Having read the Polygon and Kotaku reviews, a few things struck me.
One thing was that both talked about how Joel made the wrong choice at the end of the first one, but from what people have said here there's plenty of information in the hospital to suggest that a) they've tried this before with no success, so b) there are other people immune, not just Ellie, and c) the game literally gives you no choice but to kill the doctors and save Ellie. Which makes the Polygon review interesting, because they complain about how often the game forces you into the violence it's rubbing your nose in, but don't seem to equate that with the ending of the first game forcing you to make a specific choice that leads to all of this. And it also suggests neither reviewer, both of who seemed to love the first game, actually properly explored the final area or tried to choose differently.
Another thing was the way they both talked about how you commit continuous acts of senseless violence to continue the story, but also forces you into those confrontations. This isn't Deus Ex, where you can actually not kill people if you choose - you must murder, and murder uninfected people. And both reviewers found it annoying and patronising that the game tries to tell you violence is bad while giving you no other choice but to engage in that violence. From the Polygon article:
Would the designers feel better, would I be less complicit, if I just refused to buy or play the game at all?
It seems that, yes, the only winning move is not to play. Which I think we already knew.
And also from the Polygon article:
The Last of Us Part 2 didn’t need to force me to kill a dog in order to get me to see that it’s bad to kill dogs. But, of course, it still made me do that. Just to be sure I really got it. I felt annoyed, not reflective. Like, come on, you think I need this much convincing? Does Naughty Dog think we’re all out here killing dogs, unaware that doing so is a horrific cruelty?
It makes me think that Druckmann is one of those SJW idiots who thinks the way to stop women from getting raped is to teach men not to rape, as if men haven't ever been told that rape is wrong but if you teach them that, they'll never do it. Having a video game say, 'What if violence... was bad?' is exactly the perspective of someone who has bought into the idea that the people who play his games are all sadists who are only playing games because they're too cowardly to commit those violent acts themselves.
So it's interesting to see Polygon and Kotaku both have reviews that call the game out for treating them like uneducated savages who don't know that violence can be bad, because they're both two of the key sites in promoting the idea that gamers are violent, misogynist scum filled with hate. So it's like they finally have caught a taste of what it's like to have the people creating products think so little of you as a person, that they think you need a basic humanity primer.
Being games journalists, I'm certain there will be no self-reflection on their part about that. Or that a 'game', which is something that's meant to be fun, is a mandatory lesson on the politics of the designers instead of some escapism, and how that was something they didn't enjoy.
