@Pizzamorg Per your request I won’t comment much yet about specifics, but just wanted to say that I’m reading your thoughts with much interest and vicariously enjoying the roller coaster of experiencing the game again for the first time.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Pizzamorg Per your request I won’t comment much yet about specifics, but just wanted to say that I’m reading your thoughts with much interest and vicariously enjoying the roller coaster of experiencing the game again for the first time.
I hope I was clear in that replying is fine, just not with stuff after where I am. I read it back and maybe I should have written 'Reply with' rather than 'reply and', if it wasn't clear. It is just because in that other thread people were trying to talk to me about the ending as an example of Part 2's best writing and I was literally like three hours in at that point 😂
But I am glad you are enjoying the rollercoaster all the same!
@Pizzamorg I saw someone had revealed a rather major spoiler element of the game in the other thread when replying to you. Most likely not intentionally, but I think most of what people have written has been largely spoiler free from what I have seen.
Life is more fun when you help people succeed, instead of wishing them to fail.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
@Pizzamorg I saw someone had revealed a rather major spoiler element of the game in the other thread when replying to you. Most likely not intentionally, but I think most of what people have written has been largely spoiler free from what I have seen.
Thankfully yeah! But always worth putting a warning in just in case after what happened before. To be honest a bunch of this stuff I probably already had spoiled for me around the time, I just don't need to be reminded in case I forgot 😂
@Pizzamorg No worries, buddy. I caught your meaning (regarding the PSA to safeguard yourself on the ending). There will definitely be much to discuss when you finish though. From your various thoughts and feelings starting back at Part I, all the way through to your latest update, I know there’s certain to be substantial talking points when it’s all done. For now, I’m just enjoying passive consumption of your feelings right now and then when you’re done, I’ll give my input as to why you’re either right or wrong in your final analysis of the game (😜 Totally kidding of course. You won’t be wrong. But you might feel at odds with my opinion, or with other peoples opinions.)
But yeah, being able to talk and discuss games to our heart’s content is the chief purpose of these forums. Don’t feel bad about getting it all out there. I thoroughly enjoy it.
@Pizzamorg I won't talk about anything after where you are at, but to comment on what seems to be your main problem with the storytelling of the sequel (and something I strongly agree with) is how preachy it is about how bad you are supposedly. It is indeed extremely heavy handed, but you can thank the fact that Neil clearly had more control over the game than the first one. Even though he was the sole writer of the first one, it definitely seems like Bruce Straley kept him reigned in so to speak given the sharp differences in the sequel. A lot of preaching and agendas thrown into a game when there doesn't need to be any of it. It's a video game. I don't need to be told that the main character is a horrible person when that said person is the reason why I'm playing the game in the first place, especially when they aren't any worse than any of the other characters really. It's like people saying how horrible of a character Nathan Drake is when he's just a video game character.
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@Pizzamorg I won't talk about anything after where you are at, but to comment on what seems to be your main problem with the storytelling of the sequel (and something I strongly agree with) is how preachy it is about how bad you are supposedly. It is indeed extremely heavy handed, but you can thank the fact that Neil clearly had more control over the game than the first one. Even though he was the sole writer of the first one, it definitely seems like Bruce Straley kept him reigned in so to speak given the sharp differences in the sequel. A lot of preaching and agendas thrown into a game when there doesn't need to be any of it. It's a video game. I don't need to be told that the main character is a horrible person when that said person is the reason why I'm playing the game in the first place, especially when they aren't any worse than any of the other characters really. It's like people saying how horrible of a character Nathan Drake is when he's just a video game character.
It is exhausting, isn't it? It actively makes me feel less when a piece of media doesn't respect my intelligence, emotional or otherwise, to come to my own epiphanies. This is something so sorely missed from Part 1, which trusted its audience to making readings of the game on their own.
I don't think Part 2's approach is inherently a problem if the game was better written, and had properly integrated it's gameplay focus with its narrative focus, but as it stands it almost becomes some sort of weird parody where the game sets you up for some set piece where you need to blow through half a dozen people but then the whole time the game is just absolutely screaming at you about how awful you are. It is just like... plz... plz guys... what are we doing here?
I also think had we shifted perspectives and just been gaslit the whole time by discovering Abby and her gang are this group of amazing, charitable, heroes of the people or whatever, then I would have rejected that notion as well. The game, maybe rightly, avoids this and tries to keep things more balanced, but it is not well written or executed. The game does absolutely nothing to endear me to any of these characters previously presented as antagonists. It uses cheap devices like dogs, but I see right through it. It just makes me wonder what the point of any of this was at all, if it doesn't make you feel any differently about anything when this tangent started.
The weirdest part about the Abby's Dad change and the ending retcon that came with it is how unnecessary it is. At least to me.
Both of the Last of Us games are stories of perspectives and biases, which creates a ready made explanation as to why both endings exist.
Part 1's ending is from Joel's perspective. He sees the Fireflies on the end of the terrorist groups blowing up checkpoints and killing solders. In Abby's flashback and if she was the one to retell Part 1's ending, she sees the promise of the Fireflies, her hero Dad at the centre of them and the bogeyman Joel.
The discrepancies could easily be explained, because to Joel, his baby girl was going to die in that hospital so in his mind, the hospital was a dank, grungy, horror movie set full of inept clowns. This is what his perception of reality has created in his memories. Even the fact the original surgeon is a completely different person can easily be explained as Joel literally not seeing individual faces anymore because of all the people he has killed and how he has learnt to compartmentalise those things.
And then in Abby's mind, with the perception of her Dad and the Fireflies etc at that time, she sees that clean, clinical, blue hospital, she sees the vaccine as a guarantee in how it is presented as Part 2. This could have just been explained as her perception of that ending.
The truth then would have existed somewhere in the middle, with the audience to make their conclusions on who is probably closer to the truth, which creates an interesting thought exercise for the audience to engage in.
You could literally have the two endings, a ready made explanation for both, and no retconning would have been needed at all.
Oh my. The map. The ***** map, dude. I thought the writing couldnt get worse than those opening couple of hours - outside of the general pointlessness narratively of Abby's entire section, anyway - but my God, the contrivance of this moment. Some of the worst writing I've experienced in anything.
I had to log off after the boss fight I guess? Against Ellie in the theatre and just walk away for the night. Come back to the game fresh when I am not so irritated.
Maybe it is just the fresh rage I am feeling, and I will soften on it over time, but on the whole I kinda hated Abby’s stretch of the game if I am being honest.
There were a couple of nice sequences, cool set pieces and upgrades, but it all sorta felt like this was done as like a cheap way of making the audience care about Abby, and there was almost no narrative reason why all this stuff couldn't have been given to Ellie.
This is the more terminal issue with this stretch of game for me, is just that it feels so narratively lost. Like I've already said, I am happy I wasn't gaslit, but the game never did anything at all to justify why the character change even happens in the first place.
The whole Yara/Lev tangent we go on feels like it takes place in a different videogame. Any attempt to endear us to the antagonists through this section (if that is even what it is trying to do?) fail. Abby being a WLF has remarkable little bearing on any of this. I mean basically none at all, and could have created some unique gameplay moments that may have justified the character change had they used her role in the organization more.
And again, this is all mostly centred around a conflict which basically exists outside of Ellie’s story that we came here for, and really has no bearing on Ellie at all, the character we actually care about. Oh and it also includes multiple really frustrating difficulty spikes. Like I can't think of another game I've played where it goes off for like ten hours and just tells a completely disconnected story for seemingly its own amusement and then just returns back to the game you were playing before.
I feel like you could easily cut most of this entirely and the only result you get is a better paced game, with a lot less bad writing (as this includes some of the worst writing outside of the opening couple of hours), bloat and filler.
Any parts of this you leave in, would also make far more sense if you just played as Ellie all the way through. You could have used Yara and Lev as ways for Ellie and the audience to learn more about the conflict between the Scars and the WLF if you think this is even relevant which I kinda argue it isn’t really? Like I guess it is some nice world building, but it sorta distracts from what the core of this story is for no real meaningful gain. But it feels like has even less of a purpose when you are playing as Abby.
Like what was the point of all of this? Part 1 was already long over by the time this tangent comes to a close, and yet I feel like so much more happened in Part 1.
@Pizzamorg The game was like what I would have imagined a PS5 game would be at the time. It was a truly remarkable achievement on the PS4 Pro, and that combined with the enjoyment of the actual gameplay and encounters themselves is what kept me going. I genuinely enjoyed the game whenever the storytelling didn’t get in the way, which became a huge problem once you flipped over to playing as Abby. Sure, what happened to her father obviously really sucked for her and I get her wanting revenge, but at the same time she’s really no better than Ellie but the game sure makes it seem like you should think Ellie is worse most of the time. That’s BS, and goes back to why I was playing the game in the first place. I nearly didn’t finish the game because of stuff like that, but I did.
The theatre sequence you just brought up was the near breaking point for me. I already didn't want to be playing as Abby, although I had warmed up to it a bit until it kept dragging on and on. Forcing me to fight Ellie, even though there couldn't be fatal consequences because it's a flashback, was nearly the last straw for me. Like I've said many times already, I was playing the game for Ellie, not to fight against her. It was one of the few sequences I've ever experienced where I literally had to force myself to actually play through the sequence and not just take the game out and call it.
I don’t regret playing the game. It is a technical masterpiece in more ways than one, especially for the hardware it was released on. I just hate the things it did with the storytelling, effectively cursing the character the whole first game built us up to love basically, and for me nearly ruining what could have been the absolute masterpiece people claim it to be.
So I rolled credits. Beat it in around 20 hours. Online it seems to suggest the game should take you anywhere between 25 to 40, but I got achievements for things like all weapons etc, so I can't have missed anything major, so I dunno why my playthrough ran so short. I don't really care though, I am pretty glad this is over.
I thought the ending was a total mess, I guess I missed the flashcard, so for the longest time I thought I was in some kind of dream sequence as Ellie lay unconscious on the Theatre floor, dreaming about her ideal future. It really took me a while to register... oh no, this is really happening.
That baby looked fake, the farm looked fake. Somehow Dina and her baby survive, despite Dina getting her face pummelled into the floor repeatedly (she also has no real visible scars from that, either). Tommy also somehow survives getting shot point blank in the head. Okay.
And then we go to Santa Barbara and have to deal with the goofy Rattlers and I just feel like I am in a different game entirely. Although grown up Ellie with that haircut, killing dudes with a shotgun in that dirty white tank. Forgive me Joel for these thoughts I am having.
Then we finally get to Abby and Ellie decides to spare her for absolutely no reason at all. Okay. Cool, cool, cool, okay. Right. Cool cool cool. I mean Ellie has killed like 500 people in this game, and was still killing people seconds up until this moment, but we get to the antagonist we have been chasing this whole time and just go... nah, think I'll let you live I guess. Well, this game has been a massive waste of time then. Oh and Ellie's family abandon her or whatever the ***** happened at the end there. Love you giving a middle finger to both of the characters we love in this game, man. What a load of *****.
I know I wrote a perhaps overlong, rambly, review of Part 1 (although I appreciate the kind words people said about that review) but I am going to have a harder time doing that with Part 2.
I like to take notes when I play a game, and then sort those notes at the end. Looking at something as a whole, then working my way inwards in a more detailed way. However, I took remarkably few notes during Part 2, possibly because I was sharing my experience on this forum along the way, rather than privately in a Google doc but I also just don't really know how I feel about the game as a whole well enough, to really create a core of thought to build any commentary out of.
It seems like very few people are 'meh' on this game and this cloud has sorta hung over me the whole time playing it. I do not hate this game, but I do dislike it. Do I dislike it in a genuine way, or would I too be one of the self proclaimed haters if I hadn't had my expectations set so low by all the hatred I'd heard for this over the years? I can't ever know.
I will say I genuinely hated the bookends of this game, I thought the Abby section of the game is borderline totally pointless, but otherwise everything else was just kinda... eh to me. There are no moments I love in this to counter balance the moments I hated which is why I say I dislike it overall, but I dunno, those moments I hated create just sort of a blackhole of apathy for me.
It is a technological marvel for sure, it is generally more fun to play than Part 1 just purely looking at it mechanically as a game, while still staying mostly true to the gameplay experience of Part 1 (mechanically). Only with more encounters that feel like cinematic set pieces, which I enjoyed.
I guess the most damning thing I can say, is while I am sure I will play Part 1 again in the coming years, I sorta have no desire to ever play Part 2 again. This playthrough has felt like enough for me. Honestly beyond any discussions we may have out of this post, I think I'll honestly be happy to never think about this again and just pretend I am still living in a world where I hadn't played this yet.
I suffer through some really miserable gameplay in Part 1 at times, because the heights of that game surrounding Joel and Ellie's story are worth experiencing over and over again. It is also a near perfectly paced package, tightly telling its narrative and getting out of there, which prompts me to want to reexperience it again and again.
As fun as some of the set pieces and encounters are in Part 2, that is more in the context of how generally not fun Part 1 is to play, not that I think they are these masterfully designed engagements in all videogaming, that are of such a high standard they are worth experiencing over and over again. The gameplay improvements are just not enough in isolation, even if they improve this experience during your one time playing through it.
And also now knowing how flabby this is (despite my apparently shorter than average run time), knowing now that whole stretches of the game and almost the entire game itself honestly is all just kinda one massive exercise of futility, and knowing that it is going to deliver some true narrative low points that absolutely spit in the face of characters, and a game, I truly adore, with absolutely zero high point moments to counter balance these lows...
Yeah, there is nothing here to make me think I ever want to experience this ever again.
@Pizzamorg Just don't say I didn't warn you! Thanks so much for posting your running commentary on the game - it has been a pleasure to read and I have to admit that I'm kind of relieved that there's somebody else out there whose feelings on it so closely mirror my own! What are you going to play next to decompress?
My pleasure... I think?
I was thinking next I'd tie a plastic bag around my head and scream into it for four hours while I throw projections on my wall of images of my family just to chase one last feeling that mirrors that of playing Part 2 before I go play Mario Kart or something and eat some ice cream.
@Pizzamorg Genuinely sorry that it ended up such a colossal waste for you. Not necessarily because I felt differently, but well… because it’s just always better to enjoy the games we play rather than extract misery. 😅 That sucks.
Ah well, beyond my guilt for recommending a game which ended so poorly, I am glad for you that it’s over. You played through it at a quick pace so at least the suffering was short-lived.
I’ll share a few more details thoughts and responses on the other spoilery thread.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
So I have become quite excited about the Last of Us again after the announcement of the Last of Us 2 Remake. I should maybe wait to replay the game until the remake arrives but its honestly a little bit hard to do so. The announcement of the remake was actually little shocking to me in a sense (had no idea that it would happen). Now January 17 cant come fast enough.
Started playing the game yesterday and I've played it for 9 hours thus far. Absolutely insane to me how engrossing this game is as I wasn't expecting to get as addicted as I am with it now. This is actually the first Naughty Dog game that I'm genuinely enjoying. It could be because games like this appeal to me more now that I'm older. I played the first The Last of Us on PS4 back in 2015 and that was 9 years ago. In other words, I was a teenager back then. I remember liking the gameplay but it wasn't that captivating and I didn't care much for the story. With Part II, I'm absolutely loving the gameplay and the story is good, although it has slowed down a bit now. Not much is happening and I haven't met any new characters. But hopefully that will change soon.
I do have to mention how great the (first?) semi open-world area was. I feel like that was a trend with most first-party games on PS4, i.e. even though it's mostly a linear game, there are still some open-world areas here and there. And it was really fun to explore it! It wasn't overwhelming at all and it was very rewarding, both in terms of new equipment but also story moments.
My personal problem with the game is that I have to explore everywhere and loot everything, lol. I have to stop myself because I can't carry any more ammo/resources so there's no point in spending that much time exploring. It's fun looking for stuff but I'm at a point now where resources don't feel as scarce anymore.
It's great how much emphasis there is on stealth but I also feel like there should be more mandatory shooting sections. Otherwise you'll get rusty with your shooting once you find yourself in such a situation.
One final thing I have to mention is the fantastic checkpoint system. It feels like the game saves every ten seconds, which is super useful as mistakes can occur every now and then and I don't want to restart entire sections because of that.
I plan on maxing out Ellie and Abby's weapon/player upgrades on my 1st New Game+ save file.
My question is instead of finishing that NG+ run and then starting a 2nd NG+, can I just immediately leave the save file and start another NG+ without losing the upgrades?
After I've fully maxed out both their weapon and player upgrades to be clear (and the game saved me doing so).
I don't want to play thru the game fully three times, and I still have to do a Grounded NG+ run with permadeath.
I'm just going to tag @Th3solution and @Metonymy here, since I've mentioned starting The Last of Us: Part II to you both. I'm currently about 15 hours into the game, having finish Ellie's first part and being only a short ways into Abby's reaching the aquarium flashback thus far. I know a lot of people absolutely love this game to bits, so I'm going to tread lightly with my thoughts!
I've been having a good, but not great time with the game so far. For some backstory, I have played the first game in the series and enjoyed it well enough. It was never an all-time favourite of mine, but I appreciated what it was and thought it had a really great ending. I also enjoyed the TV series, so the narrative of the first game is still fairly fresh in my mind. And before I go on, I should preface that I was never very invested in Joel and Ellie's relationship. I don't know why, but I've just never deeply connected with those characters like many. Hence why playing its sequel wasn't necessarily a priority for me either, but it seemed like the perfect time right now for various reasons. I'll start using spoiler tags from here on since the thread is marked no spoilers.
Obviously, we all know the big opening twist that Joel dies. That wasn't a surprise to me either, just by being in the gaming sphere over the last five years. Not necessarily an issue, since I still found the scene to be well-executed and the whole proper introduction to Jackson to be quite interesting and fun. Once we got to Seattle is where the game slowly fell apart for me however. We're really supposed to buy into this quest of revenge as the main drive of the game, but since I'm not so invested in Joel as a character and, frankly, think he's a bad person, I never really was on the same level as Ellie where I felt the need to kill all these people to get back at them. For her motivation to be so asynchronous to mine was already a slight issue, but I feel like the main problem is how... and I am almost scared to say the word, but... boring Ellie's first half of the game is.
Don't get me wrong! The game is a technical marvel. It's absolutely stunning and the gameplay is so well-refined, I almost hesitate to criticise it at all. I just didn't have much fun playing as Ellie in its opening half. And not in the good way of: ''This game is so dark, I'm having no fun!'' Just genuinely finding her section to be poorly paced and plotted. I get that our quest for revenge is supposed to be what gets us to keep going, but I couldn't shake the feeling that for most of the time absolutely nothing was happening at all. We need to find Abby and kill anyone who was responsible for Joel along the way, but we either find everyone: 1) already dead, or 2) dead within the next 2 minutes. I'm barely interacting with any NPCs along the way, which I always found to be the first game's strength, and I'm just stuck with Ellie moving from building to building, from combat encounter to combat encounter. There's a few setpieces that I considered to be ''big'' moments, like the whole events with Nora in the hospital. That was masterfully done and so engaging, but I'm soon finding myself back scrounging through Seattle at a snail's pace to a great scene again five hours later. It felt incredibly repetitive. The environments weren't varied at all and the enemies were constantly the same with few introductions of new types of threats. The gameplay loop of stealth --> stuff hits the fan hit the exact same way in every encounter. Nothing really changed the formula up.
Again, I feel like my investment in Ellie's quest for revenge was supposed to be what kept me going in these times, but I don't find that to be an excuse for poor pacing or uninteresting encounters. It's not an excuse for barely anything to happen, and for when I do reach my momentary goal, to get absolutely no satisfaction from reaching it. Maybe the lack of satisfaction was the point. To put you in Ellie's shoes where your hunger for revenge only grows. Instead of having that effect however, I only found my resentment towards Ellie's story to grow. I couldn't wait to get to Abby's part and get out of her shoes. To be introduced to new locations that don't look the same every time and to meet new NPCs to have actual story beats with. As much as I like Dina as a character too (she's very likable), I found her to be incredibly obnoxious during gameplay. The amount of times she would stand in my way, actively walk into my way or not help out during combat at all when I'm trying to sneak was frustrating.
Despite my lack of investment into the Joel/Ellie duo, it is what drove the first game forward and what kept things interesting. Seasons changed, locations changed. Joel and Ellie stayed the same, but constantly developed into a real father/daughter dynamic. It was (bitter)sweet, and then the ending hits with an absolute gut punch of a scene. The only dynamic we have similar to that in Ellie's portion is her relationship with Dina, but I didn't find that to be as inherently interesting. There's no real development in their relationship. They set the stage for it in the early moments of the game, and we're just girlfriends from there on. The father/daughter-dynamic between Joel and Ellie meant that you were forced to feel a sort of protective instinct towards your companion. With Dina, it doesn't feel like she needs me. That's totally fine of course, girlpower and all that, but it does remove that inherent instinct from the equation and instead left me with nothing to emotionally connect myself to Dina with outside of: ''Oh, she's nice.'' It doesn't help that she then ends up staying back for a large portion of the later stages (for obvious reasons), so I'd just check in with her every few hours. There was no replacement then... and now I'm solely left with a protagonist whose motives I don't identify with, stuck traveling through a city where I don't find the locations particularly interesting to play through despite the strong visuals and combat encounters where I felt like I was doing the exact same thing over and over again. The repetition of that all just really got to me.
So, now I've finally reached Abby's section, and... my god, is it night and day. Her opening flashback where you meet her father and find out it's the doctor Joel killed in the first game is the first time the game made me feel the actual emotions that it tried to get from me for a long while. I soon find myself in a really, really cool stadium with lots of NPCs and new people to meet. It felt like a world had opened up that the first half of the game didn't make me feel it was capable of at all. They suddenly realised that walking through the exact same looking Seattle for 13 hours is no fun, that having side characters to engage with was integral to the first games success, that the game should pace its narrative and action setpiece moments quicker than once every 5 hours... where was this energy the whole half of the game? I am flabbergasted by how much more I've started to enjoy this game with this switch in protagonist. And honestly confused by how they managed to do the legacy character so dirty by giving her such a... and I'm sorry again, boring campaign. I'm actually excited to boot the game up again and see what's going to happen to Abby, her group and the whole WLF community. I know that when I have 2 hours to play now, I'm going to see more than just grass and similar-looking buildings. I know I've been quite down on the game so far, but it feels for the first time that it's entered an upward trajectory. For my sake, I hope it stays that way. Even if only to make sure I don't need to return to this thread later on to say that: ''Actually, it got worse again and I didn't really like the game after all.'' I know how much it means to so many. I'm probably never going to reach that level of admiration for it, but I hope I will at least eventually be able to see what others do in it, whether or not I feel as strong about it emotionally.
So, that's my long-winded, probably controversial thoughts about the game so far. Again, I am hopeful for the second half of it! I really want to like the game more than I did in its initial hours, so I'm praying I'll get the opportunity to with this back half.
@Tjuz Oh my friend, Tj… I have good news and I have bad news… 😂
First off, thanks for sharing your impressions of TLoU2. I enjoyed reading them, even if they are wrong. 😑
But seriously. I can follow your thoughts and I understand. If something I love and cherish doesn’t click for you in a piece of media, it’s allowed. It merely rips my very heart from my chest, stomps on it, and drains all solace and joy from my soul… it’s ok.
To comment specifically —
I’m kidding, and I know that Joel is maybe a very specific kind of hero. Ellie too. There may be a certain American cultural connection to these characters, I don’t know. But you’re not wrong about the plodding nature of the storytelling during that section after Joel is killed when they are heading out to hunt down Abby and Co. It didn’t drag for me or seem boring, but I can see how it would if you weren’t attached to the locales and the characters. The Dina observation is also a reasonable point, in that she just kind of become the girlfriend and there’s not as much fostering of the companionship like there was with Joel and Ellie in Part I. There’s few relationships that can carry so many unsaid emotions as a father-daughter, and so two lovers, two friends, or even a mother-son or mother-daughter bonding wouldn’t portray the same dependent emotions, I’m guessing. And that’s where the cultural stuff plays a role.
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So the bad news is, if you don’t like Ellie and hope to never deal with her and her plight again, then you’ll need to prepare yourself to be disappointed. However, I feel like any possible (trying to be spoiler free here) future dealing with Ellie are much more exciting and varied than what you experienced in the first half of the game.
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Now for the good news — you seem to like Abby so you’ll be happy to hear she is a really major character all the way through and if you like her now, I feel like you grow to like and appreciate her even more as the game progresses.
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What’s supposed to happen, and what most players complain about, is that everyone is all excited to play as Ellie, the girl they grew to love in the first game. And they have their world torn apart when she has to watch her adoptive dad brutally tortured and murdered right in front of her. Then the player has an immediate hatred of Abby because of this. And they relish running around as Ellie and hunting down this horrible villain character. And then… when Naughty Dog turns the table on them and makes them play as Abby from her point of view, everyone is supposed to get really upset and start to throw their controller and refuse to play this game and play as this character they hate. Then, over time, the players who stick with it grow to admire, appreciate, and even root for Abby. And the player is left with this dilemma in their minds, their whole world turned upside-down, trying to figure out what are these conflicting emotions that Naughty Dog is manipulating me with?!
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But you didn’t read the memo. You immediately hated Ellie and loved Abby. So you robbed yourself of the whole epiphany and moral conundrum you’re supposed to be feeling! 😂
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The other good news for you is on the NPC front. You’ve already met some with Abby and are starting to get some variety in the storyline and some interaction with other people and their plight and viewpoints. Well, there’s more of that. There’s some really good characters still to come, so it’s worth it for you to stick with it for that too.
I will be very curious to see how it all lands for you. Like I say, some of what you have in front of you will answer some of your complaints. But other significant parts of the game will probably just be doubling down on things you don’t like. Regardless, I can’t wait to read the final analysis! And after you finish, I’ll link you to my TLoU2 review to read and see how it compares to your final thoughts. 😄
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Topic: The Last Of Us Part II - OT (No Spoilers)
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