Revisiting The Last of Us: Part II | Sacred Symbols+, Episode 241
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- Опубликовано: 16 окт 2024
- For more than two years, the conversation surrounding Naughty Dog's PS4-exclusive The Last of Us: Part II has largely been toxic, unenjoyable, and regrettable. Yet, we here on Sacred Symbols have tried to put out constructive and worthwhile conversation around the game, specifically back in its launch year of 2020 when we (for the first and only time) did two review discussions and spoilercasts for it. With our coordinator and shopkeep Micah having recently played it for the first time, we thought it would be a great time to sit down once more and -- with renewed vigor! -- examine the game through a critical lens. And so, we present to you a third conversation dedicated to The Last of Us: Part II, our first in more than two years.
![ARGENTINA vs. BOLIVIA [6-0] | RESUMEN | ELIMINATORIAS SUDAMERICANAS | FECHA 10](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/C3wPtKNbAOA/mqdefault.jpg)
Wait hold up, Colin got a black wife?! You was already invited to the cookout, but now you invited invited. This is dope!! ✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿
So he's invited to the cookout because he's wife black huh ? & The girl is mix relax my guy
Definitely not invited to the cookout. No one invited to the cookout would ever subscribe to the Asian model minority myth, that tries to generalize bigotry & racism, as if it's the same for people of all ethnicities. As it asks false equivalences like if Asians immigrants amass so much wealth, or have these test scores,why haven't black Americans done the same. You're not cookout eligible with that no matter who you marry. Though I wish nothing but health and happiness for him and his bride to be.
Cringe af, especially since the guy supports people like Tucker Carlson and Ian Miles Cheong.
I'm waiting hoping for the day where no one makes a big deal about it cause we're all human. I love all colors a women by the way.
@@lawrencemiguel22 Her being mixed is still black my guy
If you ever need someone to just talk good shit about last of us I’m your man. I agree it’s about unconditional love. It hammered home once the flashback to Joel happened at the end.
You got manipulated bad lmao. The sequels story was garbage
@@jamespaul6315 No. You can not like it because it didn't fan service you, but it is OBJECTIVELY not a bad story. You just don't like where it went. Full stop
the last of us 2 was the only game i ever played where I stared at the screen for 20 mins after the last scene. I was totally affected by it.
yeah it was so powerful
Yeah I was affected by the terrible writing and how much Bruce and Amy must of reigned in Neil’s terrible ideas in the first one.
Its kinda sad that Colin never gets to talk about this game with someone who thinks as highly of it as he does. I can certainly relate. Great discussion non the less!
It’s just karma coming around for him purposefully raising his nose at games like god of war.
@@Mantrahiroshima He doesn't like God of War because it stole spotlight from The last of us franchise and Naughty Dog.
I'm sure there has to be plenty of videos from people who love this game, but this game is not perfect and I love that Micah actually says what's wrong with it. The fact that Colin has issues with God of War, which was a more robust, interesting, and just generally fun game, and doesn't have any issues with TLOU PT 2 being a simplistic, boring game that just rehashes the same gameplay mechanics and just adding prone is crazy to me
@@shaka_lutherking7152 To be honest I found God of war and TLOU2 equally boring.
@@shaka_lutherking7152 You sound equally bias as him and you're being a hypocrite. God of War has a lot of flaws too.
Don’t think “your character is evil because he killed people” as a trope in video games holds up. Especially when a game doesn’t give you an option to avoid everything like metal gear solid. I understand why people are inclined to do that in heavy narrative games but once you open that up then you got to start tallying up points for each character.
Joel killed people and was a bad person before the main portion of the game.
Colin I so clueless why people hate this game.
I think a problem for many when it came to character sympathy and likeability is that we have had up to seven years between the games to get attached to Joel and Ellie. They became iconic for the PlayStation brand due to the success of The Last of Us. Even if we only played the game once on PS3 or PS4, we still have a lasting impression of the game and think about the characters fondly. So when we fast forward to 2020, sympathizing with Abby's side was a very hard pill to swallow for many probably in part due to the time we have had in our lives to learn to love the characters from Part 1. To only then have one of them killed within two hours after waiting so long to see more of them, especially considering how character driven the first game was, that's tough. Not saying this is the right way to look at it, or that it makes the story poor (it does not), but it is what it is, and it's a potential and valid perspective that makes the game contentious.
I agree 100%. Also, I think that the story is controversial BECAUSE it was told in a video game, and not in other media. For one, because people PLAYED as Joel and Ellie, they inhabited the bodies of those characters, and will therefore always be biased to their point of view (this is why we got the "they did Joel dirty" narrative after Part 2 was released...it's hard to see a character you've BEEN taken apart with a golf club, although I think that was also kind of the point of that scene, putting you in Ellie's shoes and making you feel her exact emotions). But also, gaming is usually built around more black and white, good and evil, heroes and villains storytelling. You're supposed to _believe in_ your character, to see them as the protagonist. Even if they're an anti-hero, they're still generally doing things for reasons that are relatable, and so you can justify the bad things that result from their actions. It is not typical for games to make you think about how you could be the villain in someone else's story, how in real life, there is no good and bad most of the time, just people making choices that seem right to them (almost nobody commits evil actions believing that they are evil). People weren't expecting the story they got, *and they weren't ready for it.* I think it's for this reason that the overall impression of the game in the community has slowly improved since its release. As people have time to sit with it, to feel what it makes them feel and understand the purpose of the choices that the game made that were initially extremely unwelcome, they "get it" and start to view it on its own terms, rather than based on what they had come to believe a game should be. However, if this story was told first in a movie or book (or television show, as we'll get to see in a couple of years), it would be utterly uncontroversial. Writers especially are always manipulating their reader's perspective, getting them to side with a certain point of view, before showing them that things are far more complicated than they initially believed.
@@VoIcanoman agreed with the character role assumption and gray characteristics of the world. Oh yeah, that was something I forgot to mention. That was kind of the point of the scene, but it could’ve been done later imo and it would’ve been better received.
Based on how season 1 of the show went, I’m hopefully excited to see how much they are going to change with the show structurally because I agree with Chris with structure. I think simply restructuring events could do a lot. I would think some slight re-contextualizations, fleshing things out a bit differently, maybe add a couple scenes, take some out, characters… flesh out the seraphites especially (agree with Colin, their religious side was under explored and very intriguing), wlf could help this story a lot.
There are lots of cool ideas in part 2, for me the problem was some of the execution and it wasn’t told in as compelling of a way as I had hoped. It grows on me gradually, as you’ve mentioned, but I’m still relatively lukewarm on this game, despite the many amazing qualities it has.
Edit: legibility spacing
I feel like Colins' experience with the Patreon Spoilers has poisoned the well for him on this subject, often when Dustin or Chris or in this case Micah disagree with him he'll make note of their points and try to circle back to them, but when it's TLoU2 he never actually does the circle back. 30 mins in Micah lays out some disagreements on the merit for calling TLoU2 a GOAT game and instead of addressing those issues and digging into them he jumps to how incredibly they used the guitar.
Even as someone who doesn't hate the game, I feel a strong disconnect to the sheer unbridled praise that Colin heaps onto it and the sense of disbelief he seems to maintain whilst many in his own respected circle disagree with him. (I don't think there's a member of the Last Stand Team who believes it to be even close to the quality that Colin describes)
Micah did an excellent job and love having her in episodes, but it would be really interesting to see Colin have this conversation with someone who is a vocal critic of TLoU2 who isn't a member of the Last Stand Family.
He is just hardcore Naughty Dog fanboy. He overrates boring Uncharted games but downplays Tomb Raider. As for the last of us, him praising TLOU1 and TLOU2 is a meme at this point.
@@daksans6764 TLOU 1 is rightly considered one of the best games ever. He doesn’t even talk about Uncharted 4 anymore where he said it’s not on the same level as other games in the franchise and for years has said Uncharted 3 is better than 2. The idea he won’t criticize Naughty Dog is ridiculous.
@@DanV900 You're wrong. He worships Naughty Dog. He believes that TLOU remake is the best game of the year.
@@daksans6764 You clearly didn’t read my comment since I cited actual Naughty Dog games he has discussed. Calling Uncharted boring is a truly asinine take and he admitted that 4 wasn’t a great game years after its release. To worship a studio means you won’t criticize it at all. Like how long have you watched him? Oh wow, a remake of one of the best games all time is the best game of the year? That is crazy! Who would have thought? This is truly breaking news. Other than Elden Ring which he admits he is not good enough at to play, what are the other contenders that could reasonably be said to be better? It’s not Horizon: Forbidden West which he ranks over God of War: Ragnarok where that’s an insane take. It’s not Ragnarok either when its third act from a storytelling perspective is incredibly sloppy. Come on now.
@@DanV900 Colin has weird taste in games which is fine as everybody has their own taste and preferences.
As someone who didn’t have this game spoiled first time through, it really does just hit different
Same absolutely nothing was spoiled for me
1:03:18 regarding, Ellie not killing Abby I have never had a problem with it. In my mind, if she kills Abby she must also kill Lev or else the cycle will continue. And if she kills Lev, Ellie is too far gone for me. She learns the lesson Abby did at the beginning of the game.
For me personally, the game didn't do enough to make Abby sympathetic, and quickly forcing the player to control a character they revile is naturally going to turn people off. One of my favorite storytelling devices is when a villainous character slowly changes over time and becomes "good" by the end, but it usually happens gradually, and the villainous character has to do something major to endear themselves to the audience. Abby never had that moment where she won over the player, and they tried way too fast to make the player sympathize with her. I don't want to hear about her sob story right when she's killing a beloved character.
I'm not really a fan of The Walking Dead TV show, especially the awful latter seasons, but one thing I thought they got right was the characterization of Negan. He starts out doing the most horrible thing any character has done on the show (which I won't spoil here), but they slowly plant seeds here and there to make him sympathetic, and he has several heroic moments that make the audience side with him. If the writers tried to make Negan sympathetic right after he did his horrible deed, the audience would have rejected it, but they waited until enough time had passed and the audience was more willing to view him in a positive light.
My idea? Use this game to plant small seeds of Abby being sympathetic, but don't try to force her onto the player. Also, don't reveal why she killed Joel until the very end. Have Ellie confront her at the end and try to kill her, but then Ellie (and by extension the player) learns why Abby did what she did. It would be a good twist, and it would make Ellie's decision to spare her make a lot more sense. At this point, enough time would have passed between Abby's killing of Joel and the ending, allowing the player's anger to subside and for the player to be more willing to accept Abby.
We dont' get enough Micha
Metal gear was ahead of it’s time as well. That storyline was HEAVY
Its basically ‘days of our lives’ with guns
MGS is my favorite series in any medium and this game took a lot of inspiration from it imo. From the gameplay all the way to the protagonist switch out.
It wasn’t because Ellie was gay.. We knew she was lesbian because of the Left Behind DLC.. people were excited about the game once the first trailer came out. I don’t like when people try to figure out why someone would not like something.. They’ll actually tell you if you wanna know.
First time seeing Micah :) always wondered what she was like all these years! Btw I’ll never get tired of hearing TLOU2 discussion
There will never be enough The Last of Us Part 2 analysis.
Its story was shit. The end.
It hits a lot of points for discussion from in game to behind the studio ie pushing out Amy hennig crunch , their bonuses etc
@@salmark9080 Justice for Amy Henning
I’m right with you Colin. This game is genuinely great! It’s so incredibly misunderstood and tainted by the mob mentality of the gamer culture. Most of the time the people are right, but this time they were totally obtuse. They become the exact people they detest. A bunch of ungrateful snobs that judge a wonderful game on the mobs opinion. The same people who hate when people lump Trump supporters into a bunch of racists. It’s infuriating. And it’s nearly impossible to outdo the original. The fact that we got a sequel at all should be a blessing and for it to be great is a miracle.
Joel and Ellie were both misinformed at the end of TLOU . People love revising history. Neither Joel or Ellie were knew that she wouldn't survive the procedure. Joel was well within his rights. It was going to be murder. The fireflies shot first.
The only true thing that I disliked was the Santa Barbara portion. I was ready to be done.
I hate the toxicity around this game because it feels like you have to fall into either the extreme hate or love camps. Nice to here a genuine discussion about the game that isn't just about the controversy. I definitely agree with Micah about how the story just wasn't as strong as the first game and that it was definitely too long. However I still love it for doing something truly different and unexpected. Really wish I hadn't had anything spoiled as I probably would have gotten more from it.
agree wholeheartedly with micah's points. i think back fondly on the gameplay but i really didn't care for any of the story. give me a one dimensional character over these pretentiously written characters naughty dog makes
Does anyone have links to the original spoilercasts for this game for Last Stand, I haven't been able to find them on the Patreon or here on YT.
I just completed the game for the first time today, starting shortly after Christmas. I definitely need to sit with it more to provide a better summation of the overall experience. The only spoiler in knew was that Joel dies, but I did not know how or by whom. The game is a technical masterpiece in the amount of detail put into level/character design and environmental story telling. I felt like the story telling was amazing in certain moments that genuinely made me feel and think about it. However, the overall story was too long and felt disjointed. It almost felt like the game should have been split into two games. Ellie being gay or Lev being Trans did not take anything away from the game but nor did it add anything. What bothered me the most was the character model/design of Abby, specifically her arms. I find it so strange that a DEV. that excels at environmental storytelling fell completely off the mark with the design of Abby. A strong muscular woman does not have arms like Abby. The third game should be Ellie's conclusion, I would not mind playing as other characters but I do not need to see Abby or Lev again. I really enjoyed my 1st playthrough and while the TLOU2 was a better game in almost every aspect I prefer TLOU1 for the better self-contained story.
I know I'm three months late to the party on this one but Mica's sentiment of it being too long is exactly where I'm at. Felt too long to me too especially considering how dark the subject matter is and it wasn't helped by the pacing. The hard reset/wind back the clock when you switch to Abby felt like having hours and hours of progress erased and then finally reaching the farm near the end, being depressed and exhausted, like I've been dragged through the mud for 30 hours, it still wasn't done; she goes to California afterwards. By the time I really did reach the end, I was so emotionally numb that I found myself struggling to care anymore. I'm a completionist though and if I don't explore everything, it drives me nuts so that's probably why it took me so long to finish.
It's one of those games that I'm glad I played, but never want to play again.
There is a great to play the game on a second playthrough that in my opinion keeps the pace more interesting. You basically switch back and forth every few missions between Ellie and Abby with all of the flashbacks coming first and with Joel’s big slam becoming more of the games center point instead of it taking place only a few hours in.
I would love for a third game to be the adventures of Joel and Tommy, the events in which Joel was a hunter and did all the bad things we heard so much about.
After having played through the Last of Us Part 2 and having completed the game in July, I can understand why the game got as much flak as it did. It's such a shame as it started off so well and I thought that Ellie's story was quite good and had a somewhat decent build leading to the eventual encounter with Abby. Then when I played through Abby's story it was the complete opposite. There was a very clear disconnect with no build to the encounter with Ellie, poor pacing and a story that felt like it was given to a writing team that either didn't know what direction they wanted to go with story or they just couldn't be bothered doing a decent job with the story by linking it to Ellie and building towards what should have been an epic encounter. In the end I'm very dissapointed with how the game turned out.
Colin you're letting your emotions about the narrative cloud your views about it as a game you play. Micah was bang on the money about it being too long and exhausting/draining. You're just sitting there waxing philosophical about it and we get it, druckmann's your boy. If we entertain the fact that there was vitriol against it then maybe it was that they killed off a beloved character from 1 and replaced him with arguably a less compelling character. Also Dina, her baby daddy, abby these characters werent as compelling. It was also bringing identity politics into it more overtly too with that little shaved head trans asian ninja. The game was just generally bloated af. Cycle of revenge stories aren't new, you just don't watch enough films. It's just good by gamings standards which you're implying are low anyway to make the point in the first place.
As far as new characters go Owen was a fave. Someone that was too reasonable to survive in this world .
Accuse colin of letting his biases cloud his view while you call a character a “bald head trans ninja” and imply that their existence is purely for PC points… okay dude
While I love the gameplay and certain elements of TLOU2's story - namely, the flashbacks that give you a greater understanding of Joel and Ellie's relationship, as well as Joel's death and the beginning of Ellie's journey in general - but boy, overall it might be the best game I don't like ever.
The pacing really hurts the game overall if you don't get on board with Abby, which I never did. Her backstory as it relates to the first game is interesting, but I didn't find her compelling as an actual character. The other problem is that, to me, all the relationship drama on Abby's side is uninteresting and somewhat cringey, and her sidekicks in general feel generic and bland. The pacing issue is doubly compounded when you're asked to play as Abby AGAIN in Santa Barbara where the momentum really needs to be behind Ellie at that point.
The final nail for me though is how it has these writing "blips" where it does things that just betray either character motivations or general logic. There are several small examples of this dotted throughout the game, but the big one for me is how the game just totally cops out at the end. After giving up everything, following her path of revenge to its bitter conclusion - why does Ellie pull her punch and let Abby go? There's nothing throughout the rest of the game to indicate she would do that after getting so close to her goal. And the whole point of the game seems to be about how fruitless the pursuit of revenge is - so when Ellie doesn't follow through on that revenge, the point of her losing her family, and her connection to Joel through the guitar, feels lessened. I feel like the ending was set up perfectly: Ellie kills Abby in a brutal act of vengeance, and is left empty and with nothing meaningful in her life as a result. Lev witnesses this, and sets on his own path of revenge, thus displaying the pointless, cyclical nature of violence, and potentially setting up a compelling final chapter for The Last of Us. But it felt like the writers pulled their punch, which leaves the ending feeling unsatisfying, and reduces the meaning of the punishments doled out to Ellie.
That ending is really what left me feeling sour at the end of the day. The game has a lot that's very compelling, and in parts can be brilliant, like the first game - and the gameplay is ALWAYS fantastic. But for something that's already too long, and suffers from significant pacing and writing issues, the missed landing really stings.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and I'm happy so many people loved the game. I hope I like the third one more!
Very well said! I hate the game so much, but the flashbacks were everything for me
I found the gameplay really stale and repetitive, while the story had me on the edge of my seat.
Nicely said 👌🏼
Joel's death was so brutal that it immediately instilled rage in me towards Abby. It drove me to play as Ellie in a particular manner. Savagely. Then the conundrum of having to question that feeling later in and then eventually nit want Abby to die. Holy shit the emotional Rollercoaster that game out me through has never even touched again by any other fame before or since. Masterpiece.
Micah nails how I feel too!
Ugh sorry one more, great conversation.
In the first game, I had almost zero confidence that the fire flies could create a vaccine from Ellie, this is why I think Joel was correct.
What gives people confidence the fire flies, this gang, could engineer a vaccine for this thing??
I think TLoU2 has a very disappointing story. Yes, gameplay is tight and the graphics are on point, but none of that matters when you become uninterested halfway through the game
I don't think people will revise how they feel about TLoU2. It's received some legitimate criticism.
20:35 Colin rolling back his "best game since..." list is insane how I called all of them. New watcher but that's the exact order I had. TLOU1 took the mantle for me, from Bioshock and before that it was RE4.
I would argue RDR2 has a more sophisticated story and has better writing than TLOU2. Nothing will top RDR2 for me personally for probably some time. I was so mad when GOW got the GOTY award in 2018.
Same I felt like RDR2 really pushed the bar in allot ways, Immersion, Detail, NPC interaction and reaction, Horse riding and story telling.
This game is god awful but I love the discussion regardless. Great stuff.
I agree with a lot of what Micah said. Liked the first one better but didn’t hate it like a lot of other people
As someone who floats around a lot of the "anti-woke" circles, for lack of a better term, I think they were completely wrong about this game. It wasn't the story I wanted, and it made me go down certain paths emotionally that I didn’t want to take, but unlike apparently a lot of people, I'm not against or afraid of stories plumbing some of the messy and unpleasant depths of the human condition provided that it's done in a nuanced and respectful manner. This game blew me away with the amount of depth in its characters and story. I went in expecting not to like it very much, but I'm very glad I tried to keep an open mind, because this stuck with me long after I finished it in a good way. It was almost a cathartic experience like maybe nothing else I've ever played. The game is about the futility of revenge yes, but it's so much more than that, and it drives me nuts when people knock the game by saying that the game is just about how "revenge bad." If anything, I think that "revenge bad" is almost a given that it's only implicitly explored as a means to delve into other, more complex ideas. It almost assumes that point. While I agree that making the player take control of Abby was an exercise in empathy, I don't think that seeing things from her perspective in contrast to Ellie's was the entire point either because it in no way tries to make you believe that what Abby did to Joel was a good thing. It tries to make you feel for her, but it doesn't try to change how you might feel about her actions against Joel since she was very cleanly only given the opportunity to murder him in the first place because Joel did a merciful act of good will towards her that saved her life. In fact, her actions and obsessive mindset pretty much ruined all of her relationships, and the story goes out of its way to tell us that she didn't get the closure she was looking for. Her unusually buff amd toned physique was a physical representation of her single-minded obsession that kind of ruined her and turned her into something she probably didn't recognize in the mirror. I completely agree that it's about becoming more like what you hate, but it's also about dealing with loss, recovering from trauma, the dark side of love, how going to those dark places can taint the soul and sever the memory of those we love and our connection with those still here, the petty and devouring self-destructiveness of tribalistic polarization, and learning to look past those distinctions to recognize our common, flawed, but beautiful humanity under the surface (and probably more that I missed or don't remember or didn't understand). I loved the part of the conversation where you doscussed how people glossed over Joel's actions because he's "our guy." That's a huge part of the story, confronting tribal identification, othering, and seeing other individual human beings past our tribal distinctions. I feel like I kind of already went on some of that emotional journey already, so I was kind of already in the place of understanding everyone involved. I often found myself thinking "I don't like it, and I don't agree with it, but I get it." I felt that way about both Abby and Ellie's sides of the story. I felt myself not wanting to see them go down the roads they went down, but understanding why they felt the way they did and committing to see their journey through to the end of the line. Abby's story is about her finding healing. Where we see Ellie at the end of the game is where Abby was when she got back to Seattle, and we have to wonder if Ellie will grow in the same way that Abby did (and I think the flashback and her walking away from the guitar is actually a hopeful sign, I think). This all ties into another, largely unrecognized reason for why the reaction to TLOU2 was so intense. I think it was a great but thenatically dark and confrontational game that simply came out at the absolute worst possible time. I think there would still be people who reflexively hated it, but I think the conversation would have been noticeably different and less toxic if it had released in autumn 2019 like it was originally supposed to instead of in the middle of summer 2020 amidst all of the complicated and anxiety, fear, and anger inducing things that were happening in the months surrounding the game's release. I think we would have been able to have a much more nuanced conversation at the very least. It came out at a time when tons of people were already very psychologically riled up and locked into their tribal positions at the peak of heightened social anxiety with the pandemic, the lockdowns, the election season, economic uncertainty, and the violent riots. To be fair, many of these issues haven't entirely disappeared since then, but they were at a particularly heightened fever pitch. The social climate was like a raw nerve because so many people had no way to escape it because so many people were forced to be online to publicly exist and interact wjth others. Then here comes this controversial video game, a sequel to one of the most beloved and widely acclaimed video games of all time, and not only does it adamantly refuse to be the kind of escapism people desperately wanted at the time in order to stay on baseline (hence the success of fun games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Doom: Eternal, and Ghost of Tsushima), but it kills off a beloved character in a very personal, visceral, and traumatic manner, makes you play as his murderer, and tells the audience to go deep, deep down into some of the dark and ugly depths of human nature with themes that directly confronted many of the social problems we see today regarding the excesses of tribalism and polarization. In some respects, it was the story that many people needed to experience and work through emotionally, but they weren't in the head space to be receptive to it at that moment in time. If the world outside our window wasn't already so oppressively dark and depressing when the game released, people would have probably had a higher tolerance for the places this story was trying to go with its themes and characters. Unfortunately, I think some of how ND responded to the leaks and the negative reception maybe didn't endear them to the audiences who were against hearing what the game had to say (and I think they fed into some of the real life tribalism and polarization that their game was implicitly denouncing). I definitely have some faults with it in spite of my overall praise. I think the original is a tighter experience, but I give extra credit to anyone that swings for the fences even if it doesn't all land. I get what Druckmann was going for in terms of dramatic effect, but I think that cutting from the peak of tension when Ellie and Abby meet again in the theater to going back in time from Abby's perspective only to have to rebuild that tension all over again was a mistake. It grinds the pacing to a screeching halt, and it provided the people who were on the fencs about the experience a good excuse to bail. By the time we got to Santa Barbara, although I was interested to see how things wrapped up and believe that the final part was indeed necessary to the story, I was mentally and emotionally exhausted, and I think a slight restructuring of the narrative would have alieviated that feeling. If they trimmed some of the fat and went back and forth between Ellie and Abby's perspectives on each of the three or four days in Seattle, and then finishing the story as we saw it after Abby lets Ellie and Dinah live, I think it would have felt less long, it would have maintained consistent tension in the buildup to their showdown in the theater, and it would have given the skeptical audience more incentive to power through the Abby segments to get back to more Ellie (but what do I know, I'm just some shmuck on the internet who isn't nearly as talented or practiced in my storytelling as Neil Druckmann, so take it for wbat it's worth). As much of an improvement as the gameplay was (I loved it), they really should have done more with the rope hook. Either there should have been opportunities to use it in creative ways in moment-to-moment gameplay, or there needed to be more than just a few puzzles that actually required it. It's a cool addition that mostly felt tacked on, and I don't know why considering Uncharted 4 used its own grappling hook to such good effect. I remember it being so underutilized that I actually had to remember it was in my toolset when trying to figure out certain puzzles. Beyond that, it's a great game that greatly moved me and was a thoroughly compelling gameplay experience, and I fully intend to replay it again for the first time since launch very shortly. Part 2 does demand a part 3 more than the original demanded a sequel. Since it is Ellie's story, I do hope it primarily follows wherever she goes next. I'd be open to having another new playable character or maybe even have thematically relevant flashback segments where you play as a younger Joel trying to survive with Tommy and seeing how they met the Fireflies. If they do show the regrouped Fireflies, i do hope we see what becomes of Abbie and Lev, regardless of their importance to the larger story.
Dude... did you expect anyone to actually read your long ass post?smh
@@jasonbower7763 dude... low IQ much? smh
Not sure how many will admit this, but I just never played the game and never will. For me, a sequel was unwarranted. Not everything needs a sequel or a prequel - just leave things alone. I will also admit, the massive egos and approaches by Druckman and Baker during this whole debacle has left a sour taste in my mouth with ND.
Druckmann, I can understand you having an issue with. I don't think it's a big one, but I get it.
What did Baker do?
I just want to point something out. One of the many things people were upset about was that they "made Joel dumb". They said Joel Survived 20+ years in the apocalypse and he would never blindly follow a stranger to their people which is what led him to getting killed. But if you remember in Part 1, when Joel met Henry, Joel agreed to follow him to the radio tower to meet up with his people.
I managed to avoid the story spoilers leading up to the game's release. Only watched a really short clip of Ellie in the theater with the controls for guitar playing.
Also, in regards to the assets, every space seems to have its own story even with some repetitiveness throughout the game's world.
Micah gets it!! The way she explained the flaws and direction of this game is what makes this game not as good as people make it out to be. My sister said it best. This has to be a video game first. New mechanics and story aside. What was really “new” as a Game?
P.s. prop to Micah for collecting physical games, immersing yourself in games with no distractions, & great taste in games!!
It was a videogame first, this is a reality, you may not have liked it, but thats subjective, like everything you or I like. Its main purpose was to continue a story told which it also did. I would be shocked if the majority didnt think it succeeded on both fronts, the people complaining about it i think were blown out of proportion and also not even based on factual things like abbey being trans. Probably a bunch of it from 120lb dudes embarrassed that a fake, female, collection of pixels, had bigger muscles than they do
Micah is the true gamerbro
Most positive reviews like this do the same thing and praise what the game tried to explore but ignore the flaws and contrivance it ran into while trying to pull it off. This combined with the deceptive marketing unfortunately made the game a dud for me, despite genuinely respecting the risks the game took.
I will never forget when the moment when they let you play as ellie again. I hated it. It was so obvious they wanted you to think 'why are we still doing this'. Maybe the most disappointing and shallow game I've ever played, couldn't believe it.
Naughty dog is one of the best gaming studios in the world. Their games and story telling are top notch. TLOU 2 is another great example. There is a but here. I didn’t have fun playing it. I felt it was too long and I didn’t like the story. I see why they did it creatively. Great writing but just not for me. I didn’t have anything spoiled for me. I had some bad luck with game bugs. Severe ones actually. I was clipping thru the world in the water parts. You know where you can see emptiness under you. Also had to replay a section a few times because I couldn’t advance from an area. Like I was locked in that section. I almost restarted the game from the beginning. I did a lot of switching of the accessibility options cuz I have a young daughter around and I didn’t want her to see some graphic stuff. I assumed that’s what caused the game bugs. That being said if I have to show anyone that doesn’t game what video games can be. I always play the intro to TLOU part one. You’ll know to what part in the beginning. They are always kicked in the chest with emotions. That was amazing writing!
I wouldnt call joels action in the first game selfish, it comes back to the; if 4 people need organs is it fair to kill someone to give them 4? well then we lost humanity. and if we lose humanity we might as well lose us or civilization itself. even rome during the ancient era accused their enemies, carthage, of sacrificing children. a nation (rome) who had slavery, raped, pillaged and burned cities to the ground- was too disgusted by that accusation.
Thats How I always looked at it.
I know I'm super late on this, but just ran across it. The issue for those that are sane and not drawn into woke or anti woke nonsense, was the writing. Joel and Tommy did not act like the same characters from the first game. While I'm all for growth and yes, things and people change as time goes on, this was a dramatic turn for them as characters and we didn't spend enough time with them to understand who they had become.
All of the new characters were bland, not worthy of sympathy, and the writing, not the spoilers, were to blame for that. The editing of playing 12 hours and then basically starting over with Abby was maddening and unnecessary. Nothing was going to make her sympathetic to lovers of the first game.
I happily Plat'd the game back when it came out. To this day, I still think it is one of the best looking games available. I find myself "in the middle" when being critical of the game. The story really worked for me, I found it genuine and compelling. The gameplay, however, got REALLY stale for me. A lot of people say the gameplay is revolutionary, that it's the best gameplay since MGS V, and I just don't agree. For me, it felt largely like the same encounter over and over and over and over and over and over.
Same. I quit after 3 hours. Same old loot useless shit and clear room of people. Then clear room of zombies. Then loot. Then walk and hear lots of dialogue. Repeat.
I love TLOU because of the story. I dislike TLOU 2 because of the story. Sweet and short.
Agreed TLOU2 was an absolute miserable game. Disjointed narrative experience too. What were they thinking?
Great discussion! The more you talked about the world building and side story possibilities. My guess is the Factions MP will be side stories that somehow tie back to the main TLOU story/pt 3 Ellie or revival of Firerflies).
The thing I always found odd around the discussion around The Last of Us Part II, was the complete 180 the internet seemed to do on Joel's death. In 2016, the loudest buzz seemed to be "I hope Ellie finds out and kills Joel" and 4 years later, the loudest buzz was "how dare they kill Joel". That buzz may have been coming from different groups, but it still seems an odd contrast.
I personally loved the game, but felt it was about 5 hours too long and the end drug on a bit. I don't like it as much as Part I though. I just feel Part I has more memorable individual moments.
Gameplay was undeniably better in Part II though
Great to see Micah play this game, and happy to see Colin talk about the issues surrounding the game. I do agree that the toxicity on 'both sides' of this game is nauseating, from the loud and incorrect 'anti-woke' crowd blindly hating on the character themes, to the 'woke' crowd holding this game on an impossible pedestal and chastising anyone that dare criticize it as being bigoted.
I truly thought this game was a slam dunk in presentation, damn near perfect for about 70% of it. But I feel that it lacked restraint and didn't know when to stop, literally. I felt like Abbey's storyline could've been more seamlessly woven into the progress of the story, perhaps side-by-side with Ellie's missions, so that you progress each day from each perspective, until the final intense showdown at the end. The leaks did ruin this game too, and the conversation around it has drowned it as well.
Last of us 2 was unlike any other game I've played before or since, it stands alone. Colin is right, the attention to detail is objectively remarkable.
Yeah all that dumpster pushing is fantastic
Lmaooo my dawg Colin just rolled out of bed fr
Even without having it spoiled for me I found the game to be a divided experience. Grueling and resonant at the right moments, even down right transformative at times, but part 2 also felt dragged out to a fault.
This game is so special and I’m so happy to give this a listen. I just recently replayed these two games with my girlfriend and it was such an amazing experience to relive these two games again!
The story was a load of garbage. It was like if John Wick killed hundreds of people in revenge of killing his puppy and stealing his car. Half way through the game you play as the Russian puppy killer. Then the director says the story is too complicated for you because you didn’t want to play as a puppy killer. At the end of the game John Wick forgives the mob boss but has everything taken away from John Wick.
you have the media literacy of a child
I very much disliked The Last Of Us Part 2, but it had absolutely zero to do with anything that could be considered "woke". I simply thought the story was both poorly written and above all, terribly paced. There are at least 5 major moments from Part 1 that effected me some way, and I can take the lesser of those 5 things and not one moment of Part 2 compares to it.
The violence in this game really got into my head , now I'm all for it but there was just something deep and sinister about murdering people so up close and personal that really made me feel uncomfortable in a way I didn't like but didn't hate either. It's a testament to how detailed this experience really is. I was legit drained in a way a game has never made me feel before.
My problem with TLOU2 is that they turned the characters that I loved in tlou1 into villains.
I did not enjoy Abby, and they way the game tried to force you to like her. Production wise and gameplay wise it was amazing. But I found the story and the endings particularly morose and depressing.
The first game was a heartwarming story in a depressing environment. This game was just depressing.
I had no issues with Ellie being gay and I found the trans character one of the highlights of the game.
@@maxxyian2yt243 I get it and I can deal with an anti-hero. But Joel was already one in the first game. If this game was an anthology entry with brand new characters I would dig it more. To take characters that people love and drag them through the mud and say if you don't like it you're the problem is not my kind of entertainment
@@wingedlion17 - I feel exactly like you do. I despised and resented Abby and with the way Naughty Dog handled criticism it ultimately just soured my experience. Like you said it's still an impressive game when it comes to every other aspect but both it and Naughty Dog are kinda tainted to me now especially after they admitted they have a leftist agenda. The unnecessary full priced remake didn't help matters either so i'm personally just disappointed and burnt out with TLOU as a whole unfortunately.
The outrage and discussion around TLOU2 is a testament to how toxic the overall gaming community has become.
Let's be real, most of the anger and criticism about this game comes from a certain group of people - the "anti-woke" crowd. These people are a large portion of the overall gaming community.
And if we break this down further, these people are just mad at the game being centered around a gay white woman and a body builder white woman, and with a secondary plot involving a trans male. People can deflect and say its about Joel's death and how it was handled, but thats entirely disingenuous.
So, does this mean that we can't have stories involving different types of people, otherwise its "woke"? We can only have stories of games where we have straight white male characters?
What does that suggest at the end of the day? This means being anti-woke is just a catch-all ideology for racism, sexism, homo/transphobia, xenophobia, etc all in one.
Colin needs to wake up and realize what is really going on when people complain about things being woke. And you can't be pro-free speech and then cry woke when a game is designed to tell a story of someone from a marginalized community, but that is an entirely different discussion. That's the moral dilemma of modern conservatives - and a big reason why people who are conservative, dont like publicly identifying as conservative in real life.
I'm mostly conservative with some liberal beliefs, but I can never get behind this whole anti-woke ideology, because I know that at the end of the day, if they were ever going to make a movie / game / book based on my life, these same people would scream that its "woke" and refuse to watch it.
side note, semi-related - Colin can call the FF question race baiting, which it very likely was, but there is a real issue behind that matter and that is how FF has historically represented black folk. And the answer they provided was completely ignorant for a global organization. Its contradictory to say black and brown folk dont belong in a world based around Medieval European Fantasy, and then relax these arbitrary rules to include outrageous anime tropes and bullshit. People can make whatever game they want, but dont say one thing is not realistic, but something way more outrageous is realistic. Just another example of how you can pander to white gamers and Japanese gamers, and no one will care, but the minute you include black or brown folk, it suddenly becomes "woke" and problematic for this certain vocal group of conservatives. I remember Days Gone was so unapologetically pandering to middle white America with literally everything about that game, and of course not a single person had an issue with it. I pray we can reach a point where we can tell stories of different people from different communities and no one has an issue.
damn. Micah's comments on 41:37 are spot on. I feel like that's why I was ok with being Abby the second half of the game. Joel is an asshole or as much of an asshole as Abby. But overall I kinda agree with Colin. On a technical level this game is light years better than anything out there. Storywise I think there are things that maybe can keep up but other than that it's on a league of it's own.
I don't think the game gets enough credit for the gameplay and the performances.
The sad thing is that the script is flawed, but not much in terms of character writing or dialogue. Tommy is in the game for all of 5 minutes but you really get the sense of him throughout the story, for example.
The flaws come in when it comes to payoff. I don't understand why Ellie is affected by violence against the people that actually made the effort to find and kill Joel, but completely unaffected by the scores and scores of practically unrelated people she mows down on the way to them. That scene after Nora really didn't hit the note it was going for. The brutality of what Ellie did to her is levels below what she and others have done in gameplay and cutscenes, and Nora isn't a known quantity to the audience. We can't possibly care one way or another, because we don't know her.
Abby's story is more fundamentally flawed. I think the gameplay scenarios are cool, and I like that it's made clear that Abby is a pretty selfish person, but there's no real "point" to it. Nothing she or the audience cares about is presented or resolved.
I wish Colin wouldn't dominate the conversation so much. Micah's take was very interesting, I wish I could've heard more of it.
Ah yes one of the worst games I have ever played.
Ellie being into women even makes sense from a story telling point of view.
Joel choosing to save her life rather than humanity potentially, that is a central theme throughout both games. If Ellie was dating men, that would lessen or at least complicate the impact of the decision, because then it would have to be established whether Ellies immunity can be inherited.
It would take away from the pureness of the drama, and hence lessen the anger she feels against him, it would change the porch, everything. Or they would have had to create a new part of the story where they detail her immunity and how it can not be inherited.
But since this story is about the relationship drama and not about bio science fiction, making Ellie gay is a reasonable story decision.
The problem is, if the game ended with Ellie killing Abby in the end, but everything else that happens is the same. The game would have been better.
Empire Strikes Back was also hated at first.
This game was ruined by being made.
TLOU2 is about as deep as an episode of Vampire Diaries. The worst Call of Duty has a better narrative. Colin was probably high when he played it thought it was art 😂
He really said the greatest game ever? Dude your insane.
You're *
I think what Micah said about the game having too many threads is a pretty accurate assessment. I feel like because of this certain characters and relationships weren’t fleshed out enough for me to care, especially in regards to most of Abby’s friend group.
Its a well produced game. But that does not make it a good game. If you put this game on PS2, would it still be good? If the answer is no, than this game was never good in the first place. 😅
To me, it's ovbious that the 3rd game will have Ellie complete her purpose and deliver the cure. Abby & Ellie cross paths and are forced to team up along the way in a Goku/Vegeta style rivalry up against a final boss faction, probably the Fireflies.
The perfect scenario about Abby in my opinion is that she's pretty much butch from pulp fiction. Like we get to know Vincent right and how he is as a character and how charismatic and vibey he is through the majority of the movie get you do encounter that moment where Vincent Butch meet each other and there is this level of turquoise. And what made it even crazier when you get butches story. And you empathize with this character and you're wondering who is this person or group of people trying to kill butch you then realize that it's Marcel Wallace and Vincent who happens to be his hitman. And what happens, butch kills Vincent. It's one of those moments where it's kind of polarizing in an aspect for one character to another, but it was smartly done even in that film to have it in with Vincent and Jules leaving the restaurant even though we all know the fate of Vincent
I wish I didn't wait so long to play this. I only held off because I got it spoiled for me. I finally did it and was blown away completely.
For me, TLOU2s narrative is a slow burn that doesnt want to be a slow burn. Rather than get us attached to abby and her struggle and desire for revenge as ellie and Joel's relationship falls apart, we instantly start with his death, and then there isnt any conflicting about hunting abby.
For me (not to plug but I did a whole video on this) the narrative structure is what torpedoed the narrative and it hasnt grown in my estimation since. However, I think the gameplay is great. When I played it like it was Doom Eternal and ignored the story for my grounded+ playthrough I thought it was great. But the story structure undercuts pretty much everything it goes for thematically, imo.
Red Dead 2 probably stands above as one of the best narratives I've ever experienced in a game. The death of the vanderlier gang is slow and tragic as Arthur tires to right any wrongs, then the ending epilogue with John. Massive but memorable, especially doing the side quests with the camp characters.
Nakeyjakey said it best - "In TLoU I became Joel. In Left Behind I became Ellie. In TLoU2 I became disappointed."
In a very similar position to Micah, put this game off due to all the leaks, but absolutely loved it like Colin.
That said it left me broken and slightly depressed, it’s horrific, and I can understand why some, bigots aside, don’t like it for valid reasons.
But wow, it took me places no other game has gone and for that reason alone it is a masterpiece to me that that shows the potential of gaming.
Been on a deep dive since playing it, can’t get it out of my head, and was great to have this discussion after the 4 hours of Chris being negative. This feels far more balanced.
Whenever someone dislikes something now people say, " Ooo, it must be because there are gay characters in it." I'm sure that there are people out there who are ignorant. However, not all of us dislike it for that reason. Imagine if the new God of war just flat out killed Kratos just to make a "strong impact." Everyone would hate it. It's not wrong to want your favorite characters to live. To at least get to play as them for maybe half of the game.
I've beaten this game 3 times. To me it's not better than part 1, but I can't deny I like Abby & Lev's dynamic & story.
Nope sorry poor take Colin. To kill the main character that most fans loved in a cheap sadistic way using deceitful marketing tactics is distasteful at best and unforgivable at worst. Screw that game fr
That just doesn't make any sense unless you like stories with no stakes and marketing that gives everything away.
TLOU2 is still the best single player experience I've ever had, I loved the first game.. But this game blows it out of the water for me. I just don't know what people were expecting when they say they hated it.. The last thing I would of wanted was another Joel and Ellie adventure, we've already had that.. The vast majority of the hate comes from people just going along with the streamers/youtubers opinion that they like or that they jumped on the bandwagon due to politics.. which this game has none of.
I LOVED TLOU, I HATE TLOU2.......it is a technical masterpiece, no doubt, but I actively hated playing it......and it just wouldnt end.....I could write a series of essays about what makes me hate it narratively, but I just touch on one early bit......Abbey not killling Ellie and Tommy after she kills Joel......what the hell...." the Chances anyone will be so upset and spend years seeking revenge, putting friends in danger, halting life until this done.......total fixation.....nah, nobody would EVER do that......".......
Modern woke politics feel completely, ridiculously out of place in a post-apocalyptic game. Why does a visibly pregnant woman leave the safety of the stadium? That would NEVER happen in the post-apocalypse
and you know this because you’ve been there?
@@JigglypuffTutorials well pregnancy is kinda difficult, i guess you’re very entitled and modern and don’t know that
On a technical level, it's a masterpiece of a game, the best part for me was the gameplay encounters on Grounded, I almost never feel that tense/powerless against enemies in games and at the same time, satisfied to be able to work my way around them. That being said, even though the story is well written and realized, I don't care for it, as it's not the story I would've liked to experience.
I loved TLOU on PS1 but have never felt any desire to go back to it or to spend any more time in that world. And the conversation around part 2 just put me off even more.
The theme of “violence is bad” is getting extremely tiresome from current AAA games.
I don't get why some people keep trying to pretend this isn't one of the worst games of all time.
Last of us 2 game length was perfect for me. I felt like I got my money’s worth. I feel like short games rob me of what I spent.
I typically agree as well. What an amazingly beautiful and depressing game it was.
I will never warm to Abby and ill die on this hill. Great discussion. PS game should have ended on the farm.
Hot Take: TLOU II should've just been a new story with Abby. During the first middle segment when you first start playing as her when her jeep is being attacked by the cultists on horseback I was like "Yo this is sick, why couldn't it have just been this??"
I wish Abby and her cohorts would have been introduced in some kind of spin-off before TLoU 2. Ending on the cliff hanger about Abby's father, leaving you to ponder more on if Joel is really who you should be rooting for. Because without that context pre Joel's death I just didn't care about Abby and gang regardless how long you are in Abby's shoes I just wanted them all dead (apart from pregnant lady).
And maybe some context on how Joel and Tommy have become so soft and so trusting because there's no way in the first game they would be so trusting to lower the guard and give names straight away to a group of strangers.
I do sympathize more with Ellie because 1 Joel didn’t beat and basically torture Abby’s dad and 2 Abby didnt watch her dad get beaten to death
This game is fantastic, and naughty dog is definitely unrivaled. I think my issue with this game is that they expect us and try to force us to fall in love with Abby AFTER we see her commit the horrible crime of killing a character we fell in love with over an entire game. Imagine if Part 1 began with Joel killing everyone in that hospital and saying screw the vaccine. We would hate him just like we hate Abby. I think its obvious that we know what Joel did was wrong, but the difference to me is that naughty dog did the work to get us to the point of saying "Yes, Joel did a real bad thing, but I would have done it too" I think if we just reworked the timeline of how part 2s story is told, it could be more impactful. Show us the falling out of Ellie and Joel first. Maybe make us play as Abby from the beginning and then we get the reveal that Ellie is the one killing all her friends. I am not a writer, but I think it could have been better executed from a story perspective. I agree with Colin that the quality in every other aspect in this game is unreal.
The meaning of the game is if you kill someone, leave no survivors lol.
You know you've lost the argument when you start your argument with the idea that people who disagree with you must be racist, sexist or whatever. Perhaps people don't like the game because it isn't good. Just because you like it doesn't mean it's good.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's not good, see how that works?
@@sykes13ify that's was the exact point I just made
Colin get your fiance a mic my dude!
Wow this is fantastic timing! Literally 40mins ago I just completed my grounded/permadeath play through 😊
Decided to pay this game recently on an alternate account (due to me not being interested in paying multiple times for the trophies), and while the gameplay, environments, levels, graphics, and so on are so good... This game is just held back so much by really bad writing to the point that it actually affects gameplay. Midway through the game you reach a theater and it just really becomes a mess of pointless scenarios that keeps you circling back to the theater over and over again, and bafflingly useless characters that introduce themselves into your story only to waste your time in the story, where I'm constantly like "what are you doing, why are you here?". The typical "woke" topics people bring up about this game (Abby, etc) are also a case of bad writing in my opinion, but it's only when playing the game did I realize just how small the number of those frequently brought up topics are and how many more completely unrelated moments of bad writing there are in the game, it's like death of a thousand cuts with some bright spots in-between (such as the flashback sequences). This game just boggles my mind at how much worse the writing is compared to the first game, it honestly baffles me. It's like two different people were writing the story and they merged it together at the very end and this is the result
It's so frustrating, because before the theater section there were some speed bumps in the story but it was starting to get so good and on track to be something focused and great, it's like aghh, how did they manage to break it apart so much - what happened? I really want to really like it, I gave it a chance, but I remember Druckmann saying they wouldn't make a sequel unless it makes sense, and none of this made any sense to me
The game definitely isn't poorly written lmao.
@@Mr8T1 it’s incredibly poorly written. Glad you enjoyed it but the narrative is a mess objectively, especially in comparison to the first which was a narrative masterpiece.
@@Mantrahiroshima the first game is definitely "cleaner", structurally. It's structured in a linear fashion across four seasons.
TLOUII plays with non-linearity plus perspective and it's much more nuanced and complex. I don't think it's poorly written though. For me that means tropey / cliche ridden dialogue or lines / actions that don't fit the motivations or just bad lines that feels forced and unnatural in general. It really doesn't have any of that. It's coherent, doesn't feel coincidental and the performances are sublime.
The game definitely challenges you. And some people don't want that from their video game story. I get it. But on its objective merits, it's excellent storytelling.