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beating a bit of a dead horse here (TLoU2)
5 years ago
so it's been a few weeks, I think most the commotion has died down so I feel like it's alright to talk about without feeling like I'm bandwagon hopping. yeah everyone slammed it and stuff so I'm going to try to avoid retreading too much on the same commentary (though it's inevitable there will be some). I will say I do like the fact that abby looks like she can believably handle herself; I find things like battlefeild V's solo campaign where at one point a 12 year old girl suffering from hypothermia after walking miles grabs a full grown nazi soldier (who is looking right at her as the door opens) by the head and slams it into a desk knocking him out to be incredibly silly. HOWEVER I believe someone like abby could do such a feat, so props to them for for using a believable build. This isn't totally revolutionary since a lot of girls from fighting games have rather bulky physiques at times (most famously chun-li's horse legs lol) but it's the first time I've seen one in a leading role like that so kudos to the company for trying that.
of course this is where the praise stops. I have to admit Druckman managed to do what I'd normally find hard to believe to be possible, making me despise a buff gal. The only way I could dislike this character more is if on top of a rescue, Joel nursed her back to health after she received some kind of acute injury. The tricks they rely on in a futile attempt to make you try to like this character just don't work at all, and the retroactive changes to the firefly faction feel like fan-fiction. Given the continuity of the first game, the most I'd agree to is Joel ultimately did the right thing for the wrong reasons, and I kind of don't like the revisionist history of the director to make the fireflies feel so much less sketchy. Also I think the entire idea of "well her dad was special to her too, everyone's a human being!" rings super hallow because I have 0 doubt the same people who say that would have nuclear meltdowns if there was a wolfenstein game where Gretel Grosse smashed blazkowicz's head in because he killed her dad, and you spent half the game as her and ended up beating blazkowicz's daughters to a pulp in a boss fight where you're in control. The kicker is they would still be furious; even if the entire campaign was about wanting to leave that life behind after getting revenge they wouldn't care, which is one thing the critics are attacking the primary audience for not caring about in abby's story.
Also most people were so busy complaining about the false advertising bordering on fraud for Joel they forgot about the false advertising on new infected. When you watch the gameplay trailer they put out a week beforehand, the shambler was front in center and they implied there were a few more you could see whenever you played the game. I knew this was bullshit because if there were more they would be showing them to make people forget the leaks or generate more hype during the trailers. lo and behold, There is only one more and it's a boss fight so you never see it again. A very well designed and cool boss fight granted, but yeah maybe take the budget out for the mocapped sex scene and put a few more zombie monsters in your goddamn zombie apocalypse survival game? I mean Christ, the explosive special infected is the most generic and low effort special zombie in gaming, talk about low hanging fruit XD.
anyways, I think a question I'd ask my audience is do you think a 6 out of 10 or a 0 out of 10 is more fair? I think I tend to lean 0 because I think about it like a steak in a restaurant; if I get a 60$ prime cut that is perfectly marbled, grass fed, cooked to perfection, the waiter is immaculate, but I find out the manager wiped his ass on it right before the waiter got it because he thinks of himself as a genius whose starfish smells like roses I think I'm going to be justified rating it as low as the scale goes and never coming back. I don't think most people would be like "well that's not fair you could have chopped off the top layer of the steak and still tried it!" no...I don't think I will XD. but maybe that's not fair for a videogame? I dunno what are your thoughts?
of course this is where the praise stops. I have to admit Druckman managed to do what I'd normally find hard to believe to be possible, making me despise a buff gal. The only way I could dislike this character more is if on top of a rescue, Joel nursed her back to health after she received some kind of acute injury. The tricks they rely on in a futile attempt to make you try to like this character just don't work at all, and the retroactive changes to the firefly faction feel like fan-fiction. Given the continuity of the first game, the most I'd agree to is Joel ultimately did the right thing for the wrong reasons, and I kind of don't like the revisionist history of the director to make the fireflies feel so much less sketchy. Also I think the entire idea of "well her dad was special to her too, everyone's a human being!" rings super hallow because I have 0 doubt the same people who say that would have nuclear meltdowns if there was a wolfenstein game where Gretel Grosse smashed blazkowicz's head in because he killed her dad, and you spent half the game as her and ended up beating blazkowicz's daughters to a pulp in a boss fight where you're in control. The kicker is they would still be furious; even if the entire campaign was about wanting to leave that life behind after getting revenge they wouldn't care, which is one thing the critics are attacking the primary audience for not caring about in abby's story.
Also most people were so busy complaining about the false advertising bordering on fraud for Joel they forgot about the false advertising on new infected. When you watch the gameplay trailer they put out a week beforehand, the shambler was front in center and they implied there were a few more you could see whenever you played the game. I knew this was bullshit because if there were more they would be showing them to make people forget the leaks or generate more hype during the trailers. lo and behold, There is only one more and it's a boss fight so you never see it again. A very well designed and cool boss fight granted, but yeah maybe take the budget out for the mocapped sex scene and put a few more zombie monsters in your goddamn zombie apocalypse survival game? I mean Christ, the explosive special infected is the most generic and low effort special zombie in gaming, talk about low hanging fruit XD.
anyways, I think a question I'd ask my audience is do you think a 6 out of 10 or a 0 out of 10 is more fair? I think I tend to lean 0 because I think about it like a steak in a restaurant; if I get a 60$ prime cut that is perfectly marbled, grass fed, cooked to perfection, the waiter is immaculate, but I find out the manager wiped his ass on it right before the waiter got it because he thinks of himself as a genius whose starfish smells like roses I think I'm going to be justified rating it as low as the scale goes and never coming back. I don't think most people would be like "well that's not fair you could have chopped off the top layer of the steak and still tried it!" no...I don't think I will XD. but maybe that's not fair for a videogame? I dunno what are your thoughts?
To be real honest, I was not at all sold on TLOU2 to begin with, I have played the first one and I felt the ending for that one was good enough as it was, leaving it all somewhat ambiguous with how things would be between Joel and Ellie following what he did at the end and how he lied about what happened.
but yeah, I'd be all "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!" to blackrat if he took commissions, but he's doing patreon now and seems to have no intention of doing commissions again ever as far as I know lol. I don't blame him, 4 color page uploads a month with 2k donors? that's like 500 a page, none of us can match that individually XD
I think
Also I gotta be blunt, while you are entitled to your opinion and thus it’s irrelevant who/how many disagree with you I think you’re throwing stones in glass houses as far as Criticizing writing for a product intended for mass consumption goes.
I fail to see the problem with what you're mentioning about certain instincts and patterns; though maybe it's because I still strongly believe in the concept of the nuclear family structure there's no way I'd ever perceive such instinct as negative? I dunno I might be totally off base, you'll have to explain to me further about your thought process there.
I know you might think it's a cop-out, but the whole concept of the ethics there hinges on whether you believe the fireflies can pull this off or not, and given the evidence in-game in the original they seemed rather dysfunctional and unhinged; it feels less like dooming humanity and more of stopping a cult sacrifice from a desperate and unhinged hail Mary attempt. It still has that sort of "but WHAT IF?" kind of element, but a lot of people were on Joel's side simply because we had so little faith in the firefly's judgement. It seems that the sort-of new director noticed that and retroactively made them seem way more competent and equipped in flashbacks to make his narrative vision fit for the second game; a kind of big no-no for building on someone else's work TBH. I also heard rumors of lore being removed from one of the notes in the hospitals of past failures in future iterations to help shift the narrative from muddled grey to "nah they totally had it fam, joel should have just let them crack her skull open". Even with those changes it's still not enough to convince me of the argument "no we need to cut this golden goose open IMMEDIATELY" no matter how many zebras Abby's dad pets :P
also dunno how to respond to your deconstruction of the title. I think it's REALLY reaching TBH
I see Joel as just another brain dead hick. Be doesn't get anything but he knows how to be a grunting caveman. And honestly, he's just another edgelord Rorschach, who was a bad guy you're supposed to hate. In any other context he'd be like... a Republic of Gilead footsoldier who only wishes he was a commander. Us vs them. The most basic way to sound right. We have morals. They don't. It seemed pretty obvious it was another shortcut to make the player instantly be on the side of the player characters. Like picking a random sports team and suddenly feeling protective enough to beat people and riot over scores and trash talk.
Maybe I just hate the patriarchal meathead narrative too much, as it feels like a way to defend the deification of the ignorant savage with a gun and a baseball bat who is increasingly useless. And also the "No, the world must die so I can protect the waifu, I mean, woobie, I don't have pederastic overtones" narrative.
Oh! And something from the above comment, the nuclear family was a sham, sold to us like bacon for breakfast, torches of freedom and the concept of grain cereal and circumcision. Family was always an extended network that described generations of interwoven persons, a more expansive thing that wasn't just a 50s nightmare of an almighty husband, a wife with the illusion of choice and children who were the obedient automatons of the father.
With this game, I mainly hate it from trying to do the crappy story route. Since when the leaks happened, I stayed away from the game and chose to never touch it.
So I agree with everyone on the story since that’s what this kind of game is, a story driven experience. But like with Borderlands 3, don’t focus entirely on the story, since their are other areas that are impressive from technical standpoints and other things. If you play the game just for that, more power to you.
Those are my thoughts.