Topic: The Last of Us 2 (Coming June 19th)

[Sin Agog]

There b'aint be no thread for this and a new trailer just dropped so now there be a thread.  https://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-last-of-us-2-new-trailer-shows-off-gruesome-vi/1100-6476913/

I hope they devote at least a third of this game to the fate of the giraffes.  DLC at least?

[brat-sampson]

Warning to some that open mega-spoilers for this have been sweeping across the internet like a hurricane after a load of footage and details were hacked from the devs. I am so far spoiler free, but want to acknowledge their existence and suggest that if there are board members who would like to discuss the game with that extra knowledge that they make a separate thread for doing so, just to ensure this one doesn't get bogged down with invisible/black texted conversations for the next however many weeks.

It's hard to say I'm looking forward to this exactly, just because it looks utterly harrowing and painful. I'll definitely be playing it though.

[Nobody Soup]

It's hard to say I'm looking forward to this exactly, just because it looks utterly harrowing and painful. I'll definitely be playing it though.

I feel exactly the same. I feel obliged to play this from the get go, the first one is imo the best zombie anything in any medium, but I had to work my way through it taking breaks due to build up of anxiety it was causing me. This looks several thousand times worse.

[wooders1978]

I wonder if it will turn out that the real enemy is humans!

[AsparagusTrevor]

I wonder if it will turn out that the real enemy is humans!

Who's the real parasitic-fungal-infected zombie? Is it the parasitic-fungal-infected zombie, or is it the businessman, in his suit and tie?

[Bazooka]

I'm undecided on whether to pre-order this, I've just completed TLOU finally, and whilst I thought the characters, story and general mood was great, I had a few issues with the gameplay.  I thinking coming to this after playing all of the Uncharted games it wasn't fresh, and there were some good sections but mostly boring areas of see loads of barricades and get prepared for another boring section of slow stealth and awkward shooting, and the last couple of hours were a real chore to get through.

I'd been spoiled by better stealth,survival horror and 3rd person action shooters before playing it, but the sequel is a PS4 game so if Uncharted 4 is anything to go by the gameplay is going to be much improved.

[bgmnts]

If it had actual mushroom monsters, i'd buy a ps4.

[Zetetic]

Looking good that this is going to be widely embarrassing.

[peanutbutter]

Looks like the kind of thing almost everyone is gonna love with minor caveats but as time goes on those caveats are gonna seem more and more like gigantic issues. Reviews are absolutely unanimous so far

Regardless though, if you really enjoy the initial experience does that matter? Only if you are heavily invested in the narrative of it being a groundbreaking work of art

[brat-sampson]

One interesting issue is that almost all the outlets that I've seen with negative reactions (Waypoint, Polygon, SkillUp, Kotaku...) are ones that don't provide scores. It's definitely done gangbusters with most reviewers, but I do have concerns along with these dissenting opinions that it's all just gonna be grim for grim's sake, and a bunch of making the player feel awful for doing things the game literally requires them to do. You can see that just as a expertly-told dark story of Game of Thrones style unpleasantness, with you just along for the ride, or you could find it offensive/frustrating.

[Zetetic]

All the enemies have names, like humans do, which makes you think.

[popcorn]

I'm simultaneously skeptical that LOU2 will be a disaster and that it will be a triumph. The pre-release argument seems to be a war between 1) backlashing creatives with Patreon accounts who only want games to be cute things on Switch and 2) po-faced ponderers of ludonarrative dissonance who've read far fewer books than they'd like you to know. I typically lean closer to the second camp but we'll see.

Regarding all this talk of the game forcing you to do things to make some sort of point: I don't accept all this dismissive talk as if the contradiction cannot itself be effective or interesting... You know, meta. BioShock toyed with this concept in having the twist be that you're being mindcontrolled the whole time - wow what a statement on the lack of choice in AAA nonlinear game design - only to miss their own metaphor by having you beat the chap to death in an non-interactive cut scene. I hate BioShock.

I also am not sure that forcing players to do unpleasant things is as necessarily as hypocritical, or no more a creative dead end, than "forcing" viewers to watch unpleasant things in films. You're not necessarily supposed to enjoy it, or take gratification in it. Even though games are obviously interactive, in both cases, the alternative is only to disengage.

LOU1 was nothing if not brilliantly written so I'm fascinated to see what they try.

All the enemies have names, like humans do, which makes you think.

First I've heard of this (I haven't been reading articles or whatever) and I'm not automatically cynical about it. First thing I'd like to know is how you find out they have names. Second thing I'd like to know is how that changes anything. All the soldiers in MGS2 had names too - you got them from their dogtags. Not that it changed my perception of them as units of gameplay, but then, you know.

[Sheffield Wednesday]

All is know is that I am already bored of people's opinions

[popcorn]

All is know is that I am already bored of people's opinions

Unsubscribe, QUICK

[Zetetic]

I don't accept all this dismissive talk as if the contradiction cannot itself be effective or interesting..

Sure. The Line or Tyranny are maybe better examples than Bioshock, in so far as they were more clearly aiming at being about something other than themselves, and don't make players' sense of agency go all over the shop in the same way.

(The Line doesn't provide a huge amount in the way of choices, but the rest of the game supports its linearity and the obvious necessity of certain actions to progress. By contrast dealing with Ryan in Bioshock can't really be made to work, whether you lock the player in an office with him until it's done or do it in a cutscene.)

I think the problem that a fair few people have with it is that: We've got the general idea that games can make the player play out unpleasant things in service of a story, and the story here seems to "sometimes bad situations mean you've got to do bad things". Which is fine as far it goes[1], but seems a bit much to spend tens of millions on and then be very pleased with yourself about.

You're not necessarily supposed to enjoy it, or take gratification in it.

Hmm. The Line certainly plays to its strengths by becoming a miserable slog towards the end. If TLoU2 is absolutely awful to play, I'll hail it as a masterpiece.

First thing I'd like to know is how you find out they have names.

Eulogies.

"Should we gather for whiskey and cigars tonight? Oh no my doggo, Frances! Got something, we'll look in to it." - that sort of thing.

1.	At least if you don't think too hard about it.

[Zetetic]

Edit fuck.

[popcorn]

I haven't plated The Line or Tyranny.

Another thing I keep saying from the Patreon Twitterites is the notion that The Last of Us is a story you could tell in any medium and it's just pasted on top of a video game. I don't think this is true either.

I do think Naughty Dog have sort of made the single-player Valve model worse by reducing interaction. In Half-Life 2 you communicate with the world via the unified physics system; in Naughty Dog games you press triangle to trigger an expensive animation. That's cheaper, less meaningful, less "real".

But come on, saying it doesn't capitalise on the medium at all is horseshit. One of the level designers recently put a video up explaining how a LoU1 level was designed in conjunction with hitting a series of story beats, with all the usual tricks of directing the player and manipulating their expectations and so on, and it's like, come on, that's not a movie sellotaped onto a video game. You could have told that story as a movie or a novel instead, as the criticism goes, but that's no more illuminating an observation than saying a movie could have been told as a novel.

[Bazooka]

I've pre-ordered it from GAME, what a fucking piece of shit I am. I do think the gameplay looks better in 2 despite looking the same also, but as I mentioned earlier having completed first time last month, it was way too long, and repetetive, I fear this will be the same, but the story and characters will again carry it, until the last three hours where I will be finishing a game because I have to and not want to.

[The Crumb]

But come on, saying it doesn't capitalise on the medium at all is horseshit. One of the level designers recently put a video up explaining how a LoU1 level was designed in conjunction with hitting a series of story beats, with all the usual tricks of directing the player and manipulating their expectations and so on, and it's like, come on, that's not a movie sellotaped onto a video game. You could have told that story as a movie or a novel instead, as the criticism goes, but that's no more illuminating an observation than saying a movie could have been told as a novel.

Confirmation bias and all that plus it's not necessarily this guy's job, but this does reinforce my impression that they're not making full use of the medium. The video emphasises the visual design and how they're making the players see things the way they want to, but doesn't say anything about the mechanical design of the level, and how the design creates gameplay which reinforces the narrative. For instance, the bit about the dark stairwell creating a contrast with the light, upbeat moment on the rooftop - why not use an arduous passage of gameplay to create/enhance that contrast?

[popcorn]

Confirmation bias and all that plus it's not necessarily this guy's job, but this does reinforce my impression that they're not making full use of the medium. The video emphasises the visual design and how they're making the players see things the way they want to, but doesn't say anything about the mechanical design of the level, and how the design creates gameplay which reinforces the narrative. For instance, the bit about the dark stairwell creating a contrast with the light, upbeat moment on the rooftop - why not use an arduous passage of gameplay to create/enhance that contrast?

I totally see what you're saying, and like I said above I don't think ND marry gameplay with narrative as successfully as some other devs. But I think having the player go through a dark stairwell is gameplay. Like, they guide the player's experience to create an emotional/dramatic/narrative response. It doesn't matter whether that's shooting or walking or what.

I haven't played Last of Us since it came out, but as I recall, there's basically no "gameplay gameplay" (like combat or puzzles) in that level for ages, and the calm and tranquility, culminating in the giraffes, creates its own powerful vibe. Going through a bit of arduous gameplay there (whatever that might entail) would have created a different effect.

[Zetetic]

And the biggest problem with The Last of Us is the insertion of action gameplay or gameplay's sake. A lot of the gameplay does serve the narrative, and then there's a to nof time-wasting guff that at best has nothing to do with anything and at worst is murdering hundreds of people and so undermining both the story and the wider world it's set in.

That level is, as popcorn suggests, a pleasant exception for much of it.

[Thursday]

I loved the first game at the time, but over the years, I've just lost any affection I had for it. It's basically the strongest example of a kind of game I just no longer really have much interest in. Maybe I'll give this a go when it's cheap one day, but I feel like it's going to be one of those games people don't really remember or talk about a couple of months after it's release. That'll probably be the sign I don't need to bother with it.

[Sheffield Wednesday]

I felt the same Thurs, but went back in recently and was totally into it again, not just the writing and acting and atmosphere, but the stealthing around and then bashing someone's head in with a brick or putting a shiv straight in their fucking eye. I'm well up for something so violent it truly deadens my limbic system.

[AsparagusTrevor]

I felt the same Thurs, but went back in recently and was totally into it again, not just the writing and acting and atmosphere, but the stealthing around and then bashing someone's head in with a brick or putting a shiv straight in their fucking eye. I'm well up for something so violent it truly deadens my limbic system.

I've just finished playing through the Remaster in preparation for the sequel and I felt the same, really got sucked in again. I'm looking forward to the sequel but I do worry from a lot of the reviews it sounds like it's missing a lot of what I liked in the original. Sounds like the humour's totally gone for one, which was a highlight for me in the first game, and it seems they've just doubled down on the nihilism. We'll see on Friday...

[Harpo Speaks]

I've recently finished TLOU for the first time, and I thought it was absolutely outstanding. I'm still not entirely convinced that the game actually needs a sequel, though at the very least it encouraged me to finally get the original played. It's been a blind-spot for a while - never had a PS3, and whilst I got Remastered not long after getting a PS4, I lost two partial playthroughs when my PS4 died which just killed my enthusiasm to start it again. Very glad I did though.

I'll be getting Part 2 as soon as possible I think, largely because the leaks seem to have increased the risk of being spoiled ten-fold, be that maliciously or accidentally. I just want to experience the narrative myself on my own terms, and not have that taken away.

[Chedney Honks]

I preordered this and wanted to play at midnight but I was too tired. Because I fell asleep at about half nine, I've been up half the night and now off to work so I'll be knackered again tonight. What a way to live. I just want to play something so violent, I have to take time off work for stress so I can play it. Paradox is that I'm too tired to get to start it so I won't be traumatised enough to get to have the time off to play it to be traumatised.

[Mobius]

Is this one of those games where half of the fucker is cut scenes

[Chedney Honks]

No. It's more of a high score chaser. Well worth the fifty-five pounds if you're into arcade games. See you on the leaderboards!

[AsparagusTrevor]

Is this one of those games where half of the fucker is cut scenes

No, Hideo Kojima had no input in the development.

[Sheffield Wednesday]

Utterly peerless facial animation and lighting. Seriously best in class, the best ever. The best bits of RDR2 and FF7R are almost at the same level, but this is genuinely magnificent. I didn't expect a game to look like this yet. Acting, music and dialogue are also fantastic so far.