-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
- Status
Similar except I attacked from the front, running at the Scar shooting at me
Abby lost all her friends and the guy she loved at Ellie's hands. How can you even finish the game thinking this?
Her hand to hand combat really stood out for me in the second fight with Ellie, in terms of how much of different league she is in compared to Ellie. Abby was physically weak, emotionally drained and malnourished and held her own against Ellie for a good while.
I guess at that point it comes down to who do you care about? Joel is gone while Ellie is still alive, how is it good for her to take Abby's life outside of "You killed Joel, so no you have to die?". Ellie in a sense is Joel's legacy, so do you want her to completely fuck herself up just to get back at Abby for what she did to Joel?
And while Ellie didn't know at the time, she did take Owen from Abby. Outside of her own dad that was obviously the next person that she cared the most about, even though their relationship was in a weird place.
The sniper set-piece was the most horrifying thing I've played this generation.
Well maybe not as scary as PT but it was definitely the most tense. The way Manny going out like nothing was bonkers.
Well maybe not as scary as PT but it was definitely the most tense. The way Manny going out like nothing was bonkers.
I found it a lot more annoying than the one in the first game. Tommy did so much damage and it was hard to avoid while fighting the infected he would kick up.
Some don't like the slower character building moments. But these games have never been all action. Cutscene. action. Cutscene.
Oh, you're totally right. I hadn't realized that the Joel shot was just zoomed in.
This whole discussion nearly makes me want to restart the game tonight. I'm not sure I could handle that much grief so soon though...
You first fight stalkers when
The parallels of Ellie's "boss fight" being stealth and her using all of her weapons, and then Abby's being a fist fight was perfect.
I thought Ellie was completely justified in almost everything she did, the one time I thought she crossed the line was with Nora cause at that point Dina was already monitoring their communications and would have found Abby eventually. The next day Tommy finds her at the marina anyway so if she had just gone with Jessie like she should have she could have skipped that step.
"Lone male trespasser who is a sniper, who could that be?"
Ellie: "Idk could be anyone tbh"
Owen, Mel and everyone else tried to kill her so too bad for them they were asking for it. She might have killed them anyway but we'll never know cause she never got the option of sparing them or not. Even Alice the dog tries to maul her what else is she supposed to do just drop dead cause doggo is cute?
"Lone male trespasser who is a sniper, who could that be?"
Ellie: "Idk could be anyone tbh"
Owen, Mel and everyone else tried to kill her so too bad for them they were asking for it. She might have killed them anyway but we'll never know cause she never got the option of sparing them or not. Even Alice the dog tries to maul her what else is she supposed to do just drop dead cause doggo is cute?
It's weird - even though I utterly failed to realize it was Tommy - the instant they stopped pushing the door I felt Manny was going to die, and then BANG.
You copying my post? You're basically saying everything I said.
No.
If the medium is to ever grow you cannot dumb down your story for idiot dude-bros. That should never come into consideration. I stated in my original post that part of the reason I enjoyed TLOU1 so much is because it displayed many area of subtly which the vast majority of video game storytelling lacks. I've said it repeatedly, but TLOU2 is as subtle as a brick to your face. Why be so overt when you're trying to buttress yourself up as the premiere storytellers in gaming?
Don't spoon-feed the player, let them think for themselves. Honestly, I haven't watched the Spoilercast because I heard Neil was explaining that last shot of Ellie in the water. Does that really need explaining? Just let the players ingest the media and ponder on it themselves, don't feed them answers.
Btw, I agree with everything in your post, but these these two excerpts are completely true. I don't think it's condescending really. I mean look at some posts on Era, or that one horrible response to Druckman with that vile/sadistic ending a few pages back. Empathy for a lot of people is so damn difficult. When Abby's section began, I instantly thought "people are going to bitch about this". But hey, it's their loss.
Although, I think a lot of people are being obtuse just for the sake of it. Trying to rile people up for the lulz.
FWIW, and I might be misremembering, but Neil considers players wanting to kill Abby at the end a valid viewpoint to have (unlike the "Joel and Tommy should've given fake names" argument, which he completely shut down). He mentioned this during the KF Spoilercast.
I love the ending we got and disagree with the people who wanted to kill her at the end, but I do think it's a bit unfair to call people who wanted to do that psychopaths that are incapable of empathy and sympathy.
I love the ending we got and disagree with the people who wanted to kill her at the end, but I do think it's a bit unfair to call people who wanted to do that psychopaths that are incapable of empathy and sympathy.
I'm guessing she probably planned on killing Owen and Mel since it was that same exact torture method that always ends the same way, and didn't want to leave those loose ends.
Surprisingly watch mojo top 10 tlou2 moments has described the ending in the best possible way
And the video shows the amount of great moment the game has
And the video shows the amount of great moment the game has
The structure in which they were done is the only reason why the ending works as well as it does. It definitely makes replayability a slog but going through it a first time? phew. I also like the flashbacks happened only when the characters went to sleep which again makes the final flashback impactful because it is the only one in the game that happens mid-playthrough (the quick cut to it). Very well done(Ellie only sees Joel's bloody face when she is awake except for that one instance).
I've been trying to understand how people can misread a work so drastically far longer than LoU2 has been out. I don't have any solid answers, but I think I can safely say that this isn't the actual problem. Or, it's not the reason that people don't 'get' the themes.
It's less that they don't get it and more that they don't want it. Like, if a player picks up Last of Us 2 for some Joel action or failing that just hanging out with Joel for a big part of the game, seeing Joel and Ellie ride out together for their revenge like post-apocalyptic cowboys, they aren't going to give a fuck whatever other themes or stories are at play here.
Now, whether they don't seek these things out by choice (usually as a backlash against what they percieve as condescension by people telling them 'they need to look deeper, they can't just care about power fantasies') or whether they legitimately can't see the value in the more nuanced way of storytelling that LoU2 offers. I don't know how one would determine that, because in either case they wouldn't even try because telling them to look for these things is futile since they are fundamentally uninterested in these things.
But they are stuck at an impasse because saying you just want Joel to be your apocalpytic cowboy isn't something critics are really supposed to do. It feels like your admitting you're not a deep critic if you don't like the challenging narrative over the easy wish fulfillment.
So when asked, they tend to explain it in terms of what they wanted and how the game didn't give it to them. Most obviously this is with Abby. I've watched entire streams of people asking "why are you making me play as her? She's the villain, she's psycho" even as Abby was doing nice things. But the question was rhetorical. They never seemed to actually try to find an actual answer for why ND would switch protagonists on them. THe question actually just meant "I don't want to be playing as her. She's supposed to be the mustache twirling evildoer that Ellie has to kill, like David from the first game. How did they mistakenly make her playable?"
Idk, it's really hard to undersatnd what is going on sometimes, but I'm pretty confident that these people aren't simply failing at being good at reading a story. If thats what they were, then they'd simply accept the nuanced explanations they're given when they ask. But they almost never do. They instead are in this constipated state where they just don't understand why ND did this, which reads to me that they're mad that ND didn't do something fundamentally different with the story as opposed to simply not understanding what ND did.
I think watching a playthrough of a game, especially this game, is just like reading the synopsis of a movie on wikipedia.
I played through the game with my partner sitting next to me the whole time. I am not sure if that made it less scary, but last night I was home alone and decided to replay scenarios with headphones on for the first time. Holy fuck. Maybe I took too big a bong rip of devils lettuce but Stalkers were on another level. I had FOUR of them jump scare me to the point of yelping/flinching in that single encounter where you are looking for a face mask for Lev. It was like their AI was dialed up or something. The amount of times they would do that creepy low crawl and then emerge from the bottom side of the screen was absurd. I had to stop playing lmao
finished it at 2am last night.... I can't stop thinking about it - that plus the exhaustion has stopped me from getting any work done today.
My two take always.
My two take always.
- I am so thankful for all of the difficulty and accessibility options. I admittedly played it on the easiest difficulty and with the navigational aids on. I felt like the options still let me explore and experience the world as it was intended and I never felt like I was treated as a lesser player as a result... I really hope more games do this in the future. As I've gotten older, I guess I've become shittier at games, which has made me miss out on finishing some great recent ones - I'm glad this wasn't one of those.
- Abbey - I really connected with her and was blown away by the ride the game took me on. I started off hating her, and ended up wanting her to live over Ellie.... which is crazy considering how much I liked Ellie.
It was near the end of the spoilercast, I believe. Something along the lines of "we want the played to have those conversations" or something along the lines of that.
Lol, not shocked at all at the dislikes. Anyone that likes the game and especially the ending gets hate. It's a joke.
I found that film critics and channels were more capable of analyzing the themes of the game and what it was trying to say.
Thats not really a surprise but it shows that the gaming industry still has a long way to go.
but didn't they kind of have to do that in the sense all the promotional material was made to lead you to believe that Joel is accompanying Ellie on his revenge quest, so they had to swap Joel in for Jesse to make us believe Joel was accompanying her in her revenge. At least for me Joel's death so early caught me completely off guard because I really thought he was going to catch up to Ellie in Seattle based on the trailer footage. It is lying, but I appreciate the lie in that the story and what unfolds is more surprising that way since what your expecting is different.
The silver lining being that I don't thinks it's going to be as bad as TLJ stuff. That shit went on forever.
I dunno - that's probably true for some...but I'm definitely seeing people on Twitter who don't get it.
Like: "Abby didn't kill Joel to hurt Ellie"
Response: "She did it right in front of her and made her watch"
Nope, misunderstanding what's happening in that scene.
Oh it's utterly stupid. The reason it all works is experiencing it as the characters.
I liked Abby apart from her motivation. I didn't think it was interesting.
I think more could have been done with the idea of the Fireflies disbanding. In my head what was making Abby sympathetic was the idea of having the best parts of your life eroded. Being insulated from the grimness of the world and having a noble goal with the Fireflies, then being forced to torture someone by Issac. I would've liked to see a flashback to that end.
She was just too comfortable. Well liked, respected - for me it didn't justify the 'I have nothing, so I'll make the most of this' energy of the execution scene.
I think more could have been done with the idea of the Fireflies disbanding. In my head what was making Abby sympathetic was the idea of having the best parts of your life eroded. Being insulated from the grimness of the world and having a noble goal with the Fireflies, then being forced to torture someone by Issac. I would've liked to see a flashback to that end.
She was just too comfortable. Well liked, respected - for me it didn't justify the 'I have nothing, so I'll make the most of this' energy of the execution scene.
This is the truth. It's not about not getting it, they don't want to get it because they don't want this game.
Let's remember, everyone hated playing as Raiden in MGS2. Now everyone goes, "OMG MGS2 was so ahead of its time it predicted the future. So amazing." People say they want things different, but they really just want more of the same.
I wish more trailers lied to me to hide story beats.
Yep, tons of people just straight up don't even get scenes...ones that are pretty straight forward.
Because they're reading it only as the story they want to read it as. In this case, they want Abby to be the straight villain, they don't want to empathize with her, so they write in any interpretation as that being whats happening.
That response is actually itself proof. If they didn't 'get it', then they'd just be confused. The response would be "I don't know." Instead, they rewrite the scene. That's not "not getting it", that's something more.
Well well well, look at that. Haha ok then...
But they did a similar thing on MGS2, I'm cool with it.
Yeah I think they were dead no matter what as soon as Ellie finds them, she can't go hunting Abby with those two just out and about. I liked them both but they had it coming if for no other reason than taking part in Joel's murder. And a lot of other reasons I'm sure just like everyone else.
I just beat TLOUII.
What was it that some people hated so much about it before the game came out?
Also which threads are left open?
- Dina left with JJ somewhere.
- Ellie has forgiven Joel, and won't find solace in killing Abby, so I guess she's at the lookout for Dina, or going back to Jackson.
- Tommy and Maria is taking a break, he hasn't gotten the news of Ellie not being able to kill Abby.
- Abby is off somewhere with Lev.
Btw, who was it that Dina called Ollie at the farm? Was it just a sheep?
What was it that some people hated so much about it before the game came out?
Also which threads are left open?
- Dina left with JJ somewhere.
- Ellie has forgiven Joel, and won't find solace in killing Abby, so I guess she's at the lookout for Dina, or going back to Jackson.
- Tommy and Maria is taking a break, he hasn't gotten the news of Ellie not being able to kill Abby.
- Abby is off somewhere with Lev.
Btw, who was it that Dina called Ollie at the farm? Was it just a sheep?
- Status