Sometimes bold decisions comes with a price. This time it is hatred. I welcome Naughty Dog's bold decision they created a fantastic game. Those who haven't played the game and hating because of LGBTQ+ characters should shut up.
agreed on the lgbtq part, but i think the majority of the hate comes from the awful and poorly written story, poor character continuity along with it just not being enjoyable.
That is an interesting opinion to have from one who has not played The Last of Us Part 2. It seems that now the best way to determine the quality of a piece of interactive electronic entertainment is to read a few written words about it. I'm curious as to what else in life do you judge without experiencing it for yourself? Can you tell me the quality of this mint chocolate ice cream that I am about to eat?
Yes I didn't play the game but if you want to pretend that youtube and the walkthroughs that you can find in it don't exist that's your choice.
BTW what I don't find interesting but rather pathetic is your dumbass analogy. It would make sense if we were talking about gameplay, not narratives but this is N4g and over the years I learned that I have to keep my expectations low when interacting with the vast majority of its users.
No, I'm not making a qualitative comparison between 2 games. I'm making a comparison between one aspect of two games: how unsettling their narratives are. I'm not sure why you're pretending that to judge the narratives of these two games I need to play them and why watching a walkthrough isn't more than enough to do it. I would ask you why but I won't because I don't want to see my brain while reading what will obviously be a response completely void of any hint of basic common sense.
"still waiting on your analysis of that mint chocolate ice cream" I kinda already gave it to you and there is no need for me to do it again.
"Just curious, which Youtube walkthrough did you watch" Why does it matter? Will changing youtube channels somehow change my perception of how unsettling TloU 2 narrative is or isn't?
You are making a qualitative comparison between 2 games when you yourself have not played one of the games. You have no basis to judge how effective a video game is at telling a story when you haven't personally played the game. It would be like claiming to be able to judge the difficulty of Dark Souls by watching someone else play the game.
I'm still waiting on your analysis of that mint chocolate ice cream. If I post a video of me eating it, will you then be able to tell me the quality of it? If you think that is a dumbass analogy then you probably shouldn't do the same thing when it comes to video games. Just stick to giving your opinion and leave the qualitative comparisons to those who actually play the games.
Just curious, which Youtube walkthrough did you watch?
"Why does it matter? Will changing youtube channels somehow change my perception of how unsettling TloU 2 narrative"
No, it's just funny that you expect people to believe that you sat through an entire play-through of a 25+ hour game that you said a week ago you had zero interest in. Plus you gave the classic defense of someone that is caught in a lie so thank you for that.
Also, you probably should learn what a qualitative comparison is because that is exactly what you did when you said that "Spec Ops The Line did a better job at telling an unsettling story." But thanks for the personal attacks. It is always amusing to someone like you resort to that whenever someone challenges the point you are trying to make.
If I was lying I could easily spend 1 minute of my life go to youtube search for a walkthrough, name a channel and be done with it but I guess a great detective mastermind such as yourself couldn't imagine such a simple scenario. Yes I said that I had absolutely no incentive to play the game and I didn't. Those €60 will go to a game that I want to play.
"you probably should learn what a qualitative comparison is" You should probably go back to school and brush up on your reading skills. You said that I was making a comparison between 2 games and I didn't. I didn't because a game is composed by many aspects such as gameplay, musical score, art, graphics, tech, acting, pacing, characters etc and to compare the overall quality of 2 games I have to actually play them. I made a comparison between one aspect of these games: narrative and to do that anyone can just watch a walkthrough of these 2 games wich is why your analogy is dumb.
"like you resort to that whenever someone challenges the point you are trying to make" You didn't challenge the point I was trying to make. You didn't discuss why you thought TloU 2 has a more unsettling narrative. You made your comment about me wich is what those that have absolutely nothing to say do when they can't counter what the other person said. Oh and yes I make fun at the expense of fanboys. What can I say? Your irrationality makes you easy targets.
Only you would say "Spec Ops the line did a better job at telling an unsettling story" and then repeatedly try to claim you were not making a qualitative comparison. If you were not comparing the quality of the story telling experience of the 2 games, what exactly do you imagine you were doing? As a gamer, it is disgusting to see someone try to say that watching a video of a game is the same as playing a game. Basically, to further your pathetic fanboy goals you are willing to completely dismiss the interactive element that makes videogames videogames and not movies. You could of said that you preferred the story of Spec Ops The Line better but instead chose to make the definitive statement about how a game told its story without having actually played the game yourself. You have no idea how well The Last of Us Part 2 told its story since all you supposedly have done is watched a video of someone else playing the game (it is pretty obvious that you lied about doing even that. "If I was lying I could easily spend 1 minute of my life go to youtube search for a walkthrough, name a channel and be done" except you didn't and instead took the approach that almost all liars take and attack the question. Better to attack than risk naming a channel that hasn't finished the game yet, had a comedic commentary, or one that rushed through the entire game just to get to the ending to complain about how bad it was. It also didn't help your story that you admitted months ago to reading the leaks and saying then how bad The Last of Us Part 2 story is).
Fanboys like you are annoying and from now on every time you try to attack someone for criticizing a game that they haven't played I'm just going to point to you doing the same thing here.
Why? It was a much better executed narrative as it didn't have plothholes, left a bigger impact because it asked players to actually make moral choices and more important of all, It's narrative was able to genuinely make people feel unconfortable without having to resort to using cheap cliché shock value moments. It didn't need to create manufactured emotions... that's how you know that Spec Ops had a more disturbing narrative.
"As a gamer, it is disgusting to see someone try to say that watching a video of a game is the same as playing a game" Oh the poor baby... I clearly said that to compare 2 games I actually had to play them. I clearly said that I didn't compare 2 games but rather one aspect of them. One that doesn't need me to play to judge so shove your manufactered feelings right up your ass... hey you should apply for a job at ND.
"all liars take and attack the question" liars cover their tracks to make their lies more believable. A liar would do the scenario I suggested above. The ones that find the question stupid or irrelevant are the ones that question the validity of it.
"Fanboys like you are annoying and from now on every time you try to attack someone for criticizing a game that they haven't played I'm just going to point to you doing the same thing here"
Am I supposed to be afraid of you? Do whatever you want, I don't care.
I don't really think the game is as unsettling as it tries to be. The story wasn't great and had bad pacing. Joel, a character everyone loved, was relegated to being a plot device. Killing him wasn't unsettling, it was poorly written. It could have been done so much better. The brutality of the gameplay is great but not unsettling because we've been doing stuff like that in games for ages so it doesn't really do anything thematically anymore.And having characters just suddenly be killed (Jessie and Manny for example) isn't unsettling either, it's just cheap shock that works in the moment but doesn't really add to an unsettling atmosphere. And the fact it was done multiple times in one game doesn't do it any favors.
The concept of back and forthing between the theater and location X got fairly tiresome with very little break in what was thrown at you. I'm guessing this is what they were going for, make you somewhat feel the slog that Ellie is going through in-game but then that's the thing, it's a game, so I don't want to get tired of playing it, it needs to be enjoyable. I know they said that fun is not the goal with the game but seriously if that's the case just make a movie or TV show or book. The first was fantasatically engaging thematically where we are thrown into this gritty, horrible, violent world where we can empathize with the struggles of the different characters while still having FUN playing it. I will say though that there were some great pieces that stood out like the section making your way down hill in the suburbs just before meeting Jessie again. That stuff was tense and very enjoyable.
For me, it wasn't until the 2nd half of the game that it got consistently good. Abbies story was much better and more engaging. Her tale is more about her being affected by what's going on in the world around her. Starting off with a failed field run by being ambushed then the domino effect that pushes her story and character forward. The interaction between her friends and colleagues was much more intriguing, natural and entertaining. That's not to say there wasn't good interaction between Ellie, Dina and Jessie, because there was some good stuff there too but I felt it wasn't as good.
It's Abbies section of the game that gets closest to being unsettling however due to the cult like nature of the Seraphites (scars), where they string people up, break peoples arms with hammers, the whistling while they hunt (like wtf! not very peaceful guys). This cult is by far the most unsettling thing in the game and it peaks when Lev tries to reason with his mother but she's so brainwashed that she turns on him for being an apostate. However, while probably the most interesting aspect of the game, it is also overplayed in media and isn't anything quite new and because it is a relatively small part of the game, doesn't do enough to create this unsettling feeling. I feel like there should definitely have been more of a focus on them, their violent nature and the brainwashing.
Overall, I think the game tried to do a lot of things and didn't manage to pull it off. Turning Joel into a plot device was a big misstep for me, where they could have made it so much more impactful. As is it is, it's cheap and rushed purely for the sake of wanting players to see the different perspectives of Ellie and Abbie. It tried too hard to be meaningful, and as a result, the other aspects of the story fell short for expanding on the dark (and unsettling) atmosphere of the first.
I don't agree that Joel was relegated by a plot device because by that reasoning Ellie was just a plot device in the first game. This game is a continuation of The Last of Us and Joel is now paying for his decision at the hospital. I find the game unsettling because it shows us just how blindly we think and do what video games tell us to do. We will happily kill anything a game points us at and believe it when it tells us that it is the bad guy. People believe Joel is a good guy even though he murders an entire hospital of people trying to find a cure and did even worse things before the start of the first game. I know I was happy to kill the dog in the aquarium because of how annoying they were in the game and then I lost it when I was playing fetch with that dog as Abby. Alice was just doing what she was trained to do yet when the game tells us to kill her we are like "how fast?"
You find the Seraphites unsettling even though before you saw them torture and kill people you witnessed the WLF, Tommy, and Ellie do the exact same thing. It is easy to be against the Seraphites yet the first thing that happens when they are attacked is that they try to protect the children. You know that if the Seraphites win they will continue to kill all those that don't believe and that if the WLF wins that they will exterminate every Seraphite and outsider they find. Seattle isn't going to be a better place no matter who wins and yet you are still stuck in the middle of it. The final scene as you left Haven affected me like the intro to Saving Private Ryan. There comes a point with violence that you just want it to be over and even as you sailed away and watched them slaughter each other on the docks, you knew that there was still more violence ahead for you whether you wanted it or not. I felt the same way then as I did in the hospital in The Last of Us. I didn't agree with the choice Joel made but I needed to finish things to the end and so I killed a hospital full of people. Here, I didn't want to go to the aquarium because we knew what was going to happen but again I kept playing to see things through. That is how I found the game unsettling. (The CA part ruined all that though and felt like it was designed by someone who didn't work on the first 3 parts of the game. How could anyone think that the good way to end a story about violence and everyone just being different shades of gray was to have you go up against a group of slavers?
Sometimes bold decisions comes with a price. This time it is hatred. I welcome Naughty Dog's bold decision they created a fantastic game. Those who haven't played the game and hating because of LGBTQ+ characters should shut up.
Nah. Spec Ops the Line did a better job at telling an unsettling story.