The Last of Us (Part) 2 [PS4]

[Deleted member 13524]

Disney fucked up when they cut Tran out of Rise if Skywalker. They gave in to a small vocal group and cemented their movement.

You've got to be delirious if you seriously think you think it was a small vocal group who found the Rose character to be stupid, pointless and completely self-serving to Ryan Johnson's ego and eagerness to piss over all the characters of all the previous episodes.
This has nothing to do with Kelly Marie Tran the actor, who is completely blameless to the fuck-up she was made to act on.
Though I'm pretty sure lots of people are willing to discredit the millions of critics by going through the faster, easier and intellectually dishonest path of claiming they're all critical of the character bEcAuSe sExIsM rAcIsM.

Accuse the other person of being evil instead of discussing their points. It's so much easier to win the argument that way, and as a plus they gain fake internet points within their circlejerk.

Same thing is happening with TLoU2. Somehow all the points about characters acting out-of-character, devs trying to force likeability into an unlikeable character, the confusion of flashbacks-within-flashbacks, messed-up order of events, etc. is trying to be buried under the pretense that all critics mUsT bE sExIsT HoMoPhObIc. The same critics who praised the Left Behind DLC whose plot points included Ellie coming out as gay, because fuck logic.

Like those claiming that it doesn't make sense that in the 1940s a woman with an active cyborg arm that carries a heavy machine gun would be fighting alongside dudes with fortnite-style mohawks and face tattoos mUsT bE sExiSt.

 

[iroboto]

You've got to be delirious if you seriously think you think it was a small vocal group who found the Rose character to be stupid, pointless and completely self-serving to Ryan Johnson's ego and eagerness to piss over all the characters of all the previous episodes.
This has nothing to do with Kelly Marie Tran the actor, who is completely blameless to the fuck-up she was made to act on.
Though I'm pretty sure lots of people are willing to discredit the millions of critics by going through the faster, easier and intellectually dishonest path of claiming they're all critical of the character bEcAuSe sExIsM rAcIsM.

Accuse the other person of being evil instead of discussing their points. It's so much easier to win the argument that way, and as a plus they gain fake internet points within their circlejerk.

Same thing is happening with TLoU2. Somehow all the points about characters acting out-of-character, devs trying to force likeability into an unlikeable character, the confusion of flashbacks-within-flashbacks, messed-up order of events, etc. is trying to be buried under the pretense that all critics mUsT bE sExIsT HoMoPhObIc. The same critics who praised the Left Behind DLC whose plot points included Ellie coming out as gay, because fuck logic.

Like those claiming that it doesn't make sense that in the 1940s a woman with an active cyborg arm that carries a heavy machine gun would be fighting alongside dudes with fortnite-style mohawks and face tattoos mUsT bE sExiSt.

It's easy to pluck at plot holes and use that as justification for hating anything, whether it's film, games, novels etc. But there are a great deal of many films, games, novels that are universally loved despite having major plot holes. Almost all the films I absolutely adore are absolutely riddled with them.

She was the only character that actually shaped Finn. The whole movie he was trying to escape any sort of responsibility to be greater than just someone running away. She taught him to become a resistance fighter. I'm not sure how you didn't see that as obvious. Rey certainly did not do that.

And the removal of her character from Rise of Skywalker made it a better film? I'm fairly positive that Rise is considered the WORST of all 9 movies among all fans of star wars.

She was discarded and she had a legitimate role in actually providing any semblance of a story in a trilogy of movies that honestly lacked any sort of pacing to even bother with characters themselves. Rise of Skywalker being the worse offender of the three sequels, The Last Jedi being the least.

What hurt these sequels in particular Rise of the Skywalker and Force Rising the most was pacing. Lack of any consequences for any sort of actions. Nothing about the movie was believable because we as the viewers never get the chance to see the characters react as a result of their reactions. It's just right on to the next action sequence, plot holes or not, the audiences have a hard time to ever feel connected to anyone or anything. This is criticism. I have lots of it for their sequels, but none of it I would associate with being 'because it's forced SJW'.

I have no issue with criticism of a movie or a game, but the end result of said criticism can't be, "because it's an attack on white males", or "this person was trying too hard to be SJW". That's not criticism at all.

 

[PSman1700]

Accuse the other person of being evil instead of discussing their points. It's so much easier to win the argument that way

Seems the gold standard across all forums

 

[London Geezer]

Maybe Star Wars talk should go in a Star Wars thread?

 

[Nesh]

This is ridiculous. I have friends who are already pissing on the game because the game shows two girls making out with each other. Of course the irony is that, it's because they look like normal typical lesbians with normal looks, having a normal realistic affair and not the oversexualized lusty lesbians from porn and teen movies that macho men fantasize having a trio with.
If Dead or Alive girls were making out none would have complained. Now they are also complaining because Morales in the next Spiderman might be gay.

 

[iroboto]

Maybe Star Wars talk should go in a Star Wars thread?

I think it's valid as long as we don't venture off too deep here.
I brought it up as an example of another franchise that was deeply beloved and suffered similar criticism as TLOU2.

You see, for me, it's clear at least to me that when I read about anti-SJW sentiment about any film, what I see are people who didn't like the movie, but could not properly state why they disliked it, so they picked the one thing they felt was objectively different, in which this case is representation. You see when I think about movies like Rogue One or Wonder Woman; R1 with it's lead heroine and a supporting cast of asians, of which asians in that movie are the closest to being a jedi, and Wonder Woman where the only superheros are female, the anti-SJW movement was largely not there.

One has to ask why they didn't come out in droves?

But rewind back to Phantom Menace, and google Jar Jar Binks and he is the most hated supporting cast member there is.

There is a trend, and when the movie is bad people will scape goat something because they can't figure out what's actually wrong with it.

I don't know much about TLOU2, or even enough about TLOU1. But I'll be honest in saying that Halo suffered a similar fate. You take a hero that everyone loves deeply, and you make him into a villain or kill them off and there is going to be outrage. Huge outrage. How quickly Halo has completely backtracked on everything for Infinite (but it looks like they are following the wrong criticisms here - can't wait to see no sprint happen). What killed Halo 5 for everyone was the instant return of Cortana and the poor marketing of making Master Chief act like he's some really bad rogue agent that needs to be reeled in. They just made the biggest sacrifice o the series in Halo 4 and they just brought her back with... no consequences. Sound familiar why people are upset, look above! When I discuss about wrong criticisms, thinking the only reason Halo 5 was not successful because it has sprint, I assure you in an alternate universe where they shipped H5 without sprint, clamber, thrust, etc, the game would have fared even worse.

But in Game of Thrones, the series was so good that the death of Sean Bean did stop people from raging because there WERE consequences. The constant deaths of good people did not stop people from watching. I think if Jon lost the battle of the bastards perhaps people would have had enough and begun to tune out and people would start to look for scape goats to declare the series bad, when in reality people are upset that the writers are constantly killing off characters that they are emotionally vested with.

If this sounds familiar to anything in TLOU2, then it may be simple to draw some parallels of why there is outrage, and how on the surface the perspective has moved from a muscular dad to a tough lesbian and people immediately pointed to that as being the problem. When there were likely real issues with the story telling, plot holes ignored, some people just couldn't connect and some people just could not get over some major spoiler events. Let me talk about Halo 5 again, no one complained about SJW or forced SJW. No one cared, it was present, but no one cared. What people cared about is that people didn't want to play Locke, they wanted to play as Master Chief. Sound familiar? If Ellie was a man, who had a straight relationship, would that have made the game any better? I doubt it, because it didn't resolve the pain point that they didn't get to play as Joel.

That's on Neil. And I don't know how successful the original Star Wars trilogy would be if a major character was offed in The Empire Strikes Back. But that's where I put criticism and people are more than welcome to criticize the game in this way. Not the anti-sjw sentiment, don't scape goat.

 

[Billy Idol]

Here are my random thoughts about the game:

- The graphics are so good to me, that i do not think that we need improvement at this point to make the game better. It looks natural, has some wow moments, has great variety and super density. That is, if I do not count animation to graphics: I would say that the game has one of the best animation systems that work many times in comparison to other games of this type. Still, if I do not give it the "its a game" bonus, I think animation is one of the key tec area that is helding games back at this point. I do not think it is Ray tracing or something related - it is animations. To be honest, it seems that Ray Tracing is just a super easy PR way of giving an "improvement" over the last generation and all devs can do it...just brute force it through with dedicated hardware. Animation on the other side seems to be an area where most of the devs struggle and most likely will continue to struggle. While animation of body, arms, legs etc look ok, the animation of faces (especially mouth movement when showing emotions) is far far away of being ok. What is weird to me, while Dina and Abby worked much better, Ellie had some really really bad animation moments. What is even more weird to me, the animation were especially problematic in the cut scenes. During gameplay, there was very good facial animations...it is super intense, when you turn the camera when stealth killing...quite brutal.

- Gameplay was ok. The variety is there. The animations do not get in the way, it still feels snappy. Lot's of weapons and approaches. It works for me. I had the feeling that the infected were less dangerous this time and a bit less scary. It actually felt to me, that the infected are just a side story and not important anymore, which I am not sure is what they intended. The first game had me really on the edge all the time when fighting the scary infected...this time, no problema...easy to kill and resolve.

- The details in this game are beyond believable. I already had the impression it is insane while playing the game, but after watching YT videos of people showing things...wow, unbelievable. The moment you realize you can just listen to the click to unlock the treasure Maybe these little things make the world alive, even though one doesn't fully realize it during gaming?

- The music was good, but in the first game it was so much better and imo more impactful. This time, it just felt ok. The last time, I bought the soundtrack and still to this day listen to some of the tracks.

- The problem in a stealth game is obviously when having an AI character along. Kills the immersion a bit, when I am crawling around as i am scared to get jumped on, while the AI just normal walks and talks.

- The gameplay in general is to stressful to me. Even if you win a battle, you can still have a bad feeling: when you used up to many resources, than you know that the next battle will be tougher. That is just to stressful for me. What helped me is my next point...

- The accessibility options are amazing for all imo. I widened the FOV, I used autopick up, I used slow motion aiming, which helped made the whole game less stressful for me.

- They somehow managed to make Joel an even better character than in the first game. His facial animations where imo also the best for all characters. Wow.

- The world building was so improved in this game: you could really see how people live in such a world, super interesting imo, extremely well done. I like the small stories that you find throughout the game while reading stuff. Helps to make it believable imo.

Spoiler: story

- I see what they are aiming for in the way the tell the story. It works to some exten imo: this way, you are first full on Ellie's side, than you get the full reality check going through everything with Abby. Thus, the character progress and development came through super strong imo. However, it is also a bit problematic, as after the cliff hanger of Ellie's chapter, you realize that you need to wait for 3 days, i.e. 12h or so game, to continue with the story. I didn't like this so much. Alternatively, also used in the final part of the game: from a story progression point of view, I would prefer the: first day Ellie, first day Abby, second day Ellie, second day Abby, .... approach better. Not as impactful for the character story, but it would be better paced for the overall story imo.

- The shit with the sniper on the bridge was intense...you really wanted to f*ck up this bastard...it really took me a while to realize it is Tommy...and this was a super powerful moment: you like this guy, I had inhibition to actually shoot at him...lol, whereas he fucking murdered me without hesitation

- The final fight of Ellie and Abby was super great: Abby looked so different with her new hairstyle. I had the feeling that she also was less muscular, maybe because she couldn't work out for a couple of month in the prision. Thus, fighting her was like a regular woman, and not a trained soldier. It didn't actually feel right to press the buttons. Genius ND imo.

 

[milk]

He has said sarkeesians femfrequency vids were a big impact on tlou1 l and 2 which throws out the criticisms of 1 and 2 by trying her to them in a vacuum. In 2 in particular having representation doesnt stop the game from going ham with over the top violence and extreme themes happening to all types of people which the anti sjw crowd say they dont want censored which they arent.

These game directors all fashion themselves as auteurs. Whether its ken levine or hideo kojima with something they want to say or express in the game. In that way, druckmann having an "agenda" or a worldview shouldent mean anything to anyone who isnt offended by what that worldview is. Problem is the whole debate started stupid on tlou2 immediately after the first ellie and dina trailer. People mad about ND "forcing gays in my face with their radical sjw agenda" was prevalent. In that context i see no real "both sides" in regards to this debate.

I agree that socially conscious liberals(not leftists in any strict ideological sense) go too far in certain ways regarding criticism or woke culture in media and hollow symbols as a stand in for real idealogically potent social justice that makes difference in the world(which is how megacorp brands want it to keep the status quo off of things like workers rights, economic justice for oppressed communities and real reform in regards to things like criminal justice and equal oppurtunity)

But in the face of a real slide into real far right propaganda and uniting around a banner of hate for exclusitory purposes(which is even more of a distraction to real issues) i can only see the sjw overreach as a reaction to the get woke go broke people.


I honestly find the sarkeesian gamergate nonsense culture war agenda accusations shit in the gaming community silly since the start. Its hard to believe that the overt hijacking of gaming by alt right circlejerk started from sarkeesian making a series of video commentaries that were her own opinion about diversity in gaming and created such a silly overly sensitive backlash about critisizing the status quo in any way that shes now the devil to a lot of people through propaganda and shitty character assassination.

I didnt even agree with a lot of her points and thought she went too far in reaching many conclusions. But i respected that she had a different opinion on things than i and could agree atleast certain things regarding gender and race representation at the time needed to change in gaming.

Now its just a silly cesspool regarding media in general. Movies like captain marvel and wonder woman are set up in these peoples eyes to be examples of. People like brie larson were vicisously personally attacked for saying things like " it would be cool to see an all female superhero group".

I see the same things for actors and people who worked on this game like laura bailey and even anyone who doesnt toe the line on hating the game as hard as them.(some people had to stop streaming the game because they were getting threats just by saying it was flawed but not as bad as people were saying).

That kind of shit i have zero tolerance for and its not a matter of two sides participating in back and forth at that point.

I agree with all of it. TLoU2 story telling problems are far from being the sexuality, gender, or race of their characters, but I've seen plenty folk using that as an excuse to both criticize and excuse it. And to discredit the criticism, and the apreciation. These people exist, many of them. Thankfully, they are a noisy minority

 

[fehu]

I don't know why anyone focused so much on little difference between the final game and an early trailer, while the broken piece is the story.

Anyway, I'm a little envious of Abby's arms...

 

[Billy Idol]

They even showed in the stadium of the WLF that there is a huge gym where all soldiers did there workout. Also, it was clear that not all members where soldiers, but had different jobs and responsibilities. So soldiers do training and have muscles...yeah, why are people getting worked up with her muscles? Shouldn't it be the other way around: every other game that features a female action hero should explain how she is able to do hard action labor without getting a sign of muscles...? (Oh and if we are in the middle of the discussion: how a bikini shaped armor is able to be protective...I know, it is important for breathing?!?)

 

[Billy Idol]

Btw, one thing that the game features a lot: climbing things with fixed animation cut scenes, opening doors with fixed animation cut scenes...is it right that these are all in, just because they need time to stream in the next area?
I am looking forward to consoles with SSD such that we can get rid of these time sink/filler parts...!

 

[Deleted member 13524]

https://www.spieltimes.com/news/the-last-of-us-part-ii-sales-dropped-80-week-on-week-uk/
80% drop in the UK, 85% drop in Japan.

Here's former videogame industry critic / journalist Liana K's take on the drop:

She was the only character that actually shaped Finn. The whole movie he was trying to escape any sort of responsibility to be greater than just someone running away. She taught him to become a resistance fighter. I'm not sure how you didn't see that as obvious.

Disagree 100%.
Finn in Force Awakens is the best shaped characters in any Star Wars movie. He's a Storm Trooper who breaks out of the Empire's / First Order's mental conditioning, a moment that is promptly detected by Kylo Ren at the time, meaning it was originally meant as a Force-based release. This is further proven in Rise of Skywalker, where Abrams makes sure to let people know that Finn is Force-sensitive in several situations (BTW it was this that Finn wanted to tell Rey while being swallowed by the sand, as confirmed by Abrams.)

There were so many interesting things that could have been around Finn during the second movie. His path into the Force, his knowledge and personal proximity over the fact that the First Order's Storm Troopers are victims making him question how to handle the war,
Come the pile of shit that is Last Jedi and all of the sudden the guy who risked his life to save Rey several times becomes a coward that wants to run away, but then just follows around this shoed-in character because he's now a doormat without agency. All of a sudden the most interesting character of Force Awakens becomes a doormat that goes to a casino planet (when supposedly no one should have fuel to escape the First Order, but fuck all logic on TLJ) to make a PETA commercial for made-up animals and say RiCh PeOpLe ArE bAd.

And the removal of her character from Rise of Skywalker made it a better film?

Yes. Rose Tyco is a terribly uninteresting character that shouldn't have been in any Star Wars movie. She's the Jar Jar Binks of the new trilogy, and just like Ep. II dialed down Jar Jar due to popular demand, Ep. XIX dialed down Rose.
- "Now it was all worth it" she says, while releasing the space horses into the woods (probably to be murdered within a couple of hours by the planet's predators), conveniently forgetting they're leaving slave children behind.
How the fuck is this completely forced virtue signaling even likeable to anyone?

I'm fairly positive that Rise is considered the WORST of all 9 movies among all fans of star wars.

Most Star Wars fans I personally know put TLJ dead last.
TLJ is the worst Star Wars movie of all time. At least the Christmas Special didn't try to take itself seriously.

She was discarded and she had a legitimate role in actually providing any semblance of a story in a trilogy of movies that honestly lacked any sort of pacing to even bother with characters themselves.

She was discarded because she's a useless character who took precious screentime from other much more interesting characters, e.g. Captain Phasma or Finn.

What hurt these sequels in particular Rise of the Skywalker and Force Rising the most was pacing. Lack of any consequences for any sort of actions.

What hurt these sequels was the fact that the trilogy wasn't planned. They put one team making the story for Ep. VII, then one single self-centered idiot taking the reigns and making it all about him for Ep. VIII, then giving control back to Ep. VII's team who promptly tried their best to undo all the shit the self-centered prick did for the middle movie.
It was bad planning.

 

[Inuhanyou]

Uncharted 4 had almost as low a drop. These games have huge front ends that level off with sales. Tlou2 will hit 10 million sales before tlou1.

Not that i care about sales in particular but people have been using sales to feign fake concern to prove failures a while.

Also about the star wars talk. Most of the critisism regarding erasing tran from the movie is about disney lacking any moral character in erasing her not about the story.

You can argue the actual story and characters of these movies, its just fictional.

but lets not pretend that in erasing tran it was not disney buckling to the outrage of the same people who made the actresses life a living hell for years just because she appeared in the movie. She has nothing to do with script, writing, directing or anything. The actress didnt deserve to be erased from the movie.

 

[iroboto]

https://www.spieltimes.com/news/the-last-of-us-part-ii-sales-dropped-80-week-on-week-uk/
80% drop in the UK, 85% drop in Japan.

Here's former videogame industry critic / journalist Liana K's take on the drop:

Disagree 100%.
Finn in Force Awakens is the best shaped characters in any Star Wars movie. He's a Storm Trooper who breaks out of the Empire's / First Order's mental conditioning, a moment that is promptly detected by Kylo Ren at the time, meaning it was originally meant as a Force-based release. This is further proven in Rise of Skywalker, where Abrams makes sure to let people know that Finn is Force-sensitive in several situations (BTW it was this that Finn wanted to tell Rey while being swallowed by the sand, as confirmed by Abrams.)

There were so many interesting things that could have been around Finn during the second movie. His path into the Force, his knowledge and personal proximity over the fact that the First Order's Storm Troopers are victims making him question how to handle the war,
Come the pile of shit that is Last Jedi and all of the sudden the guy who risked his life to save Rey several times becomes a coward that wants to run away, but then just follows around this shoed-in character because he's now a doormat without agency. All of a sudden the most interesting character of Force Awakens becomes a doormat that goes to a casino planet (when supposedly no one should have fuel to escape the First Order, but fuck all logic on TLJ) to make a PETA commercial for made-up animals and say RiCh PeOpLe ArE bAd.



Yes. Rose Tyco is a terribly uninteresting character that shouldn't have been in any Star Wars movie. She's the Jar Jar Binks of the new trilogy, and just like Ep. II dialed down Jar Jar due to popular demand, Ep. XIX dialed down Rose.
- "Now it was all worth it" she says, while releasing the space horses into the woods (probably to be murdered within a couple of hours by the planet's predators), conveniently forgetting they're leaving slave children behind.
How the fuck is this completely forced virtue signaling even likeable to anyone?


Most Star Wars fans I personally know put TLJ dead last.
TLJ is the worst Star Wars movie of all time. At least the Christmas Special didn't try to take itself seriously.



She was discarded because she's a useless character who took precious screentime from other much more interesting characters, e.g. Captain Phasma or Finn.




What hurt these sequels was the fact that the trilogy wasn't planned. They put one team making the story for Ep. VII, then one single self-centered idiot taking the reigns and making it all about him for Ep. VIII, then giving control back to Ep. VII's team who promptly tried their best to undo all the shit the self-centered prick did for the middle movie.
It was bad planning.

we may need a spin off.
So I want to stay on topic here at least with respect to TLOU2.

The sales bit, I think it's normal from what I understand, most games are heavily front loaded. But someone else can speak to that.

As for Star Wars, your criticism is valid, at least with respect to Poe and Finn as potential wasted, and stories that should have been expanded. I feel the same.

At the same time, we should only criticize what it is, not what we think it should be. What we think it should be, everyone wanted something different. I wanted new plot lines, I didn't want any nostalgia at all. I'm perfectly comfortable with completely new story lines and characters. Others may want something else, and in line with that thinking, we cannot criticize a product because it didn't become something else that we wanted. This is criticizing a purse for not holding as much as a backpack.

I can't change that fact that they made the film the way it was, I don't know what was left on the editing floor or what not, but for whatever reason this is how the movies were pursued. And with the way the movie was written, they didn't want to talk about those interesting things, but that doesn't mean SJW was the reason they didn't. Star Wars has always been this black and white, good guy vs bad guy type movie. There is no gray area. The imperial army has always been the equivalent of space nazis, with grand super rich technology. ie, they made like 2 death stars, a mega death star, thousands of star destroyers, an ultra dreadnought, you get the gist. It's been marketed towards children, it's very much a children's movie.

I think a movie designed with adults as the primary audience would have turned out very differently, perhaps possibly as you described, but we'll never know.
On that point, The Last Jedi far outranks Rise of Skywalker on nearly every single ranking site I can find. You may find a site or 2 that may rank it lower, but I'm positive that the large majority of sites will rank TLJ higher.

Bringing this back with TLOU2, as I read reviews and what not, everything from a gameplay perspective is improved. Graphically, everything is improved. Controls etc. So that leaves all this criticism just down to 1 thing, which is characters, story and plot. I can't fully comment on those aspects, I never played the game, and it's tempting to just watch. But I can't see how anyone could make an argument that SJW is what ruined it. Gender, Race and Sexuality swaps wouldn't change anything. You'd have to change the plot and the story, the timing, the pacing, when things are revealed to have that type of effect.

 

[DieH@rd]

~80% drop is normal for a heavily front-loaded hit game. U4 dropped 79%.

 

[zed]

Pfffffft 80% sales decrease is actually good, seems like ppl are trying to generate page views for a non existent story

GTAV dropped ~85%

GTAV is a flop confirmed!
Though I doubt TLOU will have anything like the legs of GTA

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I've liked that comment about GTAV, but without a link, I feel I should rescind that. You might be lying or misremembering. I guess my like will go to the first person to link to evidence of GTAV's parallel sales decrease.

 

[Globalisateur]

Interestingly God of War metacritic score is just above TLOU2. Who would have guessed that God of War would become the best rated Sony game on PS4, even above TLOU2 ? To my external perspective (loved, adored even, TLOU1, read only some reviews and spoiler-less comments of the 2nd), it seems the politics of Druckmann did harm the game in the end. Or maybe it's the story, or both. But I would guess the story is strongly related with the politics ?

 

[Inuhanyou]

The critics are pointing out the actual flaws in the game. Nothing to do with "druckmanns politics" theres no fucking politics in the game. Stop bringing that shit up

 

[Deleted member 11852]

The sales bit, I think it's normal from what I understand, most games are heavily front loaded. But someone else can speak to that.

Not always with AAA games. Look at Spider-Man's initial sales of around 4m in the first week of launch in June 2018 (3.2m in the first three days) and the last number we got was 13.2m in August 2019. Some games have a very long tail and sales can peak multiple times as titles go on sale.