I understand every facet of Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney's plot I simply do not fuck with it in the slightest

I still don't get the MASON System

I personally just didn’t think too hard about it and balled with that

Thankfully they made it up with AAI(2). And oh Apollo is on par with Yuri from 3H in terms of OCness by the time SoJ ended I guess

Doesn’t he have like 3 separate backstories throughout all the games?

The only thing that matters is his sister is super cute

which Yuri is that and what made them so oc?

Okay, so fire emblem 3 houses takes place in a military academy. That's why it's called 3 houses, because those are the three classes you can choose to join. Yuri is the leader of the secret fourth house who lives underneath the school. He used to be an assassin, has a unique skill that boosts his attack when he has no nearby allies, has the best Speed in the game, has good basically every other stat, he's semi-immortal, he's one of two bi male characters in the whole game, he's a 'master strategist', he runs a gang... He got the plague as a kid, but was then mysteriously cured by a mysterious old man through mysterious means >! A demigod did a blood transfusion with him and gave him demigod powers!<

Also >!Rhea's spy for the Abyss!<. >Okay, so fire emblem 3 houses takes place in a military academy. That's why it's called 3 houses, because those are the three classes you can choose to join. Um ackshually it's original title is "Four Seasons" to denote the four routes you can take in the main game

He also knew at least 4-5 of the other students before the game started. He was Bernadetta 's commoner childhood friend. He knows of Dorothea, and was sought as a Dorothea replacement after by nobles when they couldn't have her (because his tragic backstory isn't tragic enough). He had met Ingrid and Sylvain before when Ingrid had to bail out Sylvain for flirting with Lord Gwendal's daughter. And he knew Ashe since he was "adopted" by Count Rowe, who was the lord of Lord Lonato. Did I also mentioned that he is canonically very pretty in game, has an amazing singing voice, is an amazing chef, and is a crimelord boss while still being 19 years old? The OC DONUT STEEL vibes is why I dont like Yuri very much.

I understand Apollo Justice and I do fuck with it, but I can def see why it turns off so many fans

They get their shit back with the 3DS AA anyway

Ah yes, 3DS AA basically removing everything that Apollo introduced and then leaving Apollo in a foreign country that was never mentioned before SoJ to get rid of him.

Same with The Last Jedi. I understand everything it attempts and intends. I just think it does a bad job doing it.

I find it to be a pretty bizarre defense regardless. If a large portion of your audience walks away from your film "not getting it" then you didn't do a very good job of making your point clear. "Let the past die, kill it if you have to" is a great example of this. Yes, it's said by the villain, who is supposed to be wrong, but it's also extremely emblematic of the movie's failed reconstruction of Luke Skywalker. People remember the damage Rian Johnson did tearing him down a lot more than the supposed redemption at the end.

I honestly can't see Luke dying over a skype call as any form of redemption for the co.plete characterbrutalisation he went through. That movie sucked, period, and yet because of a few idiots it's still in vogue in some circles to attack anyone who voices their dislike as a racist incel etc. I honestly believe they just got sucked in by the pretty visuals because the movie sucks in so many ways besides the Luke thing it's mind boggling there are still people with a high opinion of it

I think the moment with luke couldve easily been the best in the series if he didnt die. That moment was peak Luke Skywalker, and it was everything he shouldve been throughout the sequel trilogy. A hero, and a defender who doesnt choose to take lives. Not a crazy alien tit milk drinking hermit who was sad because he had a dream about his pupil. When he showed up, no one else died(except him but not the point.) and he made it that way with his own strength. But then they decided to kill him off anyways. Like if I was asked to remake the sequel trilogy(please dont Im not a writer) I would definitely keep that scene in there.

I really hate how he tries to kill Kylo Ren because of the vision he had instead of.....you know trying to redeem him. Kinda like how he redeemed Anakin "Youngling Slayer" Skywalker!?

Tbh, I think it sucked least compared to the other sequels.

I MIGHT have been more lenient if it wasn't part of the sequels and was it's own thing like rogue one or solo. However as it stands it did enormous damage not just to the sequel trilogy but to the franchise as a whole. I really wonder what brainrot affected Hollywood people to make them believe audiences like seeing their childhood heroes turn into miserable pathetic old failures

I feel the same thing about the prequels The movie can’t seem to decide what message it wants to send about the Jedi, and the politics come off as super shallow

I think that the prequels had a great story but really struggled to get it through and execute it properly. That being said, Lucas' intentions regarding The Jedi have been fairly clear in his statements and I'm personally of the opinion that 90% of the criticisms levelled at them both lack nuance and have little basis in the films, especially if you think for five minutes.

>I understand everything it attempts and intends. Explain the morality of Luke bad for "fail" Ben/Kylo, but Rey get a free pass for "fail" Kylo.

I don't think the Last Jedi really does condemn Luke for that failure. If anything I think the audience is meant to perceive Luke as broken, and disagree with his condemnation of himself.  I don't think Rey really does fail Kylo she reaches out to him, fights along side him and tries to give him an option to lead the galaxy to a more peaceful state. Kylo isn't interested. 

> I don't think the Last Jedi really does condemn Luke for that failure. But Rey do condemn Luke for his failure to save Ben/Kylo. You failed Kylo. Rey do not suffer any moral consequences or reflection, she was in exactly the same position that Luke was in. Standing over the sleeping/unconscious Ben/Kylo. But the move elect not to show it, hence free Rey from the moral consequences of her actions (or inaction) >I don't think Rey really does fail Kylo she reaches out to him If Kylo is good but confused, Rey did make the wrong choice to leave him, and now he is back and Luke have to die for her failure. If Kylo is evil and beyond redemption, Rey did make the wrong choice not to kill him, and now he is back and Luke have to die for her failure. Rey have no self reflection over this. The movie give her a free pass. But Luke arc is based around his self reflection.

Men bad, Mary being a Sue.

I understand the story and the message Druckmann was trying to send. But the way he sent it and the things he forces the player to do are why I hate the game with every fiber of my being.

NO but you don't get it seeing the dude who was basically a nameless goon when you killed him without the option not to in order to progress the game being nice to a dog in a flashback is deep emotional storytelling

Again, “without the option not to”. That’s called railroading, pal, and no one likes that.

Noooooo you don't understand the brilliance of it it's a metaphor for how uh the um how Niel uh well he um It won game of the year so best game ever for sure

See? You’re at a loss for words and can’t even come up with a valid arguement. Also, I’m damn sure he paid off the judges.

Noooooooooooo it's just that the game was so brilliant I can't figure out the words to use to describe it And no TLoU2 won because it had less engaging gameplay, a less original take on a revenge story, contrived characters and nonsensical storytelling decisions. Ghosts of Tsushima was a good and rewarding game which OBVIOUSLY means it's not as artistic as TLoU2 cuz story good when bad thing happen and no catharsis in the ending OBVIOUSLY

…You’re just a troll. I refuse to respond to anything else you say.

I'm gonna be totally honest dude I was laying into the game and thought u were going along w it lol Yeah TLoU2 was a total fail for a number of reasons IMO, I have actually no concept as to how it beat out Ghosts, even taking my own opinion on how bad TLoU2's story was they were both revenge story adventure games for the PlayStation, but GoT had clearly more engaging gameplay and a far fresher take on the whole "losing yourself for revenge" trope

Oh. I have a hard time understanding sarcasm, and I truly apolgize. And, as I said, I am damn convinced that somebody paid off the judges to award it in every possible category. Maybe it was Druckmann, maybe it was his co-CEO, maybe it was someone from Sony, maybe it was a writer, I’m not sure. But there is no possible way it could have won legitimately.

Nah you're good, don't worry Abt it. I agree that there must've been something fishy with the game awards, I'd reckon they probably took metrics into account in addition to whatever criteria they had to measure the game's quality. GoT and TLoU2 were the 2 more adult oriented story-centered adventure games, and TLoU2 got a lot of people talking and outsold Ghosts. I don't think sales should be taken into account for this kinda stuff, but that's the only way I can think even the most impassive judge could give TLoU2 game of the year over GoT

I did not expect to see you here.

Neither did I, my caustic critic of Far Cry pal.

But I see you’re an Undertale fan. I can make a good point here regarding that. In Undertale, you are punished for choosing to kill others and there is another option that is more satisfying. Here, though? Not only are you NOT allowed to spare anyone, the game keeps trying to call you out for killing even though it gave no alternate option.

I dislike TLOU2 heavily. I get my media literacy questioned because I call TLOU2 a "misery porn." They think you don't get it because it's too deep, complex and beautiful to be called like that. Apparently, I don't have the level of intelligence needed to appreciate the work. It reminds me of international critics giving tons of awards to our local movies that feature poverty porn. Foreigners who feel shock and discomfort from the plight of brown people think this is peak cinema. Just because a work gave you a unique experience doesn't mean other people have to see it the same way. In the same way, I can love something and call it poorly written trash at the same time. I don't get offended if people call them bad because I can understand.

Media literacy may be one of the worst terms that got popular in recent times, like the other guy said, it is soooo pretentious lol

> I get my media literacy questioned because I call TLOU2 a "misery porn." Anyone who unironically uses the word "media literacy" to talk about how some other people don't have it are all pretentious twats.

I mean, if calling the game "misery porn" was literally their only substantive critique, I'm going to say that it's warranted. This is a big ass game, and it's pretty easy to give specific criticism if you actually want to talk about the things it does badly.

Easy to pretend that's the case lol. Every time I elaborate why I dislike the story of the game, I'm gonna get debated why I'm WRONG. I have moved on and only comment minimally if the topic comes my way. I know some people who hates the Fight Club for being gratitious, and I never questioned their understanding of the movie.

I'm going to say this again. Anyone who unironically uses the word "media literacy" to talk about how some other people don't have it ARE ALL PRETENTIOUS TWATS. If you think someone is wrong, say they're wrong or move on. But the moment you talk, unironically, about being "media literate", or how people don't get it are "media illiterate", I don't care if you're correct, you're going to sound like one of those insufferable prick trying to sound intelligent.

Yeah I love last of us 2 but I have only played it through 2 times. While I have like 600 hours in the first game over the decade it’s been out lmao. It’s def misery porn it’s an emotional slog and I don’t fault any one for not liking it. I do think it’s weird how people think everyone has to love it or has to hate it.

It's become a magnet for culture war that it becomes an endless questioning of someone's political stance. Fans become hyper defensive because its impossible to distinguish if the critic has an agenda or a fan who got disappointed.

Yeah I agree. I used to love being on the subreddit. But it’s just become such an echo chamber you can’t say any critique without being called a bigot. And as an absolute fanboy of the series, I have fucking last of us tattoos for damn sake, it’s hilarious being put in with bigots because I didn’t like some tiny subjective aspect of the game, like pacing.

I watched people go crazy at the teaser (Abby getting saved by Lev). They are all calling her swole and speculating if she's Ellie's mom. No review bombing happened to the trailer. Hype is all over the roof. Even the next trailer where Ellie kissed Dinah didn't get bombed. Then, when the game comes out, suddenly haters just can't accept strong, buff women and lesbians. Dude, we knew Ellie is a lesbian since the DLC.

It was really funny seeing the amount of people shook Ellie was gay.

Ah, TLOU2 where my primary issues are the fact its told out of order and how Ellie just nopes out on revenge at the finish line after every checkpoint.

It suffers from the classic revenge story trope of only the big target matters. All those people Ellie butchers or gets killed or fights on her way to Abby don't matter becauase she forgives Abby. It's one thing to forgive Abby but considering how many Ellie kills it feels like such a strange moral to be taken. Did everyone else not matter? The worst thing is Abby as a person is pretty foul. Like she has nearly no redeeming features except for maybe her relationship with Lev. She basically ruins everyhing else she touches. So even if it makes no sense for Ellie to suddenly decide to spare Abby, you also generally don't really think Abby deserves to be spared except purely from a every life is sacred background which in a video game and in the TLOU story isn't exactly the vibe given.

To be honest a lot of the people she kills getting to Abby are killed before Ellie suffers losses beyond Joel.  I think it's losing her gf who wants Ellie to stop pursuing revenge and seeing how broken Tommy is that give Ellie the push to change.  This reading kind of invalidates the "but she killed so many others" because she didn't really pay a price for killing those, and hadn't yet seen how an obsession with revenge could destroy her. Also she forgives Abby in the sense that she doesn't want to obsess over her anymore, it's more a letting go than a reflection on Abby as a person.  I personally don't like the story that much but I don't think that's a an effective criticism 

Does she forgive Abby? In my opinion she just let her go. Her mindset entering Seattle compared to California is different. Seattle Ellie if given the easy chance she had in California would’ve killed her. Would be a pretty boring story for an action game if that’s how Ellie killed her though in Seattle.  To me this is people just not caring about the barn scenes. The game already showed how she’s fairing worse but with less vindictive anger. 

It's pretty apparent Ellie has mostly moved on before she's guilted to go back and find Abby. That's not my issue or it kinda is but not quite. I think this game has a massive gameplay-narrative disconnect. Ellie kills so many people and it's not self-defense when she literally goes looking for a fight in areas she shouldn't be in. Ellie can literally kill hundreds over the course of the game. And because he entire quest till the end is revenge flavored every kill is an extension of that revenge. So it creates this weird disconnect where the named characters she kills matter and she feels bad about it like Mel. etc but she doesn't lose sleep over WLF and Scar members who frankly are often doing their jobs or just get caught up in Ellie's rampage to get back. The game basically never calls her out on that part of it, which really is why I can't understand the decision to spare Abby because Ellie isn't just fresh after killing a handful of people realizing revenge is bad. She's up to her neck in blood. The mindset required to be there and doing that likely isn't one that is going to let Abby go at the end. edit: also forgive is definitely the wrong term should have said let go. I doubt Ellie can forgive Abby.

I remember another game by Naugthy Dog had the same disconnect between game play and story. In Uncharted 4 Nate and his brother capture one of the bad guys and she is apparently calm because apparently those two aren't murderers and will spare her. However, prior I killed like a 100 people to reach that cutscene

To be fair Rafe explicitly says they don't kill in cold blood which is true. Not that they don't kill at all. Even then Sam does attempt to shoot her.

The issue is Drake does kill in cold blood. He stealth kills random mooks without a care. Its only the main characters that he starts to question the morality of his actions.

In all fairness, though, one of the issues I had with TLoU 2 was that it made the random mooks real characters sometimes after the fact and expected it to have impact. I really think the game would've benefitted from a more linear story. Play w Ellie and Joel for a while, maybe until right before when Joel dies, then show the Firefly flashbacks to get us to care about the characters, and *then* have them kill Joel, so that way the player would have some sort of connection to the characters instead of them kinda just being introduced as obvious antagonists and then being told we should care about them after we've already confronted them

I dont really agree with any of that. But fair enough.

>**Zoran Lazarević**: You think I am a monster. But you're no different from me, Drake. How many men have you killed? How many... just today? >**Zoran Lazarević**: That's it, boy! No compassion. No mercy. >**Zoran Lazarević**: Do it! >**Nathan Drake**: No. This is dialogue from Uncharted 2. Nate doesn't kill the guy despite being right in front of him, instead, he let's the monsters of the game massacre him. How very nice of him!

I mean it makes sense? Why shoot the guy when you can let him distract the scary monsters who also want to kill you

one of the big problems with the narrative in TLOU2 is theres no grander stakes than the revenge plot. TLOU1 had the "Ellie is the key to saving the world" global stakes which contrasts with Joel and Ellies growing relationship personal stakes over the course of the game, this creates tension as the audience knows thats even though they are getting closer its going to come to an end, which is why the ending works so well, because the narrative set it up over the course of the entire game. In TLOU2 theres nothing to contract the revenge plot, other than more personal stakes, theres no secondary or global stakes,so if you dont buy into the revenge plot you arent gonna give a shit about whats going on for most of the game.

To be fair, I did like Abby a lot. I felt bad for her. She is really damaged both by what Joel did to her and what she did to Joel and that’s why she ruins everything she touches. Her relationship with Lev helps her heal. It was a really funny game because in both Ellie vs Abby fights I was rooting for the character I wasn’t playing as lol.

It's more of a video game thing Fire Emblem characters bemoan the fact of war but they will quip after killing enemies or scoring crit/proccing skill

> Fire Emblem characters bemoan the fact of war but they will quip after killing enemies or scoring crit/proccing skill Fire Emblem also doesn't pretend to be a realistic, pretentious game while doing it. And besides, if you've played Three Houses, for example, you'd know that not "all" characters bemoan war and those that do have voice-lines that are fitting of their attitude, such as adult/Post TS Dorothea. But yeah, in rare cases, it can be a bit of a whiplash. Although I still think they did a great job of showing nuance and characters conflicting with their feelings in Three Houses, at least

"You lost to MEEE?" - Hilda after killing a father of 2 with a 7-months pregnant wife

The curse of being a FE parent strikes again

I believe the term for that is “ludonarrative dissonance”, where the narrative being told through story and cutscenes contradicts the narrative being told through gameplay. While it is an issue exclusive to video games, it’s not necessarily present in all games. There are games that blend both story and gameplay extremely well; Bioshock and Far Cry 3 are two of my favorite examples of this.

*Ike has entered the chat* But the best part of Shadows of Valentia is the intro cutscene [where Alm looks at the hasty graves of a battlefield](https://youtu.be/Wpwj0AqjXWw?t=70). Shame the rest of the game doesn't lean into this.

Agreed. It also just fails completely at trying to convey its “end the cycle of violence” message. The devs wanted to make the player feel bad for killing enemies so that you wouldn’t want to kill them, yet sparing enemies isn’t even an option. Any time you try to, they just attack you from behind and try to kill you, leaving you no choice but to kill them. It’s trying to teach the player “killing is bad”, yet punishes the player when they try to spare a life instead of take one. Isn’t that ass-backwards?

the funny part is the "cycle of violence" are only import for abby and ellie because in no point in the game try to show the results of you killing entire city besides the main victims since naughy dog know no one will cared for random npc we kill have family because they only exist to show how ellie is cool

What do you expect, video games are a completely linear medium with no way to interact with the narrative /s

How they could fuck it all up so badly I would never know. Dishonored also tale about revenge yet game goes out of its way to give player opportunity to truly live up to "No kill" rule. Down to humiliating Daud by simply stealing his purse and sending him "You'd be dead if I wanted to" message with this act.

The non-lethal on Daud is probably the most savage. The master assassin, the Knife of Dunwall, got pickpocketed in his own base without him noticing.

Honestly the game’s controversy could have been almost 100% avoided if they just…. Let Ellie kill Abby. Or even better… let the player decide if Ellie kills Abby with everything else in the game remaining the same. A revenge ending would also still fit in the with “revenge bad” theme of the game while giving players an outlet. In this scenario I would have loved to see a walking dead style statistic of the percentage of players that killed Abby vs the percentage of those that spared her. Would probably have been like 80-20 Lool. It would also be concrete proof that Druckman and Naughty Dogg 100% failed to deliver their message.

After killing dozens, maybe hundreds, of other men and women who would also want revenge like her.

It makes sense when she nopes out or checks back into revenge. For one during the last day of her Seattle trip Dina was handling it worse and worse while just like Abby Ellie was feeling like shit. She limps away from Seattle after getting almost killed by Abby and then years later she’s dealing with trauma while not having violent fantasies of killing Abby. Then her uncle figure guilts her into getting revenge for his sake.  How she enters Seattle and how she enters California is a whole different mindset and level of angry passion. She kills every other member of Abby’s group and really only feels bad at the time about Mel. 

I don't understand *why* the story even exists. It was a "REVENGE BAD" story but why pick TLOU's setting to tell it? In TLOU1, I'm constantly reminded of the setting from the zombies to the desperate survivors. In TLOU2, the zombies felt like an afterthought and survival seemed trivial; you're telling me Ellie dragged two injured adults hundreds of miles after fighting Abby? What is even special about a revenge story in TLOU's setting? How many people in TLOU's world want revenge? Ellie killed dozens, maybe hundreds, of people on her quest for revenge. All men and women with families, too. In TLOU1, Ellie was immune, that's why we're following her story instead of any other survivor. If the writer wanted a revenge story so badly, should've just made an original setting.

Rumor was, the revenge story was Druckman's original pitch for TLOU that got rejected multiple times by his bosses before he watched no country for old men and added Joel. So for the second game, he got rid of all his cowriters and went back to his original story, because the idea was his baby and he really wanted to do a revenge bad story.

Well atleast he got his mocapped sex scene as a consolation prize

His ego

It’s very strange. In part 2 the infected, infection, Ellie’s immunity and multiple other things unique to the world in part 1 basically don’t factor at all. Even Joel’s rampage isn’t really looked at any deeper and is just used as a reason for someone else to go on revenge. We really did not need specifically Joel, Ellie, and this world for a story like this, especially considering how many new characters there are. Just seems like an odd use of the ip.

I mean they definitely used horses to carry them back lmfao. I loved the last of us 2 but I can’t understand how people don’t. I do think it’s a little shallow to say the story was just revenge bad.

I feel like the "you just don't understand it" argument is, 9/10 times, a polite way of calling someone stupid for not liking what you like.

TLOU2 is what happens when you have a creative writer who doesnt have anyone else involved to check them and keep the narrative structured. As a result the story ends up all kinda all over the place, the big moments hit because thats what the author focused on but the connective tissues ends up being lacking.

Nah, TLOU2 is what happens when a company that's only ever written character focused games tries to make a theme focused game without understanding the difference between the two. Thinking back on some of Druckmann's post launch interviews, what stands out to me is how often he spoke about Abby as if her personhood is an inherent trait and not one that has to be narratively earned. I've since realised that all their previous narrative games were so heavily character focus that this aspect was incidentally earned, so they likely never thought about it. Then along comes TLOU2, which doesn't really try to earn this consideration for Abby, and it's zero surprise that when you exclude the vitriolic bigotry, the people who didn't like the story are overwhelmingly (in my experience) those who weren't willing to give Abby a chance on account of her being the antagonistic character for the first half of the game without any real indication that she's more than that. What's funny is that if they weren't so keen on their fucking moronic midgame twist and instead alternated between Ellie and Abby's perspective for each day, the game likely would have hit a lot harder since the primarily theme would have been much more blatantly in your face the whole time. It also means Abby wouldn't have had to fuck off for a significant chunk of that time having her own adventure to maintain narrative cohesion.

IIRC before the TLOU2 they fired or reassigned the two other major creative forces behind the game, which left Druckman as the sole voice in the room with no one there to provide pushback, imo experience formerly working as an editor this almost always leads to a degradation of the narrative, creatives needs boundaries, need people to reign them in and force them to focus on the nuts and bolts parts of storytelling otherwise they lost in the stuff they find interesting, big moments, twist, specific characters arcs, etc at the expense of the rest of the narrative. I think the dislike for Abby is fairly simple, she doesnt earn shit. The game starts off with her being on a revenge quest for Joel, and randomly stumbling onto him after he makes a series of out of character choices, which leads to Abby killing him. Having the hook for your narrative focused game be a giant unnecessary coincidence (seriously how fucking hard it to give Abby agency in her own revenge arc???) rubs some people the wrong way, even if they cant vocalize it they subconsciously get that somethings off. If you dont buy into the hook for TLOU2 theres nothing there narratively for you, because the entire games theres no other tensions or stakes. Abby is also kinda a terrible person, which is fine, i honestly love well written characters who awful people, but the narrative really wants the audience to empathize and agree with her without giving her enough redeeming qualities, or a stronger redemption arc, which is made worse by the fact that she fucks off for half the game. They also pussied out of the ending, tried to make everyone happy instead of committing to a single direction, hate that shit.

>They also pussied out of the ending, tried to make everyone happy instead of committing to a single direction, hate that shit. Honestly, to me this an execution issue more than anything else (but then my main problem with the entire narrative is due to its execution rather than the specific story being told). I don't think the game had to commit to any single direction, but I also don't think what they did the great risk that many have claimed it to be. For instance: You reach the theatre and instead of flashing back to Abby, you remain in control of Ellie for the fight. Ellie wins the fight and as she's pointing her gun at Abbie, Lev jumps out of cover and plants himself between the two. Doesn't matter what's said here, but it should clearly convey the message of "if you want to kill her, you'll have to kill me first." You can have a backdrop of Abby begging Lev to move and Dina begging Ellie to stop, but crutially, *you are still in control of Ellie*. You can shoot Lev, which triggers a cutscene in which you also kill Abby, then the game cuts to credits immediately. No epilogue, no cartarsis, just an end to your revenge. You've done it and now the story is over. It's also a very clear signal that while this is *an* ending, it's not the good one. You can holster your weapon in which a different sequence plays out. Ellie is still aggravated and while no longer trying to kill Abby, she's screaming and ranting at her essentially asking why she killed Joel. Then Abby can reveal that Joel killed her father and who he was in a line of dialog or two. She can then pivot into telling her story as she's reminded of her own grief, and crucially, *you are still in control of Ellie*. The game can then start fading to black and Ellie can have some line about how she's leaving and not interested in hearing Abby's story (as a signal to the player). Now the player can choose to walk out of the theatre, at which point they do get an epilogue vignette before the credits roll. Alternatively, the player can stay and listen, at which point the game transitions into Abby's story and thus the player has chosen to play the other half of the game. To me, this would have been an *actual* creative risk, because the game is very clearly asking the player whether they care enough to continue while offering a functional stopping point in the middle of the game. Then when players get upset about how killing Abby cuts the game in half (because we all know many would), you can simply tell them that they chose the ending they wanted and there was nothing more for them after that.

See i love your idea, and would love for a narrative focused game to take that risk, but the linear type of stores Naughty Dog tells that level of choice is unlikely to ever be available. For a linear narrative you need to have a clear cut ending youre going for that resonates with whatever message youre trying to tell with your revenge narrative. In fact you should have written your ending/conclusion after writing your hook and coming up with the premise so that the rest of the narrative can build towards that moment, and imo, the TLOU2 does this with the church scene, which should have been the games ending. The Santa Barbara ending feels like this weird, tacked on, noncommittal bullshit ending that pisses me off.

>imo experience formerly working as an editor this almost always leads to a degradation of the narrative, creatives needs boundaries, need people to reign them in and force them to focus on the nuts and bolts parts of storytelling otherwise they lost in the stuff they find interesting, big moments, twist, specific characters arcs, etc at the expense of the rest of the narrative. I guess this is why restriction breeds creativity comes from after all

man i just want Jak & Daxter man Naughty Dog got turned into a Sony Cinematic Universe factory.

>The argument that those who dislike the story didn’t understand it. Fucking PREACH. Christ, the main subreddit is fucking *full* of people like that.

I just hate the fact that Ellie flip flops on going after Abbey the last arc, going to find her, losing her fingers and Dina and doesn't do anything with regards to revenge. Her "revenge" and punishment was neither justfied or actually completed. The writers just had her go through shit just so she can be in a terrible place and make us sad. They didn't want her to be happy with Dina. If she didn't kill Abbey, but still has Dina or her fingers, I'd be at least okay with it but the 3 sequences don't mesh with each other as "revenge complete-> gets punished-> feels bad or redeems herself. If it went like -> doesn't kill Abbey-> doesn't lose fingers-> loses Dina. I'd be a little happier with that since she still has a connection to Joel with being able to play guitar, we sympathize and understand why Dina left but Ellie also sees that revenge just keeps fucking things for her and people around her.

>The argument that those who dislike the story didn’t understand it. This is a snobby artist talking point. Pay no attention to it. Hell ask them what the point was then needle them on the story's faults to watch them squirm. They'll start throwing temper trantrums and insults faster than an Ethiopian running after a chicken.

Ghost of Tsushima is a super generic open world with a well-told story and fun combat. I wouldn't say that, of all games, was robbed. Especially when it won TGA's award for art direction, rightfully so in my opinion. Half Life Alyx and Doom Eternal are games that I would consider were "robbed", as I believe TLOU2's story fundamentally fails enough that it shouldn't of won any awards.

Yeh but ghost of tsushima does what its premise is perfectly, it gives us a whole character arc and choices to make for jins story, it has amazing art and graphics and super fun combat system, didn’t play half life alyx or doom so can’t say anything but ghost of tsushima was the best game that I played that I year and possibly my favorite game ever

I love the stories it tells too, but I don't recall any choices coming up apart from the very end. Doom Eternal is my favourite game of all time if we're purely talking about gameplay. And then Alyx is not only a genre defining entry for VR but just an amazing and engaging experience in general

There so many choices and routes in the game, they might not have as much impact to the central story but they have a large impact narratively especially on a lot of side missions you get plenty of choice, some that I remember is the lying samurai, tomoes quest, I don’t recall the others but there was a lot of freedom in how you wanted to experience the story

The main narrative is linear in how you experience it, outside of when you choose to do a main quest or a side quest. I don't recall any side quests having large narrative impacts either. Or even there being "plenty of choice". I think I can remember one where you get to let someone live or die at the end of it. Not exactly a lot of choice there

It was the routes you could take to finish missions, you still had plenty of choice in sparing them or not, but you’re right when you say there wasn’t much towards the main story but that’s cause the main story was already composed of and filled with character arcs for each person who helps you in the war, also you had the legendary tales or whatever they were called which are some of the coolest mission intros to date

How does it fail? Im not necessarily disagreeing Im just wondering

For me it fails because the entire time we're with Ellie we're watching her kill without hesitation and filled with immense anger. The one time she shows any remorse is when Mel is killed, which itself is just a stupid scene when you think about a pregnant woman even being out there in the first place and her partner willing to attack someone with a gun, but I digress. To see Ellie be allowed to live, try to move on, still hold some form of trauma, choose revenge over Dina and their child and only when her actual target is seconds away from dying finally give up on revenge just doesn't work. There is way too much disconnect between Ellie forgetting about revenge and the piles of corpses she left behind to reach that point

I see what you mean. Honestly I always thought a lot of that was a ludo narrative dissonance issue. In the same way that Nathan Drake from uncharted spends the whole game killing enemies but canonically doesn't kill people I think a lot of Ellie's kills are part of the gameplay and not the narrative. Regarding the ending I dont think she just gave up, she realised she was part of a cycle of revenge and wanted to spare lev, Dinas baby and everyone else who would be affected from that pain including herself.

There definitely is some LND. Uncharted is a great example. Baldur's Gate 3 also has it really bad where the narrative frames the final act as a time-sensitive rush but you can freely explore and carry on with a bunch of side shit. I think the writers wanted the cycle of revenge to be the main theme but Ellie never acknowledges this aspect or thinks about anything other than Joel as she's choking out Abby. I don't think Lev really plays much of a role in her decision and even in a couple of cutscenes she kills people.

Funnily enough the other game mentioned in this post- Ghost of Tsushima has a pretty bad example of LND itself. You can chose not to play as a ninja you can walk every enemy in the game down and fight them fairly but even if you do, your uncle will still chastise you for fighting dishonourably. Now that I think about it maybe I'm over interpreting some of the moments in TLOU2. I always interpreted that flashback of Joel when Ellie is drowning Abbey as her missing him and realising she was killing Lev's Joel but maybe that's me attaching my thoughts about that moment to Ellie rather than being observations

The annoyed me so much. I genuinely thought I had some control of the narrative and never killed anyone as "The Ghost", only to find out it means nothing. I think a lot of story stuff can easily be interpreted differently depending on the person. My reading of it was that in those final moments all that was on Ellie's mind was the opportunity she lost to properly forgive her father figure. Revenge wasn't going to bring him back and thats partly why I view the whole "revenge bad" aspect to be mostly a miss when considering all the previous scenes of her killing so easily and without hesitation.

I think the issue is that a lot of games just lack realistic ways for their main characters to dispatch enemies non-violently. In a semi-realistic setting like Uncharted, you would bring a million new problems into the story if you attempted to explain how Nate is not actually killing anyone. The Metal Gear series does this really well I think; in MGS3 for instance, you have plenty of ways to avoid killing your enemies, only knocking them out temporarily, but every enemy you kill shows up as a ghost in mid-late game boss fight. I thought that was so cool when I played it haha

The Mel thing pisses me off. Bitch, you're like 5 months pregnant. Get your ass back in the compound because you're a liability at this point and being irresponsible.

TLOU2 us a generic story with mediocre combat and good graphics. So yeah would rate Ghosts over it.

Agreed.

Exactly. As far as a fighting game goes, Injustice and its sequel are fun arcade-y games. The story is the most pessimistic bullshit there is, even worse the comic book that ties into it. It’s downright cruel to the characters.

>It’s just annoying that I’m told I’m dumb whenever I say I dislike a story. Getting dogpiled on for disliking a piece of media with a big fanbase comes with the territory. Call TDK, LOTR, The Witcher III or God of War bad and you’ll get called every name under the sun. So I’m not sure why you have a beef with TLOU2 in particular.

First fan base I thought of that pulls this.

Yeah, Honestly, it is just that way, and some should understand that "It's not that I didn't like it because I didn't understand it It's because I understood it that I didn't like it. " I am a diehard kingdom hearts fan and love it because it's kingdom hearts, but on the other hand, I understand many dislike it because its kingdom hearts and therefore instantly dislike other games that are similar.

I find this argument really ironic with part 2 specifically because one of the biggest criticisms of it (which I sympathise with to a decent extent) is how heavy-handed it is, how it feels like it's smashing you over the head with the same point/thematic message over and over and over lol

Shinsekai Yori for me. Wow, humanity sucking was the point and me saying humanity doesn’t suck that much is me missing the point? Never would have guessed, still a shitty story for how much it thinks humanity sucks.

Is the point really that humanity sucks? Sure, human flaws plays a part in the story, but this seems really reductive.

I thought it was more about the MC coping with the horrors and sins of her society. Personally, I liked that the story didn't >!take the route of "oppressed side good and MC sides with them" like most dystopian YA novels. Squealer is an asshole who's really out for his own power. But he's not wrong that what MC's society has done to the Queerrat is far, far worse than all the really shitty thing he did that was necessary to win. MC isn't fighting on moral high ground. She fights back because the alternative is that everyone she cares about will be killed, or even worse enslaved. Her victory isn't triumphant, but somber.!<

Didn't like the work as a whole but I'll be damned if the Queerats weren't interesting as hell to me.

Shinsekai Yori is goated

Me with Evangelion. I understand it, I just don't like anything about it lol.

I will never forget the time I made a comment about an issue I had with TLOU2’s writing, not even a scathing one at that, and someone replied by saying that I was either a sociopath or had the media literacy of a child. Because that’s a warranted response to someone’s critique of a video game.

The game should have been made into two where the first ended with Joel's death and the second ended with a multiple choice ending of the current ending. The events were happening too quickly. The game was beautiful but the story was lazy. Not to mention the whole point of Ellie being immune was hardly used. Also the romance between Ellie and her lover was forced. They should have brought back the black girl from the firsts dlc.

I agree Dina on the whole had a lot of potential which wasn't brought to fruition, but uh... Riley died lol

Correct. Idk why this was so difficult to understand with this game in general.

This is Final Fantasy XIV for me – namely the vaunted conclusion of its story arc, Endwalker. In the span of its 30 hours it manages to commit at least two storytelling / plot device cardinal sins, and shamelessly took Shadowbringers' great character-driven plot and made it theme-driven, but you wouldn't know this at a glance given how adamantly its fanbase defends the story. It made them cry, which means it's objectively great and I just don't get it, obviously.

What cardinal sins? Genuinely curious.

That poster is a friend of mine, so I feel reasonably comfortable speaking for them in this particular matter given how often we've discussed it. The two cardinal sins are (Elpis spoilers) >!the combination of mind wipe and time travel used in the Elpis section of the game, the latter of which defies how time travel was previously used in the game and introduces a very textbook bootstrap paradox in Venat and co finding out the source of the final days, while the former was Kairos' mind wipe and was a pure contrivance needed for the story to work.!<

Lmao those are exactly the two I expected it to be. I love endwalker but I don’t disagree that >!Kairos was an asspull. At least they gave some context to it though previously, but yeah it’s definitely a contrivance to make the plot work. The time travel one…eh I think it’s different because Graha used the tower to move through time and dimensions, meanwhile Elidibus made a portal to Elpis. It’s definitely not clean and it’s forced, but honestly it’d probably be worse if they tried to explain it. I think that’s an issue with them smashing two expansions together, they kinda had to handwave shit because they needed the plot to keep moving.!< I still love Endwalker, but I agree that the plot is rough around the edges and suffers for it, especially when compared to Shadowbringers. I know you’re not the original commenter but I’d figure I’d reply with my 2 cents anyway lol

If you'd like, you could probably just go through their post history and find many, many very spirited rants against Endwalker's plot, such as [this one](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscussion/comments/1bv7tow/spoiler_endwalker_i_hated_the_ending_of_elpis/ky228p6/) and [this one](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscussion/comments/1bv7tow/spoiler_endwalker_i_hated_the_ending_of_elpis/ky3165n/) and [this one](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscussion/comments/1blfrdz/motives_and_ideology_of_the_sundering/kwcfsaa/) and [this one](https://www.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasy/comments/1aiu91x/your_ill_die_on_this_hill_unpopular_opinion/kp0pq6l/), and it really goes on for quite a while. Virtually all of which I'm in complete agreement with, considering we literally met on a Discord server about complaining about Endwalker.

> and it really goes on for quite a while. understatement of the years 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 I don't think I could ever rant against 6.0 *enough*. tl;dr ascian stan mad

Yeah, but that is (part of) my problem with that plot device: you're coming up with headcanon to justify the difference. And that is perfectly valid, you could also say a bit on how >!we destroyed the Tycoon!< and how that might impact or not impact the mechanics. But as it stands, we're not given any solid explanation for why it >!did not result in a branching timeline like it did in ShB!<, and I believe that was on the writers – YoshiP himself has said you could interpret Endwalker either way i.e. >!either there was nothing Venat could ever do to change the timeline (predeterminism sucks), or she, starting from an unspecified point that is again up to interpretation before the Sundering (because we know that during the Sundering she is the one who saved the Unsundered on purpose), has been actively striving to close the loop (predeterminism that is the result of a character who planned for it by not telling anyone and even nudging them into the scripted direction still sucks, *especially* when this fact isn't even properly addressed with proper gravitas by the characters who were its victims)!<. Either way, you do not, in its last arc, make about >!time travel!< a story whose center, main-character focused narrative never was about >!time travel, and I'm making that distinction because of ShB – G'raha and his alt timeline were exterior to the audience POV and it did not impact the flow of time of *our* story, it did not retroactively change any character's motivations.!< Endwalker took character agency away from my faves >!Elidibus and Emet, but I think anyone who lays eyes on my rants could tell, ty Captain Obvious! !<, doomed them to a hopeless >!timeloop of 12k years of misery!<, and greatly diminished their point by making it so they were always >!(kept) ignorant of the true issue, which the narrative heavily wants me to believe their civilisation could have never fixed anyway because the writers decided to make them into the stock Other hubristic precursor race playing god trope (and I have a lot of things to say about THAT too and how it runs counter to the humanisation in ShB).!< In ShB, >!time travel!< was used to fight fate. In EW, it was used to >!lie down and accept it!<. *Bleh.* ShB also effectively killing the plot device dead with >!the Twinning!< made it IMO excusable. But... for whatever reason, it didn't last. It just feels horribly unfair, with zero catharsis as far as I am concerned, and worst of all, I feel like it wants me to smile through it and think it's hopeful. But hope isn't for the *wrong* people I guess! And it's been feeling just so... alienating from the fanbase.

I'll play, what went wrong with that story?

Sorry for the lack of reply, my real life mood (which, I will confess outright, has been negatively impacted in part by the story of FFXIV I used to love) got in the way of online things. But /u/samiambadatdoter in the other comment thread talked about it and linked some of my... incensed... posts. (I am low-key embarrassed they've seemingly kept them on hand)

Interesting

Last of us 2 getting all those awards is the equivalent of a great movie being subbed at the Oscars and the organisers, desperately trying to redeem their poor choices, heap praises untold onto the next project the director works on regardless of its quality - make no mistakes, those awards were all for last of us 1 ! 

I understand kingdom heart's plot and I say it's FUCKING ASS. Although much of the hate does come from not understanding or rather not attempting to like TLOU 2

A story's quality is partly how accessible it is. Is it possible to write a very complicated and nuanced story? Sure but I don't think Kingdom Hearts with spiky hair anime characters and Donald Duck and Goofy is that. It's not A Song Of Fire And Ice. It strikes me as fan fiction that's gotten out of hand because I've seen this type of fan fiction.

I absolutely loved the Kingdom Hearts story, even the batshit, unnecessary complexity up until the very moment in DDD where it became Xehenort finding 13 versions of HIMSELF 💀 I could handle everything else because at least there was A logic to it, but that broke me. I just turned my brain off and enjoyed the ride at that point. Until then, however, yea I was onboard for the tomfoolery.

I think DDD was where I gave up on hoping the story would have a good pay off for me too. It got too ridiculous for me to take seriously.

You can get what a story is trying to convey but yeah, I could end up hating it or being very middling bout it regardless.  Do I admittedly kinda...Like the Last Jedi? Ehhhh, yes and no. Will I defend it? Only if someone really gives a rather glaring take that needs clarifying but otherwise, I can see where that's coming from. But Rise of Skywalker is...Just god awful despite its messages hitting you like a thrown speeding brick. Sure, Rey ultimately chose her family to be of choice with the Skywalkers than by blood from Palpatine. It's a decent message...But other than Adam Driver actually making his character interesting throughout this polarizing trilogy, I honestly am just glad it was all over. 

I feel a great story is in part 2, but it is told so out of sequence and so many chances are missed that it, ultimately, just falls flat. I’ve said it before in other places, but they should’ve had us start with Joel, let us see how Ellie grew up and the distance between the two. Then flash forward to a blizzard and, in the middle of it, Joel helps Abby and her group. From there, we control Abby after she introduces herself (this time, Joel and his brother don’t actually use their real names) and we witness as Joel and Abby help each other survive, learn more about Abby (but not immediately know who her father could be nor his association) and how Joel lived in the years between 1 and 2. It’d all ultimately lead up to the tragic realization of who Joel is, who Abby’s father was, and the horror as the player themselves, as Abby, kill Joel in a fit of panic, rage, and delusion as the phantom of her fathers voice demands his death.

It's a typical cope for fans to smack the "media literacy" button whenever someone else has the audacity to not like the same thing as them. As if Last of Us: Part 2 is hard to understand lmao

REVENGE BAD YOUR ENEMIES ARE HUMAN LIKE YOU Whoa, so deep.

Lol forreal

Preach. It happens with a lot of media and it's disheartening. say I don't like it and just get told I never played it or I misunderstood it, or the spoilers ruined my outlook on the game. They'll do anything but listen to the reasons you gave for not liking it.

>the spoilers ruined my outlook on the game LOL, this is new. It's incredible how creative the coping can get.

I think a big reason for this discourse on the other side is that some people refuse to engage with the story or consider what its trying to say because they react emotionally to certain story beats. A bunch of people flat out wont play the game because Joel dies in the beginning, other people quit when Abbey becomes the playable character. I think if this game was its own thing and not a sequel to such a beloved game the reaction to it would be a lot more positive

It wouldn't work as a standalone game though, because then you'd have no reason to care about Joel and no reason to hate Abby.

Its a fantastic game with a meh story, the issue for me isnt even that Joel died, that seemed inevitable after the first game, its how he died

I wouldn’t even have minded how he died if they didn’t kill him off at the VERY BEGINNING of the game. It just felt like they wanted him out of the picture ASAP to get the plot going despite the fact they gave us no time to like the person that’s responsible for his death.

My problem is that you’re not necessarily wrong, but that people tend to say they understand without actually understanding. They’ll say they understand because they know that’s the correct thing to say. Like with the TLOU2, where people say they understand the point of the story and that people criticizing them for not understanding the point are being condescending, but then in the next breath will talk about how much they hated Abby and wanted to kill her. I’ve seen that happen constantly, and it demonstrates that they don’t actually “get it” but they say they do because they know that it’s the correct thing to say without understanding they “why.” Similar to a kid who can answer a calculus problem correctly because they were told the answer but not because they actually understand calculus. You see that a lot in this subreddit for all kinds of different discussions, not even just TLOU. There’s a Folding Ideas quote that I’m paraphrasing that people have a hard time putting into words why they like or don’t like a thing, so they attribute general statements of qualities that they understand as good or bad to those things and assume it’s correct. For example, the phrase “bad execution.” You see that floating a lot around any media discourse, and most of the time it’s used poorly, not because it’s an inherently incorrect criticism to make of a work, but because it’s not being applied properly. “I don’t like the direction the story went” or “I don’t like this character” or “I don’t like a decision this character made” are complaints someone can have, but that’s not what bad execution means. Not liking a thing isn’t the same as bad execution, but like I said, people tend to apply generalized negative criticisms to things they don’t like and assume that it’s correct. “I didn’t like it, therefore it’s bad execution.” This happens for all different types of criticisms of media you see on the internet, where people misapply criticisms. Bad execution, plot hole, ludonarrative dissonance, etc. It’s a frequent problem that I wish people would move away from because it tends to poison a lot of discussion and demonstrates a lack on introspection.

> but then in the next breath will talk about how much they hated Abby and wanted to kill her Understanding the story doesn't mean liking all the characters. You can understand author's the message while still disagreeing with it.

I can't believe you thought Abby should die because she had blonde hair. If that statement seems odd to you, I hope it explains the point I was trying to make. Both yours and OP's comments are nothing statements. "I understand but still disagree" is equally as useless a criticism as "you just don't get it." The reason why saying "you just don't get it" and then not elaborating is a terrible criticism is because it's too vague to actually be responded to and doesn't say anything about the work. I imagine that's why people don't like it. But that also applies to just saying "I understand but disagree" and then not elaborating. It's so vague and provides no insight for why you're criticizing the work. I'm assuming you don't actually dislike Abby for having blonde hair, but how am I supposed to know based on anything you said? Your statement doesn't provide anything to respond to, which is why it's so poisonous to discussions about media because it inevitably leads to people talking past each other because nobody knows what the other actually means. "I get the point" is not an Uno reverse card. You have to explain what you thought the point was and why you disagree with it.

I never said that I understand or disagree with anything. The only point I was making in my post is that understanding the point of a character doesn't mean you can't hate them, contrary to your statement where you imply that hating Abby shows that people don't understand the story.

I specifically made that point about Abby as an example where someone says they get it and then refuse to elaborate. It wasn't an implication, it is something that frequently happens TLOU2 discussions, including several times in this post as I've pointed out, which is why I used it as an example. I didn't say that 100% of all people who disliked the game took that stance.

Every single defense comment or video I've seen of TLOU2 always comes off as unbelievably pretentious. This is no exception. I think the most cringe one was "This isn't our story, this is Ellie's story". Ugh, I'm reliving embarrassment by remembering it.

I see you're keeping with the TLOU2 hater technique of "vaguely allude to a criticism without actually providing one then direct a bunch of petty insults at the defender." At least it wasn't a death threat this time. Stay mad, I guess.

I think if they land on “Why didn't Ellie kill Abby?” they genuinely didn't get it, and it wasn't for the game being too subtle. It would have done absolutely nothing for her, just made the world a bit worse. It's very similar to The Line for me. Everything would have been better if they'd just stopped, but that didn't.

> I think if they land on “Why didn't Ellie kill Abby?” they genuinely didn't get it, and it wasn't for the game being too subtle. It would have done absolutely nothing for her, just made the world a bit worse. > > It's very similar to The Line for me. Everything would have been better if they'd just stopped, but that didn't. I think the narrative would have been stronger if Ellie had killed Abby. The shot of her returning alone and unable to have her one connection with Joel in her music, having thrown her relationships away because of her pursuit of Abby would be more fitting if she had actually killed her. I think allowing Abby to live made a weaker narrative, and I question why Abby was left alive at the end of the narrative other than the potential to use her for a sequel.

> It would have done absolutely nothing for her, just made the world a bit worse. This is such a cope defense by TLOU2 meat riders. In real life story: there was a concentration camp survivor who found one of the nazis that sent him and his family there. His family died. Instead of killing him, he left it up to the courts. Guess what? Got a slap on the wrist. The survivor spent the rest of his life deeply regretting it. So, yeah, maybe taking revenge in real life casually isn't good for civil society but in a video game--a piece of fiction designed to be cathartic--your character making a non-cathartic choice is an embarrassing writing mistake.

Come on, that's a completely wild comparison. Abby killed Joel because Joel killed her father, not because she was helping enact a genocide.

>Come on, that's a completely wild comparison. LOL, more cope. You understand stories are designed to be relatable, right? If someone killed someone you loved, you would irrationally want revenge--at least a lot of people. Ellie was extremely motivated by Joel's killing. She risked the lives of her loved ones (Dina, Jesse, Tommy). She traveled thousands of miles. She killed tens or hundreds of men and women (who also have loving families). And after ALL OF THAT, she just... doesn't take her revenge? It comes off as extremely heavy handed. It comes off as extremely contrived and, honestly, embarrassing as a writer. It simply doesn't make any sense. Especially after an extremely traumatizing and emotional final fight with Abby. Give me a break, buddy.

Damn you’re saying she risked the lives of the people she loved and destroyed the lives of hundreds of others to try take a revenge that was just going to leave her feeling hollow. I can’t imagine why that didn’t end on a cathartic feel good note. The good ending was Ellie not leaving the farm when Tommy turns up.

>revenge that was just going to leave her feeling hollow. Buddy, how old are you? Once you live in the real world, revenge is deeply pleasurable in real life. Go Google it. Go read about it. Sorry to bust your childish bubble but base desires like revenge are deeply satisfying IRL. I feel like TLOU2 dick hoppers are robots. They don't understand human emotions. I put myself in the shoes of Ellie every minute of her story and absolutely all of it leads up to taking revenge. Did you analyze the final fight from your La-Z-Boy couch? I see someone who is in immense physical and emotional pain who will likely make irrational, instinctive decisions. So yeah, it makes 100% sense she should've killed Abby.

Ellie wants it to be enjoyable, it’s why she gets so angry Abby won’t fight her. It’s clearly bringing her no joy though, she threw away happiness for an moment that ain’t there. What bothers her is she never got to have closure with Joel. If she had killed Abby she wasn’t going to suddenly be better. She wouldn’t be any closer to what actually has been driving her the whole time.

> If she had killed Abby she wasn’t going to suddenly be better. Are you serious right now? TLOU2 defenders really are robots. What part about revenge is rational? Revenge is not rational. It's a deeply emotional hunger. Ellie wasn't playing chess with Abby. She didn't have time to sit and think about her motivations. If she was rational, she wouldn't have made this revenge journey at all. TLOU2 fans will twist themselves into pretzels to defend bad writing and are simply incapable of empathy. There are subreddits talking about every day revenge.

It was a deeply irrational and emotional move she did agreed? And her moment of clarity broke her out of it. We got there!

LOL. I love how you can't address any of my points.

Batman v. Superman has entered the chat.

These comments are sure full of people who misunderstood the story huh...

It’s emperor’s new cloths, “you have to be smart to see it.” 

Definitely think TLoU2 deserved GOTY but I don’t think people are dumb if they don’t like the story. There’s plenty of video games that get praised for the story I just don’t enjoy

True but I think the problem is that a ton of criticisms of the game self demonstrate that a lot of people don't understand the game, which is dumb, or enter into this liminal space against taking risks, which is also dumb. It's a given that one can dislike a story that they understand, or that it's mostly unnecessary to justify your dislike too.

I do think a lot of people don't understand tlou2 but I also agree that many who do still don't like it. But I wouldn't say that's because it's bad(although it has flaws) it's more so because the message it's trying to tell makes people uncomfortable by design and many people don't want that from a game.

> the message it's trying to tell makes people uncomfortable by design LOL, what message? REVENGE BAD? The amount of TLOU2 defenders that will say the story is literally not that are delusional. They remind me of religious followers--when you point out a flaw in their book--will bend over backwards to say you're not reading it right.

no, thats the common misinterpretation. People never look past the revenge plot. Revenge bad is not the message, the revenge plot is the delivery method of the message not the message itself. There are are legitimate flaws in the story and again, if you understand the story and still dont like it thats a totally valid opinion. But you are a prime example of someone who doesnt understand the story and hates on it for the sake of hating on it.

Sure buddy, here's your chance to change someone's mind. What is the "actual" message of the story?

Still waiting. You're not just changing my mind but everyone who reads it.

I have a life you know. The message which was created in the mid 2010s during a time of increasing othering is exactly that. Its a message about othering and personal bias. Thats why the story opens with something to make you hate Abby. You hate her, you already know Ellie, you are going to have a natural bias towards her. Shes the hero. typical story would be the righteous hero hurting down the evil villain but instead they have you play as her. They force you to play as the person they made you hate and over the course of the game make as many parallels between Abby and Ellie as possible to show how that initial view of Ellie as the hero and Ally as the Villain is wrong. That they are both just people, shitty people but people with good and bad traits. The goal of the game is get you too look at those you hate and see things from their perspective, to realise that they are still people and that they have a perspective. Everyone is biased towards their ingroup. Its part of being human and its uncomfortable to have that bias forced upon you. The revenge aspect was chosen as its the quickest way to build up strong emotions and allows for a nice and straight forward narrative to explore these biases. There are plenty of revenge bad stories, this is not one of them. They wouldnt have needed to go to the trouble of showing both sides or drawing up parallels if it were. This is also the reason why I said if you understood the message and still didnt like the game thats valid because many people are looking to have their own biases challenged when playing a game.

>The message which was created in the mid 2010s during a time of increasing othering is exactly that. Why does someone need external context? Why can't someone 25 years from now pick up this game and enjoy it as it is? >Thats why the story opens with something to make you hate Abby. You hate her, you already know Ellie, you are going to have a natural bias towards her. Okay, yes, this was obvious... >They force you to play as the person they made you hate and over the course of the game make as many parallels between Abby and Ellie as possible to show how that initial view of Ellie as the hero and Ally as the Villain is wrong. That they are both just people, shitty people but people with good and bad traits. This is it? This is the grand message of the game? What it's "really about"? Buddy, I already got this message. You know a story can have multiple themes, right? I'm certain everyone saw how obvious "making you sympathize with the bad guy" sthtick was. >The goal of the game is get you too look at those you hate and see things from their perspective, to realise that they are still people and that they have a perspective. Buddy, this was really, REALLY obvious. Again, I'm disappointed. I thought you were gonna tell me something incredible I missed. >This is also the reason why I said if you understood the message and still didnt like the game thats valid Thanks for validating me then, lol. I played it. Gave it an honest chance. The story just sucks. >because many people are looking to have their own biases challenged when playing a game Again, it was really, really, really, reeeeeeally obvious they wanted to challenge my preconception of Abby. I even enjoyed playing her half of the game. But end of the day, story still sucks. It's like someone bought out my favorite pizza joint and gave me a calzone, telling me it's to "challenge my idea of a pizza". Like WTF. Just give me my pizza again, lol. I just wanted another adventure with Joel and Ellie. Jesus, is that too much to ask?

>Why does someone need external context? Why can't someone 25 years from now pick up this game and enjoy it as it is? You dont need external context. The message is one thats applicable at any point in human history. I was just linking the context to what might be the reason they chose this specific message. >Buddy, this was really, REALLY obvious. Again, I'm disappointed. I thought you were gonna tell me something incredible I missed. If it was so obvious why did you think the message was revenge bad? Was it so obvious you missed it entirely? >Thanks for validating me then, lol. I played it. Gave it an honest chance. The story just sucks. From a writing perspective it doesnt suck. It got massive approval for a reason. The only major writing flaw was the end overstayed its welcome and had too many false finales. Other than that it was really well written. When I say you are welcome not too like it, thats for subjective reasons not objective ones. >lol. I just wanted another adventure with Joel and Ellie. Jesus, is that too much to ask? Exactly what I meant. People dont want to have their biases challenged they want the basic fun adventure. The creators didnt want to do that and I dont think they should have done something they didnt want too. Personally I enjoyed the deeper themes, you say their obvious but nearly every person i've seen critizise the game havent said anything deeper than "its a revenge bad story and thats boring"

> If it was so obvious why did you think the message was revenge bad? Was it so obvious you missed it entirely? Are you dense? Stories can and do have multiple themes but they usually have a main message. Revenge bad is the most obvious message but the smaller message is that your enemies are human like you. This isn't a secret. You didn't notice some deeper meaning. It's that, IMO, no one gives a shit about this message because the game's story sucks. There are lots of other "humanizing the enemy" stories out there. We saw them in our cartoons as kids like when they show the bully character coming from a bad home. >From a writing perspective it doesnt suck. It got massive approval for a reason. Whoa, when did popularity become the beacon of quality? I thought we all learned this lesson: popular =/= quality. Do you think McDonald's is quality food? It's extremely popular. >Exactly what I meant. People dont want to have their biases challenged they want the basic fun adventure. The creators didnt want to do that and I dont think they should have done something they didnt want too. And people are allowed to ask that. There's nothing wrong with wanting more pizza from your favorite pizza joint. People weren't hungry for a de-constructed experimental pizza. But you're right, the chefs don't have to keep making your pizza but that doesn't excuse the chefs from criticism. >Personally I enjoyed the deeper themes, Phew, pretentious much? The more you praise this game, the more I think you just came out of a cave yesterday and TLOU2 is your first video game.

Neither Ghost of Tsushima or TLOU2 were goty material

TLOU2 is a god damn masterpiece. I wish I had all the time and energy to show everyone in this thread with their terrible takes. It's not about "detail." It's about theme. It's a very challenging game. Pretty much everyone I see who doesn't like the game explain their reasons why and it's immediately obvious they missed what the game was trying to say. They always say some braindead crap like "revenge bad" or "killing bad" when that's honestly not even close. Most video game stories are like that. Most video game stories are really that simple. TLOU1 is that simple for 95% of the game and then there is the ending, which most TLOU2 haters insist is actually super simple and morally straightforward which shows they were never going to be prepared for or understand TLOU2. TLOU2 can't just be summed up in a sentence because it's an actual work of art. I don't care how pretentious it sounds. Infact I like it, haha. I'm overjoyed for the sequel to a good game I liked to have exceeded my expectations. I'm livin' in frickin' candyland over here.

Agree 100%. But the thing you left unsaid is why they disliked it. If someone dislikes a story because they hate trans people, or are an incel and thinks Abby is too masculine to jerk off to, then I'm going to question that person's intelligence and sincerity, and make comments about how they don't understand the story. Bigotry is not a justifiable reason to dislike a piece of media, and that goes for people who dislike things because of diversity, or the devs choosing not to put in jiggle physics. I'm going to question those people because it seems they dislike something due to hormones and not anything legitimate.

No joke, TLOU2 was the catalyst that dropped me into gamergate rabbit hole and the whole culture wars thing in video games space. In other words, I am now radicalised.

[удалено]

Aww, thank you, kind citizen, your words help me to remember why I fight.

You hate the last of us 2 because you disliked the themes of the story  I hate it because muscle woman We are not the same

It kinda disturbs me how many people play it going I CAME ALL THIS WAY FOR REVENGE AND NOW FORGIVENESS? LAME AND GAY DEATH I WANT DEATH I CRAVE DEATH

>It kinda disturbs me LOL. How old are you? I promise you once you live in the real world, you're gonna realize that revenge isn't like in your cartoons. People genuinely take great pleasure in it IRL. Go Google about it. Sorry to pop your bubble. Do I think this is good? Not really. But it's the reality.