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finished-ink · 4 years

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The Last of Us Part II RANT

I’m normally a “moblie user only” person myself, but Part II took the fattest, nastiest shit on me I’ve ever had the displeasure and feeling through game, that I had to hop on my computer and type this. But before I get in to all the bad, let me start off with the little good in the game.

PROS: The Sound Design, the Animation and Graphics, and the Voice Work

Sound Design: The songs and music in this game were extremely well done. It had me moved to tears to sitting on the edge of my seat anxious about what was going to happen next.

Animation and Graphics: The animation truly seemed like a TON of time, energy, and love went into designing the characters and their surroundings.The graphics were just as awesome and truly made you feel immersed in the world of tlou.

Voice Work: Great work done my all voice actors involved. They, along with the graphics, made the characters really come to life.

OK, now done with the good, time for the fucking bullshit. I am mostly going to focus an the story and the characters. Because holy fuck, I know GOT season 8 was like a milestone in bad storytelling, but the goal wasn’t to do worse than that shitty ass season.

The Shitty Story: I think the first thing that set this story up to be the fuck up that it is, was this lesson of “Violence isn’t the answer”. I think if the lesson was, “Your actions and choices have consequences” would have been a better theme to go along with this story. So, lets begin with Joel’s death.

I was honestly not surprised at all when I got to Abby at the beginning and someone was there to kill Joel. To think he would be able to evade the effects of what he did to the Fireflies would have been a bit ridiculous. I was even semi-fine with the torture of Joel, because I could see how that decision would force the player to really want to get back at Abby. Was it needed? Absolutely not because just killing Joel would of accomplished this. But if the torture of Joel was something Naught Dog really wanted to include then OK fine. We then come to the next extremely shitty part in the story, killing members of WLF and the game making the player feel guilty for it.

Now I know this is kinda a game play issue, but the issue being solved with a simple change in the game play would effect the story. And that is allowing the players to choose what the fuck they want to do. Do you want to just going in and slaughter everybody while their friends scream about their friends dying. That’s completely your choice. Do you want to quietly and tactically knock them out and leave them to live? Let that also be a choice. The could of even done it to where the more people you kill the more ammo and weapons you could collect, but it’ll be harder to travel because WLF will be sending out more brutes and harder enemies in an attempt to stop you. On the flip side, the more people you knock out, the less ammo and weapons you have, but the less WLFs there are to try and hunt you down because you’re not a bigger threat than the Scars. Then they could use dialogue said by the npcs to give the player an idea of how much of a threat they are to WLF. In a game where its trying to teach this lesson of “Violence isn’t the answer”, it sure forces you to resort to violence at every opportunity. You can even keep the intended message because in the game, violence isn’t always truly the answer. Bouncing off of this is my next change to the story, having the players make the choice about whether or not they want to kill Nora, Mel, and Owen.

Let’s get one thing straight, Ellie beating the shit out of Nora was not needed. An alternative to getting the info about where Abby was staying at could of been done through a series of little puzzle quests to give Ellie clues on where Abby was. This would be longer, but would not of had the same effect on Ellie’s mental state as beating the fuck out of Nora did. However, they could of kept the original scene as it played out. You get the info fast and you don’t lose out on anything major. Maybe some ammo and some pills but not enough to where it feels like you’ve lost out. But the choice now falls on the players to decide what they should do. The same applies with Mel and Owen. When you arrive at the aquarium, the player can decide to shot Owen to get Mel to talk, kill Mel to get Owen to talk, or grab Mel to threaten Owen to talk. The two kill options would be semi-bad because what played out originally with Abby would happen. But if the player decided to threaten Mel, Owen would talk, Ellie would release Mel but still holding them at gun point, and leave. However this would happen after another choice I think should of been implemented in the game. The choice to travel with Jesse to go and find Tommy.

When this happened even I wanted Ellie to just go with Jesse. It seemed like a great point to give the players a chance to decide what they wanted Ellie to do. Here’s how I would of wanted it to go: The player can either make Ellie continue to the aquarium, and the story would follow along as normal, or the player makes Ellie go with Jesse to find Tommy and leave. They leave and find Tommy after his encounter with Abby. You could even make another choice here where Tommy wants to try and go back to hunt down Abby, or go back to Dina with Jesse after he argues that they need to leave. If you go back with Jesse, Tommy follows with you, upset she gets to live, but moves on. From this they return to the theater, grab Dina and travel back to Jackson. This can then branch off to the future we see with Ellie and Dina, but there’s a scene where they travel to Jackson with J.J to see Jesse and his family. While there, Tommy approaches Ellie and says that he found Abby, and the player can decide what to do here as well. Go after Abby or stay. If the player goes after Abby, Ellie does find her and kills her, but it leaves Ellie feeling a bit conflicted because she doesn’t feel the fulfillment she thought she would feel. Cut to her traveling back to Jackson, visiting Joel’s grave and cue heart wrenching scene of her playing the guitar at his grave.

Now circling back, if the player decided to travel with Tommy to hunt Abby down in Seattle, Jesse reluctantly agrees, but tells them if they don’t find her by tomorrow afternoon, they all leave. This would then lead to the player finding Abby and Lev (because in my head Lev does run off but the boat he takes in the aquarium isn’t there and heard talk about the other boats the WLF’s use and takes off there, but Abby catches him in time to stop him from traveling to the island. This would happen after her encounter with Tommy) and Abby would tell Lev to run back to the aquarium with Yara. So its Ellie, Jesse, and Tommy holding Abby at gun point. Knowing a 3v1 isn’t winnable, she lays down her weapons and thus, another decision is allowed for the player. Kill Abby or let her live. Killing Abby has an effect on Ellie’s mental state and that can effect the game at the end. Not too bad that it ruins the ending, but bad enough that maybe there’s a cut scene of her having nightmares about killing her. If the player decides to not kill her, Ellie lets her go, she runs off, Tommy and her argue and Jesse tells them to drop it and get back to the theater. They do and cue to the ending I talked about earlier with everyone going back to Jackson. Now this leads me to my leads final story issue I would change about the game, Abby’s portion would be significantly cut down.

While the player would still play as Abby, the only flash back that would be included is the one about her and her father. Narratively, I don’t hate it. It allows for the player to understand why Abby wanted to kill Joel and drive home the new theme of “Your choices and actions have consequences”. However playing as Abby for, what, 12 hours of the game wasn’t needed. If the excuse was to pad for time, everything I said above would not have only extended the time, but would of allowed for players to want to replay the game. The player would still play as Abby with Lev and Yara so it can set up the players for how all the characters got to where they are by the time the player is given the choice to Kill or Let Abby Go. I’m on the fence about if the player would still be Abby and the theater scene would play as normal if you kill Mel or Owen. Kinda up in the air but what can you do. Anyways, while this would humanize the character to extent, it wouldn’t try to wash down her deeds like Naught Dogs tried to do. In my creation of this story, what happened in Santa Barbara would not take place at all.

All in all, there was some much they could of done with this story that could of made it worth playing. I have no more words for this grotesque torture p*rn game Neil and Naught Dogs decided to create. I wish I could fucking wipe my brain and get back to two days I wasted on this game. Fuck them and I hope Naughty Dogs fucking falls apart. I will finish my little essay with asking y’all to please not harass or go after the voice actors and the people who tried to make this game. Go after Neil , because ultimately this falls on him.

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yeeyee-alumni · 3 years

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Hi there, anon last week who offered some criticism about bias/etc in response to the Joel essay. Was looking forward to your Abby essay and really wanted to be open minded but truthfully you managed to cherry pick the absolute shit out of moments in the game and ignored so many allusions/small nuances/moments that you claim aren’t in the game (Abby showing regret, etc). That take is one of the most biased takes yet that I have read about this game. Also your use of the word retarded to describe Ellie’s questionable decision making with Mel and Owen isn’t cool. If you’re capable of writing an essay like this, you’re capable of finding another word to use instead of that.

But onto the issues with some of the arguments. This is going to be long so buckle up. (I hope it sends in it’s entirety so apologies if it doesn’t). I don’t expect this to be posted, again this is just a criticism to try and point out some bias that I’m seeing coming through. I tried to stay in a linear order of examples you brought up but if I bounce around I apologize. There’s a lot of moments that you give as examples where you would seem to embellish what happened and twist it to fit the narrative that you wanted regarding Abby and her arc.

After Joel’s death, there’s references made to Abby not sleeping and we see that she’s still having nightmares about running into the operating room and finding her dad/finding Lev and Yara. If she truly felt justified in her actions and that she had gotten her revenge, why would she still be having nightmares about this subject? Perhaps she is feeling guilt and didn’t receive any closure from Joel’s death and it’s not until after she knows Yara is okay that we finally see some sort of closure where the nightmare of death turns into a dream. It could be argued that perhaps she’s found a new purpose in life after the end of a 4 year quest and that through taking care of those that saved her life, she’s been able to move on because of this. There’s also moments during the opening of her half (specifically when we see the mansion scene again but from her view) that after the final blow, there’s no relief. For one or two moments, some of her expression look like she could be contemplating the extent of her own actions. It doesn’t seem like there’s any joy or happiness there.

Next. Expecting Abby to change her view on the Seraphites in two days because of some kids she saved is highly unrealistic. She has conversations with Lev though when they’re making their way up to the sky bridge where they discuss the religion, how the prophets teachings have been skewed over time. Even learning about them, the Seraphites would try to kill her regardless. There’s no reason for her to have a change of heart because she’s met two outliers to their religion. The majority of them still are religious fanatics.

As far as expressing remorse to Ellie for what she did to Joel, Abby didn’t know of Joel’s importance to Ellie in the same way that Ellie didn’t know it was Jerry’s death that Abby sought out vengeance for, not taking away the cure (as stated by Ellie int he theatre confrontation where she states ‘I’m the one you want, there’s no cure because of me’.” This was a really interesting decision on the writers part. Personally I would loved to have seen some sort of revelations with these but I also enjoy the fact that they never know how significantly their lives impacted each other. Abby had to reason to show Ellie remorse because she simply didn’t know the connection. For all she knew, Joel and Ellie could have been a randomly paired patrol group from Jackson. Not a father-daughter like bond.

I do agree with your assessment that perhaps Isaac had something to do with her dark ways. Clearly he has no qualms with brutal tactics and seeing as Abby is consistently referred to as one of the top WLF, it’s not unrealistic to assume that he had a direct hand into grooming her violent ways. That’s not to say she didn’t have a choice, but it’s an interesting concept to explore how he could have shaped the growth of a 16 year old Abby hell bent on revenge.

Owen’s drunk provocation of Abby is an interesting scene because Abby has always relied on Owen to be by her side. To hear his unfiltered thoughts on Joel’s torture could have come as a shock to the system because he has always been straight with her and to have someone as important to her as him paint her brutal actions in such a blunt, disapproving way could have maybe felt like a slight betrayal. There’s no excuse for Owen cheating on Mel, but we see a moment of weakness and vlunerability with the two of them. Not sure why the sex scene gets bashed so much. Whereas Ellie and Dina are allowed to be intimate (granted yes not anywhere near as explicit as Abby and Owen), there seems to be no issue with the former as opposed to the latter. Sex is natural. What’s so traumatizing about the scene? Genuinely curious.

Onto arguments about Seraphite island. You call the line from Yara a throw away line (about how there’s fighting and gun fire from the other way) yet if the conflict has spilled out to where they were, why would they go back that way? Abby trusted Lev and Yara to know a way out because she wasn’t familiar with the island. Why shut down their suggestions when she knows nothing about the layout or inner workings? Regarding Isaac, I don’t think Abby all of a sudden offering to torture a Seraphite would have been an automatic get out of jail free card. Isaac wanted the fight to be over, why would he allow one soldier to take a boat to take a child away for torture? In the grand scheme of things, this doesn’t make sense. Abby could have chosen to go back to the WLF but instead, she chose her new family (Lev). To act like she was best friends with all of the WLF and this means she shouldn’t have killed them once again doesn’t feel realistic. Even Isaac makes a comment about the Salt Lake Crew and how close they are, there’s no reason to believe that she went out of her way to befriend others when she already had her group. Abby more than likely would have gone to SB with Owen and the others (pre Mel conversation) since she was already an enemy of the WLF by that point. There’s no need to call writers less talented/less creative because you didn’t like the story. Resorting to personal attacks on their abilities doesn’t help your arguments. It comes off as petty.

Onto Abby ‘dragging’ Lev to the theater. You’re more than willing to point out Lev’s traumatic experiences but not Abby’s. Lev chose to give Abby the map. He had no reason to, but instead offered it up to her. Lev isn’t stupid. In his interactions with Abby, he shows an understanding of Owen’s importance to her so it’s not out of the box for him to understand the implications of giving her a literal map to the location of the person that had killed the two of them. As for why wouldn’t they give up Abby’s location: Mel was ready to do so and was going to. We know she doesn’t like Abby, figured she was likely dead, and saw a chance to perhaps save the two of them if she gave Ellie what she wanted. Owen cares for Abby and didn’t want to risk the possibility of Ellie finding her, interrupting the conversation before Mel could give any info. Owen approaching Ellie wasn’t wise, but how is his effort to try and deescalate anything other than an attempt to protect both himself and Mel?

Next. Abby did not respond with glee to learning Dina was pregnant. I’m not sure what you think glee is, but there’s nothing happy or joyful about the way she reacted. She’s fueled by blind rage at that point and it’s already been established she’s an eye for an eye type person. Ellie had killed Mel who was pregnant (she’s wearing a coat because there’s a giant ass rainstorm. I’m not sure why her wearing a coat would be so confusing and out of character?) and Dina happening to be pregnant would be an eye for an eye in Abby’s view. Does this make it right? No. But she was not jumping for joy and oh so happy to find that out.

Not sure what the qualms are with something as small as collections cards vs coins. It’s a video game. There was a chance to add more collectibles for a trophy so why not? This seems like a detail to just pick at just because you can. Giraffe/zebra, we knew in the first game wild animals were running around. Why is it out of the box for a group LIVING in SLC to make a hobby of watching them? Again, seems nitpicky. A father/father figure teasing a child about a relationship. Isn’t this just a dad thing? Again, feels nitpicky and serves no purpose as a legitimate critique. The museum/aquarium, are people not allowed to explore and have things they’re intersted in?’ These little details you throw in serve no real purpose other than to nitpick and are basing this off an emotional response instead of trying to use logic regrding game mechanics/achievements/explanations/etc.

Im sure there’s things I’m missing or that I forgot to mention but this has become quite long. As a wrap up, it feels like you truly haven’t tried to look at the game from a neutral perspective. Perhaps you really have tried, but that doesn’t really show in your essays. It shows as still having a strong bias towards anything that isn’t complimentary of Ellie or Joel and their stories. I do enjoy reading different perspectives on the game and having discussions, but I would still find it hard to approach and have a thoughtful discussion because there seems to be no openness and the vibe that you know the story better than the writers do. That paired with insults flung at the writers makes it feel like nothing more than a spiteful rant for not living up to your expectation rather than a constructive critique. I look forward to further essays and hope that perhaps the tone can become a bit more neutral in them. Have a great evening.

First of all, I wanna say thank you for reaching out and offering some critique, of course that is what I am hoping for (I'm not writing a 4500 word essay only to have it not be read and discussed), so again thank you for that. The next thing, you are absolutely right about the use of the word "retarded", I'll change that as soon as I posted this response. Regarding the cherry picking, I yet again have to agree with you. Of course I picked scenes that serve as (for me the most fitting) examples to support my claim/stance. I think you would agree that talking about every single scene of this game, especially in a single essay, is near impossible. So I instead reduced the list of my arguments to what I believed to be most crucial ones in informing my opinion (thus hoping they would also be most convincing to the reader). Before I go on to react to the specific arguments you make, and I had hoped I worded my essay in a way that that becomes clear, that essay is an outline of my thoughts in a way, it is me saying: this is my opinion/position/stance and these are reasons x, y, z of why I have that opinion. Subsequently, it is neither a definitive statement of any kind nor is it a critique to people who feel differently than me. I repeatedly say "in my point of view", "for me", "I expected", as well as giving room for other interpretations (I literally state that other interpretations are possible, and then went on to explain why I interpreted it the way I did). Which leads me neatly to your first argument. For you, Abby's nightmares read as an expression of guilt as well as other instances, allusions and nuances as you say, that could be interpreted this way. But that is exactly my critique. Interpretation is something so subjective and all these supposed allusions (again that is up to the individual's interpretation) are so incredibly vague that there is no way we could ever make a definitive statement about what they actually allude to. You reading it as guilt concerning Joel is absolutely and 100% justified, but me not doing so is just as legitimate. And Abby didn't strike me as feeling guilty the first time I played, and she still didn't the tenth time I did. Additionally, a glance that lasts a few seconds (and could be interpreteted in a marriott of ways) is unfortunately not substantial and concrete enough to balance out all the concrete evidence (Abby's actual actions) I have of her being a questionable person. This is one of the reasons why I needed Abby to have an actual conversation, to verbalize what's going on in her head. And it could have been with any one person, honestly, it didn't need to be Ellie. And I 100% agree with you there that we'd have to tweak a lot of the rest of the game if we were to arrive at my proposed alternative ending, since Abby wouldn't have the information needed (none of my proposed fixes work in isolation btw, so this goes for the Isaac confrontation as well). But it instead could have been a conversation with Lev, or Owen during that scene on the boat for instance (which I absolutely adore, by the way, it's one of my favourite scenes in the entire game). Owen's heartfelt monolgue could have been the perfect stepping stone for Abby to reveal her inner conflicts, thoughts, and motivations. But instead we get a sex scene. My issues here lies with the fact that they decided to show as much as they did for pure shock value (as opposed to implying it like they did with Ellie and Dina). But this is only issue #273 I have, so let's move on to the more important stuff. And this is where it gets interesting to me personally: You argue that Abby living with the WLF for the past four years would not lead her to having a strong enough connection to her comrades to not be willing to kill them. How is her connection to Lev so strong then after just 48 hours? Looks a lot like cherry picking to me. And this next argument has to be my favourite: You don't have to critize the writers just because you didn't like the story. Have you considered that I didn't like the story because it was

poorly written? I have no idea why people put writers on such a pedestal. It is their literal job. And when they don't do their job well I have the right to critize them for it. Abby dragging Lev to the theatre is and will remain inexcusable to me. First of all, Abby's "traumatic" experiences pale next to Lev's, but on top of that she's an adult and Lev a literal child. If you don't care that she's dismissive of his feelings and struggles here, because she prioritizes her own, that's your right. But I find it horrendous. "Glee" might have been the wrong word to choose here, but you still understand what I was trying to express. Her reaction to receiving that information is still messed up and concerning. And if Abby is indeed an eye for an eye type of character, and that is the supposed motivation for her to want to kill Dina, why then did Joel saving her life not lead to her letting him live in return? That would have been the eye for an eye solution, you saved my life so I will spare yours. And yet. Now, as the second to last thing, I want to address the critique that I do not come off as neutral enough. And I am absolutely aware of that. I had a second person proofread my essay before I posted it and they also let me know (even though I was aware of it beforehand) that as a reader one can tell that I am getting increasingly more frustrated as the essay goes on. And for a while I thought of going over the essay again to fix it to try to sound more neutral, objective and unemotional (like I did with my other two essays, that still aren't entirely neutral or free of personal bias by any means, as no text expressing opinions and feelings ever truly can be), but I ultimately decided against it. Not only is this a game specifically designed to elicit strong emotions, and pointing out all the issues I have did frustrate me, so why should I try to play that down? But also, why am I the only person expected to be completely rid of personal bias or emotions? Why are my arguments only seen as valid or legitimate if I present them in precisely the one way that suits you best? How am I expected to anticipate any one reader's interpretation and thus emotional reaction to my words and consciously construct my essay in a way which aims to prevent said reaction? No utterance, especially regarding opinions and feelings, is entirely neutral or free of personal bias. Your critique of my essay is filled with personal bias as well as it is emotionally charged. Does not take away from the legitimacy of your stance and/or arguments though, does it?

My priorities when I write these essays are: accumulating enough strong arguments to support my position, structuring them in a logical way as to assist the reader in recreating my thought process (to increase comprehension), wording it in a way that is as thorough while also as efficient as possible, attempting to word it in a way that is as neutral and objective as I can be (the exception being my Abby essay as I have just explained). And since I am not dismissive, condescending, or accusatory towards people who might disagree with me, I don't see a problem with being emotionally charged every now and then.

Now, finally I do wanna thank you again for voicing critique. I do appreciate it a lot. Not only for reading my essays, but again trying to look at them critically and informing me about issues you have found within my writing. It continues to force me to look at my own opinion with a critical eye and more often than not I have found myself persuaded by compelling arguments presented by people like you. And while you said you wouldn't be interested in having an open discussion/conversation, I would have to disagree, but I think an oral conversation would be more fruitful since I do get the feeling a lot might get lost by having it be a written conversation.

#ask #tlou #the last of us #tlou2 #the last of us 2 #the last of us part 2 #opinion #abby #ellie #joel

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