The Last of Us Part II – June 19, 2020

[TJ_Solo]

2 hours ago, Wagszilla said:

I don’t know much about him beyond the making-of Uncharted videos. I don’t have a dog in this hunt beyond loving video games.

 

But at the end of the day: he’s the President of the company, he let Hennig leave (good/bad, tbd), helped foster the crunch culture leading to brain drain, and he let Druckmann run wild. Terrible mismanagement of assets.

 

People leave. People come.

Who says anyone at ND had any say in Hennig leaving? 

Who cares about crunch, really? At best there was an article or two showing you people glimpses at how the sausage is made. People worked overtime before and after said article was written. Good, bad, and great games all still occurred.  If a shiny expose is all you need to get your shorts a blaze then why don't you read up on how your clothes are made or phone or TVs or anything with the "made in china/mexico" label? Surely, you outrage would be better suited to protecting the children of the world as opposed to some middle-upperclass, college educated IT professionals making 6 figures. 

 

Druckmann is running wild? How? On this project he is the co-writer and co-creative lead. He is sharing more of the design of this game than he did with the first TLOU.

 

[MidnightDragon]

For what it’s worth, congrats to them for going gold.

 

Edited May 5, 2020 by MidnightDragon

[Stardroid]

10 hours ago, DoomsdayVivi said:

 

This comment is pretty gross. I think the story is stupid, but not because one of the characters (or the devs) is trans. 

You can also check the people who liked that comment just to again confirm that these people have been spending too many hours on the internet. I don't want to classify people as walking stereotypes but you probably know the kind I'm talking about. The mindless drones saying stuff like "cuckman" or "soy boys" you know, the kind of vocabulary that any normal person looking at it makes them go like "yeah, these guys are losers". Unfortunately, a lesson I have learnt is that it would seem that the gaming community, at least the vocal one at large deserves the stigma it gets sometimes. But don't worry, I used to have people like this in my direct environment and I have met up with these people too. Most of them are really only what they "despise". Out of shape weirdos that can't even look you in the eyes. Now, not saying that it's true for some of the questionable people in this topic, but I would put a bet on it. The fact that such a baseless comment gets people nodding their heads in unison, again gives away the amount of simpletons that meddled in this discussion. 

 

I too know the story, I too am in fact disappointed with the direction they are heading in. But, to take one characteristic of a person (which they so often do) and hint it as a reason for the game going to shit. Well, that just tells you the story of most of these arguments on their side. One dimensional thinking. Black and white. 

[Stardroid]

[Darling Baphomet]

23 minutes ago, Stardroid said:

The mindless drones saying stuff like "cuckman" or "soy boys" you know, the kind of vocabulary that any normal person looking at it makes them go like "yeah, these guys are losers". Unfortunately, a lesson I have learnt is that it would seem that the gaming community, at least the vocal one at large deserves the stigma it gets sometimes. 

 

Pretty much. I used to gravitate primarily in spaces with these sorts of people. It's almost always very mentally ill or otherwise victimized feeling people who make up for their lack of self-confidence through aggression and accusing other groups of being responsible for all of their suffering - hence why reactionaries (of all ideologies) always need a scapegoat that they can attack. Being able to attack takes the heat off yourself, and lets you avoid having to self-examine. Obviously, gaming is one of the more introverted / seclusion friendly hobbies, and as such it attracts a lot of these types.

 

There's really nothing you can do about them. They'll always attack, because attacking is a defense mechanism. As long as you're constantly drawing attention to the other, you never need to step back and take a look at yourself. Growing out of that mentality (and freeing themselves from their self-victimization) is a burden that's entirely their own.

 

Obviously, this 'attack, attack, attack' mentality sees depictions of gay people, women, et cetera as an easy target and a perpetual source of self-victimization, especially because it supposedly threatens one of their primary hobbies. The truth is, only the most extreme sorts of people really bother to argue about these sorts of things. Most people will see them, and even if they don't like them, just shrug their shoulder and go, "well, that sucks. Guess I'll play something else." The people who bother making it a federal issue are going to be on the fringe, one way or another.

[BloodyRutz]

14 hours ago, panikooooos said:

Here's something interesting I found. The "co-lead game designer" of this game is Emilia Schatz, and as you can see on "her" twitter it is a transgender woman https://twitter.com/thegreatbluebit . Make of this what you will ?

 

Well, this is a new low. Disgusting.

 

11 hours ago, LongLiveHelghast said:

It genuinely wouldn’t surprise me if Neil Druckmann was in charge of everything relating to the project.

 

Judging by how things are going, I'm pretty sure that at the end of May we will be reading that Druckmann is also in charge of Sony and a child molester.

 

10 hours ago, Wagszilla said:

This is so disappointing.

 

None of my friends read the spoilers so hello, internet void.

 

The story sounds generally terrible but what turned me off the most, beyond Neil’s generally bitchy behavior at every possible turn, was the overtly nihilistic tone and ultraviolence of the game. I don’t think nihilism is insightful or intellectual, on the contrary, it’s oftentimes lazy and pretentious.

 

The first game was violent but it was colorful and a bit comic at times so I could deal with it because of that and the overall stakes. This is just straight up violent, no punches pulled, conveniently only in the cutscenes by the way. In the first game the monster mini-boss in the gym can crush Joel’s head if you get too close and I had to pause the game and take a break I found it so disturbing. The final boss fight is on that level for me and I just have no interest.
 

I’m not gonna be surprised if it turns out Neil is making a point about American militarism

and it’s “circle of violence”, in a similar vein that Uncharted 4 which was about... America bad, but obviously the contexts are dramatically different. Joel did a lot of bad things in his life pre and post apocalypse but it’s a false equivalence he’s drawing particularly in the latter case. That is, killing crazed people in a post apocalyptic world out of survival and whatever leftist ivory tower bullshit he’s trying to conflate it with. This issue is compounded by playing the game with a stealth approach and the fact most people didn’t even want to kill the surgeon in the first place. 
 

Furthermore, Neil seems to be on some Rashomon tip with the perspective changes and retconned colors. It’s all relative bro! Ugh. And the scenes are just badly acted and blocked in a stupid and unbelievable way. I’m gonna walk in the door at just the right moment to see that. Ok, sure. Nice unathletic swing, commando. Double ugh. Subtlety begone! 
 

In short, this game, by everything I have to draw on, is an irredeemable mess filled with shoddy writing, extreme violence, and insufferably preachy politics. 
 

Why no one at Sony questioned this game being commercial cyanide is beyond me. Kick Wells and Druckman out of Naughty Dog and try to salvage the studio.

 

As somewhat of an aside, I always found the “distribution” delay suspicious. I wonder if Sony went YIKES and tried to pull it out of the fire. We’ll probably never know.

 

Hope this game fails hard, people land on their feet, and the true believers rid themselves of their ugly worldview and messiah complexes.

 

 

Thank you for this comment. This is basically what I originally came for to these kinds of threads. To get some un-biased opinion about the leak without spoiling the game for myself. Also, I don't believe Sony hasn't been overseeing the development of the game. So, I think the distribution issues during the pandemic are legit. Obviously I can be wrong, I have the same source of information like everybody else here.

 

I'm genuinely curious if Naughty Dog really fucked the game up like everybody here is saying. This is something I'm still struggling to believe because a significant part of Sony's overall success this generation played these exclusives.

 

Edited May 5, 2020 by BloodyRutz

[LongLiveHelghast]

18 minutes ago, BloodyRutz said:

 

Well, this is a new low. Disgusting.

 

 

Judging by how things going, I'm pretty sure that at the end of May we will be reading that Druckmann is also in charge of Sony and a child molester.

 

 

Thank you for this comment. This is basically what I originally came for to these kinds of threads. To get some un-biased opinion about the leak without spoiling the game for myself. Also, I don't believe Sony hasn't been overseeing the development of the game. So, I think the distribution issues during the pandemic are legit. Obviously I can be wrong, I have the same source of information like everybody else here.

 

I'm genuinely curious if Naughty Dog really fucked the game up like everybody here is saying. This is something I'm still struggling to believe because a significant part of Sony's overall success this generation are these exclusives.

 

I doubt it’ll go as far as having baseless accusations made against him, but I’m led to believe he does have a political agenda in his writing; he’s very friendly with certain feminist figures in the gaming industry, and has stated he takes inspiration from them in his writing.

[Masamune]

That message from Druckmann about the game going gold is starting to pile up a good amount of dislikes (& of course the comments are turned off), gee... I wonder why? ?

 

[BloodyRutz]

21 hours ago, Masamune said:

That message from Druckmann about the game going gold is starting to pile up a good amount of dislikes (& of course the comments are turned off), gee... I wonder why? ?

 

 

I don't know, maybe it's because people would put spoilers into the comments? It's like this is the first leak in history of video games judging by how everybody is so surprised all the time. Activision did exactly the same thing when CoD: Advanced Warfare leaked online prior to release as every other game publisher ever.

 

Edited May 6, 2020 by BloodyRutz

[ziggypossum]

 

[PooPooBlast]

3 hours ago, Masamune said:

That message from Druckmann about the game going gold is starting to pile up a good amount of dislikes (& of course the comments are turned off), gee... I wonder why?

 

15k likes to 32k dislikes as of this comment, oof! And I bet majority of those 15k haven't seen the leaks or know the story behind this whole fiasco. 

[EcoShifter]

19 hours ago, Wagszilla said:

I don’t know much about him beyond the making-of Uncharted videos. I don’t have a dog in this hunt beyond loving video games.

 

But at the end of the day: he’s the President of the company, he let Hennig leave (good/bad, tbd), helped foster the crunch culture leading to brain drain, and he let Druckmann run wild. Terrible mismanagement of assets.

 

He's one of the few original members of Naughty Dog who worked on (the last two Crash Bandicoot and) Jak and Daxter games while the original co-founders were still there.

 

This is going to be a bit rough- Perhaps, but Neil was technically showing promise throughout his career. He got promoted (multiple times) to major roles after working and showing good work ethic with the last two Jak games, positions that included working alongside Amy Hennig. Every title since has lead to critical and commercial success, including the game's he acted as the sole writer and lead co-writer on. (That means the Left Behind DLC as well.) Amy exited the studio after Uncharted 3/The Last of Us and partly into Uncharted 4's development. I don't even know how to deliver the following parts—While U3 was an overall success, it was deemed as inferior to U2, and that's the only game that Neil didn't have a part in as he was working on TLOU. One would assume Neil's been a huge influence on Uncharted's success--and therefore Naughty Dog--despite Amy creating the IP(?), which undeniably shows with the one installment she basically didn't work on (because she left mid development and her work was scrapped) but Neil did and served as lead co-writer. That game, U4, is argued to be the best in the series, and at worse, the second best. But before U4, Amy's most recent work was U3 while Neil's was TLOU. So basically Neil had proven that the studio didn't exactly need Amy, and ever since Neil has been on a role. Everything that came after TLOU—Left Behind and U4—were also complete successes, cementing Neil's competence and usefulness further. What i'm getting to is that can you see why Evan Wells let Neil "run wild" with the end results?

 

Let's talk a little about pre-TLOU:P2 spoilers leak. This game was probably the most anticipated game of the entire year. All the way in 2017, when the game was in early fucking development, it won numerous awards: most anticipated game at big events like The Game Awards and PlayStation Blog and also most wanted game at Golden Joystick. This game, before all this recent nonsense that came up, was going to be a tremendous success (and it still will be to some extent for obvious reasons). Wells knew this. Again, can you blame him? As bad as it is that employees are underpaid or not paid (which I don't know if any of is true or not), that was going to have such a little impact on sales (just as with Borderlands 3), as in the end people care moreso about playing the game they've worked on, e-especially people who've been waiting particularly for this title. The same for the SJW/political aspect. It wasn't until the story spoiler related leak where masses of people started flipping out with cancelled preorders, verbal assaults on Neil, etc.

Edited May 5, 2020 by EcoShifter

[Masamune]

40 minutes ago, PooPooBlast said:

15k likes to 32k dislikes as of this comment, oof! And I bet majority of those 15k haven't seen the leaks or know the story behind this whole fiasco.

That ratio has gotten worse since I posted that too, I think it was around 12K likes to 24K dislikes earlier. But yeah, I can't imagine many of those likes have looked into the leak. ?

[Carol]

Troy Baker posted this tweet:

 

 

[EcoShifter]

39 minutes ago, Carol said:

Troy Baker posted this tweet:

 

 

 

Troy Baker is an interesting person. He's been defending the game for a while now. Some people who know him better than me (i'm more familiar with Nolan North and primarily know Troy by his game roles) also say he's a fake person.

 

The line "because I AM Joel" implies that, like Sean Schemmel, a large part of why he stayed on board was because he feels like only he can do service to Joel's character. Could be wrong, but it's a possibility as there are actors like that.

 

Anyway, @Carol, given you're a Naughty Dog fan and all, what are your thoughts on the tweet?

Edited May 5, 2020 by EcoShifter

[Dauersack]

Just because Troy Baker does not mind how they shit on his character in the new game does not mean I have to like it as well. At this point only a lazy "this was all just a dream" stunt could save this for me if they keep the decision making we have seen so far. The thing is, I have a few ideas what they are going for with the switches in perspective and all, their tweets gave me some hints and Naughty Dog never was all that original with their ideas, but even if that might have the potential to work in theory, they have been going about it the wrong way and miscalculated a few things.

 

Now with the leaks out and a significant part of the community pissed at them, the studio making it that much worse by messing with youtubers, who are the very same people posting the reviews that many of the future purchase decisions of disgruntled fans will depend on, and all the other bad press, it seems like this game will need nothing shy of a miracle if it does not want to go down as one of the biggest disasters in recent gaming history. I know my purchase is terribly unlikely at this point, even if the game reaches mediocre levels despite the story, simply because of the other shit that studio tried to do, but if even one of the people I still trust with reviews is giving this a low score and has a semi solid reason for it, then the only chance of me ever playing this game will be once it is free on psplus, and depending on how much it pisses me off I might not even touch it for free.

 

But who knows, maybe they go for a Kojima level mindfuck and, against all expectations, manage to pull it off in a way that does not completely ruin the experience for fans of the first game, but if the same guy who tried to lower fan expectations preemptively before now comes out and says stuff like this, it just looks even more likely to me that this will fall flat.

Edited May 5, 2020 by Nighcisama

[Carol]

2 hours ago, EcoShifter said:

 

Troy Baker is an interesting person. He's been defending the game for a while now. Some people who know him better than me (i'm more familiar with Nolan North and primarily know Troy by his game roles) also say he's a fake person.

 

The line "because I AM Joel" implies that, like Sean Schemmel, a large part of why he stayed on board was because he feels like only he can do service to Joel's character. Could be wrong, but it's a possibility as there are actors like that.

 

Anyway, @Carol, given you're a Naughty Dog fan and all, what are your thoughts on the tweet?

Well, I thought the tweet was interesting and that’s why I shared it. Troy Baker is clearly saying we don’t know enough to be able to judge the game and that he doesn’t feel his character was disrespected.

For me personally, his words don’t change much. Those leaks destroyed me.

[ProfBambam55]

this is one of the strangest threads I've come across here...i have to wonder: is anyone actually serious?...and, wouldn't it be fun if we all met up in tlou2 multiplayer?...

 

side note: thread title is misleading...haha...

 

edit: attempt to be on topic...didn't really like the first tlou and wasn't impressed by the trailers for the sequel so wasn't at all pumped for its release...politics and video games?...no thanks...bad mix imo...and I'm referring to what this discussion has turned into...not the game itself...

Edited May 6, 2020 by ProfBambam55

[Venocide]

At this point I couldn't give a shit about The Last of Us II. Maybe I'll play it one day when it's cheap, or free with PS Plus, but I won't be rushing out on June 19th.

Edited May 6, 2020 by Venocide

[Ghost]

9 minutes ago, ProfBambam55 said:

side note: thread title is misleading...haha...

 

There was another thread regarding the leaks but it was deleted. Everyone moved here.

[ProfBambam55]

1 minute ago, Ghost said:

 

There was another thread regarding the leaks but it was deleted. Everyone moved here.

it was an attempt at a joke...i read the first post then skipped ahead a couple pages and it made me smile...was like "wtf?"...

[Ghost]

3 minutes ago, ProfBambam55 said:

it was an attempt at a joke...i read the first post then skipped ahead a couple pages and it made me smile...was like "wtf?"...

 

Oh my bad Lol

[DaivRules]

1 minute ago, Ghost said:

There was another thread regarding the leaks

It’s not deleted, it’s visible and locked.
 

[TheLakota]

10 minutes ago, DaivRules said:

It’s not deleted, it’s visible and locked.
 

 

Not sure I've seen the thread in question. Was it locked because too many people railed against the fact Ellie is getting more sushi than they are?

[ziggypossum]

42 minutes ago, Ghost said:

 

There was another thread regarding the leaks but it was deleted. Everyone moved here.

 

37 minutes ago, DaivRules said:

It’s not deleted, it’s visible and locked.
 

 

There was also another thread, created by me the last year. Completely deleted by mods.