[SPOILERS] The Last of Us 2 open discussion [/SPOILERS]

Edit: I'd also like to point out the irony of all of the people complaining about the mundane themes of the "cycle of revenge" are also the people that are upset because they didn't get to kill Abby because they hated her for killing Joel sadistically.

Honestly most the opinions are such a lot of nonsense like one of the reviewers docking points because you collecting things like those hero cards Ellie collects or pennies Abby collects doesn't fit thematically is such a loud of crap because you don't have to collect those things, it's up to the player if he wants to. It's not like it gives you scrap or supplements to improve your weapons or your skills.

Honestly the way the internet works and rewards controversy by getting more clicks you make more money doesn't lead to honest reviews in my opinion.

Regarding Abby torturing Joel.

There is a section in the game where playing as Abby you go meet Isaac and have to go through this prison torture area which makes me think because Abby seems to of been one of Isaac's best soldiers ( someone comments that she's his number one scar killer ) she has experience with torture so I don't really see why you don't think she would torture Joel.
 
I see the doctor like every other character with a singular focus on accomplishing a goal. He joined a terrorist organization, they are killing countless people for political reasons (their goal is to bring back all branches of government, and they blow people up and hang people in public). He certainly failed his hippocratic oath wanting to kill an innocent girl for the cause, and he's the one who convinced Marlene to do it.

It's the trolley dilemma: would you actively sacrifice an innocent person if you think it will save more people in the end.

Marlene promised Ellie's mother she'd look after her. Then she was ready to kill her for her cause. There are hints throughout the game that they embellish the cause for recruitment. Joel said laughing "we've heard that one before didn't we Tess?" as a dismissal that the fireflies are often making claims of saving the world which are overly optimistic.

There is no indication that whatever the doctor was working on was a certainty. They don't know how many mutations there are. During the title intro of the first game we hear "the latest vaccination attempt has failed", meaning the entire world at it's best was unable to make a vaccine. So it's a very difficult goal to accomplish with no guarantee of success.

The different organized groups are dealing with infected through simple pest control. They are blocked by a simple fence so it's not that big of a deal. Most deaths are unrelated to the infection, they are political conflicts. Even if the fireflies (or any other group) had access to a vaccine, they would use it to increase their mobility through infected areas, and take over any other faction, they wouldn't mass produce it to give everyone, certainly not to their enemies. It would be another recruitment tool. Their cause is a political one, not a medical one. They would use it to gain an advantage, as would any other faction.

The fireflies have proven repeatedly in the first game that they don't care about anyone's life. They were even letting Ellie die while Joel was trying to bring her back. Marlene dismissed it as "it's okay they didn't know who you were". Meaning they don't give a shit about lives unless it's useful for the cause.

The fireflies will have changed after Marlene is gone, so it can go in any direction.

Saving Ellie was the right decision, killing the doctor was unavoidable since he pulled a knife. "It can't be for nothing" is a horrible point of view that Ellie didn't have early in the game and Joel is responsible for this one: she didn't want to continue the journey to the fireflies while Joel kept trying to convince her "do you have any idea what your life means?" which later became "we don't have to do this, you know that right?" as Joel realized what her life actually meant, instead of the mere practicality of her immunity for making a vaccine. It was too late, she wanted her suffering, efforts, and losses, to have meaning. She was already in a bad state of mind "waiting for her turn" to die. As if she was meant to die with her friend, but that poetic ending was robbed from her because she's immune. And the second attempt at giving her life meaning was robbed by Joel. It was still the correct decision.

Each character throughout the two games have a justification for their violent acts. The most immoral justifications were "for revenge", "for closure", "for the cause", and to a lesser extent "for survival" which is sometimes reasonable sometimes a stretch. The more interesting justification is "to save/protect loved ones" which is a slippery slope because none of these violent acts exist in isolation without consequences, but I am more sympathetic to those justifications despite the amplification it provided to the cycle of violence and making everything worse. Again that one can be reasonable (saving Ellie), or it can be twisted enough to justify wiping out an entire faction to stop the war.
 
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Honestly most the opinions are such a lot of nonsense like one of the reviewers docking points because you collecting things like those hero cards Ellie collects or pennies Abby collects doesn't fit thematically is such a loud of crap because you don't have to collect those things, it's up to the player if he wants to. It's not like it gives you scrap or supplements to improve your weapons or your skills.

Honestly the way the internet works and rewards controversy by getting more clicks you make more money doesn't lead to honest reviews in my opinion.

....

I actually do think those things clash with the narrative, but they make sense in terms of people's expectations when playing a game. They'd be like watching the movie The Road, but there's a whole bunch of scenes scattered throughout where they find packs of baseball cards and start collecting them. You'd be thinking, why is there so much time in this movie spent on baseball cards? Or if there was like 30 additional minutes of the movie dedicated to them looking through drawers and bags. At some point you lose focus on the actual story and the message. Ideally I think a game like the Last of Us 2 would be 15-20 hours max.
 
I actually do think those things clash with the narrative, but they make sense in terms of people's expectations when playing a game.

That's the thing, it's a game. If it bothers peole don't spend time looking for the cards. Now if it was necessary to find the cards to upgrade your character I would agree but it isn't.

For me I buy games to play games,
books to read and movies to watch.
I think it would be a mistake to strip away gameplay or the gamey part of games because then you might as well just make a movie or write a book.
 
At the time it kinda made sense, but now this should probably be added to the pile of Neil Druckmann's very weird and nonsensical ideas.
Yeah because movies, books and games never have very weird and nonsensical ideas. I mean there's men that shoots lasers from eyes or fly or control lightning but it's Druckmann very weird and nonsensical ideas that has you baffled. Also I don't think he wrote the story, just directed. It's a story people. Not some real life event. If it was real life, we would most likely all be screwed.
 
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That's the thing, it's a game. If it bothers peole don't spend time looking for the cards. Now if it was necessary to find the cards to upgrade your character I would agree but it isn't.

For me I buy games to play games,
books to read and movies to watch.
I think it would be a mistake to strip away gameplay or the gamey part of games because then you might as well just make a movie or write a book.

I think this is where the conflict in using games to tell great stories is going to be. You need gameplay that matches the story thematically. It's hard to tell an anti-violence story if you have a really fun gameplay loop based on committing violence. It's really hard to have a serious and emotional story if it's constantly interrupted with filler like collecting trinkets and grinding. It's an incredibly interesting problem, and from some of the criticism Last of Us 2 hasn't solved it. No game ever has.
 
It's an incredibly interesting problem, and from some of the criticism Last of Us 2 hasn't solved it.

No it hasn't and I don't think it is solvable for certain types of story.
The funny thing is that if Naughty Dog stripped away the gameplay to match the story most of the same critics that complained about it would then complain about the basic or lack of gameplay.

I know it's a review and a person can feel how ever he wants and that's fine but with some it's so transparent that all they trying to do is create controversy or whatever you want to call it so that they can get more clicks.

The thing is I didn't know about all the shit going on about The Last of Us part 2 because I was avoiding spoilers until after finishing the game.
So seeing all of it now is quite comical really but also quite disgusting how people like the voice actors are getting death threats.

Usually I don't really bother with all the noise around something that emanates on the internet because it's exactly that. I have one or two outlets I use to get an idea about a game if I don't know the developers or I'm not sure but usually I know what type of game to expect just by the genre and who is developing it and watching trailers.

I learnt that lesson when a gaming magazine I used to buy for reviews gave MGS 3 a review score of 69 but I was like fuck it I loved the previous entries so I bought it and it turned out to be one of the best games I ever played and is still my favorite MGS.
 
The way TLOU2 handles it was way better than majority of games. Even the AI character got proper dialogue when I was looking for loot despite the tempo should keep moving forward.

Detroit handles on the other hand, trus to meld gamey elements into story interaction. In the end it made things feels disconnected. Like grabbing things by pressing anakogue stick to the right then drag down.

Why simply moving the stick down? 0_o

Hopefully next gen will bring much better AI, and some indie dev will be using cloud computing to make dynamic AI. The game got successful, and AAA devs stars making smart and dynamic AI.
 
I'm obsessed with the reviews and the criticism of this game. I don't have a Playstation, and probably won't get one, so I really dove into watching the spoiler reviews and gameplay. I honestly cannot comprehend the criticisms of the story.
Whilst some of the criticisms of the story are nonsense, I can see why some people didn't like the story, or how the story was told. I think the appeal of any given narrative is a subjective thing. I definitely

I think there's more to it thematically than "killing is wrong," but perhaps it needed some more complexity for it to overcome some of the negative feelings people get while playing

Most of the themes that people have said the game is pushing aren't there. Earlier in the thread I posted a link to the spoilercast hosted by Greg Miller with Neil Druckmann, Ashley Johnson (Ellie) and Troy Baker (Joel) and they discuss certain story beats, motivations and perceiving moral messaging and there is no judgement by the game. Neil Druckmann summed it up saying basically, it's a bunch of actions, there is no good or bad, there is no judgement. If there is any message, it's that revenge comes at a high price. But it doesn't say this, it's for you to take that away.

I do think I'd struggle with the length of the game. I think the length of the game plays against the overall message. How do you make such a long game not feel like drudgery? You make it fun. You have fun exhilarating combat and suspense. That conflicts with having a game that's supposed to make you feel bad about the violence, and empathize with the foes you've killed.

Noting the above comment, and that the game actually does not do that, I felt the game was too long. Or rather not the game was too long, but the story beats for the length off the game was too long. In the last few hours, maybe 4-5 hours, there are a couple of points where you think you've naturally reached the end of the story and it goes on. The actual game, the moment-to-moment gameplay is fantastic. The hide-and-seek nature of the combat is great, the ease with which you can get around the environment, the array of weapons and traps at your disposal and the way you can use the environment is very varied.

My worry when I heard how long the game was before launch was that there would be enough variety and there definitely is. Although you're effectively in a 25-30 hours cycle of exploring, scavenging, crafting, hiding and killing, you rarely feel like you're just repeating that bit from an hour ago.
 
A quick google shows that the body deals with fungi using the immune system almost identically to how it deals with viruses.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161219134440.htm

Personally what my biggest gripe with the ending of part 1 (which I recently watched on YouTube trying to decide if I should play part II) was that Ellie has this big fungus growth on her arm. It seems a bit far-fetched that the fungus is stopped only in her brain and that that is the only place they could find something to develop a vaccine from. In the weird case that is true and there is something in her brain that stops the fungus but not anywhere else then the fungus would still eventually destroy the rest of her body. In all other cases the blood should contain the immune response, and they can look at the interaction of her body with the fungus in her arm as well. But whatever it is that makes her brain special in that regard otherwise then wouldn’t be immune response related I presume, or they would need some kind of DNA altering medicine perhaps.

But maybe I missed something. And it is not entirely important - most of these kind of stories are not very realistic. Remember how most films made us believe that you have to find the original host/animal to find it’s antibodies and then develop a cure/vaccine in days using that? Yeah. The only good that does is help delay another breakout, from learning how we should be capturing, killing and cooking our animals properly and before consumption ;).

This could be an interesting story arc for part III:

https://www.drugtargetreview.com/ne...e-system-handles-fungal-and-viral-infections/
 
I have also been wanting to YouTube this one. But I’ve still been holding out in case I get my hands on it in a year or two.
I like following this guys work, he analyzes
Movies and books this is the first time I think I’ve seen him analyze a game. So kudos to that I think. He offers a lot of insight that people tend to miss.

he seemed to really enjoy this. Unfortunately I didn’t watch it to not fully spoil myself though I sort have been spoiled enough to get the main plot points already.

 
Personally what my biggest gripe with the ending of part 1 (which I recently watched on YouTube trying to decide if I should play part II) was that Ellie has this big fungus growth on her arm. It seems a bit far-fetched that the fungus is stopped only in her brain and that that is the only place they could find something to develop a vaccine from. In the weird case that is true and there is something in her brain that stops the fungus but not anywhere else then the fungus would still eventually destroy the rest of her body.

I only replayed the first game a few weeks ago so this is all quite fresh.

Ellie has a bite mark on her arm. The bite transits the cordyceps fungal infection (which is also carried through spores) and the infection heads to the brain where it begins to multiply. Ellie was infected in Left Behind and cordyceps did begin to grow in her bran and you can see it on the x-rays, but something about Ellie's brain chemistry stops it growing further. Ellie is carrier and she infects David when she bites him.

The doctors needed to remove both the cordyceps growth from Ellie's brain and some of her brain tissue to determine why she was immune in the hope they could develop a cure. There's no suggestion that it's ever certainty but it was an important step forward to finding a to prevent infection from spreading.

It could well have been a fruitless endeavour. The Firefly doctors assume Ellie is different but it's also possible that Ellie is not different but that she has a mutated form of cordyceps that just isn't lethal.

If ants spent less time trying to steal my picnic, they could probably have discovered a cure for this themselves by now but no, apparently my lunch is their highest priority.
 
I'm obsessed with the reviews and the criticism of this game. I don't have a Playstation, and probably won't get one, so I really dove into watching the spoiler reviews and gameplay. I honestly cannot comprehend the criticisms of the story. Sure, there are parts that don't have the best acting, and Ellie escapes from captivity or near death situations too many times, but that's par for the course for games.

Maybe it's just me but if I was creating a work like this I would be more concerned if I wasn't getting controversy/criticism. When someone creates something that people feel so passionately about (positively or negatively) I think thats when you know you created something meaningful and worthy of discussion. While the anti-semetic, homophobic and death threats are troubling they unfortunately come with the territory with works like this. If the majority of criticism revolves around creative decisions then I think thats pretty good praise.
 
@DSoup I'll check out the interview. The story is definitely structured to humanize, not necessarily to make her likeable, but make her a fully fleshed human character that does both good and bad things. This is done after she's been setup as a villain, and after she's killed Joel, so it seems like it was structured that way to get the player to confront their opinion of someone they have a strong negative reaction to. Very curious about that decision if they did not have some intent to get the player to explore how they feel about the violence that's been done and will be done.
 
Maybe it's a mutation that is much weaker (as most mutations are), but it still occupies the places in the brain which the cordycept targets. So the real nasty mutations cannot take hold. It cannot be harvested anywhere except in the brain, since anything else around would have been wiped out by the antibodies that had more than enough time to develop. The infection doesn't die because it's connected to the brain in the right places, but also it cannot spread or evolve either because it's not strong enough or fast enough to overrun the antibodies.

They also produce spores only when the host dies, but the infection can also spread through blood from a bite. It looks like the Fedra device is detecting something in the brain stem, considering how they place the device for the test. It's possible Ellie has a dormant infection only in the brain and outside of those boundaries she has the antibodies, so there are no spores or fungus to harvest outside of the growth in her brain, and there are no path to infect others either.

All vaccine attempts must have all failed because they work by forcing the production of antibodies which by themselves are not enough to prevent the infection to spread, since it spread extremely quickly. So the key is that weak mutation.

To create a worthwhile vaccine they need this mutation to produce a lot of spores and it might not be easy to do so in a petri dish, considering how peculiar it is about it's environment. So... the only way to harvest a vaccine in large quantities will be a bunch of healthy human brains that you infect and then kill for the harvest. And anyone being immune becomes quite a prized catch and would be the biggest target from any faction. To recreate the mutation they could gas entire villages with spores and observe if some of them don't turn. Rinse, repeat until you have a candidate with a weak mutation. What could possibly go wrong.

No need for a doctor, just eat the brain of the immune as a religious ritual.
 
@DSoup I'll check out the interview. The story is definitely structured to humanize, not necessarily to make her likeable, but make her a fully fleshed human character that does both good and bad things.

I said earlier that both characters are hard to like. Neither have any redeeming features but Ellie gets a break because you know her. Ellie are doing the revenge at any cost thing, Abby plan for revenge are very careful so as to minimise risk to her friends. Abby spares Ellie and Tommy, were Ellie is more than happy to straight out murder people who know Abby.
 
were Ellie is more than happy to straight out murder people who know Abby.

A lot of the murdering especially Owen and Mel kind of was self defence, yeah she might of killed them anyway but it didn't really happen that way. If I remember correctly Owen tried to grab the gun and Mel tried to stab her?
 
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