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OPINION: Why The Last of Us Part 2 Collapsed [Spoilers]
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OPINION: Why The Last of Us Part 2 Collapsed [Spoilers]
The Last of Us Part 2 is a divisive game. Shank takes a spoiler-filled deep dive into how the game's utterly brilliant first half is completely undone by its second half.
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I didn’t dislike Abby because of what she did to Joel. I didn’t view her as the bad person or Ellie as the good person. I disliked playing Abby because I wasn’t playing as Ellie for all the reasons I laid out in the piece.
The sequel is a hateful, spiteful little shit that scraps all of that to tell a bland revenge story with nothing profound to say for itself. Revenge is bad, mmkay.
Fuck it right off and hire a writer with some talent.
So where do i start...
I think i have used the term ...HYPOCRITE a few times before.
I will start by saying this game is pretty good,it looks and feels like a professionally made game.So i tried to grasp the WHY there was so much anger thwarted at a game that is w/o argument 100x better than 99% of the games in the market.
I see garbage like the BR's,moba's,tactics chess like games,ARPG's all receiving tons of praise hpe and they are garbage,no effort,low quality games.
So i am not listening to ANYONE who praises a pile of crap then tries to claim this game is a complete fail.It is one thing to say "i did not enjoy it"but it is a very good game.
So what is my conclusion on the hate?I feel it is FAKE and fabricated and then tons felt the need to jump on the bandwagon like people always seem to do.
So how did it start?The infamous LEAKS.So then people that make money of of copyright material,like gaming,who put NOTHING into these games began commenting and sharing the leaked information.So of course as any decent business would do they went after those breaking the law and imo are fully justified in doing so.
So then we have a problem that has been around a long time already and that is what i would call "blackmail".
All these media outlets felt slighted because SOE came after them,so they turned to vengeance.They were basically trying to flex their power of the internet by saying "we want to do whatever we want OR ELSE"Of course the OR LESE is we will give your game bad reviews out of SPITE.
I read a lot of the arguments some sites that SOE went after and i am nOT buying their version of the story of their fake sounding reasons for claiming the game is bad.Without getting into it any further,i bet 99% of the media that said the game was bad are praising games that are utter crap and likely because the yare breaking the law buy praising a sponsored/business partner.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Well Bill came on here and started making up BS threads like"D2 is a game we NEED".
he then followed that up with more threads basically endorsing a product he had NO business endorsing.
Point?My point is the media tends to give FALSE praise when there is a business relationship going on but if there is none or they feel slighted,they are quick with the negative or to jump on the bandwagon with the rest of the negative media outlets.
I have been around a VERY long time,i PAY ATTENTION,i see a lot of what goes on in this industry.
BTW i read over a LOT of negative reviews,a LOT of websites complaining that SOE went after them,i read enough until i thought there was a very big picture being painted,a story to unfold.
Even a guy i tend to respect "Angry Joe" was WRONG in his assessment of releasing information on illegal leaked material.Just because some information is OUT THERE,when you KNOW full well as did Joe that is is NOT legal information,you know very well to not talk about it or using that leaked material in your videos.
I mean i actually think Joe embarrasses himself by making this claim,it is utter stupidity.
An example.....So for example someone gets a hold of where a person LIVES that works for mmorpg AND all of their personal information.Just because that information may be OUT THERE does not give you the right to start showing it and using that information to post your own video content.Especially if that information was leaked illegally.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
My issue is with the game itself. Its boring. Shooting is dull and boring. Fighting is dull and boring. Stealth is dull and boring. Enemies are stupid, dull and boring. The infected are completely wasted as enemies/story/mechanic.
Around the 3 hour mark I was already bored as hell, to the point I left the game for a couple of days, of going through small linear maps with the same mechanics over and over and over... They even tried to make the game last longer by forcing you to repeat that hell of gameplay for hours without any sense.
Graphics and sound are the only above average features of the game. Ambience, music, voices, its really good. Graphics have been praised a lot and its true that they are in the high end but not groundbreaking nor topnotch.
So yeah im confused about why people are so obsessed with the plot decisions as if those were the only thing that make this game a failure. The game is boring, repetitive and bland in almost all aspects.
When you are told by reviewers, advertising and almost all the media that this is a game deserving a 10 and you get a game that deserves a 7-8 (at best and being generous) its a complete failure.
Naughty Dog and Sony have behaved contemptuously throughout this whole thing. We have them DMCA'ing anyone and everything that talked about the game before it released, esp. wrt the leaks, and now that the game has been released they are getting pissy at anyone who doesn't bend the knee and bow down and give TLOU2 a perfect score and declare it the best game ever. Jim Sterling has a good take on how badly this has been handled by people associated with the game.
Is a man not entitled to the herp of his derp?
Remember, I live in a world where juggalos and yugioh players are real things.
anyone is allowed to make something and think it good but when we pay for said item, we are allowed to say it shit an it was a waste of time or resources no mater how much others think we should enjoy it, just as others can say more please and enjoy every bite and think there can be nothing better.
regardless of your view they did a poor job, if you made something great you don't need to disable comment or likes on a site, censor critics or it effect sales, argue on multiple forms saying how critics are just haters or bigots, to defend something good. i bought it day one i think it a 8/10 i you can avoid the flaws, if not knock a point or two more down and that the game, it not a 10/10 goty.
will i buy a sequel? maybe, i want see where they go from here but am not going pretend they did not piss off fans to tell a story that was done poorly, there was a article on different sitethat said they cut down the days to 3 days vs 5 days
https://screenrant.com/last-us-2-cut-content-ellie-girlfriend-joel/
" In fact, Ellie’s Seattle adventures in The Last of Us: Part 2 were meant to extend for five days, not just three. "
i don't care about it but it shows they could easily done things differently or extend thing to flesh out characters more but they wanted the game released and making $$$ so here we are.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
Who can't like a commercial product? Boy, I hope they aren't being murdered, or like having tape physically placed over their mouths and thrown into vans! This, this is a travesty unlike anything in human history! I hope those poor souls survive long enough to outlive the cultural hype of said product so people forget all about their opinion until the next commercial product comes out so theyre opinions can be martyred in their own minds. Consuuuuuume!
I dislike that at the best of times in books, movies and specially games. I even disliked it in a game I otherwise love, the Witcher 3, going back and forth between Geralt and Ciri.
I mean... I get the narrative device purpose and how some works are so epic in scope and have so many leading characters that you need to do it, as in Game of Thrones for example, but I always at least mildly dislike the discontinuity forced on me. I'd much rather read it or see it or play it from one single POV.
I haven't played this so I can't even imagine how much I would hate not just switching focus but switching focus specifically to the antagonist.
I totally get where @ShankTheTank is coming from with his take.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
I'm pretty sure a Sony-owned studio with approximately a million times the budget should be able to maintain a narrative for at least one sequel.
But who am I kidding? We live in the age where massive IPs are having all of their goodwill burned overnight by subversive hacks. First Star Wars, then Game of Thrones (ouch), and now this.
Who knew?
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
However, Abby wasn't remotely believable. I can understand why Ellie went into the blind rage she did. No person on Earth had more weight on her than she did. Could you imagine living with the knowledge that your life has doomed millions? And then to see Joel have his skull bashed with a golf club right in front of her? From what we saw of Abby's backstory, and her interactions with Lev, she doesn't seem the type of person to want to brutally torture someone 4 years after the fact. Shit had to happen in between.
I do think they got the very end right. Not the nonsense with the rattlers. But the fight with Abby where at the very end she may finally came to grips with everything and got past the revenge. The ending of Last of Us 1 gave players what they thought they wanted, Ellie and Joel both alive together, but in a way where they were pretty much guaranteed to not be happy. Last of Us 2 finally gave hope for Ellie at the end of the game, but at one hell of a price.
Honestly, giving it a numbered rating is pretty tough to do. Its better than most games I've played in recent times. Its too flawed for a 10, but far better than 95% of games that would get an 8.
But TLOU2 is no TLOU1, thats for sure.
I thought we all just played games with mediocre, highly repetitive gameplay and a bland story? isn't that what this site is about?
Then again, this probably isn't a bad thing as the focus can be more about the interaction of the players, their stories being more important in the scheme of things.
Except that.... MMORPG devs seemed to have forgotten this along the way, largely removing or neutralizing many of the very elements which were their real strengths over single player games.
Glory days indeed.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
As I see things, you have little right to complain, just suck it up as a bad purchase and make better choices in the future.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
On top of that, the game play is really good.
And I can't picture anyone who liked the first game not at least getting some enjoyment out of the first 15 hours.
But anyone who spouts off nonsense like 'SJW' deserves to be miserable.
And no one who says TLOU2 is 'shit' has any opinion worth listening to anyway. Not liking it is one thing, but its clearly far from 'shit'. Still probably the best game released so far in 2020, at least on console. Although there hasn't been a whole lot of competition just yet.
but.
Although the pacing is excellent there is definitely bloat. Every single question from the original that might be raised does so, every side activity explored to the fullest. The graphics are amazing, except when they are not. Especially some extremely low poly doors (Clouds sleeping room is a hilarious example) and the quality of the character looks makes it immediately recognisable who is important and who isn't. The main cast looks stunning, the side cast looks good and the wandering NPCs etc. look average. The combat is excellent but the camera work is sloppy in small spaces (that is most fights) Barret is even more of a caricature then before and Tifa is so much fan service that she is only inches away of constantly topping over. The music is amazing, the balance between being on rails and open spaces is excellent but on the whole the game feels a bit uneven.
In the end I would give the game an 8 for now. I would rate FF13 a 6 and FFXV a 7 so its definitely a step up for me. Do note, out of all FF games I have played (and I have played all numerical ones, all tactics ones, spinoffs etc.) the original FF7 does not make my top 3 and barely reaches my top 5.
My best game in 2020 would go to Persona 5: Royal.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer