heres my negative thoughts: Spoiler 1. game could have and should have been half as long. too much filler 2. abby is boring, playing as her feels wrong. in a post apocalyptic setting i dont need an extremely long side plot to tell me the villain is just a normal person put in a tough situation, i already know that. its borderline insulting. 3. tlou1 dealt with a lot of emotions that arent typically dealt with in video games. thats so much of what made it special. tlou2 is a standard story dealing with standard things. 4. theres a lot of unnecessart deception in the game. deception is fine quite often, look at bioshock. but bioshock had a reason, the only reason tlou2 had was deception for the sake of deception. they take away the impact of joels death but try to add all that back later but thats not how it works. positive thoughts: its really pretty and the gameplay feels better even though they clearly decided to make it more of an action game this time
I’m at the point in the story where Spoiler I’ve taken over playing Abby after the Salt Lake City flashback. So however long it takes after that. I’d be happy to participate in your questionnaire when I’m done.
Thanks for your thoughts man, just a clarification if I could... Spoiler Can you elaborate on what you mean by the deceptions? Like what they were, etc? I have seen people say that ND did false advertising to sell the game, but I don't understand that. Do they mean not telling us we play as Abby? They didn't tell us we got to play as Ellie in the first game either, but no one called that false advertising. Am I missing something? Thanks!
Spoiler specifically, they intentionally make you believe ellie and joels relationship is in a terrible place just so they can say "no wait, it wasnt"
Spoiler I could see what ppl mean by false advertising, in the final trailer where they showed Joel grabbing Ellie's mouth, by that point in the actual game Joel had already been killed
Day 5 is fucking nuts. Don't open if you're not past Day 3: Spoiler I don't want to let on that you play through Abby's own series of days. I propose we number our days 1-6 if mentioning our progress.
Spoiler man playing as Abby felt exhausting and borderline boring. The game was too long. I thought they tied in the first game really well but honestly could have left Abby out of it as a playable character. I actually don’t have any intention of playing it over. Once was enough. Also, why did Ellie have a reusable knife but Abby couldn’t?
Once again, super end game spoilers... Spoiler at the very end, do you think Ellie is heading to Jackson to reconcile with Dina or just wandering off to be by herself?
Also, do I have the right to be mad that the first trailer of the game wasn’t anywhere in the final product
You can be, but it happens all the time. I remember Avengers Infinity War, they had stuff in the trailer that was just completely made up. But yeah I'm with you, I wanted to see her sing that song. Did you watch through the end of the credits?
Watching the credits now...tremendous game. Will spoil my criticisms as they're kinda plot related but I will say that the combat and action are much better in this version than LOU1 IMO. Spoiler That was fantastic. We’ve had humanized villains in video games but that’s beyond anything I've caught before and really gave an entirely new perspective. I've never felt so uneasy trying to finish a mission than as Abby trying to kill Ellie in the theater or Ellie choosing to fight Abby on the beach at the end. You just want them to walk away from one another. You're made to forget about all the terrible things that Abby or Ellie did and then they come back at you. As far as an emotionally engaging story that really puts the audience in places that are uncomfortable, this is a good a game story as I can imagine. The visuals are ridiculous and probably as good as it's going to get on this generation. I was playing on a launch PS4 (albeit w/ HDR on) and it looks stunning. Assume it's staggering on PS4 Pro. On the negative side, there are some pretty severe pacing and length issues. I'm probably biased as I really don't think these type of cinematic games should go much longer than 10-15 hours. I kinda lost track but this was probably about 22-25 hours for me to finish (I'm pretty exhaustive but not trying to Platinum or anything). I guess not knowing that the Abby side of things was essentially half to 1/3 of the game really threw things off for me as I constantly thought we'd go back to the theater and it didn't happen for like 6 hours. As bold of a narrative decision as it was, I would have actually appreciated them allowing reviewers to at least allude to it in reviews so people are prepared, even if people would have lost their minds at it being "spoiled." You get that "oh it's just around the bend" feeling and in actuality, you have multiple hours to go. Also, I could also have done w/o some of the filler fights w/ both humans and infected particularly in the final 1/3 of the game. A few seemed tacked on for padding purposes, particularly in the Abby section. That said, the Abby boss fight in the basement of the hospital was fucking fantastic and pretty difficult (I played on normal or whatever, I can't imagine how tough that would have been on a higher level). Ditto the first time you see the "invisible" infected as Ellie. At its heights, this is about as good as you can do in a video game and I really enjoyed the nuanced and emotionally complicated story which made the fluff worth it. Short version...go buy it. It's about as well told a story as there's been in a video game, just know that it's quite long.
Spoiler Wasn't the first trailer the scene where Abby gets captured and Yara gets her arm broken? The Dina/Ellie kissing scene was also at the end. Only thing I noticed changed was the hand being Jesse's, not Joel's over Ellie's mouth.
I'm to the part where Spoiler you sneak through the Scar/WLF battle. Think I'm almost done, but I thought that after the hospital scene, so idk. Definitely agree with the criticisms about the length of the story, but I'm also not gonna complain about spending more time in this world. Don't have a problem playing with Abby, and her sequences have been some of the most thrilling in the game so far (although there are definitely things that could have been cut or shortened). And as others have mentioned, the combat is a huge improvement over Part 1. Excited to see how it ends
Agree with everything you've got going on there, if I was put in charge of trimming, it would be from parts of Ellie's levels for sure. Spoiler You don't have too long to go, but what's left is pretty great, I think the game ends strongly. The burning village is one of the most amazing levels I've seen yet in a game
I would’ve trimmed part of Spoiler the ascent to the skybridge. The entire hotel was amazing. But they took an elevator up. That elevator could’ve happened much sooner.
Spoiler I love verticality in level design, and i love when action takes place at an altitude like that, so I was 100% with all that, but I see what you mean for sure.
That was honestly fucking beautiful. It’s not my favorite game but I loved it. I’m hoping they put together some DLC to Spoiler give us a look at Tommy’s 3 days in Seattle.
I'm on Spoiler Day 1 the remix . How many more hours roughly do I have? Just trying to pace myself and savor it
Ok here we go. I loved it. I didn’t think I would at certain parts but when it comes together it’s unlike any gaming experience I’ve ever had. Also holy shit the music in this game is so good at building tension and setting the mood. The story was great Spoiler I definitely feel like the Abby shit lagged and needed to be trimmed a bit. I don’t care about Owen and I don’t care that they were in love. I will say when Lev and Yara are introduced Abby’s part goes from ok to great. Lev is easily the best new character to me. I like how it ended. Spoiler Ellie redeemed herself by letting Abby and Lev get on their boat, but I think she realized it too late and she’s lost just about everything except her iron will. My biggest gripes are that Spoiler I found Abby and most of the Salt Lake crew to be pretty flat and uninteresting characters and that the ending has plot holes that I guess would set up a Part III that I don’t see actually getting made Highlights for me are Spoiler The mood and the lighting in the underground subway part that is lit only by flares, holy shit that was so dope.Hillcrest, holy shit the music was good in that. Abby and Manny working their way up to Tommy was incredible too. The final fight between Ellie and Abby was beautifully done and the first fight was a twist I never saw coming. Also I think the horse ride through Haven as it burns down is the most jaw dropping interactive experience I’ve ever had in a game I really enjoyed most of the game and certainly feel my criticisms were said a bit too early, but I do think it fell short in the story at some points.
It wasn't ever going to not sell well just based on the hype of the 1st game. Review bombs don't really do shit to make a difference to actual sales numbers, the amount of people who actively go to metacritic, check the user reviews THEN decide on purchase/not purchase is like 0.1% of potential customers if that.
Side note, Abbey is buff as shit. The fuck she carrying around pistols for when she walking around with guns like those for arms?
Just finished Spoiler Definitely too long, but overall a really satisfying experience. Initially hated the idea of playing as Abby, but actually grew to be more invested in her story/outcome than I was in Ellie's tbh. Glad her and Lev got away at the end. Narratively the first one is better, but the actual gameplay is much improved; everything just feels way more intuitive. Part One is still the GOAT for me, but this is a beautiful game and more than worth your time...even if it's several hours too long.
I guess one of the main reasons why I'm lower on this game than most ppl is because for games like this and the 1st one, the Story matters to me way more than gameplay, so while the gameplay was much better in Part 2 than the last game, that's not really a net positive to me because I felt the story was worse. If I want to play a game for more combat I'll play Dark Souls, Sekiro or God of War, so TLOU2 trading better combat for worse story is what ultimately made me not like it as much.
Chances are sequels are going to be worse than better than an original because, excluding God of War that established entirely new lore from its previous umpteen entries, the original’s story includes so much of the world-building. I respect the spectrum of opinions we’re getting here because at least you guys played the game. Sometimes it just doesn’t hit for everyone and that sucks. For me, this was a prerecordedlive-ass game. I’ll play the original again and then replay this after PS5 drops. Hoping for some DLC here but the story is contained so they don’t owe us that.
That was the second trailer. First trailer is Ellie sitting in the house with all the dead bodies, playing the guitar and singing, Joel (we think) walks through the house, goes to the bedroom she is in, says to her "what're you doing kiddo? you really gonna go through with this?" and she says "i'm gonna find and I'm gonna kill every last one of them".
As soon as I finished the game I wasn't sure I would play it again, even though I loved it. After writing about it all week and seeing what everyone else has written, I want to jump back in again already. Too much newly purchased stuff at the moment though, have to get through Ace Combat 7 at least, probably Outer Wilds too, before I go back.
Spoiler so joel and ellie never reconciled before he died, correct? When he walks away after getting chewed by Ellie for standing up for her in the bar after kiss...I felt that :(