The Last of Us Franchise - Because it's apparently a franchise now. This thread has been double-DMCA’d by Sony Interactive Entertainment.

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

Man, even DSP is dunking on ND.

DSP is dunking on ND and calling them out on their bullshit. We have reached peak lolcowdom.

Mr. Livestream Coomer. Mr. Can't-be-Catfished. Mr. "I died in the Quicksand on Snake Eater."

We all have had our shares of laughs at Phil's expense, but when he is the one (and deservedly so) raking you through mud, you cannot deny you are a cosmic fuck-up.

Druckmann would unironically be better off killing himself.

Now let's see how long it takes for DSP to fuck it up. He almost had a leg to stand on during the Jared fiasco but he ran his jokes into the ground.

 

[Gay_nig_from_outer_space]

Now let's see how long it takes for DSP to fuck it up. He almost had a leg to stand on during the Jared fiasco but he ran his jokes into the ground.

DSP will take any opportunity to divert peoples attention from his lolcow antics, but often makes himself look like even more of a lolcow in the process.

 

[Ruin]

DSP will take any opportunity to divert peoples attention from his lolcow antics, but often makes himself look like even more of a lolcow in the process.

He'll probably get his head stuck in a bucket or something tomorrow as cosmic retribution for being technically right today.

 

[Rekkington]

Some more hot garbage from yours truly, Jason Schreier
View attachment 1268827
archive
This reeks of bullshit. Why would any dev play specific spoiler heavy parts and save them as a video?

I just want to point out that a supposed journalist, while researching the leaks and speaking to mysterious insiders, openly admitted he had not even viewed leaks and continues to speculate wildly about their content.

 

[Bread Fetishist]

https://mobile.twitter.com/AEGRO

This nigga’s either a troll or a fanboy in denial. His tweets An don’t retweets are filled with unparalleled levels of cope.

Also, can I just say console wars are the faggiest thing on planet?

 

[Übertroon]

I think what I dislike about this story is how it goes about killing Joel and how it portrays Abby and her Burger King kids club of friends.

It's fine for the story and setting to be cynical and depressive. But why tell the story if it's just going to be the protagonists getting beat up like a bunch of nobodies? There's a reason why the story was about Joel and Ellie and not the firefly leader that got killed at the end of the first game. You can kill your protagonist, but it has to be because the protagonist achieved something or tried to achieve something. You can't just go "rocks fall, joel dies"

Also you can make Abby a sympathetic character, but you don't do this by making her "the best".
Abby gets constantly praised in cutscenes for being great at everything. She is portrayed to be both well read and built like a fridge. Every guy wants her. She is fucking ubermench woman. How does this make us sympathize with her roid rage beating of Joel?

Ideally Abby would be portrayed as damaged and hurt by Joel killing her family. Forced to do terrible things just to survive. Physically strong, but emotionally stunted. Her behaviour and hatred alienating those around her and forcing her to go on her quest alone. Making her numerically the underdog against Joel and his family rather than Abby bringing a squad of every race and gender.

Make Abby a villain as a consequence of what Joel did to make her life a living hell. Not some sperg living a good life but in the mood for bashing the skull of an old man and choking his surrogate daughter.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

Also, can I just say console wars are the faggiest thing on planet?

Oh you sweet summer child. You think console wars are pathetic. You should see the autism-off between vi and emacs.

I think what I dislike about this story is how it goes about killing Joel and how it portrays Abby and her Burger King kids club of friends.

It's fine for the story and setting to be cynical and depressive. But why tell the story if it's just going to be the protagonists getting beat up like a bunch of nobodies? There's a reason why the story was about Joel and Ellie and not the firefly leader that got killed at the end of the first game. You can kill your protagonist, but it has to be because the protagonist achieved something or tried to achieve something. You can't just go "rocks fall, joel dies"

Also you can make Abby a sympathetic character, but you don't do this by making her "the best".
Abby gets constantly praised in cutscenes for being great at everything. She is portrayed to be both well read and built like a fridge. Every guy wants her. She is fucking ubermench woman. How does this make us sympathize with her roid rage beating of Joel?

Ideally Abby would be portrayed as damaged and hurt by Joel killing her family. Forced to do terrible things just to survive. Physically strong, but emotionally stunted. Her behaviour and hatred alienating those around her and forcing her to go on her quest alone. Making her numerically the underdog against Joel and his family rather than Abby bringing a squad of every race and gender.

Make Abby a villain as a consequence of what Joel did to make her life a living hell. Not some sperg living a good life but in the mood for bashing the skull of an old man and choking his surrogate daughter.

This is exactly what Disney Star Wars did. The protagonists of same are kinda like the original trilogy's protagonists, but... better. Just because. Unfortunately Hollywood is so creatively bankrupt it has no idea where to go from here other than to escalate.

 

[ZMOT]

Some more hot garbage from yours truly, Jason Schreier
View attachment 1268827
archive
This reeks of bullshit. Why would any dev play specific spoiler heavy parts and save them as a video?

it was the evil HAXX0RS! stealing probably one of most unwieldy data possible due to sheer size instead of anything of more value!

also quite telling how fucking hard he tries to discredit the "it wasn't a disgruntled employee, everything at ND is sunshine and rainbows there!"

EDIT:

Leaving aside the software and IP / music publishing divisions, when was the last time a really genuinely innovative Sony product came out? Blu Ray? Maybe, it did win a format war, but then digital distribution ate

apparently their lenses are still one of the best (or so I've heard), then there's some stuff that doesn't make headlines or revolutionizes the market over night. some of their phones aren't complete dogshit either (just too hella expensive).
but it's probably to be expected, a company as big as sony can never be 100% shit.

 

[Miang]

Just to clarify some things about Amy Hennig and her relationship with ND and Last of Us, she gave a very good interview with GameBeat last February. It's a long interview, so I'll just provide a link and the archive, but it's well worth reading. I really recommend the bits where she talks about Nathan Drake's conception and why the Uncharted cast looks like it does - it shows some excellent insight into the mind of a strong writer who isn't troubled by the pressures of identity politics and knows the history of the genre the story occupies.

https://venturebeat.com/2019/02/22/amy-hennig-interview-surviving-the-trauma-of-making-a-video-game-and-inspiring-newcomers/view-all/

archive

Here, though, are the statements that interest me given this debacle and what we know about ND's culture.

GamesBeat: I forget whether you overlapped much with The Last of Us.

Hennig: No, I was there. I was working on Uncharted 3. That was the hard part where we tried to grow the studio and do two projects at once. We had a lot of growing pains trying to make that work.

GamesBeat: What do you remember most now about The Last of Us?

Hennig: I didn’t work on it, since I was working on Uncharted at the same time. What I remember most about all the projects is how we just crunched, and it got worse with every project. It was weird for me because I was always in the midst of it myself. It was odd being on Uncharted and not being on The Last of Us and being able to objectively watch people crunching and seeing the effect it was having.

That cemented some of my desire to — man, if I ever get a chance, if I was ever to have a studio, I’d do it differently. That’s not a criticism of Naughty Dog. I don’t mean it that way. I just mean that — I don’t know. You also just get to an age where you can only — doing that crunch time in the trenches, you start realizing how debilitating it is, physically and emotionally and psychologically and relationship-wise. Just wondering if we could do things differently, do things better.

GamesBeat: Have you ever fully explained why you left Naughty Dog?

Hennig: I don’t really talk about it. I always steer away from things that feel like they could be used for sensationalist clickbait-y kind of stuff. Not that you would do that, but you know how these things go. Fundamentally it’s just creative differences. We had a different idea about which way we should go. That happens.

GamesBeat: Having done that, was it hard to leave these characters behind?

Hennig: Sure, of course. When you live with these characters — they’re coming out of your brain. You’re writing them. They feel like children or something. It’s very hard. I said, ineptly or inarticulatly, at one point — it’s like if you split up with your spouse and they have the kids. You wish them well, but you don’t necessarily want to look at their pictures on Facebook with the new spouse. It was hard for a while, because there was something distant about it for me. I’m not doing it anymore, but it’s continuing, when I lived with it internally for so long.

If you can't already tell from the above, Amy Hennig is an absolute pro and Naughty Dog is truly diminished by her absence. A smarter studio would have fought tooth and nail to keep such an incredible talent. But, oh well.

 

[Rakdos92]

Man, this thread moves damned fast.

So yes, she was absolutely special, because for all anyone knows she might have had a mutant strain that wasn't nearly as aggressive as the others and might have actually acted as a sort of vaccine against the "eat your brain" fungus we saw. Doesn't change the fact the Fireflies were trying to kill the goose that laid golden eggs of fluid and tissue samples, though, so even from the most shamelessly utilitarian standpoint those surgeons deserved what they got.

The Fireflies were a bunch of perpeptual triggered anarcho democrats who were mad they had to stay under an Emergency Powers goverment. A bunch of morons who caused several safezones to be overrun by bandits and/or cordicepts because they were a petulant bunch of children.

Okay guys, it's time to read another stupid pun book!

• Why is TLOU taking so much heat? Because it's always Sony in LA.
• Duckmann asked his fans to Neil before him. He got nailed where it leaks.
• Have you seen Abby's swing? It dropped my Joel-line!

Okay, that's it for now. Whistles!

I wanna throw a beer bottle at you for these puns. Seriously, they are abbeyful.

 

[YourMommasBackstory]

Wont be surprised if they’ll blame Russian haxxors once again

 

[Ponderous Pillock]

What are the chances that if the backlash from fans about the clusterfuck of a story is loud enough and Druckmann gets kicked they issue some kind of apology or acknowledgement? I would say zero since it's a western dev but the devs of We Happy Few made a documentary where half of it was them basically saying "we fucked up, and if we do this again something is fucked in the studio" so who knows.

For starters, Compulsion had some things not really going for it. It's a relatively "new" dev with very little wider industry experience with staff leads from another studio during it's rather infamous "only half finishing games era" before it got snapped up by Daddy Bethesda and had actual money poured into it.

That being said, Monsieur Provost also isn't a fucking coward like Drekmann, and owned the absolute shit out of his mistakes and has seen We Happy Few get steadily fixed, with whatever their next project being hopefully being a tad less grandiose in style

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

Wont be surprised if they’ll blame Russian haxxors once again

Surprisingly, this would be the most restrained bullshit accusation compared to just blaming non-employees of Naughty Dog for an atrocious plot leak.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

apparently their lenses are still one of the best (or so I've heard), then there's some stuff that doesn't make headlines or revolutionizes the market over night. some of their phones aren't complete dogshit either (just too hella expensive).

I have never had a Sony phone myself. I remember they were first to have a "4K" phone but it was only 4K in that it could play 4K media in its native resolution; the rest of the time it was downscaled to 1080p.

Also their professional-grade headphones are meant to be really nice.

 

[Polyboros2]

Never. Sony needs this game to succeed and the only way it will is if they tell Druckman to STFU, stay off social media, any sign of them firing druckman won't happen until after Sony's financials come out and they note "Poor performance in our gaming division which is being recitified by an alignment with current gaming trends" and then ND will get 'reorganized' i.e. heads will roll.

Sony poured 100M into this monster, they can NOT let it NOT make any money.

I think they people who think this will be profitable are underestimating how expensive AAA gaming development is. And this game was in development for, what, 7 years?

Sony probably wasn't counting on going into the black on this game on its initial release, before spoilers. Or, at least, not enough to justify all the money spent on it. Possible DLC, a full priced PS5 rerelease a yearish later, DLC bundled GotY edition on both consoles, and then a remastered first game bundled with the GotY edition a few years down the line.

I'm sure Sony was counting on this game having legs. I'd be shocked if all of that isn't built into it's profitablity, they planned on selling it to the fans as many times as possible.

This game tanking at release doesn't hurt the first sale, it cripples the future ones. They need to make as much money as they can on this initial sale cause they already knows it's going to be a loss.

 

[vertexwindi]

If you can't already tell from the above, Amy Hennig is an absolute pro and Naughty Dog is truly diminished by her absence. A smarter studio would have fought tooth and nail to keep such an incredible talent. But, oh well.

See, here's the thing. A lot of CEOs in the industry think all their workers are replaceable. Who cares if Dick or Bob animates this? Who cares if Jane or Alice textures this? Who cares if Amy or Neil writes this? But a writer isn't replaceable. Writers have their own particular voice that is almost impossible to replicate. You can see it comparing BL2 to BL3, ME1 to ME2/3 and you can absolutely see it with Uncharted 1-3 compared to 4. Amy wasn't replaceable. They should have absolutely fought to keep her.

 

[FuckedUp]

See, here's the thing. A lot of CEOs in the industry think all their workers are replaceable. Who cares if Dick or Bob animates this? Who cares if Jane or Alice textures this? Who cares if Amy or Neil writes this? But a writer isn't replaceable. Writers have their own particular voice that is almost impossible to replicate. You can see it comparing BL2 to BL3, ME1 to ME2/3 and you can absolutely see it withUncharted 1-3 compared to 4. Amy wasn't replaceable. They should have absolutely fought to keep her.

But what if the writers have the same Tech and Design stats?

 

[Ruin]

See, here's the thing. A lot of CEOs in the industry think all their workers are replaceable. Who cares if Dick or Bob animates this? Who cares if Jane or Alice textures this? Who cares if Amy or Neil writes this? But a writer isn't replaceable. Writers have their own particular voice that is almost impossible to replicate. You can see it comparing BL2 to BL3, ME1 to ME2/3 and you can absolutely see it withUncharted 1-3 compared to 4. Amy wasn't replaceable. They should have absolutely fought to keep her.

Musicians too. Future Doom games will absolutely suffer without Mick Gordon.

 

[Titos]

For starters, Compulsion had some things not really going for it. It's a relatively "new" dev with very little wider industry experience with staff leads from another studio during it's rather infamous "only half finishing games era" before it got snapped up by Daddy Bethesda and had actual money poured into it.

That being said, Monsieur Provost also isn't a fucking coward like Drekmann, and owned the absolute shit out of his mistakes and has seen We Happy Few get steadily fixed, with whatever their next project being hopefully being a tad less grandiose in style

That's true. Despite them being Canadian them taking ownership of their fuckup made me have some respect for them. I doubt Naughty Dog will do the same. Also helps that the soundtrack to WHF was damn good. I hope they end up as basically the replacement for Arkane since Arkanes founder left and now they seem to have lost their way, since just like Naughty Dog they've been sucking Anitas toes. Owning up to your fuckups can go a long way in restoring peoples faith, or at least people seeing you as a creator who isn't completely up your own ass. Hell they owned up to Contrast getting shit reviews even though I don't think it deserved it which says alot about them being self aware. Seeing as Naughty Dog fans were throwing a shitfit when Uncharted 3 wasn't getting 10/10 across the board I see it taking at least another monumental fuckup before ND gets it's shit together.

 

[Kurtis Trent]

"What can you tell me about...

Intersectional Feminism?"

- Gabriel Knight 4, if Anita Sarkeesian got her paws on it.

Like she's even aware of this franchise. In Anita's book there were no games before 2007