I am finally truly regretting my decision to not buy a Switch when I last had the opportunity

I also think that many people may just not be in the mood for a sad, apocalyptic, anti-humanity story right now? Some reviews I have read have borne this out. Also interesting, most of the big review sites who do scoring are scoring it very highly, but if I were to (subjectively, obv.) assign a score to reviews that don't contain one they would be much lower than the average of the scored reviews.

Just got the notification. It's in the mail on the way.

Are we looking at the third masterpiece of 2020? Let's find out.

It’s really strange, considering how much I absolutely love the first game, but I just can’t drum up an ounce of excitement for TLoU 2. I’m sure it will be a superb game, and yet I just don’t care. Maybe it’s just too late? The first game sits in such a special place in my memory, but it’s long enough ago that it feels... complete. I don’t need or even want more. I hope it’s great and that people love it, but for whatever reason, the series is complete in my mind and I don’t want it to continue.

I was just mentioning to my brother yesterday that it's really weird to think about how the followup to one of my absolute favorite experiences ever launches in just a few days, and while I preordered the Deluxe edition, and have had TLoU themes on my PS4 for the past year, I have zero hype or excitement.

A big part of that, I feel, is that I never wanted a followup to Joel and Ellie's story. The first one ended so perfectly, that a continuation kills the masterful closing moments of the game.
I know I'll probably love it in the end (and I seem to be one of the only people who loved the gameplay and mechanics of the first, so it's definitely my type of game), but that sense of dread lingers. I've heard some really great stuff about the game from non-numerical reviewers, so the quality isn't what's concerning me, but yeh. Didn't need a sequel.

Just got the notification. It's in the mail on the way.

Are we looking at the third masterpiece of 2020? Let's find out.

It’s really strange, considering how much I absolutely love the first game, but I just can’t drum up an ounce of excitement for TLoU 2. I’m sure it will be a superb game, and yet I just don’t care. Maybe it’s just too late? The first game sits in such a special place in my memory, but it’s long enough ago that it feels... complete. I don’t need or even want more. I hope it’s great and that people love it, but for whatever reason, the series is complete in my mind and I don’t want it to continue.

I honestly have no interest in seeing what they do afterwards...

I’m eager to play it, but I don’t think I’m excited for it like I normally would be. I’m expecting to be great and I fully expect to love it, but I also feel like I don’t need a continuation of that story.

I also agree with every reply so far. I'm savoring the moment.

Of course I bought it. Of course I'll play it. But I'm savoring the last few days I have when I can view the first game as a complete whole--perfect and undistorted by the inevitable revelations that will change its meaning.

I played for an hour. Now I’m excited again. Really fighting the urge to stay up and continue playing.

Yeah, we had to put the game down at 4am because of work. Despite the ever-lingering sense of dread, there's just no beating Naughty Dog at creating a story that pulls you forward towards the next story beat.

Naughty Dog is so good at writing characters. Little moments are so well done. Laura Bailey is already knocking it out of the park as Ellie.

As Abby (not sure why Naughty Dog considers her name a spoiler, but whatever), you mean? Absolutely. That's the thing about Laura Bailey: They give her such BOOOOOOORING characters to play 99% of the time. But Naughty Dog clearly recognized talent when they cast her as Nadine in Uncharted 4, and they continue to give her acting some reach here. Just the things she does and the way you can somewhat understand why (the way her friends are the ragtag bunch of misfits of another tale that we'd probably be all-in for in any other scenario).
And JESUS, CAN SHE BRAWL. Slamming an infected on the ground before jumping on their head? Hoo boy...

On a technical level it’s as good as I’ve come to expect Naughty Dog to be. That snow tech! I brushed by a pine tree and all the snow collapsed off of the branches. They’re so good at the details in a way not many other studios are.

That horse ride into Seattle was crazy good. On a technical level I'm blown away by what they can demand from a base PS4 performance-wise. And I haven't heard my Pro scream like it was since God of War (even Death Stranding usually only causes my PS4 to make a... Low Roar).
And even though we only went through the one major setpiece (Abby running from the horde of infected), the game filled us with more "Holy Crap" heart-pumping moments in five minutes than any other game has been able to in recent memory - And then what happens next...

I have a three day weekend after tomorrow, and it’s a good thing I didn’t have any plans to cancel to play this the entire time.

And to think Sammy's already caught up to us on Dying Light. :P
Yeah, we were just going to play for an hour or so, however long we thought the prologue would be... but man, four hours flew by so quick. I'm almost bummed that I made plans for Sunday.

Can't play darts.

Or Jak and Daxter.

I’m way too early to really say it definitively, but it’s a masterpiece.

I think you were right about it being too early.

20 hours in, and the game is unraveling for me. I'm not going to totally judge to till the end, but so far it appears we have the cowardly moral relativism of Bioshock Infinite, and a story that is actually quite anti-woman (or more specifically, a rejection of the feminine).

Maybe this will turn around by the end? I don't know what to expect.

I will let you know in a few days.

I can say the gameplay is top notch. It is among the best stealth action games ever. The level and encounter design puts nearly everything I’ve ever played to shame.

The acting and animation and everything that goes into making these characters real is the best I’ve ever seen, period. I quite like the story so far, but I haven’t reached the end yet. I can’t imagine an ending terrible enough to make this journey not worth experiencing though.

The reaction to this game is so much like the reaction to The Last Jedi in just about every regard.

Contempt for the feminine is a staple of the patriarchal culture. For a game about women, staring women, and featuring so many women, I’m staggered nobody has mentioned the The Last of Us 2’s constant punishing of anything feminine.

Does Naughty Dog actually think many women can relate to Abby and Ellie, two hyper masculine women who perpetrate some of the most hideous violence I’ve ever seen in a game?

This seems like yet another line of ‘strong’ female characters. Leads who are accepted by essentially becoming men. Where ‘strength’ is taken literally instead of as willpower or spirit. It’s a tacit acknowledgment of the weakness of the feminine. Yes, it’s the apocalypse, and yes it makes sense for Ellie and Abby to be physically strong, but every display of femininity in this game is punished or framed as weak. The problem isn’t that some women are masculine. The problem is that the story doesn’t let any women be feminine.

Not a single woman is ever shown wearing anything feminine such as a dress, even at the town’s dance where it would be appropriate. Ellie wears jeans, flannel, and high tops, much like nearly every woman you see. Even when things are safe, when society is more or less functioning, displays of femininity are absent.

While the women who exhibit feminine qualities are all pushed out of the story and punished, the characters with story agency, Abby and Ellie, lack almost any feminine qualities. Ellie is vicious, tempered, violent, physically strong and good with weapons. We see in flashbacks she’s into traditionally masculine interests such as rocket ships and dinosaurs. Even her sexual preferences are masculine, in that she likes women. At home, Dina does the dishes and laundry while Ellie hunts and herds sheep. She comes on to Dina repeatedly with a traditionally masculine libido before being shooed away. It’s quite clear who’s the ‘man’ and who’s the ‘woman’ in the relationship.

Abby is so unrecognizable as a woman, many people online have asked if she is supposed to be trans. Her sex scene with Owen is blocked and framed as if it were two men. Both women drive the story and solve problems almost exclusively through violence and physical prowess. Never their insight, their instinct, their sensitivity. Always their rage. Abby’s care of Yara and Lev is meant to echo Joel’s care for Ellie. A traditional masculine protector.

The women who exhibit femininity are punished in a horrible fashion. While male characters like Jessie and Owen die quickly with little fanfare, Dina, Mel and Yara are subjected to torturous violence. Dina immediately becomes sick while pregnant, explicitly equating femininity with literal weakness. Ellie scolds her for being a burden, before she is eventually shoved out of the story with no agency, but not before being savagely beaten, her head being brutally slammed into the ground repeatedly.

Mel is a doctor, a healer, potential mother, and yet her fate is to be brutally murdered, her death only useful as a plot device for the masculine leads.

Yara suffers a particularly brutal and savage beating, rendering her arm so useless it must be amputated, and ends up with her body riddled with bullets.

Because of the targeting, it becomes hideous. None of these characters have story agency, and the violence against them is more gruesome than the others. And all are horribly punished by the narrative. Not a single feminine quality is shown to be rewarded at all in this story. Nothing.

The game couldn’t be clearer. This is a man's world.

Last of Us 2 lacks any moral conviction at all in its themes. I’m not even sure the game is coherent in ANY of its theming. Is violence bad? Then why is it so awesome? So visceral and cathartic? So necessary? Is revenge bad? Then why did it work out pretty well for Abby?

In this day and age, when the President says there are ‘good people’ on both sides of the white supremacy issue, the idea of a game falling back on this very notion is irresponsible and lazy. “You’re a good person Abby”. No she’s not. So why does the game force us to sympathize with her? What genuinely is the larger aim here with this? What is the game actually saying here? It it actually standing for anything? Because it commits to nothing. What is this game about?

The power of forgiveness? What did Ellie gain through this act? What was wrong with seeking revenge? Where was the actual self reflection? Was it killing Mel? No… she never seems to think about it again. At the end, only Joel flashes before her as she decides to let Abby live. And yet in forgiveness she loses everything. She loses her vengeance, and she loses her family. She is worse off than if she’d gone through with it. What motivated her to change her mind? Seriously. In the story as shown, I cannot point to a reason why Ellie’s character at that moment would let her go.

What do your characters want, and what do they need? Why did Ellie need to let Abby go? I have genuinely no idea.

The game was absolutely too long. While the stealth mechanics can make for some tense moments, everything about the game felt recycled. Similar combat scenarios. Similar weapons. Animations lifted straight form the first game and from uncharted. These absolutely gorgeous environments were ruined with a game that felt repetitive. The novelty sections like going after Tommy when he’s sniping you were great. Making your way through the island when two sides were at war was great (although Metal Gear Solid 4 pulled this trick almost 15 years ago). I was not really having ‘fun’ for a large portion of this game. The conceit here is roughly 13 years old; the game still exhibits the same DNA that made Uncharted great. The formula is stating to wear thin.

I was willing to be taken along on the story. I don’t have a problem per se with Joel being killed and Ellie out for revenge, but it’s in how you handle it. It’s in having a solid theme, that weaves into the character’s psychology. It’s about a story that asks the right questions, and hit you in the gut with the answer like the first game did.

Last of Us 2 is this decade’s Bioshock Infinite. An impressive facade with a cowardly lack of moral conviction masquerading as depth.

I know you don't give a damn about spoilers, and I know the first trailer from two years ago hinted at revenge being a theme, but please don't let this be the start of you posting evocative titles. The game has been out four days. I'd like to keep coming here until I finish it.

The gameplay, though, is where the game truly shines for me. I really liked the gameplay in the first game. I think it's far better than a lot of people give it credit for. Part 2 takes the same formula and really expands it. I don't want to oversell it, it's still that same gameplay, but everything just feels so much better. I think most of that boils down to the arena design. Most of them are incredibly large, with pathways between sections absolutely everywhere. Getting spotted, repositioning and laying traps, luring the enemies in and scampering away through a hole in the wall . . . it's just so good. There's also a lot more set piece moments than I remember being in the first game, but it has been a few years since I've played it, so maybe that's not true.

Perhaps it's because I played on normal and not the harder difficulties, but traps rarely seemed to be a good option. The best option always just seemed to sneak through the encounter and engage nobody. Maybe do some silent takedowns on your way. Between being able to crawl and having the listening mode this was viable in almost every encounter. If there wasn't a stuck door or some other slowly movable obstacle blocking the way, sometimes just running was enough.

That way you will be well stocked for the mandatory combat the game sometimes throws at you.

I saw that the difficulty was quite customizable, with settings for each individual aspect of the game rather than a blanket difficulty changing everything. This is so cool.

Just a random collection of thoughts, here.

Let's start with the obvious--I think Abby is brilliant. It's probably the most divisive aspect of this game. I think it totally works. The presentation of her story was great.

I also love the pacing of the game. I have seen lots of comments wishing that they had flipped perspectives every day, so you play Day 1 as both characters, then Day 2. I'm glad they didn't. The game works much better as it is--play all the way through as Ellie, sharing her desire for revenge, wreaking havoc to get that revenge at any cost. Only afterwards do you get to see the other side, and get the humanization of the people you've been killing. The only thing I would have changed is to cut Abby's section from the prologue, so you only play as Ellie and then stumble upon Joel's murder as confused as Ellie is. Then, after Ellie's Day 3, go all the way back to the prologue as Abby. I'm not sure why they did it they way the did. It feels sort of at odds with what they seemingly were trying to accomplish with the perspective shift in the rest of the game.

I'm also a little surprised that Abby's 3 days didn't intertwine with Ellie's more. I sort of assumed that we would see (or hear about) all of her friends' murders, and Abby either trying to find Ellie or possibly trying to hide. As it is, Abby really only learns about it at the end. Which is fine, I found what she was doing pretty compelling.

I really liked the brief open-world segment in Ellie's Day 1. I think it worked well for what it was. I sort of wish the entire game had been like that--I can imagine having a decent chunk of the city to explore, trying to find Abby's friend's one by one. On the other hand, that might be a little too video gamey for way the story is handled. I'm not sure you could make that work and make it feel as good as a set progression. It was fun segment, though.

I think Abby's gameplay segments were without a doubt the stronger sections. Getting stuck in that room while Yara and Lev tried to find a way out was an incredible experience. Finding the way down the skyscraper before the hospital was likewise terrifying. That whole area was wonderfully designed. Fuck Stalkers and the infected stuck on the walls. The hospital itself and the Rat King was just . . . god. I only have so many ways to say amazing. I also liked the entire island segment. I was honestly a little surprised at how "big" they went with the set pieces. I don't really remember anything like it in the first game.

I also really loved all of the flashback segments. It gave me much needed Joel and Ellie time. The museum segment was a real standout, but I think they were all fantastic. I liked Abby's, too!

The thing I'm conflicted on is the ending. The last few hours of the game, every time the screen went to black I though it was going to be over. Part of me has a hard time believing that Ellie would leave Dina to go find Abby at that point. I think they did an okay job selling that she needed the closure somehow, that it was still eating at her, but she also seemed so happy there with Dina and JJ.

That final segment in California was great, though. I loved that area from a gameplay perspective. It was just a fun play space to go through.

The fight against Ellie in the theater was dumb. I can see the appeal of it on paper, but it wasn't fun, and it felt really silly and video gamey in a way that actually ruined the tension of that moment.

Likewise, the fight against Abby at the very end was not great. It wasn't awful, but Naughty Dog have a bad habit of making those set one on one fights go on for entirely too long. That needed to be fifteen seconds, not a two minute fight with three phases.

I do like that Ellie ultimately let her go. I'm mixed on how to feel if it would have been better if she had just stayed on the farmhouse and not gone at all, though, just let it all go right there. But there is something to be said for driving the point home by having her return to an empty house, missing fingers and unable to play the guitar.

It’s a small thing, but I’m really freaking impressed with the guitar. Best use of the touchpad ever.

For me, I think it’s the imagery at the end that sells it. She cuts Abby down, and Abby ignores her and goes immediately to Lev and carries in to the boat. It echoes Joel carrying Ellie out of the hospital. You’re right, I don’t think it’s sold incredibly well for Ellie to have the change of heart. I could buy it more if she had simply stayed with Dina.

I’m replaying the game now. Are you sure Ellie doesn’t know? Obviously we do, so maybe it was just too easy to jump to that conclusion. At one point one of the WLF (maybe Abby, I can’t remember) says “You’re her,” meaning the immune girl from the hospital. I think that’s probably enough for her to connect the dots.

Yeah, I had to. ;-)

This is hilarious. Spoilers obviously, not that anyone should care at this point.

https://youtu.be/6UDi8pL4RWg

Worst game he ever played huh? He must not have played Final Fantasy 15.

You know, the internet’s constant mocking of Abby’s appearance I think really does expose an ugly truth. It’s specifically why the trope of the strong masculine woman typically has her being either uninterested in sex, or a lesbian. Men are uncomfortable with heterosexual displays by masculine women. And lo and behold this is what we see in aggregate with Abby, a masculine heterosexual woman, while Ellie fits the trope and is loved. I cannot believe this is solely due to her being “poorly written” when her motivations and reasons for change are the most clear of any characater.

It’s so weird when critics of the game are accused of hating women, while the game so completely re enforces the patriarchal subjugation of the feminine. I didn’t even talk about Lev, who is subject to such overt oppression (being a child bride), that the solution is to shave his head and become a man. Rather than fight for women, he discards the feminine all together.

I’m just baffled that no critics really even discuss any of this. Is their ability to analyze so shallow that they think female leads automatically mean the game is good for women?

https://www.polygon.com/2020/6/26/21304642/the-last-of-us-2-violence

So no, Ellie can’t change. She can’t change because AAA games can’t change. Let’s say Ellie learns her lesson, that violence begets violence. That to save the world and herself, she must put down the gun. What would she even do? Literally, what would a AAA game even allow for her to do?

I've always said, the future is in RPGs. AAA games will inevitably all have to become RPGs.

BTW, I probably won't read comments for a while, but try to keep them spoiler free.

Joel Kills Dumbledore.

The game can definitely feel oppressive. There are some absolutely great lighter, happy moments throughout, tough. Just to give you something to look forward to.

Eager to hear what you think.

I haven't owned a Playstation since it was... well, PLAYSTATION. (Which still is just THE BEST intro.)

Jerk.

:-p

Skimmed while squinting. One thing The Last of Us 1 did was cut away after just showing you a flash of the worst thing. So far part 2 is similar. That said, I could barely watch the reveal teaser scene they released for Part II last summer or whenever it was, so I'm anxious.

Good reflections. I do have some other thoughts though.

What we perceive as the uncanny valley is a moving target. Early film, while obvious to us now, looked like reality. Violence, digested through time, has looked real in its various incarnations. Sure, it is more realistic now, but I'm not sure the psychological impact is different now.

We've been using digital representations of violence to make humans more killable for years. From changing the shape of targets to represent humanoid shapes to using simulators to practice killing, we have used technology and visual styles to wear away our initial hesitancy to kill.

I'm with you that this is probably a bad thing (and I have my own convoluted rationalizations for my own consumption of violent media as a filthy vegetarian wannabe pacifist), but I'm not sure that changing the "realism" threshold makes this worse than previous iterations.