The Last of Us 2 Announced (3 Viewers)

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This one has a pretty cool option IMO. New Game+. It allows you to play again but keep your weapons upgrades and abilities. May be viewed as cheating by some but I want to play more difficult and I can still see what all the training Manuel’s do.
 
Feels like the story needed refinements and go through a couple more drafts.

Joel dying was prefectly fine. I had no gripe as I expected it. He can get a spin off game. His character was never about going out in a blaze of glory moreso a horse ready to be put out to pasture.

Yet, I'd agree that his death was wasted in an overabundance of violence.

It overindulges in its theme and message that it comes off very hamfisted and sloppy. When the game lacks a real message... It falls back on its violence and brutality. Which in all honesty... Doesn't really make a lot of sense.

It reminds me of the novel vs. Real life occurrence of Lord of the Flies. The real story where humanity isn't as bleak in the face of extreme adversity as an author would protrayed. The game just lacks balance and falls too far into that Nonsensical Walking Dead Savagery.

https://www.newsweek.com/real-lord-...humankind-human-nature-rutger-bregman-1503204


This is my general gripe with post-apocalyptic writers and their obsession with repetitive, illogical violence and brutality. Especially, needless death and self-harm, It lacks common sense and basic human instincts to survive that a human would need to be able to live in a world like this.

Combat loop with bandits overstayed it's welcome and wore dry.

It's a great game. WAY too long for it's story. I found the 1st game to be better despite its glaring flaws.

Solid 8.5 Or 9.

The original game really wanted to be grounded in realism. They stepped away from that in Part 2. In a post-apocalyptic setting with an overwhelming predator threat, there would be more preservation. Psychology, the point of surviving such harsh conditions Is that killing the unnecessary provides an illogical risk in more ways than one. So, the overabundance of violence just lack the awareness of what those premeditated actions mean. There is alot of human killing, It gets to Uncharted level of obscene.

I had this original issue in the 1st game when bandits acted more like Walking Dead villains and less than realized human beings that we've grown accustomed to throughout the story. Yet, they framed it in a way that made better sense for atleast Joel & Ellie. Joel was injured and they couldn't really move. They where trying to survive on the edge. It was a much tighter narrative that has some sense of realism.

In Part 2, it's a revenge plot in a setting that really doesn't have time or reason to get revenge unless it's pertaining to survival. It really threw away all the rules established in the 1st game for this narrative.

I understand the point of the game, but when you read the same story across the genre all my life. It becomes a game of topping eachother with whom can make the most brutal world no matter if it doesn't make sense. To me, that's just not interesting.

It's gonna be a tight race for GOTY if Cyberpunk gets delayed to 2021. Right now, I think my top games will end up being..

Doom Eternal
Last of Us Part 2
Ghost of Tsushima
Spider-Man: Miles Morales

I'm excited to see how the unreleased games turn out. I think Ghost will be a sleeper GOTY winner if Cyberpunk gets delayed again.
 
yeah, i haven't finished it yet but i think that's a pretty fair assessment of the game...i mostly agree with all of it but i would say that the realistic version of that world would probably be much more boring for a video game

i definitely don't see it as a masterpiece but it's still very good...the story is the biggest shortcoming for me...i just don't feel invested in it like i did the first one...the characters and voice acting are fine but the story just seems trivial this time around

i actually love the gameplay loop but i have always liked stealth games...and ND's level design and set pieces are second to none...they improved on everything related to gameplay...the skill tree is much more interesting and the crafting system has a few new tweaks to it that are nice

i still have a few hours left so i will likely finish by tomorrow evening...i am not disappointed in the game by any means but it just falls short of the original game
 
I just wrapped up the game. If the 1st game was a 10, this one fell into the category of about an 8. I was just not a fan of switching characters and had almost no attachment at all to
Abby or her friends
. Even after they tried to humanize them in the story, they kept turning back to dehumanizing them when it came to the Scars. I agree to an extent about the over abundance of violence in parts of the game that just didn't seem to call for it. However, I still had a great experience playing the game and was overall satisfied with the whole thing.
 
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the game play is easiest to talk about because it is outstanding. The few additions like going prone and squeezing through openings made it better than the first IMO and trees of supplement improvements was well done (although you have to upgrade some things you don't necessarily want to get to ones you do) I did have some glitches that I will post later but nothing that just killed it.

now to the story. What is really odd is, it pretty much takes this game (starting with the first) for me to even talk about or care about the story. How many games have I played and simply not cared or payed attention. Even during the Uncharted that I just finished, I knew I was going to look for [insert lost location] and looking for [insert lost relic] My attention strays during cut scenes usually. Give me good game play and I don't care. But the first changed that in a big way. So in a way this one is victimized by the lofty standard set by the first. Probably more than half of the games Ive played I couldn't even tell you what was going on - didn't care enough.

some spoilers may start here

so I respect the fact that they took a chance. Movies evolved similarly. Early movies, good guys were squeaky clean - bad guys were are the same. And then you move into areas where you won't please all the people all the time. So they decided to make an ultra violent game with a message about the violence, revenge, actions and consequences. The groups sound like inner city gang names Scars and Wolves. They maybe went too far to get their point across about sequel playing field. Both had a pregnant woman in a love triangle. The Zebra I suppose represented the same innocence of the giraffes. The violence happened in another ski lodge and when you

[major spoiler]

are Abby and face off with Tommy, you are in a kitchen/dinning area with broken plates all over just like the boss fight with David.

I didn't like having to actually go against Eli, as I am sure most didn't. I didn't initially like the character switch at all but it was way better that the meat was 1 and then 2 instead of back and forth. To be honest, Abby had the most intense and most fun sequences of the game to me. And the hardest. And I'm not even talking about Bloaty McBloatface in the ER, though that was disorienting running around. When she faced stalkers early on and the part where the Scar children have to find her a way out of the cabin, I died a lot there. But the most fun stage for me was descending the building after you fall in the pool. I tried to go to sleep right after and was too wound up lol
 
I didn't have any glitches in the game that I can remember. I did have the standard aim at the guy's head, shoot, he moves his head 1 foot the other direction, then rinse and repeat that like 5 times to the point that I'm just laughing about it.

I did also notice the similarities between Ellie's storyline and Abby's. If Ellie did it, Abby did something extremely similar. Personally I thought that was one of the problems with the story and partially why I never could connect to the Abby character, because I had already done all this with a more charismatic and likable character. I think I would have much preferred to switch characters every other chapter, instead of 47% Ellie, 50% Abby, then back to 3% Ellie. I think perhaps it was split up that way to attempt to get you to like Abby more? Like by the time the end rolls around perhaps you have some sort of connection? I'm not sure.
 
xpuma20x said:
I didn't have any glitches in the game that I can remember. I did have the standard aim at the guy's head, shoot, he moves his head 1 foot the other direction, then rinse and repeat that like 5 times to the point that I'm just laughing about it.

I did also notice the similarities between Ellie's storyline and Abby's. If Ellie did it, Abby did something extremely similar. Personally I thought that was one of the problems with the story and partially why I never could connect to the Abby character, because I had already done all this with a more charismatic and likable character. I think I would have much preferred to switch characters every other chapter, instead of 47% Ellie, 50% Abby, then back to 3% Ellie. I think perhaps it was split up that way to attempt to get you to like Abby more? Like by the time the end rolls around perhaps you have some sort of connection? I'm not sure.
Click to expand...

That is where they kind of messed up IMO as well. They didn't have to go to such lengths to show her humanity. Maybe they were trying to make you like her, but surely they knew that it wasn't possible with players already having learned to "like" Joel in the first one. I mean Joel was no angel but he grew on you in his singularity of purpose. And I think the overall point of the game is to show the humanity in everyone, that there is a whole other side to the story, and that there is no winner in the game of revenge and hate. I did come to like playing as Abby and the levels with Lilly were some of the best in the game. But I didn't even feel bad about her father. His intentions seemed to be in the right place but if you make a choice of that nature in any world (much less a lawless one) you have to know that the possibility of repercussions are there. Its not about right or wrong; both Joel and he were doing what they believed were right. But the single actions of the two violent acts in both games led to a game of revenge where it was said best in War games.


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btw, was that moths that Eli was drawing? Doesn't look like Fireflys. Symbolic of change? Breaking the cycle? I may have missed something there. Another thing I noticed having just played the first again, Eli basically became Joel in this one. Dina was like Eli in the first, in a good mood asking constant questions and Eli wasn't into it. "less talk and more stepping"
 
lol. the moth is her tattoo also. Don’t know why I missed that.


The moth intrigued the team because of its resemblance to a firefly, Druckmann explained, a nod to the rebel group of that name within the game. But the image is also a symbol of death and compulsion.
“There’s this idea of obsession and being drawn to a light and constantly pursuing this thing,”
 

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