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

[Marissa Moira]

Did Neil graduate from the Rian Johnson School of Killing Franchises?

No the school he graduated from was put into the game.

This man is the very embodiment of self love.

 

[Festivus]

 

[Jaimas]

Did I ever tell you about the first Naughty Dog game I ever played? It was Rings of Power on Sega Genesis.

I bring it up because while normally, the title screen girl was thus:


If you inputted a code, she'd be topless:


That was one of the first cases of nudity on a console at the time IIRC. It's amazing how times change.

 

[Least Concern]

If you inputted a code, she'd be topless:

I remember having a game magazine that had that code in it… including a screenshot of the result. Of course it's not much now, but when you're 10 years old and the internet isn't really a thing yet, it was a treasure - a key step on the path to the coomer I once was. This was before the ESRB existed, too…

That was one of the first cases of nudity on a console at the time IIRC.

Well, there were games like Custer's Revenge on the Atari 2600 already, if you count those.

 

[BeboRefugee]

Just saw an ad for the game on TV.
It's really bleak. Way, way bleaker than anything else on TV. I think Sony made a huge error not releasing it last Christmas, hell even in February/March. I don't actually remember what the original release date was supposed to be because it's been delayed so many times, but my point is this is NOT the game you want to release in the wake of coronavirus and riots and statue demolition.
This is a game where, from the leaks, characters are more concerned about relationships than food acquisition. It's just not relatable, especially given what we saw wrt panic buying a few months ago.
Every other commercial and government statement is a sunshine and rainbows psy-op trying to convince a sector of the population from killing themselves. There's gonna be a depression, and a lot of people have been robbed of their summer plans, so a game depicting total societal collapse with a downer tone is a really bad move right now. I don't think even The Walking Dead struck a tone so devoid of happiness, a show where the zombies had a far more immediate presence, and also its peak was during a time when there was an audience for depressing shit.

You know how Lord of the Rings trilogy got popular? How it released as the public faced 9/11 and the Afghan war?
It offered millions genuine escapism. Where irl we faced an invisible enemy and paranoia, LoTR had a clear good v. bad adventure on an epic scale.
Right now millions have very valid reasons to feel like shit, and The Last of Us is just more of that, only devoid of ANY optimism or hope.

 

[blablabla]

reading some reviews and the game is a total tonal trainwreck between ellies lesbian teen love story and the murder porn. neil has some issues man

 

[Elric of Melnibone]

Okay. Here's something. Pregnancy is a big thing in normal 2020. In mushroom zombie 2020, it's fucking colossal. Why? Because there's so, so, so, so many things that can go wrong without modern medical intervention and even with. Druckmann probably thinks that you can just camp out by a roadside on a blanket, grab some warm water and hold the mother's hand, possibly give her a stick to bite on for the pain, and catch it as it comes out and it's a wonderful life-affirming happening. Nope. It's a messy affair involving blood, perineal rupture, shitting yourself (the baby's head can compress the rectum and extrude a length of copper bolt while so doing), and the massive risk of infection to both mother and child - the former because it involves parts that are normally on the inside being exposed to the environment and the latter because it has no antibodies - and that's assuming it all goes to plan. If it's breech, or the cord's around the child's neck, or there's shoulder dystocia or something else getting stuck on the way out, then it's anyone's game really.

Then after all that blood and agony, there's a very real risk post-apocalypse that the child will die early on. No easily accessible antibiotics, and the world is crawling with pathogens. Newborns need to be kept warm because their surface area / volume ratio is so high compared to older children or adults. In a brave new mushroom zombie world, people with obstetric or medical skills will be at an absolute premium.

Now that would make for a really good story, actually. Ellie is pregnant but there's nobody in her locale who could help her give birth and for her child to survive. She gets a rumour that there's someone out there who can do those things and is willing to but they live miles away. She has to go on a cross-country journey, both physical and moral, to find the person only to find that he's one of the surgeons who wanted to kill her and grind up her brain for the mushroom vaccine in the first game. Can he be trusted? What is the price of his help? And as she gets more and more pregnant she gets less and less mobile and capable of doing things, so has to rely on others more and more. There's so much opportunity for character development there. As well as having a hidden counter that tracks choices, successes, and failures throughout the game and the result of these will indicate whether Ellie and her child survives or not.

Thats a nice plot but cant happen because Ellie is super super lesbian. Like Janey Springs levels of lesbian. So lesbian that even a turkey baster would not impregnate her because she is antithetical to misogynistic men, deathly allergic to the Y. Or at least that's what Niel Cuckman says.

 

[ducktales4gameboy]

Did I ever tell you about the first Naughty Dog game I ever played? It was Rings of Power on Sega Genesis.

I bring it up because while normally, the title screen girl was thus:
View attachment 1372939

If you inputted a code, she'd be topless:
View attachment 1372940

That was one of the first cases of nudity on a console at the time IIRC. It's amazing how times change.

This singlehandedly started a trillion schoolyard nude code rumors since everyone's brother or cousin had that game where you could use a code to make the chick take her top off, but nobody ever remembered the identity of said game. I still remember hearing people bragging about seeing digital boob in gradeschool. Simpler times indeed.

 

[Shield Breaker]

You know what strikes me about this even moreso now that the release is coming up? We've already established that the game forcing you to play as Abby, a character the player is going to hate because she murders Joel, as she pounds Dina's face into pavement is insane and fucked up, but now it's come out that Abby's been doing a cross-country roadtrip murdering anyone named Joel.

So the game is asking us to sympathize with an outright serial killer who then proceeds to almost kill a pregnant woman. It's honestly quite hilarious in how tasteless and tone-deaf it is.

So you play as the Trooniac Killer?

 

[Clem Fandango]

Christ this game is cringe-worthy.

My stream of conscious thoughts as I watch this new footage:

Firstly, the beginning is terrible. I get that this is 'Part II' but a long-ass non-interactive cutscene with Joel recapping the end of the first game? One of the best things about the original was the beginning. As soon as you press play you started...playing. Even though it was essentially a series of cutscenes it didn't feel like that because you could walk and look around. This feels like a huge step back. If you already played the first one (and everyone who buys this will of course have played the first one) it's extremely boring.

After the jump to present day the first thing we get is exposition boyfriend to tell us how his girlfriend Dina kissed Ellie the night before and now she's the talk of the town. Ugh, vomit-worthy high school drama. Brilliant. For a second it seems like there might be some conflict and stakes as the guy (Jesse) gets annoyed that they'd only been broken up a week, but then that's immediately deflated as he says it's totally cool and he doesn't care. Phew!

Also, even though it's sub-zero temperatures and snowing outside, the guy just waits outside while you wander around your room looking at stuff. Apparently this is so you can 'get your stuff', but uh...wouldn't he want to come in?

Next we have the bigot Seth issue. Apparently he called Ellie a 'not nice word' because she's a lesbian. Ok? He called her what? A dyke? Would anyone really care in this wild-west type town they live in?

Anyway, he immediately apologises and gives Ellie some steak sandwiches. Wow, things are going pretty well for Ellie this morning! That was like...the best possible outcome. Even so, she's not appreciative at all and calls him a bigot. Huh, the apology seemed sincere and the sandwiches were a nice gesture but I guess we're using present-year standards of morality, where you can never atone and not be a bigot, so fuck Seth.

Seriously, how much of a luxury item must steak sandwiches be in this environment?? She wasn't even going to take them and just gives them away when Maria makes her take them? I guess we're meant to respect Ellie for being so principled? It makes her seem kind of imprudent though. You'd think simple pragmatism would be your overriding consideration post-apocalypse.

Maria says 'Thanks I appreciate that' to...Ellie? For what?? Not cussing out Seth in his own bar? She didn't do anything! Just stood there and said 'ok' over and over like a sullen teenager. The situation certainly doesn't seem resolved in anyway. But yeah 'thanks'. Ok.
Then Maria says 'Sorry' to Ellie just for asking what is going on between her and Joel. Is Maria meant to be the leader or something? Why is she so cucked and apologising to Ellie just for asking what's going on?

Then we have the introduction of the large nosed love interest herself. Pretty boring stuff, it doesn't really seem like there's any kind of spark between her and Ellie. She just says sorry to Ellie for kissing her, she was drunk. Why is everyone apologising to Ellie all the time?

Then we have....a snowball fight against some kids? What am I doing? This feels so out of place in a The Last of Us game. When did you do anything like this in the first game? It feels so tonally off. I mean, it's clearly just here to give you kind of a tutorial on how to throw shit, but still. What am I doing? Can we please get on with the fucking game already? Where are the zombies??

It doesn't seem like there's anyway to just skip this snowball fight either, since Ellie accepts in a cutscene.

Then the girls head out together on horses. To get out of town these MASSIVE gates need to be opened. Why are they so big? Do they really need such a high fence around town? It looks to be about 40 plus feet. I don't remember seeing any zombies that could super jump or climb or work together. Wouldn't like a ten foot fence be enough? Is it to keep out raiders? It's only wood, if I was a raider I would chop my way through or set fire to it, the height wouldn't really stop me.

I guess they're not short of wood, but whatever. Such a big fence seems like kind of a waste of effort.

Jesse shows up to see you off, and you would never guess that he just split up with Dina and that she had immediately hooked up with Ellie. No awkwardness, or reference to it. He just hands Dina a gun and says here you go. I guess there's no stigma to being a cuck in this town.

And off they ride. We're half and hour in and there's been basically no game so far.

Then cut to...

Oh shit, Chad Thundercock herself, Abby!

I burst out laughing, as in her first line of dialogue ('hey' to some guy) the subtitles show her as 'Woman'. You couldn't make it up.

The guy says he wants to show you something, grab your gear.

And.....I'm playing as Abby! What was all that in the marketing about this game being about Joel and Ellie? Half an hour in, I haven't done anything meaningful as Ellie, I've played as Joel for about two minutes during the opening cutscene and now I'm playing as ABBY? The character they won't fucking admit is even in this game in any of the marketing??

Hoo boy, I'm guessing at least half this game is going to be playing as Abby. Some people are going to be very surprised and disappointed.

So after more tutorial stuff you and the guy arrive at a cliff overlooking Jackson. The guy says 'Mel is pregnant', which Abby seems real pissed off about, and says that everyone's gonna want to head back when they see that they're up against a full city with electricity and guns. They talk about trying to lure someone (Joel) out of Jackson. Abby, like a true chad, says fuck it and just head off towards town on her own.

During one squeeze-through-the-passage section (you'll be well familiar with this way of masking loading times if you've played Uncharted games), there's a frozen dead woman in the passage that you have to shove out of the way. How the fuck did she freeze to death stood up?

Stop the clock! 40 minutes in, we have our first zombie!

There's a quick time event you apparently can't fail. It looks hilarious as the zombie spastically slaps the hell out of Abby and makes no attempt to bite her for a good 10-20 seconds.

More tutorial shit with the same zombie where it teaches you to dodge and melee attack. Abby just decks this zombie with her bare hands, finishing it off by literally stomping its head into a fine paste. Oh boy, I'm on the edge of my seat. These zombies are so scary and such a threat. You can just punch them to death!

More tutorial. Medkit, flashlight...this is some really by-the-book videogame stuff. You don't forget you're playing a game for one second.

They're clearly keen to show of the 'go prone' feature. Abby gets out of a house by...crawling under floorboards? The windows just have a couple of two-by-fours nailed over them, but uh, yeah get down on your belly and crawl through the dirt. Go for it. Why would you even assume you could get out that way?

Tutorial on the listening feature, sneak attacks. This is so spoon fed. Maybe the second game could just assume you know how to do this stuff from the first game?

The person playing appears to get a bit lost here. Tries punching the two-by-fours off the windows. Lol nope. Those are just there for 'zombie game aesthetics', they may as well just be brick walls.

Abby punches some more zombies to death with ease. I know the game just started (almost an hour in...) but there really is no tension. I'm sure if you die you just restart from exactly where you were, so why couldn't these guys be more of a challenge. It looks pretty boring to watch. Like, it would be hard to actually die.

Aaaaand back to Ellie riding along with Dina. There's a lot of lame dialogue about relationships and feelings. Fortunately, Dina doesn't miss being with Jesse and is completely over him, even though they've apparently been together a long time. Very convenient. Guess Ellie doesn't need to feel bad in any way about making out with Dina.

Seriously, could it be any more obvious that Jesse is just there to be a sperm-donor for Dina? He's immediately been discarded and doesn't care, nor is he missed at all. I'm sure he'll just be discarded from the story by dying later in the game.

Blah blah blah, some chat about Ellie's previous girlfriend 'Cat' who was an artist and did Ellie's tattoo. Yawn.

The horse's name is 'Shimmer'. That's a gay-ass name for a horse, so I guess it works in-universe.

You look around an old radio tower. Look around with some binoculars at a town where you're headed next. Then there's a bizarre 'dude weed lmao' bit where Ellie finds a bong that apparently belonged to a 73 year old stoner guy called Eugene that they know.

The rope physics look pretty bad climbing back down, flipping all over the place.

Ok after a bit more riding we have what looks like the game's first open-ish area filled with runners. I don't know what difficulty this is being played on, but the person playing seems pretty bad at videogames and still doesn't seem to be having any problem just walking up and stabbing the zombies.

Some climbing and exploration. If you've played videogames before you'll be able to figure out where you're going a mile off (climb on truck roof to get into the supermarket). Lol the person playing seems like kind of a dumbass and can't figure this out for quite a while.

In a mini-cutscene it's revealed that Dina doesn't know about Ellie's immunity (she shows concern that Ellie might get infected and that she'd have to 'shoot her in the face'). Huh. I guess that's kind of interesting. So Ellie is keeping it quiet?

Medkit crafting tutorial. They're still doing this? We're well over an hour into the game. I guess all AAA games are like this nowadays though.

Clickers! In a spore-filled supermarket, we get our first clickers. Maybe this bit will actually be a bit tense? Ehh, not really. The player triggers one of them to run at him and it just seems sooooo slow. I swear they moved a lot quicker in the first game. I got my neck ripped out a bunch of times. Now it seems like you can just shank them like a regular zombie without much difficulty.

Another semi-open area, and it seems like you enter a lot of areas where the runners are just stood with their back to you, not moving.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Ok, that's the first hour and a half of footage, and it feels like I've typed quite a lot so I'll just post it. I'll do the second half of the footage later.

Edit: second part here

 

[Secret Asshole]

Fucking hell. Kotaku and Polygon have both trashed it, even though they were lining up to fellate Druckmann for muh inclusivity beforehand.

The burning question - are the reviewers at those organs still employed? There was a lot of the same talking points about "a queer woman" as the protagonist in both which implies they were probably given a fat press release and loads of "notice this" pointers, so they probably fellated it as much as they could in order to retain their jobs. Also none of them mentioned Abby. I'm guessing that Sony know that forcing you to play as a character who throttles to death the previous well developed protagonist and beats her father's brains out with a sand wedge isn't going to help with sales. Or they are still deluding themselves that this subversion of expectations will make people gasp, "oh my god, how profound" with one hand perched over their mouth as they stare at Druckmann's narrative genius.

Yet despite this, Harlan Ellison of all people did far better at a cynical, bleak world in 1996 with the adaptation of I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream. In it, you could only win that game and defeat AM (voiced by the man himself) by having your characters develop, identify the reasons why they were hand-picked as torture victims (Ted's narcissism, Benny's bloodlust, Ellen's inability to move on from past trauma, Gorrister's feelings of guilt, Nimdok's evil past) and then consciously guide them to change. Yes, IHNMAIMS is also a misery simulator (each character's story is designed to trigger them at every turn) but it features I. hope, and II. CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT.

All I get from this is that The Last Of Us: Part II must be really, really, bad to get criticism even at this stage from the access media. There's probably some utter shotgun-blasts of fail that they aren't allowed to tell us about.

Yes. Here's what happened.

Sony is notorious and has paid off reviewers for literally every product it puts out. This has happened in its movies and game division. Since they've spent so much on TLOU 2, they've got to prioritize their bribes. So they didn't bribe Kotaku, Polygon and Vice, because those three are supreme progtard outlets. Because they weren't paid, their writers were allowed to give their real opinions.

However, this doesn't matter because Sony knows they have the progtard crowd in the bag. So it doesn't matter if these outlets write that its pure garbage. It needs IGN, Gamespot and the normie outlets to give it 10/10s to get the mass market. So it basically left these guys out in the cold with no money, so the reviews aren't filtered.

 

[John Merston]

At this point any time I see someone spout SJW nonsense I instantly assume they are an Atheist who wouldn't dirty themselves with Religion, The Left Wing is to good for that, they have better things to do.

I thought the modern Left hated atheism because it's mean to all the oppressed brown people who believe in religion.

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

However, this doesn't matter because Sony knows they have the progtard crowd in the bag. So it doesn't matter if these outlets write that its pure garbage. It needs IGN, Gamespot and the normie outlets to give it 10/10s to get the mass market. So it basically left these guys out in the cold with no money, so the reviews aren't filtered.

Even this is gonna work against them eventually. I can't help but think back to Mass Effect 3; IGN slobbered all over that game and gave it an extremely high score, but the site itself was plastered in ME3 advertisements which indicated that what we were seeing wasn't really honest reviewing. More importantly was that they gave no mention of the ending, which as we all know caused a massive shitstorm. Surely, someone who beat the game wouldn't give it a 9.5 after witnessing that abortion of an ending.

This situation is interesting though because people already know the ending and Naughty Dog decreed that nobody can discuss the second half of the game, which is where all the really awful parts of the game come into play. At least with Mass Effect 3, everyone was blindsighted by the ending none of the journalists mentioned, but here we have a not-insignificant number of people who know what happens and realize what the outlets are doing. It's gonna be real fun once the game drops and more and more people realize what's happening.

 

[Marissa Moira]

Even this is gonna work against them eventually. I can't help but think back to Mass Effect 3; IGN slobbered all over that game and gave it an extremely high score, but the site itself was plastered in ME3 advertisements which indicated that what we were seeing wasn't really honest reviewing. More importantly was that they gave no mention of the ending, which as we all know caused a massive shitstorm. Surely, someone who beat the game wouldn't give it a 9.5 after witnessing that abortion of an ending.

They're probably going to close naughty dog after this.

It's really sounding like this is the end for Naughty Dog, Druckman's nice guy act is really coming across like he was given a screaming ultimatum from someone who knew what they were talking about. Jak and Daxter have been given over to another studio but there's no formal announcement yet. Uncharted remains to be seen, but I think that's going to be the next thing that's shipped off. Insomniac is doing another Ratchet Game so a new Jak game is almost sure to follow.

I think his Hollywood dreams may have also been nuked, but that's going to take time to come out in full.

But there's supposedly an Australian Sirtech level grade story that we may not know about behind the scenes. There's too much weird shit and somebody is going to fucking talk after all this is over.

 

[Ruin]

So it looks like you play as Abby for like 75% of the game.

 

[Marissa Moira]

So it looks like you play as Abby for like 75% of the game.

I thought it was an estimated 42% to 50%.

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

They're probably going to close naughty dog after this.

It's really sounding like this is the end for Naughty Dog, Druckman's nice guy act is really coming across like he was given a screaming ultimatum from someone who knew what they were talking about. Jak and Daxter have been given over to another studio but there's no formal announcement yet. Uncharted remains to be seen, but I think that's going to be the next thing that's shipped off. Insomniac is doing another Ratchet Game so a new Jak game is almost sure to follow.

I think his Hollywood dreams may have also been nuked, but that's going to take time to come out in full.

But there's supposedly an Australian Sirtech level grade story that we may not know about behind the scenes. There's too much weird shit and somebody is going to fucking talk after all this is over.

I dunno man, Mass Effect 3 couldn't even kill BioWare and that game caused one of the worst gaming controversies of the last decade; I'd say they were crippled at worst because ME3 still made a lot of money and BioWare continues to limp along making games nobody cares about. Even if TLOU 2 causes a shitstorm like I think it will, odds are good it's still going to make money because there is a huge playerbase. The question then becomes how will Naughty Dog function after this. BioWare showed you could make a financially successful product and still end up dying a slow death because you pissed off the people who buy your games. That to me is what will be the thing to look out for, especially since Naughty Dog hasn't made a truly "bad" game until now (even if I don't like the first Last of Us, I'm not going to pretend it isn't an immaculately produced game), and they certainly haven't faced this level of controversy before.

That said, I do agree that Druckmann's Hollywood dreams have been tanked, especially since he's actually getting into petty fights with games journalists over his content.

 

[vertexwindi]

So it looks like you play as Abby for like 75% of the game.

Normies are gonna be so fucking pissed about that. Nobody wants to play as a bitch so ugly and unhinged that she kills everyone named Joel.

 

[ThatDutchManace]

I thought it was an estimated 42% to 50%.

That's a lot for someone who hasn't even been promoted, and who isn't even on the boxart.

 

[blablabla]

So it looks like you play as Abby for like 75% of the game.

if this weere a cool game abby would be a strong independent woman on a hellpath to kill the two assholes who killed her father on the first game like old kratos. Instead we got a half teen romcom with two assholes and half i spit on your grave.