- Joined
- Aug 21, 2013
I've been trying to remember why I loved the first one. The gameplay was fun IMO, but nothing groundbreaking like in the original Doom or Portal. The plot was a pretty simple reheat of disaster porn tropes and Cormac McCarthy's The Road.
It was the style and execution that made it work so well. The graphics and tone were on point, the voice acting was wonderful, the characters were written and performed with believable human depth. And there was a mature, tasteful restraint to the way the story unfolded. Especially in that last scene, which was perfectly understated and completely in sync with the way those characters in that world would interact.
By comparison, most previous vidyagame efforts at being "cinematic" are cringe even when the game is good. The original Max Payne was 2Edgy4Me like a turn of the century nu-metal band. Deus Ex was hilariously convoluted gibberish. Kojima is obviously some kind of high functioning autist with a giant robot fetish.
TLOU was simple, but not stupid. It has a rock solid emotional core that compares with Bioshock Infinite - another story that works emotionally (and despite the fantastical elements, mushrooms zombies and alternate universe evil versions of the good guy are goony af) because it has a really straightforward, but artfully delivered right hook straight in the feels.
I don't give a shit about TLOU2 because there's no way to improve on perfection, and there's something about CGI teenagers lezzing out for our... what? that makes my skin crawl. I dunno if it's meant to be tittilating, or we're merely meant to whack off to how stunning-and-brave we are for buying Lesbo Mushroom Zombie Simulator, but I get a mental image of sickly, doughy looking middle aged dorks animating this stuff with awkward boners poking through their cargo shorts, and I don't want none of that. They'll probably troon out later.
Joel was the hero and best character of TLOU, and killing him off to make you play as Ellie or some other character you probably care even less about seems like the kind of mistake Kojima made in MGS2. Normal people want to play the badass hero, not the ambiguously gay stand in or the definitely gay nosebeast who isn't even as pretty as Raiden.
It's not even the faggy stuff that's the problem here. You can tell a good story with gay characters. Bill in the original game was queerer than a circus of Joe Exotics, and a great character. Bill being gay was also completely irrelevant to the plot - you didn't feel like his inclusion in the game was due to the writers trying to demonstrate performative wokeness (then tucking and dancing in front of a mirror to Goodbye Horses). It's the difference between how a mature adult tells a story, and how a socially autistic nerd spins a tale. "Look at this" versus "look at me"
The last game that gave me any emotional resonance was Red Dead Redemption. For me that final scene was less about unexpected consequences and more about showing how utterly fruitless the pursuit of revenge can be. Doesn't matter if you shoot that guy 5 times or 500 times, it will never bring John back.
The faggy parts are only a real problem because she's the only known person with immunity yet chooses to stay gay. There have been other successful integrations of gay characters into survival apocalypse fiction because they are not the only ones with the highest chance of survival. If the human race is legitimately endangered, your sexual orientation gets thrown out the window as opposed to wilful extinction. It would be no different against any other hot-topic quandary, and pretending otherwise is pretty egotistical.
