The Last of Us

[accies1874]

The hospital stuff was amazing, but I thought the boss was kind of rubbish. Maybe it was just me but it was simply a case of running around in circles and shooting an enemy with no real idea of how much damage you were inflicting. The design of the area also made some deaths feel a bit cheap/unfair.

The worst boss fight's still to come though...

[accies1874]

I can't remember which "half" of the game this takes place in, but the section where you fall down a hole into a lower level of the hospital which has got a bunch of WLF and clickers in it is brilliant. The red lighting mixed with the spores and having no choice but to play the two groups off each other make for a really tense sequence.

[NotThePars]

7 hours ago, accies1874 said:

I can't remember which "half" of the game this takes place in, but the section where you fall down a hole into a lower level of the hospital which has got a bunch of WLF and clickers in it is brilliant. The red lighting mixed with the spores and having no choice but to play the two groups off each other make for a really tense sequence.

That's before the hospital right and just after the TV station I think. I just flung a bottle, sat back and watched the carnage unfold. The whole scene looks amazing though.

[forameus]

I'm well into Abby's bit now, and things are starting to get tense.  I knew that resources were going to be scarce, but the way they've pitched things now it's been dwindling and dwindling, and now I'm really having to think through things to avoid getting killed immediately.  Really enjoying it so far, but I'm really starting to see them artificially stretch what is clearly a well written story.  You've got all these well-written cutscenes and flashbacks, filling in parts of the story where you need it, but the core part of the game seems to take every opportunity to extend itself.  We need to get to point A, so let's g....oh shit, we've fallen over, it's going to take a bit longer now.  It's not bad that they're doing it, but it just shows the relative repetitiveness of the mechanics.  I've no idea how long I have left (in terms of chapters, I look to be about 2/3rds) but they could definitely have tightened this up and made a great game even better.

[Gianfranco]

That’s me finally finished it. I agree with a previous poster that said they were rooting for Abby rather than Ellie towards the end. Overall it was right good fun and I wouldn’t be surprised if the two girls team up in a part 3.

 

 

ETA I’ve no idea what to play next.

 

[Guts]

4 hours ago, Gianfranco said:

That’s me finally finished it. I agree with a previous poster that said they were rooting for Abby rather than Ellie towards the end. Overall it was right good fun and I wouldn’t be surprised if the two girls team up in a part 3.

 

 

ETA I’ve no idea what to play next.

 

Days Gone...

[forameus]

I just finished it last night too, spoiler free review, I really enjoyed it.  I'm glad I didn't look into the maelstrom of hate it was getting as that might've affected my enjoyment .  I also take back arguments on the length, as with how it ended up boing, I actually think it should've been longer.

Spoilers ahoy...

So on the "longer" part, I think they kind of dropped the ball a bit with the final section of the game.  The way people were talking, I expected the game to drag a lot longer than it did.  In the end, the level design and the story made it seem a lot shorter than it actually was.  I probably put 20-25 hours into that playthrough, and to be honest it didn't seem that long.  Certainly not in the way these seemingly endless open-world games seem to.  However, that ended up being part of its problem.  The Rattlers.  Why the f**k were they given such a tiny part of the game?  That fight in the theatre probably could've ended the game nicely.  Abby goes to get her revenge, but again stops short of killing anyone.  Everyone learns a lesson, and Ellie/Dina go back to Jackson, or to their farm, and Abby and Lev go off into the sunset.  NIce.  What happened after wasn't bad, in fact it was a nice continuation, but it almost felt like a waste given how long you actually play.  They spent most of that last act setting up the Rattlers, showing off certain people like they were going to be bosses, and then it's a 30-60 minute period where you release the prisoners, find Abby, and then...that's it.  A big shame given the Rattlers actually seemed like the more interesting group compared to the Scars.  I'd have happily played a few more hours with fighting your way towards Abby.

I guess that is part of a wider problem with the game in the characters.  A lot of them don't really get fleshed out much at all, outside of Ellie, Abby and Joel.  The Scars could be interesting but get glossed over a lot.  The WLF are the same (although get more time).  The Rattlers start well but run out of time.  Every individual character doesn't really offer much, like they spent all their time making sure Ellie and Abby could be as miserable as they possibly could.

But that's one area they really shine, because the everything surrounding the story of Ellie and Abby is brilliant, and brilliantly performed by the actors involved.  Particularly Abby.  I know it's likely what they were intending, but that final fight in the water I really didn't want to do.  When she's on the ground and you have to hit her, I waited ages thinking it was a choice, but alas no.  The only misstep I think is keeping Ellie as the "good guy", as the whole ending sequence from the fight onwards kind of glosses over that she's responsible for all of it after Joel's death.  She knows why they did it, but then goes on to stab up most of the group, with Abby just reacting.  But it's not a black and white story, and they told it really well.

On more general points, I expected the violence to be a lot more overblown than it was.  Don't get me wrong, utterly brutal at times, but it was pitched at the right level for me.  It's a dark game, in a dark world, and it's not really unrealistic you'd imagine in how the world would go.  Desperately fighting someone with a claw hammer because you've run out of bullets, after that person's just finished mourning their friend is harrowing, but it's supposed to be.  I don't think it ever really overstepped the mark.

8 out of 10 for me.  A masterpiece in design that doesn't hit all the notes, but does a really good job of trying.

[NotThePars]

This game has fair picked up since I got on to Abby's arc. Enjoying myself a lot more and even breezed through the Resi Evil monster.

[NotThePars]

Just finished it there and feel heavy conflicted by it. There's a ton of great performances and a lot of work put into the presentation, accessibility  and the moment to moment gameplay but my god Ellie's arc drags the whole thing down and just made me think she was an irredeemable p***k after a while.

This game badly needed an editor and someone that wasn't Neil Druckmann in charge. if I was rewriting it I would've made Abby's section the main thrust of the game, removed the start and end entirely and maybe worked some of it into the middle portion which, imo, was the most engaging part of the story even if it also contained the most frustrating sections of gameplay.

7/10 for me.

[renton]

On 21/07/2020 at 00:09, NotThePars said:

Just finished it there and feel heavy conflicted by it. There's a ton of great performances and a lot of work put into the presentation, accessibility  and the moment to moment gameplay but my god Ellie's arc drags the whole thing down and just made me think she was an irredeemable p***k after a while.

This game badly needed an editor and someone that wasn't Neil Druckmann in charge. if I was rewriting it I would've made Abby's section the main thrust of the game, removed the start and end entirely and maybe worked some of it into the middle portion which, imo, was the most engaging part of the story even if it also contained the most frustrating sections of gameplay.

7/10 for me.

I thought they started with Abby very much in the irredeemable p***k mode, but did a lot of heavy lifting to add context and give her a conscience, but never got a vibe of Ellie being irredeemable. 

The game does a good job of broadening the player's appreciation of the various motives but keeps the protagonist's letterbox view of things largely intact. 

Ironically, abby's journey is similar to Joel's from the first game: like Joel she has a great personal trauma related to the death of a loved one, like Joel she spends some time doing things that are less than morally sound and like Joel she finds redemption in learning to care for someone outside of her immediate survival needs on a human level and find a real connection, and to start thinking about the future in ways that might not immediately involve violence...and like Joel her previous less than moral actions bring down vengeance on her head, only for Ellie to have the advantage of her own experience with Joel to pull back from the brink and to break the cycle. Having said that, maybe there is a WLF survivor of the village out there with a nine iron and a long memory...

I guess for me it comes down to the initial act against Joel perpetrated by the WLF/Ex Fireflies. You could say that it's on Joel, his actions in the previous game that brings all it down on his head on the 2nd game, but for him it wasn't personal. In a brutal world where violence is the first and usually only resort, he mowed through the Fireflies and the surgeon, without really giving too much thought to who they were. It's Abby, ultimately who makes it personal (and in turn kicks of Ellie's quest for the same personal retribution) Abby's act of vengeance that resolves nothing for her personally or for the Firefly movement more broadly.

I guess the other part of it for me is that the others who go along with Abby don't have the understandable personal angle. They claim to be in it for retribution over the collapse of their movement to find a vaccine, but that hardly holds up. In the first game they create some shades of uncertainty as to whether a vaccine could be found from Ellie. The fact that The vaccine hunt collapsed with the death of  single doctor hardly bears out the idea that a vaccine could be found and disseminated (and really in the first games, the Firefly vaccine was as much about political leverage for bringing people over from FEDRA as anything else), there is also the mentions of the Fireflies own violence and the fact the WLF are harldy whitehats. Many in Abby's group seem to be in it for the act of violence itself, like Manny, so I wasn't shedding too many tears for them. Only Owen and Mel showed any sense of the futility of their violence, that was an avoidable tragedy and a low point for Ellie (though you suspect if Owen had committed to Mel properly and told Abby to go find her own revenge that might have helped them in the long run)

To me the idea of a vaccine is pointless. 20 years after the outbreak and the infected are a dangerous nuisance rather than an existential threat. They have no bearing on the conflict between the Seraphites and the WLF, arguing over territory in a massively vacated urban zone. They are fighting because it's too much effort not to. Removing the infected is not going to remove people's predilection to violence as the first and only authority in TLOU universe.

That then is where Ellie gets the win. If Abby's story is a retread of the man she hates so much, Ellie's is a progression: allowing, even at the 11th hour for some hope of forgiveness in the world that seems to lack it entirely. 

I fucking loved the story.

Edited July 22, 2020 by renton

[Have some faith in Magic]

Spoiler

Do you get to play as Ellie again after the start of the main Abby section?  (Have just set off to look for Owen).

When it  was the Ellie section I had been saving lots of stuff and hadn't even used any explosive arrows. 

and I want to try and  play the guitar again. 

[NotThePars]

6 hours ago, renton said:

I thought they started with Abby very much in the irredeemable p***k mode, but did a lot of heavy lifting to add context and give her a conscience, but never got a vibe of Ellie being irredeemable. 

The game does a good job of broadening the player's appreciation of the various motives but keeps the protagonist's letterbox view of things largely intact. 

Ironically, abby's journey is similar to Joel's from the first game: like Joel she has a great personal trauma related to the death of a loved one, like Joel she spends some time doing things that are less than morally sound and like Joel she finds redemption in learning to care for someone outside of her immediate survival needs on a human level and find a real connection, and to start thinking about the future in ways that might not immediately involve violence...and like Joel her previous less than moral actions bring down vengeance on her head, only for Ellie to have the advantage of her own experience with Joel to pull back from the brink and to break the cycle. Having said that, maybe there is a WLF survivor of the village out there with a nine iron and a long memory...

I guess for me it comes down to the initial act against Joel perpetrated by the WLF/Ex Fireflies. You could say that it's on Joel, his actions in the previous game that brings all it down on his head on the 2nd game, but for him it wasn't personal. In a brutal world where violence is the first and usually only resort, he mowed through the Fireflies and the surgeon, without really giving too much thought to who they were. It's Abby, ultimately who makes it personal (and in turn kicks of Ellie's quest for the same personal retribution) Abby's act of vengeance that resolves nothing for her personally or for the Firefly movement more broadly.

I guess the other part of it for me is that the others who go along with Abby don't have the understandable personal angle. They claim to be in it for retribution over the collapse of their movement to find a vaccine, but that hardly holds up. In the first game they create some shades of uncertainty as to whether a vaccine could be found from Ellie. The fact that The vaccine hunt collapsed with the death of  single doctor hardly bears out the idea that a vaccine could be found and disseminated (and really in the first games, the Firefly vaccine was as much about political leverage for bringing people over from FEDRA as anything else), there is also the mentions of the Fireflies own violence and the fact the WLF are harldy whitehats. Many in Abby's group seem to be in it for the act of violence itself, like Manny, so I wasn't shedding too many tears for them. Only Owen and Mel showed any sense of the futility of their violence, that was an avoidable tragedy and a low point for Ellie (though you suspect if Owen had committed to Mel properly and told Abby to go find her own revenge that might have helped them in the long run)

To me the idea of a vaccine is pointless. 20 years after the outbreak and the infected are a dangerous nuisance rather than an existential threat. They have no bearing on the conflict between the Seraphites and the WLF, arguing over territory in a massively vacated urban zone. They are fighting because it's too much effort not to. Removing the infected is not going to remove people's predilection to violence as the first and only authority in TLOU universe.

That then is where Ellie gets the win. If Abby's story is a retread of the man she hates so much, Ellie's is a progression: allowing, even at the 11th hour for some hope of forgiveness in the world that seems to lack it entirely. 

I fucking loved the story.

Spoiler

 

Ellie's story just lost its momentum fairly quickly and I didn't find her motivation to be strong enough to sustain just how long her arc ended up being. I also think the writers were aware of that as well which is why you have characters like Dina sidelined fairly quickly to prevent them asking the awkward questions they would inevitably ask once it hits day three and people are dropping like flies in pursuit of Ellie's revenge. 

What you've said about Abby's arc mirroring Joel's just cements for me that her arc should've been the main, or even sole, focus of this game. It would've also had the benefit of giving greater impact to the reveal of who the sniper is that's shooting at Abby and Manny as well as giving an "oh shit" moment when you hit the theatre and fight Ellie backstage (which coincidentally was the best boss fight of the game). Also what you've said in trying to unpack what Joel did ironically for me highlights why her arc is more justified than Ellie's is and a sole focus might have done more to highlight the differences between them. Obviously they add contextualisation for Abby which makes what Joel did specifically personal but ultimately the difference between the two is that Abby is enacting justice on someone who committed an undeniable crime both against human society (either because of the vaccine which I do agree with you on or because Joel kills doctors and surgeons which are clearly scarce) and against Abby, her group and furthermore against Ellie by taking away Abby's dad and removing Ellie's agency for his own selfishness. A resolution which acknowledged that Abby was seeking justice whereas Ellie was just seeking revenge would've made for a better narrative than the worn old out cliche of "when seeking revenge, dig two graves" that's served up and becomes tired about three hours in. I found it even more baffling that at no point do Abby and Ellie actually talk to each other about what they're fighting about. I remember someone mentioning that it doesn't happen and I was convinced they had missed it but I genuinely don't think it's ever addressed.

I have the impression from reading interviews with Druckmann and just from playing that the game went through several rewrites including after they had recorded and made specific sections and they were just too unwilling to remove what was decent enough scenes but which ultimately superfluous or actively counterproductive to the story they were trying to tell. The final arc especially for me felt counterproductive and even rushed. It's wild in a game which insists on showing you everything it can just rushes through character development in Ellie and Dina's relationship to a break that doesn't feel earned or makes Dina look a bit of a p***k or a stereotypical cowboy western wife which is a disservice.

I really enjoyed a lot of the beat-to-beat stuff and there's a lot to enjoy in this but the story itself just fell flat and the justifications given by Druckmann unfortunately just soured the experience even more for me from his surface level analysis of "universal hate" to the weird transplanting of the Israeli-Palestine conflict on to the game's background conflict.

Apologies for the disjointed reply or if I've ignored some of what you've said, I have no idea how to format an Ad Lib style line-by-line response.

 

 

Edited July 22, 2020 by NotThePars

[NotThePars]

2 hours ago, Have some faith in Magic said:

  Reveal hidden contents

Do you get to play as Ellie again after the start of the main Abby section?  (Have just set off to look for Owen).

When it  was the Ellie section I had been saving lots of stuff and hadn't even used any explosive arrows. 

and I want to try and  play the guitar again. 

Yes

[renton]

21 minutes ago, NotThePars said:

Ellie's story just lost its momentum fairly quickly and I didn't find her motivation to be strong enough to sustain just how long her arc ended up being. I also think the writers were aware of that as well which is why you have characters like Dina sidelined fairly quickly to prevent them asking the awkward questions they would inevitably ask once it hits day three and people are dropping like flies in pursuit of Ellie's revenge. 

What you've said about Abby's arc mirroring Joel's just cements for me that her arc should've been the main, or even sole, focus of this game. It would've also had the benefit of giving greater impact to the reveal of who the sniper is that's shooting at Abby and Manny as well as giving an "oh shit" moment when you hit the theatre and fight Ellie backstage (which coincidentally was the best boss fight of the game). Also what you've said in trying to unpack what Joel did ironically for me highlights why her arc is more justified than Ellie's is and a sole focus might have done more to highlight the differences between them. Obviously they add contextualisation for Abby which makes what Joel did specifically personal but ultimately the difference between the two is that Abby is enacting justice on someone who committed an undeniable crime both against human society (either because of the vaccine which I do agree with you on or because Joel kills doctors and surgeons which are clearly scarce) and against Abby, her group and furthermore against Ellie by taking away Abby's dad and removing Ellie's agency for his own selfishness. A resolution which acknowledged that Abby was seeking justice whereas Ellie was just seeking revenge would've made for a better narrative than the worn old out cliche of "when seeking revenge, dig two graves" that's served up and becomes tired about three hours in. I found it even more baffling that at no point do Abby and Ellie actually talk to each other about what they're fighting about. I remember someone mentioning that it doesn't happen and I was convinced they had missed it but I genuinely don't think it's ever addressed.

 

 

I guess for me, the debate in TLOU comes down to philosophy. I always think, logically that utilitarianism should win out, but viscerally I can't get on board. For me definitely saving one life would always trump the vagueness of a vaccine that had no guarantees. So in that sense, I guess I never saw Joel's actions in the light of a horrific crime against humanity, and only barely an act of violence that rises above the general background level inherent in TLOU universe.

Maybe that colours how you see the actions of the 2nd game protagonists. If you see a terrible crime in Joel's actions then Abby and Co. May seem far more justified, then again what Abby doled out was fairly brutal torture, after turning on people who had helped her when she could easily have been killed by infected. For me, it was a fairly low act, and was entirely fuelled by revenge. Any abstract sense of injustice perpetrated against humanity over the absence of a vaccine seems to me lile justification after the fact. Both protagonists would feel like justice was being served by killing the other.

I guess they deliberately made Abby's story track Joel's arc, but you couldn't have that as a stand alone story, I personally think it wouldve been a retread of that plot (though with improved game play and some really great set pieces). I think also the lack of conversation between the two is deliberate, it's a world where no one allows for complex philosophy or moral grey areas. Just kill or be killed. It's an interesting setup where the whole of what is left of humanity is deeply traumatised by the collapse of civilisation.

That for me is what made the ending. The fact that Ellie and Joel could attempt some kind of reproachment meant there was space for Ellie to see the parallels of both herself and Joel in Abby, and to break a cycle of revenge that had already consumed both the Seraphites and the WLF.

 

Edited July 22, 2020 by renton

[Have some faith in Magic]

16 hours ago, NotThePars said:

Yes

Good stuff. Cheers 

[Scotty Tunbridge]

Finished this today just some short points since most of the long posts here have nailed it.

So many fucking jump scares
Maybe too long
Ellie is a bit of a p***k
The bit with the rattlers could have been given longer than some of the WLF/Scars stuff or Aquariam bits
Didn’t deserve the flak it was getting at launch

[NotThePars]

A tight 15 hours and I'd have probably really liked this game but it ended up being too long to make what was ultimately a shallow point.

[19QOS19]

Finally played it.

** Spoilers. Don't read if you haven't played it (obviously) **

Thoroughly enjoyed it (shock horror!). I just got sucked in by the story once more and thought the development of Ellie and Abby was great. I hated Abby so much after wiping out Joel that I really didn't want to be in control of her. Skip to the end and I was genuinely devastated when she was being drowned by Ellie. It was predominantly about Abby developing but I feel Ellie is getting a hard time of it. We meet her with real tension between herself and Joel. So much so she is struggling to even speak with him - even so she goes on a suicide trip to try and save him. The rage then takes her to want to wipe out Abby. By the end we (IMO) see her coming to the realisation that vengeance won't bring him back and perhaps guilt that she took him for granted.

I loved seeing both sides of the story as well. WLF were savages in the beginning but spending time with them I thought "I reckon that would be the apocalypse group I'd join".

I had a wee glitch in the bit where you worked your way down the building with Lev. I got out the building, locked the door behind me and Lev was still inside. Thankfully it didn't effect the cutscene and he caught up.

Also, in the mansion just before you get to the scene where the prisoners escape (but after you've killed a whole lot of them then go upstairs and out the window to the left). Did anyone else have a HELLUVA lot of bodies to kill? It was as if they kept spawning. I had my ear to the ground and one person was in the distance, I'd leave the mansion and get hit by two other folk. This went on for a good while and my ammo was practically gone. I ended up making a run for the exit.

Given how much I love TLOU I'm impressed I loved this one as much. I thought it wouldn't get close. For me it's hard to call what one was better.

Loved it.

[Stellaboz]

The dogs were brutal, utterly brutal when you're sneaking about.

[NotThePars]

The dogs were brutal, utterly brutal when you're sneaking about.

The only enemy I used my trip mines on