Having seen the leaks, I would like to congratulate Naughty Dog on such a great April Fool's joke. It might be a bit late, but it's just what we need in these dark times.
The game is going to sell well. People who think otherwise are delusional. Just like people claiming the last Star Wars movie would bomb. The average person is a mindless drone who buys whatever their overlords tell them to buy.
The important thing isn't that it sells or not (well, it is to Sony), it's that the people who against all odds and everyone telling them it isn't worth it, are still expecting this to be this majestic follow up.
And the moment when they see that 'roided up freak beat two girls senseless, when reality checks them like a 400lbs linebacker and they reach to twitter, they'll have no choice but either bullshit themselves and say they like it through the tears or admit ND is full of crap.
Pretty sure its a nameless uncredited writer whom's genius will never be truly appreciated and recognized, instead with Cuckmann getting all the credit.
You joke, but they've played that card more than once.
Before backlash: "It was me! Me me me! I made this!"
After backlash: "Games are a team effort. Trying to pin this on a single dev shows how ignorant you are of game development."
Hell, 20 years is a long time, and the US is pretty big. Honestly, if it was so critical that someone, anyone else was the POV character and not Joel and Ellie, there was so much cloth to dig in to make at least three more games before getting back to them, and that's without getting to see how see other countries handle the Human Cordyceps.
The game is going to sell well. People who think otherwise are delusional. Just like people claiming the last Star Wars movie would bomb. The average person is a mindless drone who buys whatever their overlords tell them to buy.
while no doubt there will be mindless coomsumers indeed, I dont know...feels like even normies are getting hold of this and getting disgusted, then promising not to buy it. But we will have to see...until there.
Holy shit, this is fucking hilarious. That fucking plot. Neil Druckman or whatever his name is is a massive faggot who can't write worth a fuck. Some rando you shot in the last game's daughter kills both mains? FUCKING LOL.
I'm going to dissect this from a narrative standpoint because its just so fucking bad I can't help myself.
Having your antagonist be some daughter of some unimportant enemy you offed is pathetic. Its doubly pathetic that their entire motivation was 'lets kill this child by cracking her skull open, and see what happens'. THE VERY BEST OF HUMAN SCIENCE.
The antagonist's father was willing to murder and dissect a child on the off chance that they 'might' get a cure. So murdering his cracker ass is completely justified.
This completely new antagonist of some random who you've never met before and never seen before and don't sympathize with, whatsoever, becomes the protagonist. This is fundamentally terrible on every level. TLOU was what, 30 hours? So you've spent 30 hours with these characters, only to have one murdered and then forced to play as his murderer.
There's no relationship between Abbey and the player before this, maybe they'll know of her for an hour or two hours, compared to the 30+. There's simply no way a random NPC's daughter is going to be able to compete with the player's attachment of the two characters. Even if this character was likeable, the amount of time spent will override that completely.
Ironically, the story is basically summed up by 'NPCs have rights too!' Nobody cares about a goon you kill in a videogame. This is a basic fundamental misunderstanding of the medium. Its like one of the random mercenaries Lara Croft kills, his son comes back as the antagonist. You didn't even know his dad, who gives a fuck?
The themes of a cycle of revenge need to include named, major, important characters. This does not work in TLOU 2. Revenge is a highly charged emotional device. For example, in the animu Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood, one of the main characters is a guy whose entire family got ethnically cleansed before his eyes, so he seeks out killing any State Alchemist he can find. He constantly comes into contact with the one of the main characters and she
realizes he killed her doctor parents who were helping the people who were being ethnically cleansed, no matter what. He was a former patient and he murdered them in cold blood because they were simply just there. She ends up pointing a gun at him, wanting to kill him. Eventually, they both come to understand that their revenge is utterly empty and meaningless, and would eventually continue forever. She continues to hate him, but realizes that pursuing it would be futile. It wouldn't bring her any closure at all. He realizes the same thing, that by killing the State Alchemists, he's still hollow inside.
Both characters are extremely influential in the story, and we get to know them as time goes on. In this game, however, we just meet the character, don't even know her father. And even if we did, there's no guarantee we'd accept his murder as something to get revenge over. There's no pathos here. The cycle of revenge is utterly meaningless, because the players only have ties to Joel and Ellie, not Abbey and her child murdering father. For this cycle of revenge to work, BOTH parties must have a MEANINGFUL way to want revenge and must be sympathetic. No questions asked. It is meant for the audience to come into conflict with themselves. Nobody is going to sympathize with Abbey, so the theme ends up being utterly pointless.
Playing as the antagonist is nothing really new, but playing as the antagonist who kills both characters is unacceptable. It just isn't. There's no way that is not going to build malice towards you by your player base. Its extremely spiteful, petty and disrespectful. It also demonstrates delusions of grandeur if he thinks that people will blindly accept this. You can argue its 'his vision', but being a spiteful, egotistical faggot is inexcusable.
Also pulling a bait and switch on the main character isn't new either, but Raiden didn't kill Solid Snake and was sympathetic with him. It upset the fans because they wanted to play as Snake, but I think everybody eventually got over that. It is simply not going to be possible to get over this.
I mean, this is just unacceptably bad. This isn't a movie. You can't treat it like that. This is freshmen level writing here, a complete misunderstanding of theme and how the audience is going to react.
I mean Jesus fucking Christ, its the personification of the Thanos meme: "You took everything from me!" "I don't even know who you are." TLOU 2's plot is basically one meme image.
Anyone who thinks this is good writing is a dumb faggot.
EDIT:
Ok, so Ellie doesn't die, but you brutalize the ever living shit out of her. This is probably worse.
The game is going to sell well. People who think otherwise are delusional. Just like people claiming the last Star Wars movie would bomb. The average person is a mindless drone who buys whatever their overlords tell them to buy.
You might be right, but its going to suffer from what I call the 'Mass Effect 3' syndrome. Mass Effect 3 was a success and made bank. However, the next game was laughed at, mocked and basically destroyed the studio. Same with Star Wars. The Last Jedi did well, but the brand was permanently fucked after that.
Playing as the antagonist is nothing really new, but playing as the antagonist who kills both characters is unacceptable. It just isn't. There's no way that is not going to build malice towards you by your player base. Its extremely spiteful, petty and disrespectful. It also demonstrates delusions of grandeur if he thinks that people will blindly accept this. You can argue its 'his vision', but being a spiteful, egotistical faggot is inexcusable.
You made an awesome rebuttal as usual, but I just want to correct that you don't kill Ellie. You beat the everloving fuck out of her and her pregnant girlfriend, but you don't straight up kill her. The game ends with Ellie recovering (somehow) and running out on her girlfriend to track down Abby to get revenge, presumably as a set up for part 3.
Where this goes wrong is the fact that, you, the player, are in control of Abby as she brutalizes the protagonist and her love interest. The protagonist that, as you said, we feel a deeper connection to and would much rather see succeed over the same character that murdered the previous game's protagonist. If you were in control of Ellie as this was happening, it would certainly be bleak and a very unsatisfying conclusion, but it would be a bit better by sheer virtue of the fact that you aren't forcing the player to beat her until her eyes fucking bleed.
It's this sheer disconnect between the game and the player and it's just wrong on so many levels. Playing as a different character? Sure, I don't care. Playing as the antagonist? Okay, that's interesting. Playing as the antagonist as she nearly kills the main character that you grew to love over the past 30+ hours? Fuck no.
The SRPG Gameplay has been replaced by action rpg mechanics. The battle areas tend to be a bit on a small side. For the World itself it has a ton of places to walk around and explore.
The SRPG mechanics in the originals were not that deep and the action system in this game seems to be more indepth than the likes of stuff in Trials of Mana. It's about as competant of an update as you could expect with Sakura Wars. Everything from the originals are there in spades.
The important thing is that it hasn't bombed, so maybe we'll get a sequel.
That in and of itself isn't a bad idea; there's a lot of story potential in a morally gray scenario where two people become monsters in their pursuit of revenge. The problem is that the audience isn't going to like having to beat the shit out of the series protagonist, especially when the character has already killed the other protagonist early on. If anything it just looks as though the game is completely shitting on Ellie.
If I were to rewrite this, I would have done the entire game from Ellie's perspective and have her do the most heinous shit to try and get back at Abby. The audience might empathize with her decisions at first, but as the game goes on they learn more and more about Abby and start to realize maybe this isn't such a good idea while Ellie continues to slaughter Abby's friends out of revenge. Then when the third game comes they'd feel torn about who's really in the right.
As it is, the game just expects you to empathize with Abby as she beats a pregnant woman and almost kills the other main character. And I don't know about you, but that's not really someone I can empathize with on any conceivable level.
Exactly. The (very basic) concept they seem to have been going for is absolutely fine, but they clearly didn't think as deeply about the execution as you did in a throwaway message on a shitposting forum. (Their heads are probably too far up their asses to allow self-doubt/editing.)
It’s an utterly insane miscalculation, the controversy was originally over Ellie’s homosexuality being so in your face and they thought to have YOU the player then beat the shit out of her, so the SJWs won’t like it either.
So what's the over under on Naughty Dog having a bunch of graphic novel prequel shit featuring this new she-hulk character and her journey to get revenge that's now scuttled because comic and book stores are now scuttled?
