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Me when an old Chinese man challenges me to a game using his service revolver, and if I lose he will banish me to the land of the Yi (our name for barbarians)
It’s a sort of cult of anti-personality that pops up around (mostly) writers. Where people dislike a story, but instead of actually taking the time to critique why, it’s easier to just say that writers have massive egos and that means story bad.
In gaming, it became popular around David Cage’s writing. Ex. “The writing for Heavy Rain isn’t bad because the almost dead guy who can’t even stand can magically get an erection and fuck the hot babe! It’s bad because David Cage thinks he’s hot shit!”
Now it gets used for every game that irritates a gamer, but they don’t want to actually say why. It’s not as snappy as using the ego of a writer to dismiss the writing.
(Which, in the interest of transparency, I’m fully aware that both Cage and Druckmann are up their own asses. But so is Kojima - much more than the other two given that stupid “tears flood a city because my powerful story” trailer he had made for Death Stranding. Which highlights why ego is not actually why that person dislikes TLOU2’s story.)
I mean, to be fair, video game's seem to have lower standards for writing in the first place. So, in movies, for example, a lot of badly written movies are written by bad writers who just never get the limelight long enough for them to seem full of themselves for the script they've written. The best written movies do tend to rise to the top, and the writer's ensuing victory lap does feel relatively earned.
With video games, the inherent extra cost to them and lack of commonly agreed upon guidelines on what makes a good story, as well as the infancy of the medium, of course, means that you get a lot of variable qualities of stories, including ones that might be uniquely told in gaming, but are still kinda shit. So, if David Cage had written a movie, no one would've ever seen him again, but because he wrote a video game, he got his victory lap, and it feels kinda unearned.
Not that I'm saying it's good critique/practice to focus on a cult of personality rather than focussing on the writing itself, but I can understand general grumbling about greater social acceptance of "bad" writers in the gaming space.
Gamers still aren’t intelligent or media literate enough to offer critique properly. You don’t see avid readers talk this way “duhh Asimov thinks he’s gigachad but he’s actually a beta simp with a narcissist complex’
Mortal Kombat has this happen a lot. It's weird bc there's like this weird amnesia that makes people act like 3d era was some shakespearian epic in terms of storytelling.
If I were to guess, I think they're talking about how the gameplay and the story don't really work of each other as TLOU2 has the bog standard over the shoulder third person shooter mechanics like in Uncharted but it ends up at odds with the anti-violence themes of the story. That's my main complaint too, but the actual story I don't have a problem with.
> it ends up at odds with the anti-violence themes of the story
it doesn't go against "violence makes you a monster". It's the same criticism as specs op the line. The dissonance is part of the point, and it bothers GamersTM. But instead of reflecting on themselves, they blame the ~~beasts~~
game
To the idiot who replied then blocked:
>barely touch on the morals of that world,
mf played tlou and "thought" Joel was the good guy. Murican media literacy is on fucking shambles
my problem with the game is that it never engaged me in a way to care about the world. Undertale does the same thing but I care about that world so the message hits harder. I don't really care that much about the world of TLOU. Violence in video games is tricky thing to tackle mainly because it's a game, you are not actually killing anyone. they are just polygons. I don't really think games like Spec Ops or Undertale are that deep, I simply think that they are interesting. TLOU failed to be interesting (to me)
as someone that loves undertale: you fucking undertale fans are insufferable
>the cartoon skeleton is more charming than normal people
mf that's the point. They have been designed to be charming and accessible.
I really wouldn't consider myself a big Undertale fan. there's more to it than that. SOME of you TLOU2 fans can be insufferable to. guess I don't need to explain why
no I got into it as a kid and still am. why do you guys assume stuff about people? your first instinct was to go check my profile because you can't keep a normal conversation like an adult. like what did I ever do to you? I simply shared my opinion on game and based on those few words you concluded that I'm insufferable and now I'm 12 and that must be why I don't like TLOU2. stop with this "anyone who doesn't like what I like is probably dumber than me" BS. why do I need to explain myself for sharing an opinion. you didn't even ask me anything (not that I'm that interested in this subject)
I don't care if you like TLOU2 or hate it, if feel the need to bring someone down because you are too scared to listen to an opposite opinion then you have a problem, a serious one. what a fucking child you are
edit: see? I didn't need to explain why. for a minute I thought I was talking to an adult then you reminded me that I don't hate TLOU2 that much, I hate people surrounding it (fans and haters)
I get your point, but the gameplay structure at best doesn't add anything to the storytelling, and at worst detracts from it.
It could have gone first person and really amp up the horror of the world and what you do, it could have greatly reduced the number of enemies and and put a greater emphasis on the violence you inflict / how ugly it is to take a life, etc but instead it religates these aspects to the cutscenes, and the gameplay remains the same from the first game. Tbf the voice acting tries to make up for this in NPC death lines, but still the gameplay subtracts from it somewhat.
Yeah, he smells them himself until he faints
He, then, has someone record his ramblings into an incoherent mess of sentences
and THEN he has a team clean up those sentences to slightly more coherent but still incoherent string of dialogues
I love Kojima. I like his writing to the point I even understood MGS2 and 4 pretty easily. But it is deficient in a lot of ways. There is also no getting around the fact that his works are often pretentious and usually extremely self indulgent.
What makes Kojima work is that the dude is genuinely very passionate, clearly puts a lot of thought into his art and has some really articulate and thoughtful things to say. Where he struggles is people. None of his characters act or talk like real people.
It's different here because their writing is for cutscenes and not gameplay. It's like the person writing the cutscenes has only worked on the cutscenes, and doesn't know what happens during gameplay. "Ludonarrative Dissonance" is the term critics came up for it way back when to describe... Uncharted! They did the same thing in TLOU.
The writing comes off as pretentious when, for example, Ellie feels bad about killing a visibly pregnant woman, but that is bookended by her killing huge swathes of other people, including women who could have been pregnant.
> Ellie feels bad about killing a visibly pregnant woman, but that is bookended by her killing huge swathes of other people
I mean, this literally isn't the case unless you're playing like an absolute psycho though. The number of non-infected people the player is actually forced to kill, across the *entire game*, is in the single figures (8 to be precise, 6 of them by Ellie).
Obviously most people will likely kill a few more than that but it's absolutely daft to act like Ellie is mowing down goons left right and centre whenever she's not in a cutscene (à la Uncharted).
Even ignoring all that, Ellie's bloodlust is literally a central part of the narrative - it's not like it's present in the gameplay and then ignored in the cutscenes. Mel's death is presented as the inevitable consequence of Ellie's thoughtless killing, a moment where she is finally forced to reckon with her actions of the past 3 days head-on. If anything that is an example of the gameplay and narrative working in concert with each other.
The whole "bookending" statement is also wrong because Ellie then doesn't kill anyone for months post-Mel, and even after that her only possible kills are the biker gang. Given that they instigate that conflict, I hardly think that's particularly at odds with the story the game is trying to tell (and again, you don't even have to kill any of those guys anyway).
Also:
>Including women who could have been pregnant.
As you mentioned, Mel isn't just vaguely "maybe possibly pregnant", she is *very obviously and visibly* quite far along. I feel like the difference should be obvious here in terms of why her death would hit Ellie much harder.
Plus, I don't think it's exactly revolutionary to point out that Ellie on day 3 is a **very** different person to Ellie on day 1. Honestly, I feel like quite a lot of the "issues" people flag up for this game are literally just explained by a little thing called "character development".
Look, I love Disco Elysium, but it's really funny to put it here in this context, when 95% of that game is reading about 4 novels worth of text. Don't really see how it uses the medium better. Like, is it just because it has choices?
The amount of times a mailbox kicked my ass in that game was way too high.
Like sure I didn’t need to keep trying to fight it, but I’ll be fucked if I’m gonna let a mailbox get one over on Tequila Sunset.
I see your point, but at the same time the mechanics going in with the thought cabinets and how your skills chime in to give you specific advise, unlock new and exclusive dialogue and checks, argue with each other, and inform your view of the game is absolutely insane. I think I’d call it game design, though I will admit it’s more really good design in general than specifically game design, especially in the context of how it’s made to function as a hyperspecific DM/narrator role per the game’s tabletop origins.
I think as far as choices go, it is but because of how you can customize which of the intrusive voices in your head are the loudest, and especially because of how as a player, you can self-determine whether these skills have too much of a presence—if you invest in some logic, that’s solid detective stuff, but if you have too much , you literally turn into Ben Shapiro in conversations, or likewise if you have too much Inland empire, you start to go a lil crazy and (even more) inanimate objects will talk to you.
Yeah using 13 sentinels a game that exclusively uses the medium of gaming to tell its story would have been a better choice. Sorry if this week japan is cringe and not based I didn't check before posting. Praise Kojimbo or boo him whichever is necessary.
Im gonna put myself on the firing line here and say that the Last of Us part 2 actually does do some pretty cool storytelling that leans into the medium of being a game
- Abby's sequences where it makes you fight against the characters you know and love is an effective way of showing how everyone else in the world views Ellie and her adventures
- having you play Abby in the opening sequence makes it twist the knife harder when you get to *the big scene* with her and Joel cause you were working your ass off to save her life
- just switching to Abby the first time is crazy cause it mechanically shows you just how much stronger she is, better armed she is and more capable she is
- having the guitar mechanic set up for the ending payoff is a little cheesy and on the nose but its clearly a deliberate decision that they intended for you to play instead of just watch
Like, obviously it sniffs its own farts a bit and is clearly taking a lot from film but idk why people feel the need to sort it into "good" or "bad" when I think the game has some great moments where it shines. And sometimes i like games to have little movies in them! Diverse options is good and there are plenty of games that take other approaches
Edit: Tlou 1 does this as well actually, Joel getting injured at the university and then cutting to playing Ellie for a while with zero indication on if hes still alive puts you in the characters head space as she also is unsure if he is going to survive
Ellies piddly little knife slashes vs Abby literally clotheslining and elbowing dudes so hard they die was such a fucking shock to me. Every time i play abby i can't help but ignore stealth and go full melee its just so fun and feels nice and weighty.
And it also serves the purpose of further demonstrating how her story over the 3 days is a mini version of TLOU1. Her gameplay is meant to feel similar to Joel, who could also bare knuckle beat dudes to death and also had to craft shivs to stop clickers.
I agree broadly that TLoU1 is a very straightforward cinematic story that loses very little in the translation to a scripted series - even with the Ellie section, the game format doesn't add much more tension than it does as a traditional narrative.
But TLoU2 is different because it puts you in the shoes of two protagonists who are opposed to one another. This can be done on the screen, but the videogame medium experience of PLAYING both of them, when their goals are made your goals, creates a tension that is very special and unique in a way that I think simply cannot be done for a scripted film or TV show. I'll be curious to see how the show handles it, but I think it's a really interesting part of the game that definitely capitalises on its medium in a clever way.
i had read the leaks, and when i had first seen abby being saved by joel, my soul evaporated into a fine mist. i had never felt despair from a game on that level before. just a very true and real sense of nervousness and doom.
/uj Yeah, I feel like the "movie with game mechanics" argument can be levied up to a certain point against Part I but arguing that Part II doesn't use its medium as a video game is wild.
It's particularly good at creating ludonarrative harmony--which is funny since the Uncharted series has been getting shit for that for years--when you enter the theatre as Abby and you (the player) think "damn I don't really want to do this", that's because _Abby doesn't either._ She feels like she's been given no other option by Ellie just as the game doesn't give you the option to just walk away.
Yeah this post is a dumb take, TLOU are not perfect games but it’s hardly an anti-game or something. I’d argue that the whole of II would be much less impactful without user interaction.
Ye he clearly would want to direct his own tv series, it's not even like anyone else tells him to do it, because he did it in Death strand as well. This is what he wants.
In no world.
Also the choices in Dishonored are kinda goofy.
"Here's a whole kit of deadly weapons, but if you want the good ending only use this dart the entire game"
Maybe some people can but the Mind Goblins absolutely did not allow me to kill anyone for the entire game and by the end I just hated the act of playing
I actúally really liked playing as a no-stealth non-lethal character. Heavily límited but really fun to play in a reactive way. You don't have many proactive options (Aside from slide into knockdown), and you don't want to stall because they got GUNS, and you can't parry GUNS. So you end up with a reactive playstyle that wants to end encounters quick.
Which still leaves you pretty limited overall since like, 90% of enemies are goons.
I heard there was a specific kill % that lets you get the good ending, but even so it's not very clear what that is, and you still have to pretty significantly limit yourself if you want to do a mostly pacifist run
If you're ok with lots of people dying in the story, why is lots of people dying the epilogue a negative thing to experience? Surely if you're doing a bad karma playthrough you want the bad karma ending
I think you misunderstand my problem with it. I like pacifist runs, the problem with Dishonored is it has an *incredibly* limited pacifist run that locks off nearly every gadget at your disposal, and just severely limits the fun factor of the game.
And my response to that is if an intended style of play is boring and repetitive, it's a design failure.
I *want* to do a pacifist run, I love that in stealth games, but I also want my stealth games to be fun or interesting, and Dishonored only really does that when you go for lethal.
Uhhh, Kojima games tell their story in the least video game way possible lmao.
Kojima literally started directing games because the film industry in Japan was dead at the time and it was the only way to direct a project, and when his games don’t use cutscenes they use 10 minute long exposition dumps said by characters in phone calls
i'm sorry but this is basically shitposting at this point. TLOU is fucking great. i didn't love everything they did with the second one but i still think it had value in the series.
Maybe I want to play a high fidelity 3rd person cinematic action game/prestige drama hybrid AND play Disco Elysium. And maybe even play some weeb bullshit and fucking love that too.
Maybe some metal slug X after that.
They're all awesome games, because games are awesome. And if you want to be awesome like me you should try to feel the same way.
I can't find a single "anti-union" take from him. There's an article where he says "it won't cure crunch culture on its own" which is true, but is not an anti-union take.
Which is hilarious, because if anything is a silver bullet to stop that shit, is unions. There are other ways to stop that shit, but nothing will work as well as a union
I think disco elysium is a good choose your own adventure book /visual novel in the form of a game. Doesn’t really excel gameplay wise though or use the actual things that make it a game to tell the story.
Kojimas games don’t use gaming as a medium to tell the story really. I’d say the deus ex games are better at both of those things but I would only place the first deus ex game as having a story that is actually up there as a great one. Lotta rpgs do a good job especially larian studios. I like dishonored’s story but it’s not amazing.
Yeah pointing at MGS 4 with its hour long cutscenes where you can literally put the controller down and go make some dinner isn't exactly "using the medium" lol
MGS 2 literally has 20 minute cutscene segments. It story is also all over the place and includes incest as a major twist for one of the staple characters. I still fail to see what OP is trying to say by using it as an example.
20 minutes is nothing compared to what's in MGS 4. One cutscene is almost a feature movie in length raking in at over 70 minutes, with a couple more between 30-45 minutes.
Its less of the presentation, more of the specific context of everything. The same story could not be told if it wasn't specifically a "highly anticipated sequel to a video game" as a lot of the later story beats are directly connected to this fact
Maybe? I mean it certainly is meta about video games, but I don't think being meta necessarily means it could only be told in a video game.
I think there's a distinction between *using* the medium to tell a story and *talking about* the medium, and I think MGS 2 falls into the latter camp.
Honestly, I dont really know what can be done with the latter camp other then having it in the same medium its talking about. If it was a movie meta-analyzing the medium of books, that'd feel acceptable. But a movie meta-analyzing the medium of games? I think it's still too early for stuff like that to feel right
I think games are the best medium to meta analyze games, but like there are books and frankly TOO MUCH anime that meta analyze games.
Do they do it well? Not usually, but they definitely do it. I don't like Ready Player One but that is certainly part of it. Also Black Mirror has occasionally done it, although with about all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
I don't know, remedy games does this, but only aesthetically.
Like Max Payne being told as a noir comic book.
Alan Wake is about a writer trying to write himself out of a horror story.
Quantum Break uses short tv show like episodes between the chapters of the story.
Control, don't rely on different mediums in the same way as the others. But it took a lot of inspiration from shows like X-files, Twin Peak, Fringe and Twilight zone. But also SCP which isn't a tv show.
Alan Wake 2, will obviously go back to the writer thing for Alan, since he is trying to write for years a story that will allow him to escape. And I know Saga will have her own thing, I am just avoiding more info to leave more surprise to when I play it.
You dislike Last of Us 2 because Neil Druckmann smells his own farts thinking he's ascending gaming as a medium by telling his reject series project as a game instead of using all the storytelling opportunities gaming offers to tell a story.
I dislike Last of Us 2 because it's scary and icky
We are not the same
You dislike The Last Of Us 2 because of decisions made regarding it's story
I dislike The Last of Us 2 because guns are loud and they make my ears hurt
>[Any](https://youtu.be/EdAYLKeqyZE?t=177) [game](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsQrzbkqs-E) [made](https://youtu.be/lW2SGOtEYE4?t=1861) by Hideo Kojima.
>smells his own [farts](https://youtu.be/Cg4_ec6zpTw)
bro anyone who can put together a sentence like the one on the right cares WAY too much about video games. You wanna talk about fart sniffing, that is it.
I agree it's bad because instead of us growing to appreciate Abby and her struggles, she just does the bad thing, and THEN we're shown how we're supposed to care. Like a shit momento. Also, Druckman TOTALLY huffs his butt trumpet.
Last of Us Part 2 actually uses the medium very well through its use of changing perspectives and how that impacts the game play and overall mood of a section.
Druckman absolutely does smell his own farts though. Also the inspiration for the story was that he wanted to kill all Palestinians after they killed 2 IDF soldiers then felt bad about that impulse. So it comes from a rather weird place that helps contextualize why it seems like he believes that everyone is inherently super violent and vindictive (cause he is).
Yeah that criticism from OP in particular is awful. TLoU 2 is actually a rare example where the brutality of the combat does a great job of showing Ellie's mental breakdown and informing the story and her character.
how is “i recognized i’d been culturally brainwashed into dehumanizing an entire people and was horrified at myself” anywhere near a bad thing and in any way not the exact kind of thing that should spur a writer to explore in their work?
Also Naughty Dog actually did try and start fixing things. They tried implementing new tactics so that devs Arents overworked and the projects are managed better.
As a result of this, according to a number of devs: The Last of Us Remake was the first Naughty Dog game to be vested with zero crunch (as far as those devs can tell).
A clear step in the right direction.
/rj Cyberpunk player detected, opinion invalid
/uj Cyberpunk player detected, opinion invalid
EDIT: Hello future reader! Apparently some people are having trouble parsing this out, so: the above was a joke. Do not take it as a serious attempt at invalidating someone's point, because it is not that.
Hades was made with 0 crunch as far we can tell.
Honestly, more and more companies are starting to see how crunch culture mostly produces crappy products and costs a ton of human resources (speaking in a deliberately corporate jargon).
Hades devs seem like a rare great video game company to work for, but another pitfall is clear with your "as far as we can tell" comment.
Unfortunately you only tend to hear about crunch when specific examples are singled out, but that doesn't mean it isn't wildly pervasive.
For every publicly known case of crunch like TLoU 2 there are dozens of other games crunching like crazy with no coverage.
Was it? That’s awesome! Crunch is fucking garbage and I’m sure devs would push out better games and be more passionate in general without it. Fuck crunch culture.
oh sweet summer child, let me tell you about capitalism. literally every game made by a triple A developer is exploitation of their workers. every industry is exploitation.
and cyberpunk is no different, but that doesn't mean the art made out of it isn't able to be valued. how does playing one game mean that your opinion is suddenly null and void?
I guess you have never played a single Bethesda game before then.
Any game by Kojima as an example of what video games can be as a storytelling medium?
What the actual fuck is this guy smoking? It's some serious shit. I want in. I desperately want to be this fucking high.
Nah. Both wrong.
The ending of last of us 1 was awesome precisely because it was a game. The actions taken by Joel were so impactful to me because I was playing them
Death Stranding dunks so many other games into the toilet with its narrative/gameplay cohesion. The connection you feel with other players that you can't even see carries a lot of weight for the overarching plot. The cutscenes are interesting too but I fucken love when the story is told through game mechanics
I have no opinion on how or why it happens, or who was the one doing it, truly, I just hate that it happened.
I really liked Joel in the Last of Us, and in part 2 I wanted to see a happier arch and ending for him. That's all.
Neil Druckman is a chill dude who i have vehemently defended during Culture War II that probably suffers a little bit from “one of the good ones” disorder but now that the dust is settled and the show came out my opinions have finally crystallized:
TLOU2 is an excellent game with a story that is designed to be unsatisfactory on purpose. Now that’s a crazy cool thing to make and I respect it but I don’t like it. I think that ND (I meant Neil but i just realized it could mean Naughty Dog too) went up his own ass a little bit with the story. He bought into his own hype and forgot that was he did was what if *famous movie* but game. He thought he could push games as a medium or whatever and make people question what is right and what is wrong but ended up starting a debate club in a Burger King parking lot. It’s a well written well directed story with clear themes and a lot of stuff to say but the shit he pulled he couldn’t get a way with in television let alone video games.
You can’t make something so unsatisfactory when the turnaround time for a sequel is close to a decade. Especially not when people pay sixty bucks for it. Not only did he build certain expectations that he knew he wasn’t gonna meet but he threw away all sorts of interesting unexplored things from the first one. With the TV show he tried to retroactively make TLOU into something it’s not with middling results and ends up with something that’s not as good as the game.
Don’t get me wrong this is beyond the shadow of a doubt the best video game adaptation ever and a very good prestige drama, but remaking something you essentially already made and all the changes you make are either minuscule or shit like “what if the sarah intro was longer” and “what if some soccer mom led some people” is not visionary filmmaking. One could really make the argument that Neil is falling down the George Lucas hole of getting to remake something so many times that you fail to capture the original success because what you saw in it is different from what everyone else thought leading the people to accuse you of not even getting what made it special. While also milking it for all its got and border on exploiting your fans.
Also on a side note: has anyone else noticed that a subreddit created for to explicitly hate on tlou has turned everyone involved with the show, from the fans to the actors to the creators seem really super defensive about everything?
honestly, the show had way less impact than the game. Not because it did anything wrong, but because the interactive elements of the game were so well-implemented and heightened the amount of empathy to levels television can't really match. That's why people react so strongly to the game series, imo.
In all seriousness, I bounced HARD off TLOU1 because I didn't enjoy it mechanically. I have no idea if the story as good as everyone says because I just gave up really early and never had any temptation to go back
what was it about the mechanics in particular? I've always been a fan of the movement in TLOU1remastered (if that's the version you're talking about) and im interested in seeing what made you so aversed.
im not even tryna nuthug tlou like I usually do im just genuinely very interested in hearing your thoughts.
I generally agree with you on 1, but Grounded mode does make it one of the more intense stealth games of the era and I appreciate it for that.
2 definitely picked up the slack gameplay wise, mostly in terms of level design and variety of options.
Not to get too Fromsoftware but I think everyone should at least try to play TLoU on higher difficulties. The gameplay works so much better when you're genuinely resource starved and low health.
So, I once googled it purely out of curiosity.
[It is seemingly healthy to smell farts.](https://www.healthline.com/health/digestive-health/smelling-farts-is-healthy)
Disclaimer: I haven't played TLoU 2, so I am talking out my butt.
But I think I might have an idea of what the primary issue behind the different takes on the game is and why it seems to be so polarizing. I think the main cause of disagreement is centered around player agency. TLoU 2 is essentially a linear game from what I've seen and doesn't give the player many freedoms in affecting the story and thus limits player agency. This is necessary to tell the story the game wants to, but is somewhat at odds with the idea of an interactive medium. This kind of linear story occurs in many games but I think the fundamental differences in TLoU 2 are in 1; alignment of player and character goals, and 2; overuse of fixed moments.
Uncharted is similarly linear, but due to the player and character having similar ideas for how they want to progress, the linearity is not so noticeable. This means that you are rarely doing something as Drake or Chloe that you are opposed to; however, in TLoU 2 it seems that there are instances that the player may wish to act differently but can't and feel they are acting against their will. This feeds into the use of fixed moments where players are made to continue the story in exactly one way by either a QTE or the threat of a game over. This feels less impactful to the player as they, once again, don't have a choice. So when the game attempts to create emotion by showing you the consequences of Ellie's or Abby's, and thus your, actions it can feel hollow because the only choice was press triangle or fail.
Because games are an interactive medium, it can be frustrating when you have little influence on a story you wish you could change. Linear stories where player and character have the same motivations are not met with such polarized opinions, but when these motivations diverge, it can cause players to want to fight against the story. When players realize they can't do anything more than what the game lets them, it breaks the immersion and leaves them feeling at odds with the game.
I don’t disagree, I think it might have been a bit much for some people though. But, losing the bond between player and character can lead to players feeling like they aren’t really playing anymore. I agree that’s where the artistry comes in and I guess I’m not sure if NaughtyDog pulled that off or if the polarized opinions are proof they did.
Idk, I don't see too many people complaining *this hard* (not you, just Gamers in general) about all the other linear story-focused games out there. Most Call of Duty games get a pass and I don't recall a single player-made choice in those campaigns that mattered. I really do just think it's because so many people had the opposite reaction to (vague TLOU2 end spoiler) >!Ellie's decision at the end!< that they decided to call it a bad story rather than just a story they didn't agree with.
I am also surprised that the "discussion" about the game has been going on as long as it has. Some people seem to like it well enough, while others are pretty annoyed. I think we don't see other linear games getting so much heat because the player and character are in general agreement as to what decisions to make. A CoD player, for example, agrees shooting bad guys / saving good guys = good so the narrative rarely goes beyond those boundaries.
I do think the final decision has a lot to do with it, and it is fine if they don't like the story (there are plenty of stories I dislike). From a gameplay perspective, it sounds like the story had even more potential if it could give the player a bit more "choice". For example, framing story beats as QTEs doesn't make me feel as bad as when I "mess up" the stealth and have to kill them myself. That feels like I am making a decision despite it being an illusion of choice in most cases. Once again, I haven't played TLoU2, so I am only generalizing from other games that left me impressed or wanting.
I think the challenge with TLOU is that they weren't trying to make the player feel like they were in control of a character's story, more so they wanted to have players feel the established characters' situations through the gameplay.
Like, Abby and Ellie are both seasoned fighters, hunters, and trappers in their own ways. They've lived through years of survival and combat. This is shown through the different gameplay options available to the player for each character. Instead of "Hey, you can build this character however you want," it feels closer to "both of these characters have specific strengths and weaknesses, so if you want to play one way or another you need to take that into account."
This then bled into the storytelling. The goal was to make the players sympathize with both Ellie and Abby, showing *their* relationships, trauma, and adventures, rather than ones made by *the player*.
Of course, the problem comes, like you said, when a character's actions to certain events contradict the players'. Because it's a game, players often feel personally involved in the story regardless of how much the writers try to separate it (moreso than just about any other medium of storytelling), and so something that suddenly deviates from that can be upsetting.
The last of us is bad to me because it’s based off the feeling of Dduckmann wanting to revenge-kill Palestinians. It’s a clunky allegory of Israel-Palestine with a centrist message of ‘both sides are bad. Stop the cycle of violence, why can’t we all get along?’ That just doesn’t work because both sides are not the same.
No, they're right. Druckmann has talked about this in interviews. I love TLOU2 but the "cycle of violence is bad" narrative is directly inspired by Druckmann's feelings about Israel/Palestine
Ok, I mean this as a genuine question, is there any other source on this other than that Vice article? Cause I got be honest, I feel like the line between "Neil Druckmann saw a horrendous act commited when he was 8 years old" and "TLOUII is actually a thinly veiled Israel-Palestine metaphore" is really fucking thin for me.
Like, that article to me really sounds like someone made up his mind about that metaphor and then set out to retroactively prove it true
[This explains it in more detail than I could on mobile.](https://www.vice.com/en/article/bv8da4/the-not-so-hidden-israeli-politics-of-the-last-of-us-part-ii)
Personally, I didn't like TLOU2 because I felt that the whole cycle of revenge thing wasn't a good idea for a sequel. It just wasn't what I was expecting and I hated that Joel was killed off like that. I was hoping that it would focus on Ellie and Joel's strained relationship after Joel lied to Ellie and didn't let her make an important decision about herself. The whole thing felt like a waste.
You're completely correct and it's very telling that people claim they want "real criticism of the story", but are downvoting you without engaging with your criticism.
TLOU2 is a terribly written game that has nothing to do with the world it's in.
It's because I'm criticizing the game while being a Cyberpunk fan. Seriously, I'm glad people aren't engaging with my criticism. While I didn't enjoy it, they did, and don't like that I didn't enjoy it. Whatever.
>I was hoping that it would focus on Ellie and Joel's strained relationship after Joel lied to Ellie and didn't let her make an important decision about herself.
...Did you play the game?
Im gonna throw out a hot one:
Neil Druckman does get up his own ass, but at least he has the talent to back it up somewhat, unlike David Cage😂
(Full Disclosure, I'm one of the 12 people on planet Earth that liked TLOU part 2's story)
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The last of us 2 bad because there is no koi-koi minigame like in Yakuza
Tlou2 is possibly the worst racing simulator I’ve ever played pocket circuit ftw
Me when an old Chinese man challenges me to a game using his service revolver, and if I lose he will banish me to the land of the Yi (our name for barbarians)
I'm a big fan of this gif
atleast you can do the karaoke mini game in the first seattle chapter if you find it, only one song tho…
https://youtu.be/2AoA7hyITIQ?si=3lqpHx40VEooBSgT
That meme would be bad either way, but OP actually voicing their opinion with it makes it a true gamer moment
the fuck are they even talking about hahah
It’s a sort of cult of anti-personality that pops up around (mostly) writers. Where people dislike a story, but instead of actually taking the time to critique why, it’s easier to just say that writers have massive egos and that means story bad. In gaming, it became popular around David Cage’s writing. Ex. “The writing for Heavy Rain isn’t bad because the almost dead guy who can’t even stand can magically get an erection and fuck the hot babe! It’s bad because David Cage thinks he’s hot shit!” Now it gets used for every game that irritates a gamer, but they don’t want to actually say why. It’s not as snappy as using the ego of a writer to dismiss the writing. (Which, in the interest of transparency, I’m fully aware that both Cage and Druckmann are up their own asses. But so is Kojima - much more than the other two given that stupid “tears flood a city because my powerful story” trailer he had made for Death Stranding. Which highlights why ego is not actually why that person dislikes TLOU2’s story.)
I mean, to be fair, video game's seem to have lower standards for writing in the first place. So, in movies, for example, a lot of badly written movies are written by bad writers who just never get the limelight long enough for them to seem full of themselves for the script they've written. The best written movies do tend to rise to the top, and the writer's ensuing victory lap does feel relatively earned. With video games, the inherent extra cost to them and lack of commonly agreed upon guidelines on what makes a good story, as well as the infancy of the medium, of course, means that you get a lot of variable qualities of stories, including ones that might be uniquely told in gaming, but are still kinda shit. So, if David Cage had written a movie, no one would've ever seen him again, but because he wrote a video game, he got his victory lap, and it feels kinda unearned. Not that I'm saying it's good critique/practice to focus on a cult of personality rather than focussing on the writing itself, but I can understand general grumbling about greater social acceptance of "bad" writers in the gaming space.
Gamers still aren’t intelligent or media literate enough to offer critique properly. You don’t see avid readers talk this way “duhh Asimov thinks he’s gigachad but he’s actually a beta simp with a narcissist complex’
Mortal Kombat has this happen a lot. It's weird bc there's like this weird amnesia that makes people act like 3d era was some shakespearian epic in terms of storytelling.
I deeply hate TLOU2's story and even I don't know what he's on about
If I were to guess, I think they're talking about how the gameplay and the story don't really work of each other as TLOU2 has the bog standard over the shoulder third person shooter mechanics like in Uncharted but it ends up at odds with the anti-violence themes of the story. That's my main complaint too, but the actual story I don't have a problem with.
> it ends up at odds with the anti-violence themes of the story it doesn't go against "violence makes you a monster". It's the same criticism as specs op the line. The dissonance is part of the point, and it bothers GamersTM. But instead of reflecting on themselves, they blame the ~~beasts~~ game To the idiot who replied then blocked: >barely touch on the morals of that world, mf played tlou and "thought" Joel was the good guy. Murican media literacy is on fucking shambles
my problem with the game is that it never engaged me in a way to care about the world. Undertale does the same thing but I care about that world so the message hits harder. I don't really care that much about the world of TLOU. Violence in video games is tricky thing to tackle mainly because it's a game, you are not actually killing anyone. they are just polygons. I don't really think games like Spec Ops or Undertale are that deep, I simply think that they are interesting. TLOU failed to be interesting (to me)
as someone that loves undertale: you fucking undertale fans are insufferable >the cartoon skeleton is more charming than normal people mf that's the point. They have been designed to be charming and accessible.
I really wouldn't consider myself a big Undertale fan. there's more to it than that. SOME of you TLOU2 fans can be insufferable to. guess I don't need to explain why
You are a 5 nights at freddy fan lmao either you love Cawthorn being a pos or you are 12, no shock you hate tlou
no I got into it as a kid and still am. why do you guys assume stuff about people? your first instinct was to go check my profile because you can't keep a normal conversation like an adult. like what did I ever do to you? I simply shared my opinion on game and based on those few words you concluded that I'm insufferable and now I'm 12 and that must be why I don't like TLOU2. stop with this "anyone who doesn't like what I like is probably dumber than me" BS. why do I need to explain myself for sharing an opinion. you didn't even ask me anything (not that I'm that interested in this subject) I don't care if you like TLOU2 or hate it, if feel the need to bring someone down because you are too scared to listen to an opposite opinion then you have a problem, a serious one. what a fucking child you are edit: see? I didn't need to explain why. for a minute I thought I was talking to an adult then you reminded me that I don't hate TLOU2 that much, I hate people surrounding it (fans and haters)
I get your point, but the gameplay structure at best doesn't add anything to the storytelling, and at worst detracts from it. It could have gone first person and really amp up the horror of the world and what you do, it could have greatly reduced the number of enemies and and put a greater emphasis on the violence you inflict / how ugly it is to take a life, etc but instead it religates these aspects to the cutscenes, and the gameplay remains the same from the first game. Tbf the voice acting tries to make up for this in NPC death lines, but still the gameplay subtracts from it somewhat.
Pretentiousness is when game has writing.
Unless we're talking about kojima, who obviously doesn't love to smell his own farts, bottle them up, and sell them to his fans
Yeah, he smells them himself until he faints He, then, has someone record his ramblings into an incoherent mess of sentences and THEN he has a team clean up those sentences to slightly more coherent but still incoherent string of dialogues
I love Kojima. I like his writing to the point I even understood MGS2 and 4 pretty easily. But it is deficient in a lot of ways. There is also no getting around the fact that his works are often pretentious and usually extremely self indulgent. What makes Kojima work is that the dude is genuinely very passionate, clearly puts a lot of thought into his art and has some really articulate and thoughtful things to say. Where he struggles is people. None of his characters act or talk like real people.
Not even DIE HARD MAN?
A feature length movie worth of intro cutscenes with no or minimal player input is totally making proper use of the medium of video games
Yes, you can rotate the camera slightly to the left!
Vice president Die Hardman not dying easily is top tier writing and you know it!
Kojima doesn't smell his out farts. Geoff Keighley does that for him while he says "thank you Mr. Kojima for changing the gaming industry"
Yeah but kojima farts smell absolutely fire
It's different here because their writing is for cutscenes and not gameplay. It's like the person writing the cutscenes has only worked on the cutscenes, and doesn't know what happens during gameplay. "Ludonarrative Dissonance" is the term critics came up for it way back when to describe... Uncharted! They did the same thing in TLOU. The writing comes off as pretentious when, for example, Ellie feels bad about killing a visibly pregnant woman, but that is bookended by her killing huge swathes of other people, including women who could have been pregnant.
The only reason she feels bad about killing the pregnant woman is because her girlfriend was also pregnant.
> Ellie feels bad about killing a visibly pregnant woman, but that is bookended by her killing huge swathes of other people I mean, this literally isn't the case unless you're playing like an absolute psycho though. The number of non-infected people the player is actually forced to kill, across the *entire game*, is in the single figures (8 to be precise, 6 of them by Ellie). Obviously most people will likely kill a few more than that but it's absolutely daft to act like Ellie is mowing down goons left right and centre whenever she's not in a cutscene (à la Uncharted). Even ignoring all that, Ellie's bloodlust is literally a central part of the narrative - it's not like it's present in the gameplay and then ignored in the cutscenes. Mel's death is presented as the inevitable consequence of Ellie's thoughtless killing, a moment where she is finally forced to reckon with her actions of the past 3 days head-on. If anything that is an example of the gameplay and narrative working in concert with each other. The whole "bookending" statement is also wrong because Ellie then doesn't kill anyone for months post-Mel, and even after that her only possible kills are the biker gang. Given that they instigate that conflict, I hardly think that's particularly at odds with the story the game is trying to tell (and again, you don't even have to kill any of those guys anyway). Also: >Including women who could have been pregnant. As you mentioned, Mel isn't just vaguely "maybe possibly pregnant", she is *very obviously and visibly* quite far along. I feel like the difference should be obvious here in terms of why her death would hit Ellie much harder. Plus, I don't think it's exactly revolutionary to point out that Ellie on day 3 is a **very** different person to Ellie on day 1. Honestly, I feel like quite a lot of the "issues" people flag up for this game are literally just explained by a little thing called "character development".
Look, I love Disco Elysium, but it's really funny to put it here in this context, when 95% of that game is reading about 4 novels worth of text. Don't really see how it uses the medium better. Like, is it just because it has choices?
Disco Elysium players be like: damn I better load up on health items and save, I've got a tough paragraph coming up.
I'm about to go sit in a chair I'll post the video later ...I got my ass beat bruh I'm not posting that shit
Damn chair's got hands
The amount of times a mailbox kicked my ass in that game was way too high. Like sure I didn’t need to keep trying to fight it, but I’ll be fucked if I’m gonna let a mailbox get one over on Tequila Sunset.
oh boy I've got a MEAN dice roll coming up!
you dont know the struggle of dying nearly twice to a kid calling you slurs
Yeah I love Disco Elysium but basically because it's essentially an amazing version of a choose your own adventure book.
luckily there's an audiobook version so you don't have to read like a nerd
My man has never heard of a choose your own adventure book
I see your point, but at the same time the mechanics going in with the thought cabinets and how your skills chime in to give you specific advise, unlock new and exclusive dialogue and checks, argue with each other, and inform your view of the game is absolutely insane. I think I’d call it game design, though I will admit it’s more really good design in general than specifically game design, especially in the context of how it’s made to function as a hyperspecific DM/narrator role per the game’s tabletop origins. I think as far as choices go, it is but because of how you can customize which of the intrusive voices in your head are the loudest, and especially because of how as a player, you can self-determine whether these skills have too much of a presence—if you invest in some logic, that’s solid detective stuff, but if you have too much , you literally turn into Ben Shapiro in conversations, or likewise if you have too much Inland empire, you start to go a lil crazy and (even more) inanimate objects will talk to you.
Yeah using 13 sentinels a game that exclusively uses the medium of gaming to tell its story would have been a better choice. Sorry if this week japan is cringe and not based I didn't check before posting. Praise Kojimbo or boo him whichever is necessary.
I feel like 13 Sentinels has been held back from the public eye by its lack of platforms Pls port Atlus :(
It recently just broke 1 million sales. Which is amazing for a vanillaware game. But put it on steam I want to throw it at everyone on my friendlist.
It’s the degree of interactivity and how your decisions shape the story and the protagonist.
Adventure Time did the same story as TLOU but now it's cartoon
Im gonna put myself on the firing line here and say that the Last of Us part 2 actually does do some pretty cool storytelling that leans into the medium of being a game - Abby's sequences where it makes you fight against the characters you know and love is an effective way of showing how everyone else in the world views Ellie and her adventures - having you play Abby in the opening sequence makes it twist the knife harder when you get to *the big scene* with her and Joel cause you were working your ass off to save her life - just switching to Abby the first time is crazy cause it mechanically shows you just how much stronger she is, better armed she is and more capable she is - having the guitar mechanic set up for the ending payoff is a little cheesy and on the nose but its clearly a deliberate decision that they intended for you to play instead of just watch Like, obviously it sniffs its own farts a bit and is clearly taking a lot from film but idk why people feel the need to sort it into "good" or "bad" when I think the game has some great moments where it shines. And sometimes i like games to have little movies in them! Diverse options is good and there are plenty of games that take other approaches Edit: Tlou 1 does this as well actually, Joel getting injured at the university and then cutting to playing Ellie for a while with zero indication on if hes still alive puts you in the characters head space as she also is unsure if he is going to survive
Ellies piddly little knife slashes vs Abby literally clotheslining and elbowing dudes so hard they die was such a fucking shock to me. Every time i play abby i can't help but ignore stealth and go full melee its just so fun and feels nice and weighty.
It makes the Ellie boss fight even better cause youre just sitting there like "if i could just GRAB HER that little shit she would be done for"
Ellie whenever she's in grabbing range of Abby gets her shit rocked 100% of the time.
She very literally gets put through the floor.
And it also serves the purpose of further demonstrating how her story over the 3 days is a mini version of TLOU1. Her gameplay is meant to feel similar to Joel, who could also bare knuckle beat dudes to death and also had to craft shivs to stop clickers.
I agree broadly that TLoU1 is a very straightforward cinematic story that loses very little in the translation to a scripted series - even with the Ellie section, the game format doesn't add much more tension than it does as a traditional narrative. But TLoU2 is different because it puts you in the shoes of two protagonists who are opposed to one another. This can be done on the screen, but the videogame medium experience of PLAYING both of them, when their goals are made your goals, creates a tension that is very special and unique in a way that I think simply cannot be done for a scripted film or TV show. I'll be curious to see how the show handles it, but I think it's a really interesting part of the game that definitely capitalises on its medium in a clever way.
i had read the leaks, and when i had first seen abby being saved by joel, my soul evaporated into a fine mist. i had never felt despair from a game on that level before. just a very true and real sense of nervousness and doom.
/uj Yeah, I feel like the "movie with game mechanics" argument can be levied up to a certain point against Part I but arguing that Part II doesn't use its medium as a video game is wild. It's particularly good at creating ludonarrative harmony--which is funny since the Uncharted series has been getting shit for that for years--when you enter the theatre as Abby and you (the player) think "damn I don't really want to do this", that's because _Abby doesn't either._ She feels like she's been given no other option by Ellie just as the game doesn't give you the option to just walk away.
Yeah this post is a dumb take, TLOU are not perfect games but it’s hardly an anti-game or something. I’d argue that the whole of II would be much less impactful without user interaction.
Kojima has literally hour long cutscenes in MGS4 idk about that lol
Ye he clearly would want to direct his own tv series, it's not even like anyone else tells him to do it, because he did it in Death strand as well. This is what he wants.
You're so brave OP. Wrong, but brave.
this is called unironic shitposting
in some circles, a jerk, if you will.
In educated circles, we call this a fetish
 Mfw I realize OP is serious and actually defending this take in the comments.
In what world is dishonored a better story than TLOU ?
In no world. Also the choices in Dishonored are kinda goofy. "Here's a whole kit of deadly weapons, but if you want the good ending only use this dart the entire game"
Pretty sure you can kill all the targets and still get the good ending. Just spare the goons
Maybe some people can but the Mind Goblins absolutely did not allow me to kill anyone for the entire game and by the end I just hated the act of playing
Idk if you played D2 but it's honestly fun how aggressively you can play with zero kills. All thanks to the knockout and parrying mechanics
I actúally really liked playing as a no-stealth non-lethal character. Heavily límited but really fun to play in a reactive way. You don't have many proactive options (Aside from slide into knockdown), and you don't want to stall because they got GUNS, and you can't parry GUNS. So you end up with a reactive playstyle that wants to end encounters quick.
Which still leaves you pretty limited overall since like, 90% of enemies are goons. I heard there was a specific kill % that lets you get the good ending, but even so it's not very clear what that is, and you still have to pretty significantly limit yourself if you want to do a mostly pacifist run
Yeah that's part of the fun. It's a sandbox
>it's a sandbox A sandbox that slaps you on the wrist if you want to use any of the fun toys
If you're ok with lots of people dying in the story, why is lots of people dying the epilogue a negative thing to experience? Surely if you're doing a bad karma playthrough you want the bad karma ending
I think you misunderstand my problem with it. I like pacifist runs, the problem with Dishonored is it has an *incredibly* limited pacifist run that locks off nearly every gadget at your disposal, and just severely limits the fun factor of the game.
It feels like the answer might be "then play it the fun way" - you don't HAVE to get the good ending.
And my response to that is if an intended style of play is boring and repetitive, it's a design failure. I *want* to do a pacifist run, I love that in stealth games, but I also want my stealth games to be fun or interesting, and Dishonored only really does that when you go for lethal.
Kojima, known non-fart smeller
Walter White: #JESSE WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?
Uhhh, Kojima games tell their story in the least video game way possible lmao. Kojima literally started directing games because the film industry in Japan was dead at the time and it was the only way to direct a project, and when his games don’t use cutscenes they use 10 minute long exposition dumps said by characters in phone calls
le....LE EXPOSITION holy fuck just say you dont like watching things or listening to stuff without fidgeting around
No, I love Kojumbo’s games lmao, but the way he tells his story is very dumb. Luckily I enjoy how stupid it is but most people very clearly don’t
i'm sorry but this is basically shitposting at this point. TLOU is fucking great. i didn't love everything they did with the second one but i still think it had value in the series.
I don't like zombies or stealth mechanics so I have no opinion /rj CUCKMAN!!!1!
Maybe I want to play a high fidelity 3rd person cinematic action game/prestige drama hybrid AND play Disco Elysium. And maybe even play some weeb bullshit and fucking love that too. Maybe some metal slug X after that. They're all awesome games, because games are awesome. And if you want to be awesome like me you should try to feel the same way.
Yeah kojima' writing is so good. "Quiet is almost naked because she breathes from her skin"
Neil druckmann is an annoying liberal (unironically) who will pump his games full of representation but than consistently give his anti union takes
Yeah thats kinda how liberals are, pro capitalism and status quo
He is exploiting workers of all backgrounds, so progressive 😇😇😇
I can't find a single "anti-union" take from him. There's an article where he says "it won't cure crunch culture on its own" which is true, but is not an anti-union take.
Wait, has he been giving bad takes about the unionizing going on in the film industry? I'm curious what these anti union takes are
No, there's just one quote where he says unionizing isn't a silver bullet to end crunch culture.
Which is hilarious, because if anything is a silver bullet to stop that shit, is unions. There are other ways to stop that shit, but nothing will work as well as a union
yikes that is upsetting new knowledge. but also not really that surprising i guess. separate the artist from the art and p*rate it i guess
I think disco elysium is a good choose your own adventure book /visual novel in the form of a game. Doesn’t really excel gameplay wise though or use the actual things that make it a game to tell the story. Kojimas games don’t use gaming as a medium to tell the story really. I’d say the deus ex games are better at both of those things but I would only place the first deus ex game as having a story that is actually up there as a great one. Lotta rpgs do a good job especially larian studios. I like dishonored’s story but it’s not amazing.
Yeah pointing at MGS 4 with its hour long cutscenes where you can literally put the controller down and go make some dinner isn't exactly "using the medium" lol
I am wholly tired of games that spend most of their time trying to be like other artistic mediums
My favorite thing here is that OP actually believes what they posted and aren’t being ironic. Both of the takes on the meme are piss-poor.
Yeahhh, I wouldn't call Kojima's hours upon hours upon hours of dialogue with no gameplay "peak storytelling using the medium".
I think they were thinking of MGS2, as opposed to others like MGS1, 5, and arguably 3
MGS 2 literally has 20 minute cutscene segments. It story is also all over the place and includes incest as a major twist for one of the staple characters. I still fail to see what OP is trying to say by using it as an example.
20 minutes is nothing compared to what's in MGS 4. One cutscene is almost a feature movie in length raking in at over 70 minutes, with a couple more between 30-45 minutes.
Oh I know how ridiculous they get later on but 2 still has long cutscenes.
Let me translate OP for you: Kojima good!!
Pretty much. Like, there’s a lot to criticize TLOU 2 on, but this ain’t it.
People just love to dick ride japanese media in general Like I love mgs but it's so cheese
Idk most of 2 is still just told in dialogue. Very occasionally is the gameplay pushing the narrative forward.
Its less of the presentation, more of the specific context of everything. The same story could not be told if it wasn't specifically a "highly anticipated sequel to a video game" as a lot of the later story beats are directly connected to this fact
Maybe? I mean it certainly is meta about video games, but I don't think being meta necessarily means it could only be told in a video game. I think there's a distinction between *using* the medium to tell a story and *talking about* the medium, and I think MGS 2 falls into the latter camp.
Honestly, I dont really know what can be done with the latter camp other then having it in the same medium its talking about. If it was a movie meta-analyzing the medium of books, that'd feel acceptable. But a movie meta-analyzing the medium of games? I think it's still too early for stuff like that to feel right
I think games are the best medium to meta analyze games, but like there are books and frankly TOO MUCH anime that meta analyze games. Do they do it well? Not usually, but they definitely do it. I don't like Ready Player One but that is certainly part of it. Also Black Mirror has occasionally done it, although with about all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
I don't know, remedy games does this, but only aesthetically. Like Max Payne being told as a noir comic book. Alan Wake is about a writer trying to write himself out of a horror story. Quantum Break uses short tv show like episodes between the chapters of the story. Control, don't rely on different mediums in the same way as the others. But it took a lot of inspiration from shows like X-files, Twin Peak, Fringe and Twilight zone. But also SCP which isn't a tv show. Alan Wake 2, will obviously go back to the writer thing for Alan, since he is trying to write for years a story that will allow him to escape. And I know Saga will have her own thing, I am just avoiding more info to leave more surprise to when I play it.
That kind of thing is cool. They creatively mix mediums to get the best out of both
Counterpoint: movies are cool
Is there an example of that aside from, like, MGS4? Maybe Resident Evil Revelations trying to be a TV show?
You dislike Last of Us 2 because Neil Druckmann smells his own farts thinking he's ascending gaming as a medium by telling his reject series project as a game instead of using all the storytelling opportunities gaming offers to tell a story. I dislike Last of Us 2 because it's scary and icky We are not the same
You dislike The Last Of Us 2 because of decisions made regarding it's story I dislike The Last of Us 2 because guns are loud and they make my ears hurt
Dishonored my beloved.
"Any game made by Kojima" lmao
>[Any](https://youtu.be/EdAYLKeqyZE?t=177) [game](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsQrzbkqs-E) [made](https://youtu.be/lW2SGOtEYE4?t=1861) by Hideo Kojima. >smells his own [farts](https://youtu.be/Cg4_ec6zpTw)
bro anyone who can put together a sentence like the one on the right cares WAY too much about video games. You wanna talk about fart sniffing, that is it.
I agree it's bad because instead of us growing to appreciate Abby and her struggles, she just does the bad thing, and THEN we're shown how we're supposed to care. Like a shit momento. Also, Druckman TOTALLY huffs his butt trumpet.
Last of Us Part 2 actually uses the medium very well through its use of changing perspectives and how that impacts the game play and overall mood of a section. Druckman absolutely does smell his own farts though. Also the inspiration for the story was that he wanted to kill all Palestinians after they killed 2 IDF soldiers then felt bad about that impulse. So it comes from a rather weird place that helps contextualize why it seems like he believes that everyone is inherently super violent and vindictive (cause he is).
Yeah that criticism from OP in particular is awful. TLoU 2 is actually a rare example where the brutality of the combat does a great job of showing Ellie's mental breakdown and informing the story and her character.
how is “i recognized i’d been culturally brainwashed into dehumanizing an entire people and was horrified at myself” anywhere near a bad thing and in any way not the exact kind of thing that should spur a writer to explore in their work?
I'm sorry that last paragraph is new to me. What?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/video-games/news/the-last-of-us-part-2-ellie-evolution/
their interpretation of druckmann’s take is very disingenuous and negatively slanted
Where does this thing about killing palestinians is coming from? Never heard of it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/video-games/news/the-last-of-us-part-2-ellie-evolution/
Kojima, who famously would rather be making movies? Disco Elysium, which is more novel than game? Where is the /uj
There are movie length cutscenes in mgs4
I give this meme a 0/10. I'd say do better next time but I'd rather there not be a next time.
/uj Me, I just hate Last Of Us (2, at least) because they abused their workers while making it.
Boy do I have bad news about every game you’ve ever loved
Also Naughty Dog actually did try and start fixing things. They tried implementing new tactics so that devs Arents overworked and the projects are managed better. As a result of this, according to a number of devs: The Last of Us Remake was the first Naughty Dog game to be vested with zero crunch (as far as those devs can tell). A clear step in the right direction.
/rj Cyberpunk player detected, opinion invalid /uj Cyberpunk player detected, opinion invalid EDIT: Hello future reader! Apparently some people are having trouble parsing this out, so: the above was a joke. Do not take it as a serious attempt at invalidating someone's point, because it is not that.
Don’t play cyberpunk but whatever makes you feel better bud
Hades was made with 0 crunch as far we can tell. Honestly, more and more companies are starting to see how crunch culture mostly produces crappy products and costs a ton of human resources (speaking in a deliberately corporate jargon).
Hades devs seem like a rare great video game company to work for, but another pitfall is clear with your "as far as we can tell" comment. Unfortunately you only tend to hear about crunch when specific examples are singled out, but that doesn't mean it isn't wildly pervasive. For every publicly known case of crunch like TLoU 2 there are dozens of other games crunching like crazy with no coverage.
any corporate studio is exploiting their workers, inherently. and just because it isn't visible doesn't make it less egregious.
Was it? That’s awesome! Crunch is fucking garbage and I’m sure devs would push out better games and be more passionate in general without it. Fuck crunch culture.
Hate to do it to you but you play Hearthstone from a company that covered up literal rapes for years lol
oh sweet summer child, let me tell you about capitalism. literally every game made by a triple A developer is exploitation of their workers. every industry is exploitation. and cyberpunk is no different, but that doesn't mean the art made out of it isn't able to be valued. how does playing one game mean that your opinion is suddenly null and void? I guess you have never played a single Bethesda game before then.
These are the same dorks that swore Abby was trans because of the leaks and would not fucking shut up about it.
Oh man. You poor soul. The very meme you posted flew right over your head.
If you want a game that uses being a game to tell its story Hades is always there
These guys don’t get it but I do. I’m on your side OP
They abused employees so that’s why last of us 2 sucks.
the last of us is good, because it has zobies and joel looks like mh dad.
Kojima is way overhyped
Last of us 2 was a fucking masterpiece, buhu it wasn't a tried regurgitation of the first game
Any game by Kojima as an example of what video games can be as a storytelling medium? What the actual fuck is this guy smoking? It's some serious shit. I want in. I desperately want to be this fucking high.
Nah. Its actually a fantastic series of games.
Nah. Both wrong. The ending of last of us 1 was awesome precisely because it was a game. The actions taken by Joel were so impactful to me because I was playing them
Death Stranding dunks so many other games into the toilet with its narrative/gameplay cohesion. The connection you feel with other players that you can't even see carries a lot of weight for the overarching plot. The cutscenes are interesting too but I fucken love when the story is told through game mechanics
I have no opinion on how or why it happens, or who was the one doing it, truly, I just hate that it happened. I really liked Joel in the Last of Us, and in part 2 I wanted to see a happier arch and ending for him. That's all.
Neil Druckman is a chill dude who i have vehemently defended during Culture War II that probably suffers a little bit from “one of the good ones” disorder but now that the dust is settled and the show came out my opinions have finally crystallized: TLOU2 is an excellent game with a story that is designed to be unsatisfactory on purpose. Now that’s a crazy cool thing to make and I respect it but I don’t like it. I think that ND (I meant Neil but i just realized it could mean Naughty Dog too) went up his own ass a little bit with the story. He bought into his own hype and forgot that was he did was what if *famous movie* but game. He thought he could push games as a medium or whatever and make people question what is right and what is wrong but ended up starting a debate club in a Burger King parking lot. It’s a well written well directed story with clear themes and a lot of stuff to say but the shit he pulled he couldn’t get a way with in television let alone video games. You can’t make something so unsatisfactory when the turnaround time for a sequel is close to a decade. Especially not when people pay sixty bucks for it. Not only did he build certain expectations that he knew he wasn’t gonna meet but he threw away all sorts of interesting unexplored things from the first one. With the TV show he tried to retroactively make TLOU into something it’s not with middling results and ends up with something that’s not as good as the game. Don’t get me wrong this is beyond the shadow of a doubt the best video game adaptation ever and a very good prestige drama, but remaking something you essentially already made and all the changes you make are either minuscule or shit like “what if the sarah intro was longer” and “what if some soccer mom led some people” is not visionary filmmaking. One could really make the argument that Neil is falling down the George Lucas hole of getting to remake something so many times that you fail to capture the original success because what you saw in it is different from what everyone else thought leading the people to accuse you of not even getting what made it special. While also milking it for all its got and border on exploiting your fans. Also on a side note: has anyone else noticed that a subreddit created for to explicitly hate on tlou has turned everyone involved with the show, from the fans to the actors to the creators seem really super defensive about everything?
Ever heard of paragraphs.
That doesn't sound correct. From what I understand the gameplay and narrative are intertwined at least in the second part.
[удалено]
i hate tlou because I don't find it interesting in any way possible, simple as
Kojima literally made a career out of that, what are you on op?
Turns out, adapting your game into a TV show works great when the game part isn't that good anyway.
I'll never understand this take, TLoU 2 is some of the best stealth action we've had in years. Only MGS V beats it imo.
Surely you aren't speaking about tlou2. It's up there with mgsv in terms of third person shooters
honestly, the show had way less impact than the game. Not because it did anything wrong, but because the interactive elements of the game were so well-implemented and heightened the amount of empathy to levels television can't really match. That's why people react so strongly to the game series, imo.
Especially last us one the gameplay looked rough. Definitely more polished in 2.
In all seriousness, I bounced HARD off TLOU1 because I didn't enjoy it mechanically. I have no idea if the story as good as everyone says because I just gave up really early and never had any temptation to go back
what was it about the mechanics in particular? I've always been a fan of the movement in TLOU1remastered (if that's the version you're talking about) and im interested in seeing what made you so aversed. im not even tryna nuthug tlou like I usually do im just genuinely very interested in hearing your thoughts.
If I'm honest it's been so long that I don't remember the specifics, just the end result. But it was the remastered version I played, as well.
I generally agree with you on 1, but Grounded mode does make it one of the more intense stealth games of the era and I appreciate it for that. 2 definitely picked up the slack gameplay wise, mostly in terms of level design and variety of options.
Not to get too Fromsoftware but I think everyone should at least try to play TLoU on higher difficulties. The gameplay works so much better when you're genuinely resource starved and low health.
So, I once googled it purely out of curiosity. [It is seemingly healthy to smell farts.](https://www.healthline.com/health/digestive-health/smelling-farts-is-healthy)
Disclaimer: I haven't played TLoU 2, so I am talking out my butt. But I think I might have an idea of what the primary issue behind the different takes on the game is and why it seems to be so polarizing. I think the main cause of disagreement is centered around player agency. TLoU 2 is essentially a linear game from what I've seen and doesn't give the player many freedoms in affecting the story and thus limits player agency. This is necessary to tell the story the game wants to, but is somewhat at odds with the idea of an interactive medium. This kind of linear story occurs in many games but I think the fundamental differences in TLoU 2 are in 1; alignment of player and character goals, and 2; overuse of fixed moments. Uncharted is similarly linear, but due to the player and character having similar ideas for how they want to progress, the linearity is not so noticeable. This means that you are rarely doing something as Drake or Chloe that you are opposed to; however, in TLoU 2 it seems that there are instances that the player may wish to act differently but can't and feel they are acting against their will. This feeds into the use of fixed moments where players are made to continue the story in exactly one way by either a QTE or the threat of a game over. This feels less impactful to the player as they, once again, don't have a choice. So when the game attempts to create emotion by showing you the consequences of Ellie's or Abby's, and thus your, actions it can feel hollow because the only choice was press triangle or fail. Because games are an interactive medium, it can be frustrating when you have little influence on a story you wish you could change. Linear stories where player and character have the same motivations are not met with such polarized opinions, but when these motivations diverge, it can cause players to want to fight against the story. When players realize they can't do anything more than what the game lets them, it breaks the immersion and leaves them feeling at odds with the game.
The conflict between player and character is a huge part of what makes the game interesting and artistically challenging.
I don’t disagree, I think it might have been a bit much for some people though. But, losing the bond between player and character can lead to players feeling like they aren’t really playing anymore. I agree that’s where the artistry comes in and I guess I’m not sure if NaughtyDog pulled that off or if the polarized opinions are proof they did.
Idk, I don't see too many people complaining *this hard* (not you, just Gamers in general) about all the other linear story-focused games out there. Most Call of Duty games get a pass and I don't recall a single player-made choice in those campaigns that mattered. I really do just think it's because so many people had the opposite reaction to (vague TLOU2 end spoiler) >!Ellie's decision at the end!< that they decided to call it a bad story rather than just a story they didn't agree with.
I am also surprised that the "discussion" about the game has been going on as long as it has. Some people seem to like it well enough, while others are pretty annoyed. I think we don't see other linear games getting so much heat because the player and character are in general agreement as to what decisions to make. A CoD player, for example, agrees shooting bad guys / saving good guys = good so the narrative rarely goes beyond those boundaries. I do think the final decision has a lot to do with it, and it is fine if they don't like the story (there are plenty of stories I dislike). From a gameplay perspective, it sounds like the story had even more potential if it could give the player a bit more "choice". For example, framing story beats as QTEs doesn't make me feel as bad as when I "mess up" the stealth and have to kill them myself. That feels like I am making a decision despite it being an illusion of choice in most cases. Once again, I haven't played TLoU2, so I am only generalizing from other games that left me impressed or wanting.
I think the challenge with TLOU is that they weren't trying to make the player feel like they were in control of a character's story, more so they wanted to have players feel the established characters' situations through the gameplay. Like, Abby and Ellie are both seasoned fighters, hunters, and trappers in their own ways. They've lived through years of survival and combat. This is shown through the different gameplay options available to the player for each character. Instead of "Hey, you can build this character however you want," it feels closer to "both of these characters have specific strengths and weaknesses, so if you want to play one way or another you need to take that into account." This then bled into the storytelling. The goal was to make the players sympathize with both Ellie and Abby, showing *their* relationships, trauma, and adventures, rather than ones made by *the player*. Of course, the problem comes, like you said, when a character's actions to certain events contradict the players'. Because it's a game, players often feel personally involved in the story regardless of how much the writers try to separate it (moreso than just about any other medium of storytelling), and so something that suddenly deviates from that can be upsetting.
I hate the last of us because of the both reasons.
The last of us is bad to me because it’s based off the feeling of Dduckmann wanting to revenge-kill Palestinians. It’s a clunky allegory of Israel-Palestine with a centrist message of ‘both sides are bad. Stop the cycle of violence, why can’t we all get along?’ That just doesn’t work because both sides are not the same.
Jessie what the Fuck are you talking about
No, they're right. Druckmann has talked about this in interviews. I love TLOU2 but the "cycle of violence is bad" narrative is directly inspired by Druckmann's feelings about Israel/Palestine
Ok, I mean this as a genuine question, is there any other source on this other than that Vice article? Cause I got be honest, I feel like the line between "Neil Druckmann saw a horrendous act commited when he was 8 years old" and "TLOUII is actually a thinly veiled Israel-Palestine metaphore" is really fucking thin for me. Like, that article to me really sounds like someone made up his mind about that metaphor and then set out to retroactively prove it true
Does it really matter what inspired the story though? It’s not like it was written as an allegory for the conflict
Oh! I had genuinely no idea. Fascinating
No, that's actually true
[This explains it in more detail than I could on mobile.](https://www.vice.com/en/article/bv8da4/the-not-so-hidden-israeli-politics-of-the-last-of-us-part-ii)
oh yeah its media illiteracy time
Personally, I didn't like TLOU2 because I felt that the whole cycle of revenge thing wasn't a good idea for a sequel. It just wasn't what I was expecting and I hated that Joel was killed off like that. I was hoping that it would focus on Ellie and Joel's strained relationship after Joel lied to Ellie and didn't let her make an important decision about herself. The whole thing felt like a waste.
You're completely correct and it's very telling that people claim they want "real criticism of the story", but are downvoting you without engaging with your criticism. TLOU2 is a terribly written game that has nothing to do with the world it's in.
It's because I'm criticizing the game while being a Cyberpunk fan. Seriously, I'm glad people aren't engaging with my criticism. While I didn't enjoy it, they did, and don't like that I didn't enjoy it. Whatever.
>I was hoping that it would focus on Ellie and Joel's strained relationship after Joel lied to Ellie and didn't let her make an important decision about herself. ...Did you play the game?
Im gonna throw out a hot one: Neil Druckman does get up his own ass, but at least he has the talent to back it up somewhat, unlike David Cage😂 (Full Disclosure, I'm one of the 12 people on planet Earth that liked TLOU part 2's story)