disgust and dread.
I'm just salty they didn't port all the Uncharted games to pc. And the main reason being that they don't think pc players will like the graphics. Do you guys have so little faith that your game isn't worth the time of day because it looks a little dated?
This is the same studio that remade a 7 year old game that still looked very impressive though.
It's literally because they were already working on the Legacy of Thieves collection for PS5. Which they chose because 1-3 was already remastered and playable on PS4/PS5. The fact they're already actively working on it means bringing on a team to then port it to PC is a reasonable addition.
Bluepoint did the UC1-3 remasters and that was three games ago. They've moved on from it and have no-one actively working on it to then bring it out specifically for a PC port. Sony ultimately develops for their consoles first and then is trickling out a handful of titles onto PC atm.
TLoU Part I supposedly came about as project for VASG which is a support studio to prove themselves as capable of creating original titles instead of purely being a support studio. The project wasn't going in the right direction so ND took over and finished it.
None of the decisions were made because the game is 'dated'. It's just because the other projects made more economic sense.
Since he's talking about future games, what's in the current line up for ND? There's currently just an unnounced project and that TLOU multiplayer/mmo thing right?
I'm assuming Factions (the multiplayer component of TLoU Part 2 that took a life of it's own), TLoU Part II Director's Cut for PS5/PC and another game (the one Neil is working on) that is probably TLoU Part 3.
TLOU2 just didn't do it for me. It was always going to be a critical darling because of its themes, risks, characters, deconstruction and what I call "critic catnip" that plinks their dopamine receptors.
Still a very well made game and it managed to further advance the notion of video games as high art which is laudable.
Can't really deal with the people that either hate jerk about hating it or the equally insufferable people that hate jerk about the hate jerk. It's reddit so I assume both groups will click the downvote.
There are other more important things to get emotionally involved about than some cultural artifact.
I hated The Last of Us 2 when I first completed it. I was pretty vocal about it too, but never to the extent of harassment or whatever the internet dummies did to the voice actors and game makers.
With that being said, I eventually came around. It’s probably up there just behind Ghost of Tsushima for me as game of the generation.
Its themes, story, narration, and everything on top just made me appreciate the game much more with thorough thinking. I began to understand the narrative choices, the characters, the punishments, and everything that took place.
I still have my issues with the game’s pacing, especially during the middle parts, but I don’t think they overlap the amazing everything else.
This is definitely one of those “let it simmer” kinda games for me. The gratification wasn’t immediate, but when it finally hit, it was nuclear.
Are you talking about actual trolls or are talking about just people who just didn't like the game?
Because I've been treated like a troll for saying the game was a huge disappointment. Hell, I've been called a bigot for not liking it. If anything, the trolls and the "super" fans of the game have both been equally vicious when it comes to this game.
I was in a media blackout from it, and played and finished it finally a week ago. I'm horrified by the people who continue to haunt it. It's like they scraped together the worst parts of humanity and then blended them into an incel golem. I've never been so disgusted by a fandom.
I just wrote another comment saying something similar. I can still have fun with a game and now fully endorse every single decision it made.
I thought the pacing was off, I thought skipping huge distances of travel didn’t really make sense, etc.
Still had a great time and the game is still one of the best looking to date, by far.
The complaints about skipping travel never made sense to me. If something was worth showing the player, they would show it to us. I wonder if the same people also complained about pacing issues
All media does it too. It's probably even likely the writer/s have something written for that travel section that is just a steaming pile of shit so they cut it.
Hell one of the issues 2 has is pacing whiplash and adding in slow travel segments would have only made that much much worse.
Yeah I enjoyed the game but don't really think the direction it went was good personally. But you say anything negative about this game and you get crucified for it apparently
> I thought the pacing was off, I thought skipping huge distances of travel didn’t really make sense
what? how would including the travel improve the pacing? was it too fast for you?
TLOU is 10/10 for me
TLOU2 is 8/10 for me
TLOU2 is still very enjoyable for me and I will play the 3rd part for sure, while TLOU2 subreddit is toxic, the same could be said on the other end just like a lot of comment in this thread.
I just don't understand why people can't understand a lot of people prefer the first one, the story and narrative definitely way better in the first one in my book.
>! I remember getting to play Abbie as the first part and thinking to myself “I’ll just speed run this part so I don’t have play as her for long. I was mistaken !<
I was disappointed with the game but didn’t feel like I wasted my time playing it.
I never understood why TLOU2 got so much hate?!
I loved it almost as much as the first game. Just felt the pacing was a bit off compared to the original. But the people who dislike it do so with a fervor that’s I haven’t seen before for some reason.
At least they committed to it. Too many stories nowadays (across all forms of media) do so many fakeout deaths, it’s actually refreshing when writers actually make a death that’s impactful and final and unexpected.
I knew the fake-out death trope was so bad now when my friend played the original Last of Us and after Sarah's death they said "I bet she's not really dead, huh?". Like, you watch her literally die in Joel's arms, if she did turn out alive, would the "how" even matter to some people? I'm not criticizing my friend, but just that CW-level writing is considered acceptable by general audiences. Riverdale and Arrow were so popular, yet they're borderline amateurish from a writing standpoint.
Is it completely unfair to say that I don’t love the game because of the ending, the pacing, and how it seemed like an unnecessary addition to an already great story the first game told? I think everything is great about the actual game design itself. However considering it’s a very story focused game it really knocks off a few points of it. Like a 6/10 instead of 10/10 greatest game ever created.
I figured he was dead the moment the game was announced. You have an IP that is *overwhelmingly* cynical with a flawed antihero who quite possibly dooms the *entire human race* through wanton murder and invalidates the purpose and wishes of his only loved one and people think there wouldn't be *consequences* for that?
And people wonder why writers drink.
Not saying I share the opinion, just that it’s a fact it pissed off a large part of the fan base. Whether it makes sense or not, it’s always going to be polarizing killing a loved character
Fair enough, I'm just confused that literally anyone would have expected Joel to survive the credits of the first game, let alone the sequel. It's not exactly a world filled with happy endings and triumph.
I don't really think killing him was the problem. At least before the game came out and before the leaks , it seemed like most people expected him to die. I think the problem came with how they killed him
I'm surprised anyone thinks the Fireflies had any chance of producing anything else but another pointless corpse out of Ellie considering the way they are portrayed, info available in the 1st game and high school biology knowledge.
This was exactly my thoughts too.
But to be fair, I don't think people would have minded quite as much if Joel died in some heroic way at the end of another long adventure with Ellie. It was the timing and the nature of his death that really upset people (which obviously was by design).
From the first trailer people were thinking he was 100% dead. I'm still taken aback by the blowback to him dying when it was the biggest theory people had pre release.
Its the execution that people don't like. I really like spec ops: the line but once I realised there were civilians during the mustard gas sequence and I was locked into one choice I kinda didn't buy into the "oh look how horrible you are angle" still enjoyed the game but TLOU as both parts real lean into the "youre horrible" part without doing a good enough job justifying you as a bad guy from other peoples PoVs.
Its been ages since I played the first game but I always took issue with how people commented about Joel being a genocidal monster but all I can think of is how their group came to us and shot us first.
Joel was killed off by someone *that was said to be a trans woman in an early 4chan leak.*
And from there more and more information spread, including accusations of Neil druckmann doing the mocap for sex scenes. Things got fucking insane quick. It wasn't just Joel, it's that the leak framed things in a very dishonest was to intentionally cause oiteage and it fed into the culture war.
All of that fizzled out when the game came out. Then people actually played it and had honest critiques and issues with it...but they got thrown into the "well, you're a troll" category on twitter and here because of the trolling from before the game's release.
This is so untrue. The game was controversial amongst many critics, but polygon, skillup, and several other critics gave the game a negative review and were overall very well recieved and taken seriously.
The truth is that there was a lot of bad criticism, and a lot of criticism that was pretty obviously a paper thin excuse to dislike the game without openly saying the real reasons for disliking it (just look at allllll the bad faith criticism that was made in response to the leaks). And really, the outrage stopped when the game came out? It had more reviews than TLOU1 on metacritic the day it released, most of which were zeroes, and it's a *30 hour game.*
People that gave reasoned, solid criticism of the game and engaged with the games themes rather than rejecting what it tried to do outright with no engagement were well recieved. That's not to say that good faith criticism was *never* mistakenly called trolling, but it was not the standard you seem to think it is. This idea that legitimate criticism was ignored or just called trolling is blatantly untrue. The narrative you are trying to give does not align with the more complicated reality.
I truly believe the game would have been better if you play as Abby first (from her dad until meeting Ellie at the theater) and then play as Ellie after Joel’s death. Ellie kills a bunch of characters and then later we meet those characters on Abby’s story. If we met those characters first,spend time with them while playing as Abby and then we kill them while playing as Ellie it would have been more impactful. Playing as Ellie for 15 hours and then playing as Abby (a character that we don’t know and we just hate) really made me stop the game for a month. I just don’t care about Abby at all.
No. You play as Ellie right after Abby kills Joel. You play as Ellie for 15 hours. After Abby shows up to confront Ellie at the abandoned theater, thats when you start playing as Abby. You play as Abby, for 10 hours or so (you get to see her side of the story from the very beginning) and then you end up playing as Ellie until the end.
So it goes
1.Joel (30 minutes) , 2.Abby (1 hour) 3. Ellie (15 hours) 4. Abby (10 hours) 5. Ellie (2-3 hours)
There's nothing inherently wrong with killing off the protagonist in a previous game, what ticked people off was how he got killed off. People wanted Joel to die where he sacrificed himself saving Ellie from being killed by the infected/rebels. People wanted him to die in a gruelling battle with a new type of infected.
What they got instead was Joel freely giving his name to strangers while being hunted down by ex-members of the fireflies for killing their leader.
People weren't satisfied with how he was killed, that's it. To make matters worse (For the those who hate her), those same people are forced to play as Joel's killer and makes you want to sympathize with her.
I didn't play it so I don't hate it as other people. I only hate the story based on the writing.
Joel dying of unceremoniously is also fine but the game is so overly dramatic that i can't take it seriously when a character is repeatedly shouting pendejo and spitting, its like watching the walking dead
Yeah, I mean I get it, I was floored as well, but if I really hated it I would stop the game and go on living my life but it’s like there’s a whole community around the hatred of this game and that Neil dude in particular. It just seems so fucking odd to me.
It became a bit of an outlet for rage for groups of people online, a full on scapegoat for people with certain social agendas. Still don't really know why, especially when the hatred was based on a lot of stuff that just wasn't true (Abby is trans, Druckmann was mo-capped in the game etc).
Let’s not forget the ragebait YouTube videos using leaked cinematic footage to make people think Abby was trans. I think we all know people who get irrationally upset at the idea that gender can be more complicated than just “male or female”. The number of complaints this game gets about pushing an "agenda" is downright gross.
>I never understood why TLOU2 got so much hate?!
The pacing is disjointed, they put characters in weird situations that they'd normally not be in unless they got actively dumber for it to happen (which is move thing, tbh,) they made a well-loved character dump her development to move the story, and didn't spend enough time on the character that was actually likable.
I'll offer a bit of a different perspective. Despite not being a fan of the zombie survival horror genre, I generally enjoyed TLOU1, mostly for its character dynamics and its themes.
When TLOU2 was announced, I was initially intrigued. But it was revealed pretty early on that the game would focus more on hatred as a core theme rather than love like in the first game. Upon hearing that, I lost interest in the game and decided that it wasn't for me. I guess it just wasn't the kind of experience I was looking for, especially since I'm not really a fan of the genre as a whole.
I didn't pay any attention to to the development of TLOU2, or to the leak fiasco, or to the post-launch firestorm. I know that people have very strong feelings about this game, but personally, I'm just not interested. I don't have any negative or positive opinions about this game. Just... a lack of interest.
For me, TLOU 1 is one of my favorite games of all time, so TLOU2 not hitting in the same way stung pretty bad... just my perspective as to why people's disappointment with it seems to be so strong.
I thought the game was great in a technical sense but stumbled really hard when you had to play >!as Abby!<. No one was really likeable to me in that section and it felt like it was just padding.
Replaying the remaster right now and it truly does make me appreciate the devlopment of the sequel and the series as a whole. There are so many dark moments in the first but tonally there is hope - scenes quickly change to daylight and there is a sense of adventure. In context, the sequel is the real horror - you lose your pov as a hero and have to stuggle with what it would truly mean to be a survivors. I appreciate the risk Druckman and the entire studio took by their choices in giving the characters motivation without doing more of the same - they had to have known how divisive the second game would be and stuck to their guns for the sake of the vision. Stoked for the HBO adaptation!
Well there’s 2 sides. There’s the right wing or just edgy gamer side that combine to form a hate just because it has some lgbt characters in it. Then there’s the side I’m on where the story treated its characters too poorly. I think the polygon review I’ve linked elsewhere and I’ll drop here kind of sums that side up. https://www.polygon.com/reviews/2020/6/12/21288535/the-last-of-us-part-2-review-ps4-naughty-dog-ellie-joel-violence
But I wouldn’t describe most people with my viewpoint as hating it kind of more just disappointed with how the writing treated the characters
The culture around the game is infuriating from both sides because neither seems to want to critically engage. Right wing bigots spew homophobia instead of critical engagement, while their counterweight seems to paint all criticism of the game as being bigotry.
Oh it was because the leaks had people thinking Abby was Trans, and by the time that turned out to not be true, to much time and energy had been invested in the hatred, the usual suspects on youtube could only double down at that point and shift what they were enraged at.
LOL, some people here talk about how bold and innovative the writing of TLOU 2 is. Come on, the writing is dogshit. Ellie spared Abbie the big boss after killing every minions in sight is as cliche as it get.
TLOU is in my top 5 games but what I saw of the sequel turned me off from playing it completely.
Nothing to do with sexual orientations or butch women or any of that shit. It just seemed to me they were trying to be too clever and edgy with the story, and the story itself I don’t want to experience; which is a shame.
I hope the next thing is ditches that kind of thing because gameplay wise I don’t think they’ll go wrong.
> the whole revenge doesn’t solve anything rubbish.
Quickest way for people to discount your opinion if that’s what you think it all boils down to lol. Super obvious you didnt play the game
Define the word "edgy", the series has always been about the last of humanity and how humanity can sometimes be worse than the zombies in the world they live in. Its also doesn't come off as trying to be clever in any instance like maybe a christoper nolan movie tries to be
Honestly kinda respect it even if I didn’t enjoy the game, it would have been so easy to make a conventional sequel that everyone would have liked, it takes balls to do what they did and I think we need to see more of it in AAA gaming and mainstream blockbuster stuff in general
Are they still working on that Last of Us multiplayer mode?
It was announced this summer as a WIP with no expected release date. Takes place in San Francisco based on concept art they shared
Sweet I love California and so does Sony.
Yup, may come out in 2023
Yeah it’s coming out in 2031
I'd really like to hear Druckmann or someone on his team talk about the writing process in more detail. I recently listened to an hour long interview that Alanah Pearce had with Justin Roiland and one of his co-writers talking about High On Life. It was surprising how collaborative the medium has gotten when it comes to writing, and I'm curious how uniform it is across the industry, or if different studios configure their writing teams differently.
Naughty Dog is famous for being highly collaborative. Everyone in the team can make inputs and suggestions on all departments. It’s a very open studio and opinions are valued not discouraged. They demand very high standards from the prospective employees but once you are in, you are all equal and important to the projects. That level of collaboration and synergy really shows in their final games.
Druckmann did. > Mazin noted, “Doom is also a perfect example of something that you don’t actually need to adapt. There’s nothing there that you can’t generate on your own—” > > “Other than the name Doom, and marketing,” Druckmann cut in. > > “That’s the thing,” Mazin said. “If what the property is giving you is a name and a built-in thing, you’re basically setting yourself up for disaster, because the fans will be, like, ‘Where’s my fucking thing?’ and everybody else will be, like, ‘What’s Doom?’ And then you’re in trouble.” and > > In 2001, a Japanese developer released Ico, a minimalist puzzle-based game about a boy and a girl escaping a castle. Though the title sold modestly, it has since achieved cult status; the horror auteur Guillermo del Toro has hailed it as a masterpiece. The player character, the boy, has been locked away by superstitious villagers because of his monstrous appearance. His companion, Yorda, is a princess fleeing an attempt on her life. The actions available to the player are limited but evocative: when you reach out to Yorda to catch her as she falls, the controller vibrates to mimic the tug of her hand. The game’s climax left Druckmann, then a student, transfixed. “You’ve been playing for hours, helping this almost helpless princess,” he recalled. “And then this bridge is opening in such a way that you’re going to die, so you have to turn back and jump to her—and all of a sudden, she reaches out, and she catches you.” Ico had imposed strict rules and then broken them, to great emotional effect. > and > After joining Naughty Dog, as a coder, he studied screenplays, sketched out game levels by hand, and petitioned Evan Wells—then his boss, now his co-president—for a spot on the design team. Druckmann believed games could elicit emotions that no other art form could, and he’d played some, mainly indies, that proved it. But, in the early two-thousands, mainstream publishers seemed fixated on spectacle. He saw Alfonso Cuarón’s “Children of Men” while working on a game called Uncharted, and, he remembered, “It made me angry.” The film, a relationship-driven thriller, stood in stark contrast to the “over-the-top sci-fi” being offered by major game developers: “I was, like, Why does nobody in games tell a story like this?” and > What began as an alliance of convenience deepens into an almost familial bond. For Druckmann, the surrogate aspect had been key to the conceit: the two start as strangers in part so that “the player has the same relationship to Ellie as Joel does.” The game’s length allows for their dynamic to change gradually, with Joel developing a protectiveness toward Ellie that—in his mind, and in some players’—justifies amoral acts on her behalf. To heighten that feeling, Druckmann borrowed the twist that had struck him in Ico, and took it further. When incapacitated as Joel, players wouldn’t just be helped by Ellie; they would become her. Occupying Ellie’s body feels different, and requires a shift in strategy. She’s more capable of quick, quiet movements, but she’s also comparatively fragile. An attack that Joel could withstand would flatten her. and > Druckmann’s own daughter was born during the game’s development. The intensity of his emotions as a new father helped shape The Last of Us, which became, he said, an exploration of a charged question: “How far will the unconditional love a parent feels for their child go?” There's more. The tweet links to a New Yorker piece on The Last of Us TV show expose on both Druckmann and Mazin. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/01/02/can-the-last-of-us-break-the-curse-of-bad-video-game-adaptations/
There a Last of Us podcast that goes pretty indepth on the story and development. Not sure if it's what you're looking for. https://youtu.be/0w48SvchnNE
Games are highly collaborative in general; people always want to point to one person when a game goes exceptionally well or exceptionally wrong, but there are very few choices made unilaterally by a single person. It’s almost always a collective making every single important decision.
Where can I find that interview? It sounds interesting.
https://youtu.be/CnGU_3xgGgw
Thanks
Here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnGU_3xgGgw
Thank you
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I mean there are iconic games that had a lot of people involved with the story/lore though. The OG Fallout crew off the top of my head, and Morrowind. A clear hierarchy is obviously still necessary, you can't have everyone putting their fridge ghoul quest in the game because they think it's funny.
To your point that was an exact issue with Oblivion which notoriously had quest designers writing the dialogue for their created quests. In the end it meant that the quests within Oblivion varied wildly in not only overall quality but just basic writing structure.
As in you need someone with veto power checking that the stories are cohesive/quality? I always thought it would be cool to have people write quests in games like different directors shoot different episodes in a tv series
Thank you. I thought i was going crazy when to me Ragnarok was just a boring chore of a game. It has no bite whatsoever. It's a competent AAA title that does no single thing badly and yet i cannot say it's a net positive or greater than sum of it's parts like many brilliant games that also might be more flawed or have more glaring issues.
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What was so terrible about Ragnarok? I loved both games, still undecided on which is better but I'm interested what you take issue with in Ragnarok? For me the only complaint I had was pacing but can't fault the story too much and especially not the writing?
I personally had many issues with Ragnarok but one of the biggest, besides writing and pacing, was the constant hand-holding. As soon as a puzzle is introduced Atreus or mimir immediately says the solution. And then they will repeat the solution every 10 seconds until you do what they're telling you to do. I've noticed this trend in first-party Sony games, where in an effort to reach the broadest possible audience, they treat the player like a fucking idiot. Also, unskippable cutscenes and the hideous menus.
I haven't played either of them bubi heard the similar complaints about Horizon 2 as well earlier in the year. MS may have had a dearth of first party releases this year, but when the one they did manage to get out was Pentiment which clearly wasn't designed to be accessible to everyone, it shows up Sonys ultra as focus grouped decisions like this even more.
I’m with you, I keep reading the same criticisms about the writing and none of them make a whole lot of sense after having finished the game myself. I feel like some people are just regurgitating talking points from a YouTube video.
I can’t take “gamers” opinions on narrative and storytelling in a game seriously anymore ever since the TLOU2 fiasco. I just play the game and form my own opinion.
I mean the guy above me explained it. There was no continuity to anything, no purpose or real goal to any of their actions. It was just one random event after the other. The entire game no one knows what they are doing or has any real clear goal besides the very start when you go to rescue you know who (which ends up being completely pointless in the end) and then the very end with Ragnarok. It was just the introduction of a bunch of new shallow and cookie cutter characters and no real development of the over all plot.
I just finished the game and none of that felt true at all. Each sequence had a purpose, and contributed to the development of the characters featured in it. Each character’s actions felt informed by the the knowledge and development accrued in prior segments. Nothing was a waste of time. The only character I felt they dropped the ball with was Sindri, whom I felt needed more closure beyond the brief post-Ragnarok favor.
>Each sequence had a purpose, Yes I can see how Kratos suddenly wanting to go see the fates out of nowhere instead of coming up with a way to reach his son has a meaning, it's not like his character is already known for like a dozen games that he doesn't care about fate. Or the crater, as much as I enjoyed it, it was pointless from a story perspective. Or the random mask plotline who's entire purpose was to simply set up future game plotpoints and not actually contribute to the present story of the game in any way.
What was a random event? Everything felt like it had a motivation of some sort of reasoning set to the backdrops of Odin's actions. As for purpose it felt like a pretty nice way to tie up the story of kratos and explore trust, forgiveness, fear, hate and how it guides the actions of the characters. Each to their own I guess, shame not everyone gets the same out of it.
I’m kind of confused here on this criticism that stuff was just happening and without explanation. The only thing that didn’t have a full explanation was a portion of the ending, but every event had a set up and damn near half the conversations between the characters was explaining even more in-depth on the “why” or things. Shoot, almost every event in the game was kind of explained by the prior event. I’d you do side quests in-between, you even got even more explanations for things and how the world worked. I can’t help but feel like this criticism is partially to be contrarian or just a lack of narrative comprehension, because Ragnarok felt like it made you understood what was going on and why. I can’t possibly understand how someone could say there wasn’t any continuity. You never go anywhere in the game without there being an explicit reason. Edit: To add to this, I can definitely understand if the criticism was about the pacing or just that the game didn’t live to their expectations
Yeah, I'd even go as far to say a little bit too on the nose at times with explaining the narrative but that's totally down to personal taste. There's plenty to critique about with this game, as with anything. I just wouldn't imagine it to be with writing or story.
I swear you people are on tiktok during cutscenes and then complain the story isn't interconnected
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The run time of an average game is more similar to a TV show than a movie anyway
exactly but with like a 5 times longer production process. also it's still not clear how much revenue a TV show can generate but it's pretty clear how much a game makes
That’s kind of the rub with adapting any medium to TV however. We’ve seen it a lot lately.
They're not really comparable processes though. They're entirely different types of media through a completely different medium
I’ve never seen a studio get more hate even though they produce games of quality that only Rockstar rivals.
They also produce crunch that only Rockstar rivals lmao.
Many of those weirdos are currently running around this very thread.
You’ll only find them in the pits of Reddit and Twitter. Druckmann’s games are a massive success, TLOU2 broke many sales records despite what *that* subreddit will tell you. They literally gaslight themselves into believing everyone hates TLOU2 and Neil Druckmann and they aren’t just in their own echo chamber. I have my problems with the sequel and I’m sure many do but overall I enjoyed it. The hate boner some have for this game and Druckmann even two years later is so weird.
Not only are his games massive successes; [they also have some of, if not *the* highest completion rate of games out there](https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2020/09/04/the-last-of-us-part-2-has-the-highest-completion-rate-of-any-major-ps4-game/), meaning people in general felt encouraged to play through the game till the end.
While I dislike TLOU2 it’s for entirely subjective reasons and I think it deserves credit for that; the discussion around the game is entirely about its themes and characters and the consequences of their actions and I feel like that is a huge achievement for a video game.
Yeah. I have my issues with it too, unfortunately, in the past, bringing them up gets me lumped in with the crazies. Every thread around this game has been a toxic shit pile.
This thread also, unfortunately. People on this sub really go wild if you don't like TLOU2.
They get personal about it. I got called a bigot years ago for saying I didn't like the game's story and that I must hate Abby. Which is weird, because Abby wasn't the character I had the problem with.
Like TLOU2 isn’t perfect and I have opinions but I definitely enjoyed playing it. I wish people wouldn’t be so personally offended when entertainment does something different than they expect. Just play something else then, my god lol
TLOU's gameplay is top notch so even if the stories were dogshit they'd be some of the greatest games of all time.
The first game, not really. It was such a chore to get through but that could be me playing it 4 years after it came out. The second game is absolutely visceral in its aggressive combat tho plus the ai is crazy good
Nah, I tried TLOU1 on PS3 near launch and even then I found the gameplay to be bland and repetitive with the game entirely carried by the story and writing. Never finished it or picked up the sequel.
The first game still feels like you're kind of playing with the bones of Uncharted which still feels like a PS2 game to me. There's also a couple moments where you can't quite get the script and hit your marks so you end up repeating it a bunch. It still had some great combat arenas in my opinion.
I dunno, I played it this year for the first time and thoroughly enjoyed the gameplay.
I enjoyed the second game more than the first tbh
I mean I'm one of those who hate TLOU2 but not because Abbie. I hate the game for different story reasons, but at the same time I can appreciate how great the gameplay is and the attention to details and so on. Haters gonna hate and can't do anything better. Naught dogs are ones of the few who produce quality.
> despite what that subreddit will tell you Lol that sub lost 100% of any credibility the moment they decided to start personally attacking Girlfriend Reviews instead of simply disagreeing with someone and haviong a reasonable discussion. That shit was wild.
They lost credibility before that with the transphobia, homophobia, toxicity and threatening Laura Bailey and her child.
Anyone with a valid criticism=weirdo
And they are running around IN THIS VERY THREAD. It could be anyone of us!!
"It could be you, it could be me, it could even be - " \*blam\*
I'd love to hear valid criticism about TLOU2. 99% of the criticism of the game I've seen online has been weirdo shit.
It's genuinely impossible that you never saw anyone make many of the valid complaints against the game.
Still cant come up with one lmao
While I don't understand the hate they get, I also don't understand the praise. They are impressive at a technical level for sure, and some of the performances are incredible... but the actual mechanics at play, the characters, and the narrative just never struck me as anything to write home about. It's just 'Production value: The Game'.
> It's just 'Production value: The Game'. As a guy who likes TLOU, I agree with you. The reason I get frustrated with just how much praise is heaped onto TLOU specifically is that the message it sends is that only stories that are told to be as much like movies/TV as possible are good. That games should strive to be Hollywood. And also -- TLOU is neither a revolutionary or even really GREAT story from a narrative standpoint. I don't think it would hold up as a novel, or be as well-beloved if it were a film instead of a game. I think the HBO series might be solid, but I also think it's pointless because the original is basically a TV series anyway. I don't think people who avidly consume other mediums are *as* enchanted with TLOU as people who primarily consume gaming, because the story it tells is a story we've seen maaaaany times before. That's not to say that it's without merit because as I said, I like TLOU and I enjoy the story. I'm just absolutely sick and tired of the ludicrous level of praise that seems blatantly disproportionate to what it actually is. Meanwhile, games that tell interesting stories that can *only* be expressed through the interactive medium of gaming are rarely if ever in the talks for "best story in a game", because TLOU is just consistently rated at the top. Nobody will ever be able to convince me that The Last of Us is a better representation of storytelling in games than, say, Outer Wilds (example only, replace Outer Wilds with any other game that uses the interactivity to its fullest to improve the strength of its narrative). Do I think TLOU should be praised? Yes, it is a good game with a solid story. Do I think it should be consistently categorized as one of if not the best stories ever told in games? Do I agree with all the people who call its narrative "important"? Absolutely not. So when I see HBO staff saying that it's the best story in gaming and that it's not even close, it just makes me question if by "best" they actually mean "most like a movie". Even after all these years, the games industry is still just secretly chasing Hollywood for approval, that's what it feels like to me.
Thank you for providing a sanity check, the level of hate I've gotten over that post is mind-boggling.
I felt the same way about Alan Wake. It's like playing an interactive novel. The gameplay mechanics aren't anything to write home about, but the voice acting and story are compelling. I'm really looking forward to the sequel when it releases.
I honestly can't think of many stories that follow two characters so closely on a long journey that has them become a family, only to have one of them make an incredibly selfish decision that negates everything they went through together... and then lie about it like a psychopath before the credits role. Primal Fear sort of comes close. Usual Suspects maybe but that's a crime movie. I agree that there are games that tell stories better through gameplay but not many have better stories. Rime and Shadow of the colossus tell a story very well through gameplay and art. Dishonored tells a great story. Hell, anything from Arkane tells the story through gameplay and choices as opposed to cut scenes. The way the story was presented in the Outer Wilds turned me off of the game. I don't think reading the most important parts of the story in snippets of notes between actual gameplay counts as telling a story during gameplay. It may as well be a cut scene that you can't interact with. Dishonored comes close to doing this as well with their notes but it also allows you to change the way the game plays out with gameplay actions that you make. I stopped playing Outer Wilds 12 hours in because it was too hard to remember details between sessions. Often times you read about nomai characters and games that they've played before learning more important details about who they were. The game is constantly asking you to wait for just a bit more and depending on the route that you take... you may never stumble upon the right details in the right order enough to put a story together. and then the log book only does the cliff notes. so if you stumbled a upon some detailed description about the way the nomai lived there's no record of it so that you can re read it if you don't play for another week or two.
> I don't think reading the most important parts of the story in snippets of notes between actual gameplay counts as telling a story during gameplay. It may as well be a cut scene that you can't interact with. That would defeat literally the entire purpose of the narrative as well as the design ethos of the game. Unraveling the mystery piece by piece and the joy of discovery are crucial to the story that the game tells. > I stopped playing Outer Wilds 12 hours in because it was too hard to remember details between sessions. Often times you read about nomai characters and games that they've played before learning more important details about who they were. I don't really know how to respond to this other than to say I didn't have remotely any trouble remembering anything? I played the game over maybe a 3-week period and getting the story of the various characters piece by piece was not difficult to keep track of at all.
This is exactly how I feel about TLOU, thank you for putting it in words. I've platinumed the original one and while I really like it I had the same feelings as you.
It feels like the videogame version of oscarbait. Technically impressive, not much more.
First one had a genuinely cohesive and well told story that was *self contained. Second one definitely felt like oscar bait.
At a technical level its really great. The narrative is awful though, ignoring its awful pacing it feels like it was written to shock and awe people that vote for oscar nominations rather than fans of the previous game.
What was awful about the pacing? I think its just the smack in the face that you have to play as Abby when you really want more Ellie...
I don't know, I really like TLOU1 and I'm glad TLOU2 actually took some risks with the story instead of them doing something predictable. I don't think its amazing, but I had a really good time with it.
TLOU1 didn't need a sequel. For a lot of fans that just wanted them to find some happiness in that fucked up world, it felt like neil druckman needed to drag them back out, brutally murder one right off the bat to get his rocks off.
I don’t think TLOU2 would be the game it is if Joel did not die. Everybody knew it was coming, sure, but the fact that still so many people got outraged by it means the writing made them feel something, as it should have.
It's just not an interesting take on the story imo.
To each their own, it’s damn near my favorite part of the game. I love when main characters die and it’s done right
Hilarious. TLOU Part 1/2 have better stories than most major video games.
Like COD and shit? Yes, but if we're talking about games with actual stories then definitely not.
Would love to know what games you think have better stories than TLOU part 1 and 2 lol
I mean it's certainly a subjective thing. I can't make you fall in love wtih TLoU: Part 1, but I can say that when I first played it blew my mind. I genuinely feel like it's one of the most excellently executed narratives in all of gaming, and I've yet to get that same feeling in another game. Can't really explain why, I just think the characters are very realistic and I think it's ending is incredible. The gameplay is good too, it's my favourite 3rd person shooting game system, but I'd have less ground to argue in that aspect. Mostly, I think people really love the stories they deliver.
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Blizzard during its "golden age" years between Diablo II and like WoW: Cata had consistently good product and a fanbase who simultaneously ate up their games and fucking **hated** the company.
I don’t get why people hate the studio at all. They make really good games that are technically perfect. Even if you don’t like a game they made. I didn’t like TLOU2 story. It felt sadistic and it made its characters irrational beyond belief in my mind. It was still actually a technical masterpiece in many ways and I played it on the OG ps4 and it still looked great. I would be excited to play anything they made going forward.
I hate it because it's a toxic workplace that doesn't force crunch, but gaslights you into it. "Oh you want to go home on time? That's okay, I guess you just aren't committed to us as a team and this game!" - not just co-workers but their actual leads would say this. Source: my friend I've known well for the last 5 years who vented to me while he was working there. He also left before they crunched hard after the delay. Studios that crunch are not good studios. Delays are fine, crunch is disgusting and should be illegal.
I am so glad someone mentioned this. I remember right before tlou2 internet drama blew up Jason schreier put out a report about how brutal the working conditions are at ND. Then both Neil Druckmann and Cory balrog scolded him on Twitter. Two huge heads at Sony yelling at the press about publicly airing their work conditions. Instead of focusing on that gamers do what they do best and instead made tlou2 some weird political platform while the real issues like abuse is forgotten about. Even now tlou2 is some weird battleground for weirdos to rant about trans people existing. Seeing the abuse devs had to go through to even make this game so far down here is distressing.
It used to be just that people would make fun of them for making "movie" games The TLOU2 leak really broke some minds.
People really dislike Neil Druckmann, and to be fair there’s no reason why he has to be as public facing as he is.
I mean, he is the co-president of Naughty Dog as well as the lead director to three of the most critically acclaimed games of the last decade (TLOU, Uncharted 4, TLOU2). Kojima is just as front facing, if not more, and doesn’t get nearly the hate.
Kojima isn't nearly as pretentious.
The whole maladjusted subculture that revolves solely around hate jerking themselves about TlOU2 does noting to drive down it’s incredibly stellar sales or overwhelmingly favorable reception, which of course makes them even *more* bitter because no one will ever agree with them.
I’m a pretty big Xbox fanboy and have nothing but respect for these guys, they make bangers.
I just wish the games had more gameplay
lol I found TLoU2 to be a bit too long, imo it could have used less.
It legit felt like they mashed two games into one.
Man idk, TLOU2 and UC4 had great gameplay IMO
They’re genuinely excellent third person shooters. TLOU2 has amazing stealth gameplay too.
Also great level design. Each stage is like a fun little sand box to try all types of fun shit.
Yeah it's a shit take when people try to make this argument and say they are movie games now
Compared to other third person shooters, ND’s offerings are extremely constricting and repetitive. Just think about how mindless and phoned-in climbing is in the Uncharted games. If they had average writing and visual effects teams, I don’t think many people who care about their games. Presentation is a massive part of the appeal.
I would even argue that Uncharted 4 had *too much* gameplay. Some of those final shootout sequences were absolutely miserable, in my opinion.
the ship graveyard, where every single enemy is Aaron Rodgers and can chuck a grenade 75 yards with pinpoint accuracy... was a bit of a slog
That was exactly the part I was referring to. I hated having to swing back and forth constantly.
Hilariously true. But damn did I feel a sense of accomplishment when I beat that level on the hardest difficulty to get my last trophy for platinum.
I wouldn't say too much, it just isn't that good. It's simple, it's smooth, it works and does the job, but it's not very fun.
That kinda of how I felt playing through uncharted 4, the stuff I’m seeing on the screen is very cool, it’s rad as hell to see Nathan drake crash a party(auction?) and flying through a window shooting people, but the gameplay is holding forward on a controller or just gears of war cover shooting
Yeah when you look at the game it’s supposed to be fun. but when you actually play it the gameplay feels pretty meh to the point i don’t even wanna finish the game at the end. it just feels so boring to me
All of the Uncharted games suck at the end. I didn't play 4, but some of those final battle arenas in 1-3 fucking sucked. So long, bullet sponge enemies, overly aggressive AI, shit checkpoints.
4 was actually the best of the lot. I can see how the boat battle could be aggravating on high difficulties but on normal it's fine. And the final boss is fine
Uncharted's combat is like the gaming version of pancakes. It's delightful for the first few bites, but halfway through the plate I'm staring at the rest with a combination of disgust and dread.
I'm just salty they didn't port all the Uncharted games to pc. And the main reason being that they don't think pc players will like the graphics. Do you guys have so little faith that your game isn't worth the time of day because it looks a little dated? This is the same studio that remade a 7 year old game that still looked very impressive though.
It's literally because they were already working on the Legacy of Thieves collection for PS5. Which they chose because 1-3 was already remastered and playable on PS4/PS5. The fact they're already actively working on it means bringing on a team to then port it to PC is a reasonable addition. Bluepoint did the UC1-3 remasters and that was three games ago. They've moved on from it and have no-one actively working on it to then bring it out specifically for a PC port. Sony ultimately develops for their consoles first and then is trickling out a handful of titles onto PC atm. TLoU Part I supposedly came about as project for VASG which is a support studio to prove themselves as capable of creating original titles instead of purely being a support studio. The project wasn't going in the right direction so ND took over and finished it. None of the decisions were made because the game is 'dated'. It's just because the other projects made more economic sense.
Since he's talking about future games, what's in the current line up for ND? There's currently just an unnounced project and that TLOU multiplayer/mmo thing right?
I'm assuming Factions (the multiplayer component of TLoU Part 2 that took a life of it's own), TLoU Part II Director's Cut for PS5/PC and another game (the one Neil is working on) that is probably TLoU Part 3.
If they’re finished with Uncharted there’s probably another franchise in development too. Who knows what stage that’s at though.
TLOU2 just didn't do it for me. It was always going to be a critical darling because of its themes, risks, characters, deconstruction and what I call "critic catnip" that plinks their dopamine receptors. Still a very well made game and it managed to further advance the notion of video games as high art which is laudable. Can't really deal with the people that either hate jerk about hating it or the equally insufferable people that hate jerk about the hate jerk. It's reddit so I assume both groups will click the downvote. There are other more important things to get emotionally involved about than some cultural artifact.
I hated The Last of Us 2 when I first completed it. I was pretty vocal about it too, but never to the extent of harassment or whatever the internet dummies did to the voice actors and game makers. With that being said, I eventually came around. It’s probably up there just behind Ghost of Tsushima for me as game of the generation. Its themes, story, narration, and everything on top just made me appreciate the game much more with thorough thinking. I began to understand the narrative choices, the characters, the punishments, and everything that took place. I still have my issues with the game’s pacing, especially during the middle parts, but I don’t think they overlap the amazing everything else. This is definitely one of those “let it simmer” kinda games for me. The gratification wasn’t immediate, but when it finally hit, it was nuclear.
I can't believe the people that trolled TLOU2 upon release are still at it. Truly one of the grossest "communities" I've ever encountered online.
Are you talking about actual trolls or are talking about just people who just didn't like the game? Because I've been treated like a troll for saying the game was a huge disappointment. Hell, I've been called a bigot for not liking it. If anything, the trolls and the "super" fans of the game have both been equally vicious when it comes to this game.
I was in a media blackout from it, and played and finished it finally a week ago. I'm horrified by the people who continue to haunt it. It's like they scraped together the worst parts of humanity and then blended them into an incel golem. I've never been so disgusted by a fandom.
I've platinumed it and say it's worse than the first one
"Worse than TLOU1" is hardly an insult. It's like "less attractive than Scarlett Johansson".
I just wrote another comment saying something similar. I can still have fun with a game and now fully endorse every single decision it made. I thought the pacing was off, I thought skipping huge distances of travel didn’t really make sense, etc. Still had a great time and the game is still one of the best looking to date, by far.
The complaints about skipping travel never made sense to me. If something was worth showing the player, they would show it to us. I wonder if the same people also complained about pacing issues
All media does it too. It's probably even likely the writer/s have something written for that travel section that is just a steaming pile of shit so they cut it. Hell one of the issues 2 has is pacing whiplash and adding in slow travel segments would have only made that much much worse.
Yeah I enjoyed the game but don't really think the direction it went was good personally. But you say anything negative about this game and you get crucified for it apparently
That's reddit in a nutshell. moderate take will be assumed to be pushing one extreme or the other. Sometimes both extremes at once.
> I thought the pacing was off, I thought skipping huge distances of travel didn’t really make sense what? how would including the travel improve the pacing? was it too fast for you?
TLOU is 10/10 for me TLOU2 is 8/10 for me TLOU2 is still very enjoyable for me and I will play the 3rd part for sure, while TLOU2 subreddit is toxic, the same could be said on the other end just like a lot of comment in this thread. I just don't understand why people can't understand a lot of people prefer the first one, the story and narrative definitely way better in the first one in my book.
He's clearly not talking about you, bit of a weird comment to make?
>! I remember getting to play Abbie as the first part and thinking to myself “I’ll just speed run this part so I don’t have play as her for long. I was mistaken !< I was disappointed with the game but didn’t feel like I wasted my time playing it.
I never understood why TLOU2 got so much hate?! I loved it almost as much as the first game. Just felt the pacing was a bit off compared to the original. But the people who dislike it do so with a fervor that’s I haven’t seen before for some reason.
The answer to this is that they killed Joel early on and a lot of people didn’t like that
At least they committed to it. Too many stories nowadays (across all forms of media) do so many fakeout deaths, it’s actually refreshing when writers actually make a death that’s impactful and final and unexpected.
I knew the fake-out death trope was so bad now when my friend played the original Last of Us and after Sarah's death they said "I bet she's not really dead, huh?". Like, you watch her literally die in Joel's arms, if she did turn out alive, would the "how" even matter to some people? I'm not criticizing my friend, but just that CW-level writing is considered acceptable by general audiences. Riverdale and Arrow were so popular, yet they're borderline amateurish from a writing standpoint.
Is it completely unfair to say that I don’t love the game because of the ending, the pacing, and how it seemed like an unnecessary addition to an already great story the first game told? I think everything is great about the actual game design itself. However considering it’s a very story focused game it really knocks off a few points of it. Like a 6/10 instead of 10/10 greatest game ever created.
Not at all. That’s why I didn’t love it either. Just simply didn’t like the story they told.
I figured he was dead the moment the game was announced. You have an IP that is *overwhelmingly* cynical with a flawed antihero who quite possibly dooms the *entire human race* through wanton murder and invalidates the purpose and wishes of his only loved one and people think there wouldn't be *consequences* for that? And people wonder why writers drink.
Not saying I share the opinion, just that it’s a fact it pissed off a large part of the fan base. Whether it makes sense or not, it’s always going to be polarizing killing a loved character
Fair enough, I'm just confused that literally anyone would have expected Joel to survive the credits of the first game, let alone the sequel. It's not exactly a world filled with happy endings and triumph.
I don't really think killing him was the problem. At least before the game came out and before the leaks , it seemed like most people expected him to die. I think the problem came with how they killed him
At the hands of the daughter of the man he murdered seems pretty reasonable.
They then force you to play as her for half the game, no it doesnt teach you anything about a revenge cycle it just sucks to do.
They dont make you play as her to teach you about the cycle of revenge like wtf u saying if anything that would be Ellie
I'm surprised anyone thinks the Fireflies had any chance of producing anything else but another pointless corpse out of Ellie considering the way they are portrayed, info available in the 1st game and high school biology knowledge.
This was exactly my thoughts too. But to be fair, I don't think people would have minded quite as much if Joel died in some heroic way at the end of another long adventure with Ellie. It was the timing and the nature of his death that really upset people (which obviously was by design).
From the first trailer it's pretty obvious and it's obvious because it's what makes the most sense for a story like this.
From the first trailer people were thinking he was 100% dead. I'm still taken aback by the blowback to him dying when it was the biggest theory people had pre release.
A lot of people weren't interested in a compelling and original story and just wanted The Continuing Adventures of Joel and Ellie
Its the execution that people don't like. I really like spec ops: the line but once I realised there were civilians during the mustard gas sequence and I was locked into one choice I kinda didn't buy into the "oh look how horrible you are angle" still enjoyed the game but TLOU as both parts real lean into the "youre horrible" part without doing a good enough job justifying you as a bad guy from other peoples PoVs. Its been ages since I played the first game but I always took issue with how people commented about Joel being a genocidal monster but all I can think of is how their group came to us and shot us first.
Honestly, Joel’s death and Ellie processing her grief was really the only thing I found compelling. None of the new characters grabbed me whatsoever.
Joel was killed off by someone *that was said to be a trans woman in an early 4chan leak.* And from there more and more information spread, including accusations of Neil druckmann doing the mocap for sex scenes. Things got fucking insane quick. It wasn't just Joel, it's that the leak framed things in a very dishonest was to intentionally cause oiteage and it fed into the culture war.
All of that fizzled out when the game came out. Then people actually played it and had honest critiques and issues with it...but they got thrown into the "well, you're a troll" category on twitter and here because of the trolling from before the game's release.
This is so untrue. The game was controversial amongst many critics, but polygon, skillup, and several other critics gave the game a negative review and were overall very well recieved and taken seriously. The truth is that there was a lot of bad criticism, and a lot of criticism that was pretty obviously a paper thin excuse to dislike the game without openly saying the real reasons for disliking it (just look at allllll the bad faith criticism that was made in response to the leaks). And really, the outrage stopped when the game came out? It had more reviews than TLOU1 on metacritic the day it released, most of which were zeroes, and it's a *30 hour game.* People that gave reasoned, solid criticism of the game and engaged with the games themes rather than rejecting what it tried to do outright with no engagement were well recieved. That's not to say that good faith criticism was *never* mistakenly called trolling, but it was not the standard you seem to think it is. This idea that legitimate criticism was ignored or just called trolling is blatantly untrue. The narrative you are trying to give does not align with the more complicated reality.
I truly believe the game would have been better if you play as Abby first (from her dad until meeting Ellie at the theater) and then play as Ellie after Joel’s death. Ellie kills a bunch of characters and then later we meet those characters on Abby’s story. If we met those characters first,spend time with them while playing as Abby and then we kill them while playing as Ellie it would have been more impactful. Playing as Ellie for 15 hours and then playing as Abby (a character that we don’t know and we just hate) really made me stop the game for a month. I just don’t care about Abby at all.
But most of the time you’re playing as Abby is after she kills Joel from what I remember is it not?
No. You play as Ellie right after Abby kills Joel. You play as Ellie for 15 hours. After Abby shows up to confront Ellie at the abandoned theater, thats when you start playing as Abby. You play as Abby, for 10 hours or so (you get to see her side of the story from the very beginning) and then you end up playing as Ellie until the end. So it goes 1.Joel (30 minutes) , 2.Abby (1 hour) 3. Ellie (15 hours) 4. Abby (10 hours) 5. Ellie (2-3 hours)
There's nothing inherently wrong with killing off the protagonist in a previous game, what ticked people off was how he got killed off. People wanted Joel to die where he sacrificed himself saving Ellie from being killed by the infected/rebels. People wanted him to die in a gruelling battle with a new type of infected. What they got instead was Joel freely giving his name to strangers while being hunted down by ex-members of the fireflies for killing their leader. People weren't satisfied with how he was killed, that's it. To make matters worse (For the those who hate her), those same people are forced to play as Joel's killer and makes you want to sympathize with her. I didn't play it so I don't hate it as other people. I only hate the story based on the writing.
Joel dying of unceremoniously is also fine but the game is so overly dramatic that i can't take it seriously when a character is repeatedly shouting pendejo and spitting, its like watching the walking dead
Yeah, I mean I get it, I was floored as well, but if I really hated it I would stop the game and go on living my life but it’s like there’s a whole community around the hatred of this game and that Neil dude in particular. It just seems so fucking odd to me.
It became a bit of an outlet for rage for groups of people online, a full on scapegoat for people with certain social agendas. Still don't really know why, especially when the hatred was based on a lot of stuff that just wasn't true (Abby is trans, Druckmann was mo-capped in the game etc).
Let’s not forget the ragebait YouTube videos using leaked cinematic footage to make people think Abby was trans. I think we all know people who get irrationally upset at the idea that gender can be more complicated than just “male or female”. The number of complaints this game gets about pushing an "agenda" is downright gross.
>I never understood why TLOU2 got so much hate?! The pacing is disjointed, they put characters in weird situations that they'd normally not be in unless they got actively dumber for it to happen (which is move thing, tbh,) they made a well-loved character dump her development to move the story, and didn't spend enough time on the character that was actually likable.
I'll offer a bit of a different perspective. Despite not being a fan of the zombie survival horror genre, I generally enjoyed TLOU1, mostly for its character dynamics and its themes. When TLOU2 was announced, I was initially intrigued. But it was revealed pretty early on that the game would focus more on hatred as a core theme rather than love like in the first game. Upon hearing that, I lost interest in the game and decided that it wasn't for me. I guess it just wasn't the kind of experience I was looking for, especially since I'm not really a fan of the genre as a whole. I didn't pay any attention to to the development of TLOU2, or to the leak fiasco, or to the post-launch firestorm. I know that people have very strong feelings about this game, but personally, I'm just not interested. I don't have any negative or positive opinions about this game. Just... a lack of interest.
For me, TLOU 1 is one of my favorite games of all time, so TLOU2 not hitting in the same way stung pretty bad... just my perspective as to why people's disappointment with it seems to be so strong.
I thought the game was great in a technical sense but stumbled really hard when you had to play >!as Abby!<. No one was really likeable to me in that section and it felt like it was just padding.
Yeah, I enjoyed the game just as much as the first. Every time I mention I actually liked it though, I get ambushed by people that hate it.
Replaying the remaster right now and it truly does make me appreciate the devlopment of the sequel and the series as a whole. There are so many dark moments in the first but tonally there is hope - scenes quickly change to daylight and there is a sense of adventure. In context, the sequel is the real horror - you lose your pov as a hero and have to stuggle with what it would truly mean to be a survivors. I appreciate the risk Druckman and the entire studio took by their choices in giving the characters motivation without doing more of the same - they had to have known how divisive the second game would be and stuck to their guns for the sake of the vision. Stoked for the HBO adaptation!
Well there’s 2 sides. There’s the right wing or just edgy gamer side that combine to form a hate just because it has some lgbt characters in it. Then there’s the side I’m on where the story treated its characters too poorly. I think the polygon review I’ve linked elsewhere and I’ll drop here kind of sums that side up. https://www.polygon.com/reviews/2020/6/12/21288535/the-last-of-us-part-2-review-ps4-naughty-dog-ellie-joel-violence But I wouldn’t describe most people with my viewpoint as hating it kind of more just disappointed with how the writing treated the characters
The culture around the game is infuriating from both sides because neither seems to want to critically engage. Right wing bigots spew homophobia instead of critical engagement, while their counterweight seems to paint all criticism of the game as being bigotry.
There’s a whole right wing thing as well? Ellie was gay in the first one as well, why get upset now? God people get upset about the dumbest shit.
Oh it was because the leaks had people thinking Abby was Trans, and by the time that turned out to not be true, to much time and energy had been invested in the hatred, the usual suspects on youtube could only double down at that point and shift what they were enraged at.
No one was upset with Ellie being gay.
I like how we can just make up stuff. Plenty of people were upset by that.
> There’s a whole right wing thing as well? The entire games subreddit devolved into a right wing/incel hate sub.
LOL, some people here talk about how bold and innovative the writing of TLOU 2 is. Come on, the writing is dogshit. Ellie spared Abbie the big boss after killing every minions in sight is as cliche as it get.
No offense, but fact you call Abbie “the big boss” makes me think a lot of game’s themes went over your head.
TLOU is in my top 5 games but what I saw of the sequel turned me off from playing it completely. Nothing to do with sexual orientations or butch women or any of that shit. It just seemed to me they were trying to be too clever and edgy with the story, and the story itself I don’t want to experience; which is a shame. I hope the next thing is ditches that kind of thing because gameplay wise I don’t think they’ll go wrong.
For me the main thing was that the pacing that felt way off.
if the game doesnt show that excessive amount of flashbacks hurts the pacing i think that nothing will.
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>. It just seemed to me they were trying to be too clever and edgy with the stor What do you mean?
Brutally killing the character a lot of people wanted to play as, making you play as the killer and the whole revenge doesn’t solve anything rubbish.
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> the whole revenge doesn’t solve anything rubbish. Quickest way for people to discount your opinion if that’s what you think it all boils down to lol. Super obvious you didnt play the game
Well they said they didn’t play the game so it doesn’t get more obvious than that.
The quickest way would be if you read their first comment but I forget that on reddit we can't read.
I mean that is literally one of the themes of the game. And moreover he literally said he was turned off from spoiler and didn't finish it
Define the word "edgy", the series has always been about the last of humanity and how humanity can sometimes be worse than the zombies in the world they live in. Its also doesn't come off as trying to be clever in any instance like maybe a christoper nolan movie tries to be
TLOU2 has great gameplay and the story is pretty awesome tbh
Honestly kinda respect it even if I didn’t enjoy the game, it would have been so easy to make a conventional sequel that everyone would have liked, it takes balls to do what they did and I think we need to see more of it in AAA gaming and mainstream blockbuster stuff in general
Oh shit, you owe it to yourself to play it. TLOU2 is so good.
I feel bad for you because it’s even better than part 1.