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

[Festivus]

choosing to have Chloe die instead of the whole town was a no-brainer.

>Instead of the whole town

What the actual fuck is wrong with that game? Why would that even be presented as a real option?!?!?

 

[Secret Asshole]

Life is Strange's choice is fucking HILARIOUS in that its basically 'one really terrible person dies' or 'an entire town of innocent people die'. Like, this terrible person you've tried to save from being terrible with your powers is completely and utterly responsible for the time travel fucking disaster it causes and she's still a selfish cunt. There's no choice in that, let that bitch die. She shot an innocent dog and murders people she owes money to Chloe is a TERRIBLE TERRIBLE person. It isn't even a choice. The game presents it as 'sad' but if it were me, I'd be like, "Bitch, you ruined my life by forcing your way into it and abusing my abilities. Enjoy hell, cunt. Thank God you die before I even know who you are."

>Instead of the whole town

What the actual fuck is wrong with that game? Why would that even be presented as a real option?!‽?

Its fucking hysterical, they expect you to sympathize with a character that shoots a dog. Like, writing rules 101, don't have someone you're supposed to like shoot an animal or harm a child. And it violates that. On top of that, she is a TERRIBLE human being, with no redeeming qualities.

In terms of TLOU 2 plot, retroactively making a character a rapist or a terrible person demonstrates you have no writing skills and cannot make your narrative work in its current form. This has never worked, will never work and has crushed anyone trying to do this. Its sincerely obvious at what you're trying to do: You need to make Joel worse to justify what happened to him. The problem is, whatever he's done would have to be in the distant past. IE: No one will care or support it.

People are going to outright reject the retcon you put in place. You can't have something like that without a LOT of foreshadowing in place. And by the way, I mean a LOT. Also, he's had a daughter and basically adopted Ellie so there's basically no indications he has any problems with girls or women. So the idea is purely idiotic.

If it's not the wife, I guarantee you it'll be something with him killing a woman/women during/post-apocalypse in a really brutal way.

They're fighting a losing battle, though. Unless they make him a rapist or a pedophile, people on the whole are not gonna stop liking Joel just because he's done some dark shit. I mean fuck me, the Far Cry series is built on the backs of its villains: People love them even though they are literal murderous monsters, so I'm pretty sure Joel will be fine.

Unless- again- they decide to really fuck themselves in the mouth and make him a pedophile or rapist. Those are the ones that will make people draw back, and it would be the literal worst possible decision the devs could make with his character.

The worst.

Emphasis mine.

Once again, I am so fucking glad that I have enough distance from this game to not give a shit how this unfolds. If the devs are actually embracing the un- fucking-speakably sexist idea that "all men are rapists" then this is going to turn into an absolute nightmare shitstorm, far beyond the one we've already seen.

If the company and developers are actually running with this ideology in the process of making their game, they will absolutely push away players with opposing views, as well as moderate/centrist players. BUT, they may also start to push away people who generally agree with their politics, but disagree with the extreme nature of the ideology that they're pushing. There are left-leaning feminists who are mild enough or reasonable enough in their views that they will not approve of an "all men are rapists" narrative and denounce it as sexist (or at least, they will if they're not fucking cowards and hypocrites). I could so VERY easily see this being turned on the developers as a "men are all rapists, which means that women are all victims, and portraying women as victims is sexist" trap.

God. If there is even an ounce of truth to this leak, the developers need to be overhauling this fucking game ASAP. It will tank so goddamn hard if this is the sort of insulting ideological fuckery they're putting into it.

Dude, in Far Cry 4 I wanted to fucking rock and roll with Pagan Min. I HATED both drug pusher and commie factions and would loved to have just rolled them the fuck over with Pagan. That clearly should have been an option. He was more interesting than either of the factions. If you view the secret ending you actually see his motivations and you just want to hop in his chopper and just fuck up the rebels. It should have been there. Ubi shouldn't have even bothered with three factions, just Min and the others. I wanted to hop in his chopper with a SAW and just gun down rebels to rock and roll music with my step dad. Oh and that faggot Mohan deserved to die. Fuck the Golden Path. I honestly could not play Far Cry 4 that much because of how much more I liked Min than all the other options.

The thing is there's nothing they can make him now. The problem is they're re-writing him for use in this plot because its the only way to make this plot work. There is no scenario where this is acceptable, or will be accepted by the player base. It will be seen as a revision to justify his death, which it is. Its the only reason you'd make that choice. Which demonstrates that you have no justification for the story itself existing. Re-writing a character's backstory without any prior foreshadowing has always been demonstrated in really terrible stories, especially in sequel works or been done by other writers other than the character's creator.

How does Joel not have sympathy for women or treat them poorly, after losing a daughter, a wife and nearly losing an adopted daughter? It makes absolutely no sense.

Also, allowing the 'all men are rapists' basically joke hypothesis and pretty much a living straw-man into your story is probably the stupidest fucking idea you can ever do. For one, no one but a VERY VERY small minority even take that shit seriously. The only people I have ever seen take it seriously are so mentally broken that they don't have normal human relationships. If they're in your writing room, your story is dead. Sorry, there's no saving it. Your story is fucked.

If this is true, then there's no fucking way Cuckman works at any AAA studio ever again and Sony is even more of an embarrassment to not even break through the walls of Naughty Dog like the fucking Kool-Aid Man and strangle Druckman to death on the writer's room table for even having the idea pop into his soy-filled brain. Its the antithesis of securing a wide audience. Its like pouring poison into your product. Even the most progtarded corporations have avoided this because even THEY know this is a very fringe idea that shouldn't ever be put into anything where you're putting a even a dollar into. I have RARELY ever seen a progtard advocate this. At best, they laugh nervously and avoid it altogether when one of their 'allies' goes off on it because they know its psychotic but that group-think be strong. At worst, its mocked in those circles. Those who actually think like this are few and far between, genuinely joyless, unpleasant and loathsome individuals.

'All men are rapists' is a fucking joke. Everyone treats it like one. The people who take it seriously are locked away in some Gender Studies department, being paid nothing and generating revenue for a university or are mentally ill, broken people who can barely relate to humanity as a whole and will probably end up killing themselves at some point. No fucking joke, I do not believe you can hold this ideology and live a normal life. I believe it is fundamentally impossible as it contradicts reality on every level. That Druckman even considered doing this means he is so painfully fucking stupid, it hurts.

 

[Hangula Hungui]

>Instead of the whole town

What the actual fuck is wrong with that game? Why would that even be presented as a real option?!‽?

They tried to pull a Butterfly-Effect Moment (even showed them during the entire game) by letting you chose to either negate the entire time you invested into the game by teleporting back to the beginning where the blue haired cunt gets shot in a toilet (as it was the first time you manipulated time) or you let a tornado which was spawned near the town because of time manipulation consume almost everyone in the area. Where the movie The Butterfly Effect actually worked (even with the cut „killing yourself in your mothers womb“ ending), the devs thought they were clever by letting the player chose either of two very bad options.
Very bad options because if you chose to let Chloe die, her funeral scene is very dramatically drawn out, to a point where even characters who never knew her or interacted with her show up and cry.
To me and many others who aren’t into Yuri bait or tumblr tier writing, this didn’t work. It didn’t bring up any conflict or emotions into us because Chloe is acting like a sociopathic abusive friend. Her reaction when one of the students at the local Uni tries to kill herself/kills herself (depending on your actions)?
„Kate Marsh is dead/almost killed herself! Such sad, okay? But this doesn’t help me with my problems.“ and later „I gotta blame somebody, otherwise it‘d all be my fault. Fuck that.“

I chose the „fuck you let everyone die“ option and laughed my ass off as these two cutsie small town hipster lesbians drove off into the sunset, while being surrounded by the shambles of their hometown (and possibly dead bodies of friends and family) with sad and pretentious hipster music in the background. Fuck this game and fuck everyone who thought it had good writing and characters.

 

[Secret Asshole]

The ending where they drive off like a happy couple is HILARIOUS, because there's like dozens of corpses under the rubble and shit. Its the most SELFISH ending you could choose.

Also lol at Chloe's funeral scene. Dumb cunt high-school drop out has this massive turnout even though she was terrible to everyone she met? Uh, yeah, fucking no.

 

[Festivus]

Its fucking hysterical, they expect you to sympathize with a character that shoots a dog. Like, writing rules 101, don't have someone you're supposed to like shoot an animal or harm a child. And it violates that. On top of that, she is a TERRIBLE human being, with no redeeming qualities.

I gotta blame somebody, otherwise it‘d all be my fault. Fuck that.“

I saw that quote clipped and it was honestly just that and 5 minutes of a Let's Play on which I formed my opinion... but it just gets worse and worse. HOW YOU GONNA SHOOT A DOG?!

They tried to pull a Butterfly-Effect Moment

>Insert gif of Michael Scott screaming NO here

 

[Dysnomia]

I sat through about 5 minutes of a Let's Play where they were just in that blue chick's room talking shit on her step-dad for the WHOLE time. It was not a very good first impression to say the least. Thanks for the link, I'll give it a watch.

I didn't even bother with that one after the major let down that was Gone Home. I can't remember which was first. But I tried Gone Home thinking it was an actual horror game because I stupidly didn't look into it more than the lies it was sold on. My theories were that you were either actually dead and didn't know it (your family was out identifying you at the morgue or something) or you would find the whole fam decapitated in the basement. Turns out it was some idiotic teen lesbo love story that includes going AWOL for love. A relationship that would probably end in a year or less anyway because your baby sister is too young and irresponsible to be in love to begin with. Stay in school kid.

The whole channeling a ghost thing was a red herring. I think it was the ghost of some weird old uncle that was supposed to haunt the house.

I actually enjoyed looking through the stuff in the house. I thought that part was well done and they gave a lot of detail to mundane things like packs of toilet paper. But it was all totally wasted on the stupidest big reveal I have ever seen. A really bad example of how a teen should handle a relationship being sold as the greatest american love story. Lesbians good. Worried parents bad.

I can't imagine Life Is Strange is any better in how they treat a story about young lesbians. Something that could be used as a positive portrayal gets tumblr'd to death for woke points.

The ending where they drive off like a happy couple is HILARIOUS, because there's like dozens of corpses under the rubble and shit. Its the most SELFISH ending you could choose.

Also lol at Chloe's funeral scene. Dumb cunt high-school drop out has this massive turnout even though she was terrible to everyone she met? Uh, yeah, fucking no.

I remember reading that you have a choice between the lives of the whole town and the life of your girlfriend. I'm sorry, but if someone sacrificed countless innocent lives for me I would be horrified and never speak to them again. I would live my whole life with the guilt that they are dead because of me even if I didn't kill them directly.

Someone forgot the wise words of a certain Vulcan.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

Mark Hamill took a shot at kids, who have zero control over who their parents/grandparents are, for wearing a Star Wars uniform because he doesn't like their grandfather's politics? Well, my view of him's just gone goddamn sour. That is pretty fucking pathetic.

As for Troy Baker- I get celebrities pretending to be their character on social media and at events when it's all in good fun. But he was definitely taking things too seriously when he did that rant, and "I AM JOEL" just comes off as cringe. He could have just as easily said "Well geez guys why not just wait until the game comes out, give it a chance and decide for yourself" and it would have been a thousand percent more palatable and less condescending than the rant and the video.

Troy Baker's been in a lot of things, but as a person I really only remember being kinda turned off by him years back when he was at some awards show (the BAFTAs?) accepting an award on Ashley Johnson's (Ellie's) behalf and he claimed that her winning an award and The Last of Us having such a "strong female character" was a "watershed moment" in gaming history or something, and it just really rubbed me the wrong way because it came off as that feminist posturing about how "Current Year's Female Characters are the only strong female characters that have ever existed, none have existed before today."

Also, fuck this noise:

Troy Baker hints Joel has a dark past & possibly hurt women/girls in TLoU


This is like the Titanic hitting the iceberg, and instead of trying to mitigate the damage they just start hacking away at the hole with pickaxes to make it bigger.

He's always been an overrated piece of shit. Too overused too. Not really surprised that he thinks hes all method and shit.

I have LIS but I haven't really played it. I got to the form and haven't touched it since lol because I forgot about it.


Does anyone remember the Tiger Woods incident? Someone should make a thing using this

 

[BrokenWokenBespoken]

If this is true, then there's no fucking way Cuckman works at any AAA studio ever again and Sony is even more of an embarrassment to not even break through the walls of Naughty Dog like the fucking Kool-Aid Man and strangle Druckman to death on the writer's room table for even having the idea pop into his soy-filled brain. Its the antithesis of securing a wide audience. Its like pouring poison into your product. Even the most progtarded corporations have avoided this because even THEY know this is a very fringe idea that shouldn't ever be put into anything where you're putting a even a dollar into. I have RARELY ever seen a progtard advocate this. At best, they laugh nervously and avoid it altogether when one of their 'allies' goes off on it because they know its psychotic but that group-think be strong. At worst, its mocked in those circles. Those who actually think like this are few and far between, genuinely joyless, unpleasant and loathsome individuals.

'All men are rapists' is a fucking joke. Everyone treats it like one. The people who take it seriously are locked away in some Gender Studies department, being paid nothing and generating revenue for a university or are mentally ill, broken people who can barely relate to humanity as a whole and will probably end up killing themselves at some point. No fucking joke, I do not believe you can hold this ideology and live a normal life. I believe it is fundamentally impossible as it contradicts reality on every level. That Druckman even considered doing this means he is so painfully fucking stupid, it hurts.

Unfortunately, he has the special games are art badge that lets him get away with it because if Sony kills their only head with the "charisma" to run a shitshow like this, Sony will lose any appeal for devs as they alienated their weeb fanbase to the point every weeb game released is filled with crystal ball fear that the game will be censored and banking on being the narrative storytelling console means they can't just pump out dudebro shooters and call it a day. Hencewhy they are working doubletime to protect him because if he falls, Sony may have to restructure and find someone else to replace him which is not going to be possible since every AAA dev is a braindrained zombie deprieved of creativity and ambition

 

[Hangula Hungui]

I remember reading that you have a choice between the lives of the whole town and the life of your girlfriend. I'm sorry, but if someone sacrificed countless innocent lives for me I would be horrified and never speak to them again. I would live my whole life with the guilt that they are dead because of me even if I didn't kill them directly.

Someone forgot the wise words of a certain Vulcan.

What’s even funnier is that if chose the „fuck the town“ ending and you play Life Is Strange 2, you meet her stepdad in the desert, living there with a bunch of social outcasts. He survived, his wife didn’t. He started to reconcile with Chloe and calls her, talking about how she and Max are traveling around the world and Max being a decorated photographer.

 

[Festivus]

she and Max are traveling around the world and Max being a decorated photographer.

Fucking gag me with a spoon there's every goddamn Tumblrina trope in one game. I hope the voice actors got paid well at least because the scripts for these games sound like some exceptional fanfic.

 

[OmnipotentStupidity]

Fucking gag me with a spoon there's every goddamn Tumblrina trope in one game. I hope the voice actors got paid well at least because the scripts for these games sound like some exceptional fanfic.

I'd argue it's worse than a fanfic, because at least most fanfics don't end with you needing to solve a trolley problem where there is one clear absolutely positively correct answer as to what you should pick.

 

[Kulee Baba]

Unfortunately, he has the special games are art badge that lets him get away with it because if Sony kills their only head with the "charisma" to run a shitshow like this, Sony will lose any appeal for devs as they alienated their weeb fanbase to the point every weeb game released is filled with crystal ball fear that the game will be censored and banking on being the narrative storytelling console means they can't just pump out dudebro shooters and call it a day. Hencewhy they are working doubletime to protect him because if he falls, Sony may have to restructure and find someone else to replace him which is not going to be possible since every AAA dev is a braindrained zombie deprieved of creativity and ambition

There's no one who shit the bed harder than Ken Levine did with the production of Bioshock Infinite, it went thru its own development hell and at the end Irrational Games had to hastily cut the game changing what was going to be a game with a Hub World and a much more layered enemy AI into a more linear shooter affair. What we ended up getting was a massively compromised version.

It still received high marks from the critics and sold many copies, because gamers seek out more intellectually stimulating games even if the intellectual grasping are mere window dressing. I think this was expressed no better than when Cliffy B lamented that Roger Ebert died when Infinite was released. The cracks officially showed when Irrational released the DLC Expansion packs which was critiqued for having a short length and being unable to deliver in it's promise of showing Bioshock's Rapture before its apocalypse. At the end Irrational was closed down and now Ken Levine is in charge of a much smaller studio which hasn't even announced a game in 7 years.

So I don't think Druckmann is necessarily untouchable. There's no way you can convince me that Ken Levine earnestly wanted to scale back down so hard. "Idea Guys" don't get straight up fired but they will be put on the backburner.

 

[Neurotic Loser]

What’s even funnier is that if chose the „fuck the town“ ending and you play Life Is Strange 2, you meet her stepdad in the desert, living there with a bunch of social outcasts. He survived, his wife didn’t. He started to reconcile with Chloe and calls her, talking about how she and Max are traveling around the world and Max being a decorated photographer.

The step-dad (evil white male), is more sympathetic than Chloe and Max as they basically fucked up his happy life with his loving wife (without him knowing). All because Max wanted to get some gothpunk snowflake tail.

 

[Secret Asshole]

I remember reading that you have a choice between the lives of the whole town and the life of your girlfriend. I'm sorry, but if someone sacrificed countless innocent lives for me I would be horrified and never speak to them again. I would live my whole life with the guilt that they are dead because of me even if I didn't kill them directly.

Someone forgot the wise words of a certain Vulcan.

What you say is a common outcome in a lot of stories where a LOT of lives or even a few are sacrificed for one protagonist, and the protagonist them self is horrified. But Chloe is a horrible, selfish fucking human being, so it wouldn't bother her all that much.

Unfortunately, he has the special games are art badge that lets him get away with it because if Sony kills their only head with the "charisma" to run a shitshow like this, Sony will lose any appeal for devs as they alienated their weeb fanbase to the point every weeb game released is filled with crystal ball fear that the game will be censored and banking on being the narrative storytelling console means they can't just pump out dudebro shooters and call it a day. Hencewhy they are working doubletime to protect him because if he falls, Sony may have to restructure and find someone else to replace him which is not going to be possible since every AAA dev is a braindrained zombie deprieved of creativity and ambition

Like I've mentioned before in this thread, he may not have been touchable before, but I earnestly think his career is dead. I'll go over my reasoning again:

1) It is impossible to survive with your head intact over a scandal such as your entire game releasing a month early. Not only a month early, but to massive derision, enough to question the seven years you spent. He's where the buck stops. He is the head of the studio. If his security wasn't good enough, or his hires reliable or his management style solid, that is HIS fault.

Not only that, you have other Sony developers watching him. If he gets off with a slap on the wrist, you WILL have a mutiny on your hands. You will make a MESS of your first party divisions if Sony doesn't take him to task in the future. Because other developers will basically laugh off what Druckman did and push the envelope because of a weak Sony response.

2) He spent 7 years churning out a game which is now being widely ridiculed months before its release. It is a massive embarrassment to the brand and the studio. Like others mentioned with Ken Levine, Bioshock Infinite basically destroyed him. This is a scale of destruction unseen before.

3) In the history of self-destruction of franchises, the guy who is responsible doesn't get out alive. Typically. D&D basically got fired from Star Wars, the ME 3 people scattered to the 4 winds and I haven't heard of them since. Netflix only got stuck with D&D because they signed a contract before the level of their fucktardation reached full blast. Neil Druckman being a special exception is laughable.

4) Forget other developers within the Sony brand, other developers and competition outside are looking at Sony right now with glee in their eyes. The company has been absolutely embarrassed, and one of its flagship titles reduced to burning dogshit. Everyone is going to take advantage of that.

5) Druckman's style of story-telling and method of choosing who gets to tell what is fully revealed. Not only is he outed as massively incompetent for letting a leak happen, he is massively incompetent in terms of writing talent. With an inflated ego NO ONE wants to inherit. If there's someone looking at this scandal and going 'That's a creative I can trust!' they're just as fucking stupid and their products will crash and burn. No competent studio is going to touch this dumbass with a ten foot pole.

I don't think Druckman makes it out alive. Simply because of the scale and the level of embarrassment he caused, not to mention in addition to killing a franchise. If Sony does keep him on, then I think that's a sign that they're really fucked. There's literally no good reason I can think of to keep him in his current position or let him have free reign over anything again. I'm not saying they're racing to fire him this minute (because that would look just as bad) but if they keep defending him in the future, it makes them and their company look EXTREMELY weak.

EDIT:
Also remember, TLOU 2 did not have a defined release date before this. Leaks happen, BOOM, suddenly its in June. What does that tell you? Someone said, "We saw what you did. You're fucking done. We're not putting any more money into this. Release this right fucking now."

 

[Absolutego]

What you say is a common outcome in a lot of stories where a LOT of lives or even a few are sacrificed for one protagonist, and the protagonist them self is horrified. But Chloe is a horrible, selfish fucking human being, so it wouldn't bother her all that much.



Like I've mentioned before in this thread, he may not have been touchable before, but I earnestly think his career is dead. I'll go over my reasoning again:

1) It is impossible to survive with your head intact over a scandal such as your entire game releasing a month early. Not only a month early, but to massive derision, enough to question the seven years you spent. He's where the buck stops. He is the head of the studio. If his security wasn't good enough, or his hires reliable or his management style solid, that is HIS fault.

Not only that, you have other Sony developers watching him. If he gets off with a slap on the wrist, you WILL have a mutiny on your hands. You will make a MESS of your first party divisions if Sony doesn't take him to task in the future. Because other developers will basically laugh off what Druckman did and push the envelope because of a weak Sony response.

2) He spent 7 years churning out a game which is now being widely ridiculed months before its release. It is a massive embarrassment to the brand and the studio. Like others mentioned with Ken Levine, Bioshock Infinite basically destroyed him. This is a scale of destruction unseen before.

3) In the history of self-destruction of franchises, the guy who is responsible doesn't get out alive. Typically. D&D basically got fired from Star Wars, the ME 3 people scattered to the 4 winds and I haven't heard of them since. Netflix only got stuck with D&D because they signed a contract before the level of their fucktardation reached full blast. Neil Druckman being a special exception is laughable.

4) Forget other developers within the Sony brand, other developers and competition outside are looking at Sony right now with glee in their eyes. The company has been absolutely embarrassed, and one of its flagship titles reduced to burning dogshit. Everyone is going to take advantage of that.

5) Druckman's style of story-telling and method of choosing who gets to tell what is fully revealed. Not only is he outed as massively incompetent for letting a leak happen, he is massively incompetent in terms of writing talent. With an inflated ego NO ONE wants to inherit. If there's someone looking at this scandal and going 'That's a creative I can trust!' they're just as fucking stupid and their products will crash and burn. No competent studio is going to touch this dumbass with a ten foot pole.

I don't think Druckman makes it out alive. Simply because of the scale and the level of embarrassment he caused, not to mention in addition to killing a franchise. If Sony does keep him on, then I think that's a sign that they're really fucked. There's literally no good reason I can think of to keep him in his current position or let him have free reign over anything again. I'm not saying they're racing to fire him this minute (because that would look just as bad) but if they keep defending him in the future, it makes them and their company look EXTREMELY weak.

EDIT:
Also remember, TLOU 2 did not have a defined release date before this. Leaks happen, BOOM, suddenly its in June. What does that tell you? Someone said, "We saw what you did. You're fucking done. We're not putting any more money into this. Release this right fucking now."

I don't know where this widespread sentiment that D&D were "fired from Star Wars" comes from other than skimming headlines and wishful thinking. By all accounts they left because they'd spent 18 months watching Kathleen Kennedy announce a new project every quarter for PR purposes, and then leave them in development hell with no further updates. At the same time Netflix was offering them a multi-film deal with cash up front, a deal they signed after Game of Thrones ended. They're doing well enough that even their Netflix work was on hold while they produced an HP Lovecraft movie for WB.

And I think you're viewing the whole Sony - Naughty Dog relationship from an overly dramatic angle as well. There's a souless corporate bureaucrat angle that perfectly explains this - if corporate was banking on media praise and further pre-release hype making the game a commercial success no matter what, it can be delayed indefinitely as the virus gives them a handy excuse to buy for time and draw out crunch. But when the leaks happen, killing not only any chance of Druckmann being able to sell Sony on the idea his game was a surefire hit, but also killing any chance of using the aforementioned hype to profit off the game before bad word of mouth killed sales, that's when Sony's management told them to polish the turd Gold, release it, and go home until further instruction.

 

[Ponderous Pillock]

I'll just leave my mild defence of Life Is Strange from the appropriate thread.

It's a shame as the game was alright to pretty good for me as it had many 80s/90s sops to writing which dated it hilariously. But as folks have said, it was all tumblr'd to death and the "Max x Chloe" option was actually a "hidden" ending sort of snuck in by the devs as a sop to the community that started doing it way the fuck back in episode 1 and you had to pick one specific set of dialogue options to get it and had to hit all five/six spread throughout to get it.

Interestingly, the people who followed the game and were more on the edge of the idiotic community would try and fix the hilarious (and apparently canonical) Tornado ending by having the denizens of Blackwater take shelter in the Academy (Largely thanks to Warren and Katie) so the town is utterly shattered and it instead set it up to be an interesting drama of people trying to rebuild shattered lives from the decisions taken by Max, and her guilt of that.

 

[Nisse Hult]

how the fuck the 12-year old brat got more votes than Jill motherfucking Valentine??

I know gaming twitter eats shit but still...

View attachment 1305392

For me, it's Ms. Pac-Man.

 

[Neet Tokusatsu]

So is Druckman a rapist?

I've read a couple times in this thread that this Druckman guy wanted to get into Hollywood to make movies, but for some reason ended up making games instead, so he's using The Last of Us as a stepping stone to become a movie director, but we all know there has been a lot of scandals in Hollywood in the last couple of years, many of them about sexual harassment or even theories about pedo rings involving Hollywood elites, if Druckman want's to be there, it's most likely because he want's a piece of that pie

 

[Ruin]

What you say is a common outcome in a lot of stories where a LOT of lives or even a few are sacrificed for one protagonist, and the protagonist them self is horrified. But Chloe is a horrible, selfish fucking human being, so it wouldn't bother her all that much.



Like I've mentioned before in this thread, he may not have been touchable before, but I earnestly think his career is dead. I'll go over my reasoning again:

1) It is impossible to survive with your head intact over a scandal such as your entire game releasing a month early. Not only a month early, but to massive derision, enough to question the seven years you spent. He's where the buck stops. He is the head of the studio. If his security wasn't good enough, or his hires reliable or his management style solid, that is HIS fault.

Not only that, you have other Sony developers watching him. If he gets off with a slap on the wrist, you WILL have a mutiny on your hands. You will make a MESS of your first party divisions if Sony doesn't take him to task in the future. Because other developers will basically laugh off what Druckman did and push the envelope because of a weak Sony response.

2) He spent 7 years churning out a game which is now being widely ridiculed months before its release. It is a massive embarrassment to the brand and the studio. Like others mentioned with Ken Levine, Bioshock Infinite basically destroyed him. This is a scale of destruction unseen before.

3) In the history of self-destruction of franchises, the guy who is responsible doesn't get out alive. Typically. D&D basically got fired from Star Wars, the ME 3 people scattered to the 4 winds and I haven't heard of them since. Netflix only got stuck with D&D because they signed a contract before the level of their fucktardation reached full blast. Neil Druckman being a special exception is laughable.

4) Forget other developers within the Sony brand, other developers and competition outside are looking at Sony right now with glee in their eyes. The company has been absolutely embarrassed, and one of its flagship titles reduced to burning dogshit. Everyone is going to take advantage of that.

5) Druckman's style of story-telling and method of choosing who gets to tell what is fully revealed. Not only is he outed as massively incompetent for letting a leak happen, he is massively incompetent in terms of writing talent. With an inflated ego NO ONE wants to inherit. If there's someone looking at this scandal and going 'That's a creative I can trust!' they're just as fucking stupid and their products will crash and burn. No competent studio is going to touch this dumbass with a ten foot pole.

I don't think Druckman makes it out alive. Simply because of the scale and the level of embarrassment he caused, not to mention in addition to killing a franchise. If Sony does keep him on, then I think that's a sign that they're really fucked. There's literally no good reason I can think of to keep him in his current position or let him have free reign over anything again. I'm not saying they're racing to fire him this minute (because that would look just as bad) but if they keep defending him in the future, it makes them and their company look EXTREMELY weak.

EDIT:
Also remember, TLOU 2 did not have a defined release date before this. Leaks happen, BOOM, suddenly its in June. What does that tell you? Someone said, "We saw what you did. You're fucking done. We're not putting any more money into this. Release this right fucking now."

They do occasionally survive though, Kathleen Kennedy burned a franchise to the ground arguably pop culture's biggest franchise and kept her job.

Hideo Kojimo to a lesser extent royally fucked up MGSV and got rewarded by Sony. Although Sony is allegedly very unhappy with low Death Stranding sales so we'll see how long his bullshit is tolerated.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

They do occasionally survive though, Kathleen Kennedy burned a franchise to the ground arguably pop culture's biggest franchise and kept her job.

I'm still waiting for them to oust then guillotine her. I cringed when she appeared in the roundtable Mandolorian show.

Don't forget other people that single handedly killed franchises. Steven Spielberg, Rian Johnson, Joss Whedon, JJ Abrams, etc