Downtown Khazan: Ice Cold Utopia

[Nik Hasta]

I'm going to pointlessly ****-stir here for a moment.

As someone who bounced off the first TLOU game really hard and thought it was a largely uninteresting game with slightly above average character work and production values, I would argue that franchise was never good to begin with.

Aside from obvious bait, some of accessibility options, character animations and clever rope tech they have in TLOU2 are ridiculous.

Hell of a technical achievement. Whatever else you can say about the game.

[Yun Lao]

From what I've heard, the person who wrote the first game (Amy Hennig) was forced out of the company between the two games

Amy Hennig did not write the first one since they say she was forced out of the company by Druckmann after Uncharted 3.

If the fact that Druckmann forced out the writer and director of the Legacy of Kain series (one of the best vampire franchises, in my opinion) is true, then I can't honestly hide any negative bias I'd have for him.

[master of read]

I'm going to pointlessly ****-stir here for a moment.

As someone who bounced off the first TLOU game really hard and thought it was a largely uninteresting game with slightly above average character work and production values, I would argue that franchise was never good to begin with.

Aside from obvious bait, some of accessibility options, character animations and clever rope tech they have in TLOU2 are ridiculous.

Hell of a technical achievement. Whatever else you can say about the game.

the game looks great, which is about the only real good thing i can say about.

gameplay didn't appeal to me.

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

the game looks great, which is about the only real good thing i can say about.

gameplay didn't appeal to me.

Until you see the sex scene with the Druckmann self-insert, anyway.

[Farealmer]

yup. that's how it ends

spoilers:

Joel is barely in the game and then he dies by golf club. i'm not opposed to Joel dying. i hate how he dies. i mean, in the first game, joel's whole thing was his wariness and his problem with trusting people. it took him the whole game to trust Ellie and he came to view her like the daughter he lost. in this one, he immediately trusts a group of randos he literally just met and then got ambushed. they had to make Joel stupid to kill him.

end of spoilers

spoilers:

He's not Batman and it's not rumbles. In post apocs with humans, anyone can make a mistake at anytime that gets them killed.

end of spoilers

[Len Ikari145]

Until you see the sex scene with the Druckmann self-insert, anyway.

Speaking of which, Druckmann is deflecting valid criticism on Twitter with the classic "If you have a problem with this game, you're a bigot" argument. Yeah, because it's not like the previous game had queer characters, including the female main lead, who was outed as bi/lesbian in the first game and even had a brief relationship with another girl in her prequel DLC. It can't be because the story is trying hammer in a basic moral that children understand, or because of the literal character assassinations, or maybe because the main antagonist is a karmic Houdini for the most part that we're apparently expected sympathize with. Or the ending being monstrously depressing and hollow.

[grampagen]

spoilers:

He's not Batman and it's not rumbles. In post apocs with humans, anyone can make a mistake at anytime that gets them killed.

end of spoilers

spoilers:

IIRC they spend a significant portion of the first game concerned about concealing identities, specifically with Joel given the sheer number of people he's crossed. The kicker for me is how contrived the sequence of events was, such that: 1) Abby wants revenge, does not know the face of her attacker, nor would she recognize him if she saw him 2) Was rescued by Joel and Tommy who then offer to foster their group, something which does not cause her to reflect in the slightest, and 3) Attacks him because he told her his name was Joel, shot out his leg, then confirmed his identity as...some guy name Joel. The half-assed attempt to paint her father as some saint despite the fact that none of the Fireflies got either Ellie or Joel's consent, nor were transparent with what they had to do, was also rather hamfisted.

end of spoilers

[master of read]

spoilers:

He's not Batman and it's not rumbles. In post apocs with humans, anyone can make a mistake at anytime that gets them killed.

end of spoilers

spoilers:

again, i have no problem with his death. in fact, before i saw the vids, i was half expect either Ellie or Joel to bite it. it's how he died that pisses me off. he went from being able to sniff out a ambush due to his very cautious nature to walking right into one by being stupid. to use batman as example, that would be like batman trusting a superhero he just met with his secret identity and then that hero turning around and killing him for a past slight that he doesn't know about. i don't expect Joel to be a unstoppable badass who can kill anyone. i expect him to act like the same person who kept his surrogate daughter alive by being careful around people he doesn't know.

end of spoilers

[master of read]

Speaking of which, Druckmann is deflecting valid criticism on Twitter with the classic "If you have a problem with this game, you're a bigot" argument. Yeah, because it's not like the previous game had queer characters, including the female main lead, who was outed as bi/lesbian in the first game and even had a brief relationship with another girl in her prequel DLC. It can't be because the story is trying hammer in a basic moral that children understand, or because of the literal character assassinations, or maybe because the main antagonist is a karmic Houdini for the most part that we're apparently expected sympathize with. Or the ending being monstrously depressing and hollow.

honestly, if they wanted to go that route, they should've let us play as Abby a lot more before joel's death, while at the same time, getting Ellie and Joel to reconnect after she found out what he did.

[grampagen]

honestly, if they wanted to go that route, they should've let us play as Abby a lot more before joel's death, while at the same time, getting Ellie and Joel to reconnect after she found out what he did.

If they wanted to be smart about it, hey could've separated the Seattle plot with Abby's group and the Scars entirely. You know, show how things are going down in a different part of the world and opened it up some more.

...speaking of which, it's sort of strange that the conflict between Ellie and Abby's groups was presented as a commentary about how 'your enemies are people' in a bid to make the morality greyer, and yet they pull out a Mad-Max-style fanatic cult who are unambiguously horrible for the latter to smash without any guilt.

[Farealmer]

or maybe because the main antagonist is a karmic Houdini for the most part that we're apparently expected sympathize with.

spoilers:

You mean Ellie? Yeah that was BS. The stuff she does in this game was beyond the pale.

end of spoilers

spoilers:

IIRC they spend a significant portion of the first game concerned about concealing identities, specifically with Joel given the sheer number of people he's crossed. The kicker for me is how contrived the sequence of events was, such that: 1) Abby wants revenge, does not know the face of her attacker, nor would she recognize him if she saw him 2) Was rescued by Joel and Tommy who then offer to foster their group, something which does not cause her to reflect in the slightest, and 3) Attacks him because he told her his name was Joel, shot out his leg, then confirmed his identity as...some guy name Joel. The half-assed attempt to paint her father as some saint despite the fact that none of the Fireflies got either Ellie or Joel's consent, nor were transparent with what they had to do, was also rather hamfisted.

end of spoilers

The games were always full of contrived situations. Stuff breaks just when it's dramatic, people just happen to find each other, gun shots or stabbing are conveniently nonfatal, that was nothing special in that regard. Joel surviving a impaling in the first game was just as bad. That's always been part of this game.

spoilers:

IDK about portraying abby's father as a saint. If anything it made Marlene look better in hindsight. Abby's father was just a desperate man willing to made a horrible call that he fully acknowledged was a horrible call. Yes the situation was bad no matter what but lets not pretend Joel did what he did out of righteousness. If he had not got so attached to Ellie i don't think he would of had issue leaving her there.

end of spoilers

spoilers:

again, i have no problem with his death. in fact, before i saw the vids, i was half expect either Ellie or Joel to bite it. it's how he died that pisses me off. he went from being able to sniff out a ambush due to his very cautious nature to walking right into one by being stupid. to use batman as example, that would be like batman trusting a superhero he just met with his secret identity and then that hero turning around and killing him for a past slight that he doesn't know about. i don't expect Joel to be a unstoppable badass who can kill anyone. i expect him to act like the same person who kept his surrogate daughter alive by being careful around people he doesn't know.

end of spoilers

spoilers:

He was a very different man than he was back then. Things happened very fast and he had no reason to believe the group would just happen to be one that wanted him dead. And a better analogy would be if Batman slipped on something he didn't see there when he jumped down somewhere and was killed. People would call it BS because Batman but in reality that could happen at anytime.

end of spoilers

[grampagen]

One supposes these situations happen as they must to move the plot along, but all the same when you can see the way they transparently slap down the railroad, the verisimilitude is significantly reduced and investment in turn.

[Farealmer]

One supposes these situations happen as they must to move the plot along, but all the same when you can see the way they transparently slap down the railroad, the verisimilitude is significantly reduced and investment in turn.

Again that's literally the entire series. These main characters mowing down groups of trained soldiers without issue and every time they get caught convenently being kept alive to get away. That's the nature of shooter em up games when you play as normal humans. Dante and Bayonetta get by from being unstoppable superhumans that their enemies almost literally cannot kill. The characters in this game aren't them.

[grampagen]

Again that's literally the entire series. These main characters mowing down groups of trained soldiers without issue and every time they get caught convenently being kept alive to get away. That's the nature of shooter em up games when you play as normal humans. Dante and Bayonetta get by from being unstoppable superhumans that their enemies almost literally cannot kill. The characters in this game aren't them.

The gameplay was based largely on stealth kills or outmaneuvering enemies with distractions, such that a basic knife is essentially OP in these situations. Ambush is put forward as the ideal way scrappy survivors like Joel and Ellie can take down these soldiers. Joel survived his impalement by way of Ellie going on a desperate quest for antibiotics, he didn't just sleep it off.

Of course, Ellie sneaking through the WLA in part 2, murdering trained soldiers playing their Vitas isn't exactly immersive either, we can agree on this.

[master of read]

spoilers:

You mean Ellie? Yeah that was BS. The stuff she does in this game was beyond the pale.

end of spoilers


The games were always full of contrived situations. Stuff breaks just when it's dramatic, people just happen to find each other, gun shots or stabbing are conveniently nonfatal, that was nothing special in that regard. Joel surviving a impaling in the first game was just as bad. That's always been part of this game.

spoilers:

IDK about portraying abby's father as a saint. If anything it made Marlene look better in hindsight. Abby's father was just a desperate man willing to made a horrible call that he fully acknowledged was a horrible call. Yes the situation was bad no matter what but lets not pretend Joel did what he did out of righteousness. If he had not got so attached to Ellie i don't think he would of had issue leaving her there.

end of spoilers


spoilers:

He was a very different man than he was back then. Things happened very fast and he had no reason to believe the group would just happen to be one that wanted him dead. And a better analogy would be if Batman slipped on something he didn't see there when he jumped down somewhere and was killed. People would call it BS because Batman but in reality that could happen at anytime.

end of spoilers

[]spoik]but on the flip side, he had no reason to reason them since they just met and it's part of his character to be mistrustful of people he doesn't know. again, i can buy Joel dying. i don't buy him dying because he acted out of character. [/spoil]