PGW 2017: PlayStation Boss Comments on Controversial Last of Us 2 Trailer

I for one am looking forward to playing this. Although the tone was dark, this is no worse than what is portrayed in movies or TV shows, Game of Thrones anyone?

The first 'Last of Us' was pretty grim. Not a game I played through a second time. Looks like ND has taken the dark tone even further with Last of Us 2. Not for me. In my mind the key word is 'game' I like to 'play' a 'game' which I expect to be fun. Sure, exciting and scarey is a part of it but LoU seems to like banging us over the head with it 'dark' ness of it all. Even games like RE and those countless zombie games had a sense of fun. ND seems to have forgotten this in their endeavour to give us 'dark, realist horror thriller or whatever grim tone they're going for

"Sony closed its Paris Games Week 2017 press conference with the clip, but many think it was a bit too heavy".

Only thing a bit heavy was the women

@get2sammyb Difference with Far Cry 5 and LOU2 is that FC5 developers haven't forgotten their sense of fun; the whole point of games

Is the world made by 12 year olds or...? If the game is dark that trailer must be dark too! Why don't these idiots complain about violent movie trailers too? Sigh

This trailer caused controversy? Job done. Personally I loved it and appreciated how well it was done rather than took offence at the depicted violence.

Don't use or have a Twitter account, and only visit this site and a few others, so i guess I missed the unneeded drama that tends to come out in those places. Ryan said it perfectly though; this is a game for adults. It is also one of their most anticipated games over the next few years, so showing anything to increase the hype is better than nothing for them from a business standpoint, even better if it leaves a majority of the viewers with more questions about the game, increasing their awareness of it.

@nathanSF games can be fun and dark at the same time. People have 'fun' playing horror games - yet most of them aim to be dark, disturbing and scary.

People have taken this trailer and tried to create controversy around it, for no reason at all. If they don't like it, or got offended, who cares? The game clearly isn't for them - they should go buy Yoo-Ka laylee or something.

What were people expecting, a game with witty characters going on adventures, like Uncharted? The Last of Us always was a contrast to Naughty Dog's other games. I loved the video. Massive props to them.

I think its fine to show the clip for a game that's likely to be full of violence. Its much better than showing a 'pretty' or 'light' trailer so people go out and buy it for 'underage' gamers. I would rather we see adult games with adult trailers (maybe edited for 'prime time' - like a movie trailer would be). I would rather it stirs up some controversy about the 'violence' so maybe 'parents' will be aware of it - even if they miss the rating on the box.

From my point of view the uber violent genre of games have been managed fairly well up to this point by rarely stepping into difficult areas and allowing the gamer to skip the graphic scenes in those that have; like the gta torture scene for instance or the mw2 airport sequence. Both of which were in poor taste imo.

But lets be honest here though whats the difference with a pregnant woman with a knife to her belly and watching live animals get squashed? (I read that latter part on the bbc news website about a predatory peadophile and the whole article made me sick). In comments sections ive been reading comments wanting more blood, more violence, even comments about women being punched in the face. Do Sony really want to pimp themselves out to that demographic?

TLOU was a watershed in gaming story telling, lets not wreck its legacy with violence for the sake of it.

He apologized for TLOU2? That trailer was upbeat - women was rescued from hanging and another from torture - after that Detroit trailer where a father murdered his own daughter with his own 2 hands after yelling F this and F that at her. Detroit is some seriously sick stuff, TLoUS2 was a comedy in comparison.

I had no problems with it. It was emotionally intense and I was more impressed with how they got that across using some of the best facial motion capture I've ever seen on display.

Not something I'd want young kids watching though, perhaps Sony could get pro-active and stick their own ratings on clips before broadcasting them. Or a 'graphic content' warning beforehand.

'Controversy creates cash'- Eric Bischoff

Anybody else notice the face Jim Ryan pulled, just before the clip played? He knew exactly what kind of reaction the trailer would bring about.

It didn't bother me too much, but i did cringe when he 'clipped her wings'. The game just looks so damn realistic.
All that trailer did was make me want TLOU2 more. Job done.

that trailer was amazing.the graphics and the violence wow.another masterpiece by naughty dog incoming.word up son

I think that some people felt that it lacked som level of context. We didn't know what game it was, we just saw a few minutes of unpleasant threat and then violence.

I think, in the game, there will be a sense of context. TLOU had some heavy themes and scenes, and many other games do but if it is contextualised it makes sense. I think this was an odd clip to preview TLOU2. It didn't bother me but it was odd to have such a horrid scene just closing out a long presentation.

AHahahahah Jesus I don't get how can you be upseat by something that is not real sure It talks about Taboo topics but come on lol being angry at someone for tackling a Taboo subject lol.

Seen the trailer now for the first time. Wow. They surely know how to direct a cutscene! By the way, one of the most gruesome scene, the woman's arm getting smashed, looked like gratuitous violence to me. I'd prefered a close-up of the woman since the facial acting is incredible.
Or is it my fault because maybe guys at Naughty Dog follow Pushsquare and read my complain about TLoU being not an horror game

I can't understand the logic behind the "controversy". The trailer was a great insight in to one of the events in TLOU2.
It was violent. Yes. But had those characters that were subject to the violence been men, would this even be a thing?
Remember when Sony showed TLOU at E3 back in 2012 and Joel shot a man on the floor, in the face, with a shotgun, at point blank range? No? No.

This controversy, to me, appears to simply be SJWs getting gripey because they (wrongly) think they have a reason to.

And that comment above about 'the point of games is fun' is just ignorant and sets the medium back thirty years.

Gruesome but that is the setting of the game humans are not so nice anymore.

@nathanSF dude that's the tone they've been going for since day one and game one and they are not going to just change it all of a sudden to try to appeal to people like you who let fake violence bother you so much. That would be like producers when they were turning the road into a movie saying "you know what this book was way too dark let's go ahead and lighten it up maybe put some rainbows and laughs into it." That would be just as ridiculous as ND listening to people saying tlou part 2 is too dark nvm the fact tlou part 1 was pretty dark

@nathanSF no bro that is not the whole point of games nowadays. Games are made to make us feel tons of different emotions they are not just meant to be fun anymore and they haven't been since the medium thankfully grew up and evolved

@JoeBlogs But isn't that the general idea of a trailer? To give an overall impression of what the game will be like? It's an advert for the game!

People always complain, now they're complaining about the violence on the trailer because they can't complain about the lack of announcements...

I wonder if they really played the first game, it's supposed to be dark with heavy content for crying out loud.

@Turniplord I agree, dark and fun can be blended into a great game.

Thought it was excellent. I’m really looking forward to playing when it comes out. I’m not on Twitter or any forums I’m far to old to care about teenage points of view. My only worry from reading all these comments is I hope I’ve not brought up my 2 teenage daughters to be such snowflakes. May need to get them to watch the walking dead with me and my wife.

I really loved the first Last of Us, but this trailer did get me out of the hype-train. I don't know, maybe it was too dark, too violent for my taste. And I perfectly understand that this kind of violence, here, in this context, is justified, cause it's supposed to make us think about it - what violence lies in the human heart when the laws are gone, etc...
This is not dumb violence meant to be fun, like in any FPS you could think of. We were supposed to be chocked by this trailer, I get it.

But still. It didn't get on me.

Maybe its also because I never wanted a sequel to The Last of Us. I found at the time that the ending was absolutely perfect. Kind of thing that makes you think, that makes you talk with your buddies, around a beer, about who dig it and who didn't. It was perfect.

So no matter what, I just can't manage to be hyped for this sequel. It's beyond me.

@JoeBlogs Totally get you on waiting for the gameplay front. This was particularly gruesome for a lot of people, myself included and i'm one desensitised individual! It's just the one is so darn low. Not sure i want see the next trailer

@get2sammyb Oh go on, give it a go. For instance
I think fun doesn't come into it. Many games are a form of entertainment, just as horror and gorefest films are a form of entertainment. LOU2 is simply another form of creative representation that allows participants to engage personally in a fiction and situations that in real life most would find disturbing or repulsive. It's an adult extension of imaginative play; exploring themes and confronting situations they would avoid or condemn in real life. Just because LOU2 adds elements of realism where other developers go for more fictionalised, and arguably safer, more accessible representations of real or threatened brutal violence and danger, it does not mean it is not entertainment. The prevalence of such realism demands that to have an impact the stakes must always be raised to attract attention and stand out. This goes for books, films, and games. Take the recent BBC series 'Gunpowder' for example. The portrayal of violence far exceeded what the BBC had put out previously. In an equal but milder vein, vein, Doctor Who has far more scary scenes that it did in the past. I'm confusing the simple notion of 'fun' with the far more nuanced and complex concept of 'entertainment'.

Even I thought it was a bit to much But I hate gruesome Films(it looked like a Film to) anyway and Never watch them. Still can't wait to play it because it looked INCREDIBLE!

The violence did seem a bit extreme to me, but then I hacked my missing deranged wife up with an axe the other day in Resi7 (first time I'd seen her in 3 years too!) so it's not so shocking like it hasn't been done before.
Bit surprised they used it for a streaming even at 4pm GMT though, I'm sure lot's of under 18's watched it too.

TLOU was promoted to be very violent even in the first one, it's a far cry from Uncharted which featured violent but mild or non-existent compared to TLOU.

ND did an amazing job shifting their tone from the Uncharted series which focused more on Adventure and exploration to TLOU's dark and gritty world.

I think Sony has an amazing lineup of diverse game catering to each genre so I don't think they should tone down something that was meant to be.

I don't think the clip tried in any shape or form to "synthesise a gameplay experience" which is what I'd have preferred to have seen rather than a cutscene from which little can be learnt.

Me after @rjejr sent me here:

Time to go back to the same "kiddy pool" article I've come from, thank you very much!

Funny, I was more bothered by the Chris Redfield (RE7) footage. The vulgarity was too much for my sensitive ears. Meanwhile, TLoU2 was heavy but didn't feel overly gratuitous.

There's always mario if people want bright and colorful games

Great trailer

@JoeBlogs True dat

This was a great trailer! Got me hyped. Anyone who says a trailer was missing context...that is the point of a trailer. I don't want to know what this scene is about or who the characters are because I want to play the game.

Also, Anita S. must be having an aneurysm over two "damsels" being rescued by the male kid. Somewhere in America she is crying and that makes this trailer even better.

It's realistic violence therefore controversy. You don't have to play this game, consumers vote with their feet. Books and Film do violence plenty. Grow up, do not censor gaming, we're adults, get over yourself, get off your high horse, play knack 2.

@adf86 Not to mention the burning of the animals, so many turtle has fallen to fire flower in mario

Yeah, it’s interesting when you think about it, murder and bodily harm is present in about 90% of video games on some level. Including eating the dead (I’m looking at you, Pac-Man) 😆.
But, the photo-realistic portrayal of the violence is what is new, as seen here with TLOU2.

personally i think neil druckmann is likely to have chosen this trailer deliberately, in order to be provocative rather than controversial - and i mean provocative in the sense that it will get people talking, discussing, speculating, etc. a lot of us were even guessing what game it was for quite a while during the live stream.. we don't see ellie or joel at all, and there's little context, so we're left with all these questions.. how does this tie in with ellie's story?, what state is society in 5 years after TLoU?, what events have caused this scene to transpire?, is this what the fireflies have become? etc. etc. TLoU was pretty brutal in places.. it just didn't have the graphical fidelity that this does.

there are way too many mature rated games on ps4/xbox.

The Last of Us as a whole has always been about what is acceptable in order to survive in a world without rules.
How its far too easy for your humanity to slip away.
That was pretty much the entirety of Joels character, he was so good at survival because he no longer felt empathy for his fellow man.
This clip does the same thing.

As far as the game goes, Im not sure I want to play it.
I didnt much like the Ellie only parts of TLOU and it doesnt make sense in my head how Ellie, a person of far less stature and strength than Joel can combat the same people Joel consistently struggled to combat.

@get2sammyb
Even if they put a warning it wouldn't have mattered. Companies put ratings on their games and list the exact content on the back of the package, store employees will even tell parents buying M rated games for young children what's in the game and people still buy it anyway. Then they'll complain when little Joey shoots somebody in the face or sees a female character in revealing clothing. I think the bottomline is in 2017, and for the last half decade, people just want to be angry about everything.

I'm not big on The Last of Us, and as such don't really have interest in the sequel. That said, I think the trailer did its job well for the intended audience. The franchise is set in an extremely violent post-apocalyptic world, so I wouldn't expect any less from a trailer.

My one complaint is that it features no gameplay at all, and gameplay is what sells me on trailers. But again, I'm not the intended audience for story-driven games like this anyway.

@hadlee73

You realize its violent when they drag the woman among the hanging bodies in the first 20 or so seconds