I personally don’t like the direction Naughty Dog have taken for the past decade or so because their games have become less “game-y” (for lack of a better term). Yes the shooting/traversal is mechanically competent and the story is well directed, but I think that they are hewing much more closely to a long-form television show format. The fact that Last of Us was able to be adapted into a tv show so seamlessly also suggests this is the case.
The colourful worlds of Crash Bandicoot and Jak & Daxter were Rare-esque and much more to my personal taste. This isn’t because they are aimed at younger audiences per se; games can aim at adult demographics without aping another medium. Some personal favourites would be series like Souls, Resident Evil and God of War.
The story is what a middle schooler thinks constitutes “deep writing”, and the gameplay felt like a tacked on mess made by someone who saw a video game on the internet once without a single clue of what makes them good
What is ‘deep writing’ to you? It’s a character driven narrative focused on two characters’ relationship to each other and their survivors guilt. It doesn’t have to be ‘deep’ to be compelling. It might not be ‘the greatest story ever told in a video game’ as it’s been lauded, but it’s not bad by any means.
No not the only one. The disconnect between gameplay and the main theme, murdering a lot of people while preaching a revenge through murder is bad story.
A similar problem had Max Payne 3. Cut scenes showed Max walling in pain and alcohol, because he is a dirty cop murderer. Gameplay was mowing some people in slow mo.
Last of Us 2 has some problems, but still is in my top games ever. Especially the story and character focused list.
You don’t think the body count reinforces revenge being bad? With the looks of terror on their faces as Ellie slices their throat, the cries of “Sheila!” or whatever when you blow Sheila or whatever up, the dogs whining at their dead owners’ sides, seems to me that all of this feeds into revenge being bad. You see the cost of those actions too, whole settlement aflame as Ellie hunts down Abby, slaughtering everyone in her way whilst Abby is trying to walk away from it.
You’re a killing machine in that game, but everywhere you go the violence is always extremely messy, upsetting, and visceral, and Ellie has pretty severe reactions to it as well in cutscenes. Both Ellie and Abby even say hateful and petty things under her breath whilst you’re taking them out, hardly presenting them in the best light whilst they’re slaughtering people in their pursuit of revenge. Enemies beg for their life when you grab them, Ellie has to be talked down from murdering a pregnant woman. At one point she tortured, brutally, a woman who looks a bit like Dina. I’m not sure the ludo-narrative dissonance argument applies here, surprisingly, despite basically being Rambo from a gameplay perspective.
Now Uncharted? I love those games, but you destroy legions worth of bad guys, it’s ridiculous, and in a serious narrative Drake’s charming affableness whilst doing it would have to be a cover for a full on psychopath or something. There aren’t many action games, especially shooting, where this argument doesn’t apply really. It’s just somewhere you need to suspend your disbelief. That or only play games where you kill a reasonable amount of people? What would that be? 15? Even that seems high, but 12 hour game a game where you only defeat 15 people isn’t an action game.
There are some real complaints to be had. I think not liking the more realistic/explicit presentation of violence is fair. I think the visceral behaviour of games does make it a different experience to the same violence you’d see in a movie.
I also think disliking Neil Druckmann as a person is valid, he has some quotes that seem snobby.
Not enjoying cinematics games in general could also be an avenue for complaints but I think none of these are explicit complaints about tLoU2
Not all directors come across that way but signalling them as a visionary suggests some slight bias.
I also don’t really understand what your trying to say above, isolating “preference” and “issues” doesn’t really make sense since issues form from preference and art is not objective.
Yeah, but wasn’t without drama. Druckmann left a bad taste in a lot of peoples mouthes when Amy Henig got pushed out and tossed out her Uncharted 4 after TLoU success. Hes always given me Jared Leto God vibes ngl
Except Naughty dog when asked specially said they weren’t doing to make “childrens” games anymore like it’s something beneath them. I quite liked/like those games.
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