The Last of Us

China Bat Soup said:

Where is the strawman? You bought the game and you're here crying about "SJW bullshit" in your video game. I'm genuinely interested in what you tell yourself to justify this behavior. To be fair to you, I'm sure 80% of people here pull the same routine, but your post was so glaringly myopic that I had to crack the whip.

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8==========O:

Lithose said:

I love dunk, don't get me wrong. But if you ever watch an actual interview with him in it? The guy is kind of an idiot. He's just hysterical in the moment. His comments on the story really tend to illustrate he can't tell the difference between contrived/manipulative writing and good, character driven writing. All that matters to him is if the writing evokes certain feelings (And the last of us 2 certainly uses every cheap trick to do that).

The writing is just cheap. Its like GOT Season 8/TLJ, where you can tell someone wanted shock value and "subverted expectations" but wasn't good enough to write those things into a Universe that ALREADY had developed characters and rules. So instead of writing a compelling narrative that slowly changes those characters and rules, and THEN going for the shock, the writer went for the shock and then did a bunch of manipulative things to associate emotions how best to rationalize the shock (Ooo, see, this person is nice to dogs, while the other person is MEAN to them!!!!!!! Now think about Joel dying with that emotional context in your head!) They also broke the characters rules/personalities which really made the shocks feel extra cheap. (Even Joel's ambush feels cheap--Joel, the guy who could smell an ambush in 1, now implicitly trusts a group he just met?)

This game is bad and its not because of the She-Man, or even Joel's death. Its bad because yet another person has confused "different" and "shocking" with good, and was in such a rush to justify their "shock" that they accidentally dove headfirst into their own asshole mining out some thin reasoning for it. (And don't get me wrong, Joel dying was NOT the issue. The issue was how it was done.) But by far the worst part of it all is the obtuse, hamfisted "revenge message", as others here have pointed out, ends up being contradictory. The ending doesn't say what the story has been trying to spell out. Which just makes it go from bad to terrible; because the game is REALLY fucking confident, to the point of being arrogant/obtuse in its messaging...So when that messaging ends up being contradicted inadvertently? It's just rage inducing. It's like trying to listen to a hypocrite preach at you about X rule while flagrantly violating it.

So glad I didn't buy this garbage.

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I feel the tug between this in the story they are trying to tell and the manipulative, shitty way they are trying to tell it. When the story of the 2010's is told, this whole "subverting expectations" bullshit will be looked back upon as a cheap, pulp narrative shortcut rather than doing the hard work of telling story through character. Stories haven't all been told, you nihilistic, meta fucks, and the content gusher is glorious, not a curse: You just have to put in the effort to actually make people feel things. It separates the hacks and the pretentious from real genius, which isn't any less rare than it ever was. There were tons of playwrights in Shakespeare's times too, we just don't remember their names.

Also, I hate that people keep having to provide an apologia around Joel's death, as Lithose does here "Don't get me wrong, Joel's death is NOT the issue." I have watched a dozen of hours of reviews and read at this point at least a fifty written reviews: I have seen no complaints about Joel's death (that I recall, most comment like Lithose does here); I have seen literally no one complain about Ellie's sexuality, I have seen not a single complaint about the game having female leads. The Joel and Ellie relationship was special and positive and uplifting, so of course in 2020 it had to be destroyed and subverted and dragged through the mud.

That shit is all because the concept of subverting expectations is all the rage these days. But most retards in film, games, etc are complete morons who don't understand some basic nuance.

Yes, subverting expectations is good. When it is done well which is actually quite hard to pull off and can easily fail hard. But when its done well it is almost universally exceptional material in any medium. Because it is quite difficult to create a narrative that draws you in, shows you everything you think you need to know, then pulls the rug out from under you in a way where if you look at it again you could SEE the things pointing to what actually happened. But failed to recognize them then you just go, "holy shit!!!"

But even the most talented writers and storytellers have a hard time pulling this off and even then they aren't consistent with it.

Thats another bad story telling device that gets overused in general today but especially by these current "subvert expectations" jackholes. Start off the story with some shock value then cut to scene "10 days ago" or some related bullshit. Not only does it feel cheap (especially when you have something like the Joel in one moment and have to then go back to him after), but it completely removes all dramatic tension from the flashback parts because you know who lives.

And yeah there is no trick to subversion story telling, really. You put in some tucked away foreshadowing and make sure the characters stay true to their nature. Then you hit the shock moment and make the god damn characters actually shocked at the twist. Also it needs to be rational. There are plenty of good examples all through excellent works of fiction over the years. Saliari not being the one who actually killed Mozart, Hans WANTING FBI interference, Tyler Durden reveal, Rocky losing in the first movie, the non clone reveal in the S4 Rick and Morty finale, Season 1 Westworld MIB reveal, and so on. Its not rocket science to do if you have a plan and understand your characters. Much like his favorite movie TLJ, Druckmann neither understood his characters nor had a real plan beyond "fuck you this is my story now".

The dumb thing is there was totally a way to do a revenge story in this, set it up for a sequel, make the trans monster sympathetic, and even have a good basis for a sequel.

First off, subvert the fucking Heroes Journey Mentor Dies expectation. Have Tommy, Ellie, and Joel out on some mission, maybe Ellie finds out the truth and runs off and Tommy and Joel go track her down as she retraces her way to the Firefly base. Meanwhile Tranbro gang finally locates Tommy's community, but Joel is not there. Team Tranny wipes the place out, possibly over their intentions getting outed (LOL) and things getting out of hand. Ellie's tucan sam lesbian girlfriend is killed and revealed at that time to be pregnant, because she was getting some twink D on the side to keep the community going (reveal this in a diary entry somewhere). Tranny and pals are mortified with what they have done (notice new characters having these traits instead of shoe horning this bullshit into Ellie) and take off back to home base.

Next, Joel and Tommy catch up to Ellie and rescue her from some random bullshit in Denver. They find out about Team Tranbro because there are signs of them having been there to investigate the place themselves. Leave fluff there suggesting Ellie was not the only immune and they had killed a couple others trying to cure her (thus greying up the choice made by Joel from pt 1 nicely) and clues that they are looking for them and might know where Tommy town is. Trio sets aside differences for now and races back and finds place wiped out. Tommy and Joel have it out because Tommy lost his wife and everything over Joel's past again. Maybe Tommy suicides, maybe he runs off for sequel setup. Ellie finds dead preggo bagel box eater and loses her shit, deciding to track team tranny back to their home base. Joel cautions against it, but since Tommy has ditched him he reluctantly goes. Many scenes of them tracking stragglers and Joel trying to talk amends while Ellie gets more and more obsessed with killing Tranbro.

Get to Seatle and fight a bunch of Westboro types to get to where they have Tranbro strung up. Joel finds Tranbro first and reveals that Fireflies like his dad had been cutting open kids for a while for a cure that they never could work out, giving Tranbro pause. Joel appologizes and cuts Tranbro down, offering to help to get Tranbro Team survivors out of Jesus Land Seatle. Tranbro pals do not agree and decide to create Fireflies 2.0 with the knowledge that Ellie is an immune. Tranbro rejects this idea and helps Joel escape. They catch up to Ellie and she is even more pissed at Joel because he is helping tranbro. Team Jesus and Firefly Trans Team arrive at same time, chaos ensues. Joel says some words to Ellie about revenge and being a better person and reveals he had been bit at some point earlier in Seatle as a callback to Tess. Joel urges the two of them to escape and repeats Tess's sacrifice to buy them time to get clear. Play Joel one last time in grand three way murder hobo session. Ellie and Tranbro have some words, Ellie still hates Tranbro for killing bagel box eater, but finally understands the revenge cycle must end and the two part ways. Epilogue is new crazy branch of Fireflies tracking down Ellie and any other rare immunes in the future for a kill that will never work. Tranbro's final arc is to try to redeem himself by preventing that from ever happening, understanding how immoral his father's work was finally.

Sequel setup: Fireflies hunting Ellie and other immunes and have a secret rebel base someplace as the last vestiges of the US govt fall apart. Tranbro can be protagonist here redeming himself by freeing rare immune kids from them, but eventually needs help from Ellie to accomplish this. Maybe Tommy is involved if he is still around.

Thinking of that took me ten minutes on the shitter and it preserves most of the content they created for this game. It just reworks it into something that makes more sense and is an actual game that would not completely fucking repell the audience or rewrite existing characters. If I can take a hangover shit and outline a better plot with the same pieces, there is zero excuse for Sukkmann failing as bad as he did. It is clearly a combination of incompetence and agenda.

Well I was taking a shit when I thought about how to make a passable story out of what elements and casting they already had on hand (like if Sony said fuck it and redid the story in rewrites). I am not saying its perfect or even good, but its passable and better than what Druckmann shat out. Plus it has the virtue of being consistent with the characters as they were defined in the first game. And yeah a Mexico saves the world twist seems about right, with bonus points if they are also Muslim and descended from native aztecs.