December Talking Meme: Day 16 (TLOU2)
Dec. 16th, 2020 08:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jaggedwolfFrom here, walkthegale asked me about my feelings about The Last of Us 2.
TL;DR I fricking loved it, my GOTY and best game I've played in the past few years. Ellie's going to be a video game protagonist I care about for a long time. Obviously, this post is full of spoilers!
But first, some first game thoughts
So, when talking about TLOU2, I think it's worth talking about my reaction to the first game, which I played in 2018. I thought it was solid all-around, even as I stumbled through playing an FPS on a console for the first time in a while - I enjoyed the banter between Joel and Ellie, how well it managed to execute a very simple story about a man with very simple priorities, the world-building told through environment and notes, and how that all comes to a head at the end. Looking back, a zombie video game was absolutely the best mechanic for me to buy into loving a story about a grizzled tough guy. I wasn't affected much by the TLOU prologue, but when I reached the end of the TLOU2 prologue, I was absolutely gutted.
'Cause when I'm controlling Joel, trying to get past zombies and hunters, trying to keep Ellie alive, I get just as dang frustrated and irate as he does. Honestly, out of our three playable characters, his priorities are probably the ones I agree with the most. Like, I get it. (I might discuss this later, but I'm way more interested in player control of video game characters as a question of empathy, not complicity.)
And that ending, man. From a more distant standpoint, I would say that the TLOU series isn't interested in questions of judging its character's morality, and is more interested in exploring the consequences of people's connections to each other in an environment of high danger/scarcity/uncertainty. My actual gut-level reaction is that I absolutely am a goner for a character going "this person cannot die, absolutely not", in a way that's almost instinct. That's the way The Hunger Games, Supergirl, and Life Is Strange all grabbed my attention with their starts. Edward Elric of FMA is an overachiever who does this at the beginning and the end of his story for Al.
Joel does it at the end, a righteous rampage of how dare you take her that irrevocably seals a bond between him and Ellie. Unknowingly breaking a different bond, which sets us up for the second game.
TLOU2 Story
I liked TLOU2 way more than the first game. Personally, I like it when sequels have at least a little ambition to them, and get very bored with people whining that they don't reproduce the original's plot. Honestly, that reproduction is often more ~disrespectful~ to the original's characters than letting them actually change and shift. (See: The Star Wars sequels.)
I love how much of TLOU2 is about Ellie's trauma and guilt and her struggling with it, how the game lets her descend into her worst instincts but also lets her climb out of it, and how it does the same thing with Abby, who's further along on the journey. There are many differences between the games, but I think a fascinating one is how much this game is focused on Ellie's generation and people younger than that. They were all born and grew up in a world where the apocalypse had already happened, and it unavoidably marks all of them. The worst thing that ever happened to Joel happened when he was in his thirties. It happened so much earlier for Ellie, Abby, Dina, Lev, Jesse, Yara. Of course that fucks them all up in different ways.
The game doesn't give a fuck about telling the player that revenge is bad, it's way more interested in the trauma and loss surrounding that revenge, about how that revenge has more to do with the fallen father behind you than the enemy in front of you. Hence, I appreciate that this isn't a story were Ellie and Abby ever manage to connect or talk about what happens, because their choices really aren't about each other at all.
I felt in complete alignment with Joel and Ellie's decisions in the first game, and not so much with Ellie's and Abby's in he second game. It gels well with the story the game is telling, because Ellie and Abby are themselves ambivalent about their choices in a way Joel never was.
It is a heavy game, and I couldn't stop thinking about it for at least a week after. With the journal, we're brought so much deeper into Ellie's head than we ever were with Joel. It's harder to forget. And yet, I found many moments very hopeful, even when they don't end the best way. That birthday flashback. That we get to see Ellie and Dina's progression from best friends to romantic partners, and how obvious their history is. That Lev and Yara cut Abby down and then Abby goes back to get them. That Jesse cared so much about his friends and Joel that he trekked out to Seattle on his own. That Joel would take Ellie hating him if it meant she lived. That Ellie tried to keep herself together for the farm life with Dina and JJ as long as she could. That Dina tried to support that. God, even the fact that Ellie gets her maladaptive coping mechanisms (can't talk about Joel or Jesse) from Joel is touching to me, because he made such an effort to be there for her in Jackson.
The ending, too. I have to agree with people who say TLOU is an upward arcing story (Joel and Ellie growing closer) with a bleak ending (Joel's lie), while TLOU2 is a downward arcing story (Ellie's obsession with revenge) with a hopeful ending (Ellie at peace, able to draw Joel, and wearing Dina's bracelet). I dunno, I think I just find a lot of resonance in what feels like the game's core idea: some events are irreversible, but it's never too late for you, yourself, to change. Joel learned that in the first game too.
Uh, I definitely liked Abby and Lev and Yara too, I just have a lot more feelings about Ellie's side, haha. I think the switch was well-done, and the beginning gives you a good sense of how perfunctory Abby is about being part of the WLFs. She doesn't care about them, she cares about her friends and she used to care about killing Joel. I'm fond of the growing friendship between Abby and Lev and Yara, and how fiercely the former two latch on to each other after the fiasco of Seattle. I was very happy with the menu screen change :S
Sometimes jaggedwolf gets annoyed at the discourse
Uhh, feel free to skip this section because it's just me being salty about reviewers' opinions on the game.
I don't get the people claiming this game tries to guilt-trip the player. Like, you the player do not exist in this fictional universe, there is no fourth-wall breakage, playing a character who kills dogs that want to tear her throat out and then playing a different character who is part of the dog-owning faction and thus plays with the dogs is not a condemnation of you. It's called perspective! Do people get this mad reading ASOIAF??
The game is not contradicting itself by being a violent video game that says violence is bad, because the game doesn't think violence is bad. Like, have a list of violence I doubt the game is saying is bad.
Dina having to kill a guy at age 10 because he was attacking her mom
Lev killing his mom in self-defense
Ellie and Dina defending each other at the school
Abby and Lev killing the Seraphites who hung Abby and crushed Yara's arm
Literally any Rattler death
Characters are naturally conflicted about certain kinds of violence they committed, not violence in general, because the latter is a baseline for their world. It's not weird that Ellie has more complicated feelings about torturing a dying woman for intel (with the same method that Joel was killed by) or killing an unarmed pregnant woman (when Dina is pregnant) than Mook B who is going to shoot her if she doesn't shoot back first. That's a reasonable difference that doesn't feel like ludonarrative dissonance to me.
Okay the last thing I'm still mad about is the weird Polygon take that because Ellie is a gay woman, her going on a roaring rampage of revenge should necessarily be different from a straight man's revenge story. Like, even moving past the fact that Joel is actually less likely to go revenge-crazy, that essentialist attitude can fuck right off. Ellie's a person who gets angry, we saw that in the first game.
To be fair, Polgyon's articles about this game have been fucking trippy and made me give up on reading any reviews on their site again - the same review somehow thinks Ellie punching the old homophobe at the barn dance would be more morally justifiable than her wanting revenge on Joel's killers. It's a pity, because I remember how much I appreciated their review of Gone Home all those years ago, but either they're less interested in analyzing stories for what they are these days or I value that aspect of reviews more.
ANYWAY, while we're talking about LGBTQ rep, I think Ellie/Dina is very sweet and very centered on as a source of light in Ellie's story without Dina ever feeling unrealistically good or whatever, and Lev is a delight (Cold!). Ellie's the first locked-in LGBTQ protagonist of an AAA game and I'm so glad that milestone got such a good game. A part of me also feels some kind of way about how both TLOU and TLOU2 feature the playable adult character protecting a kid they don't really get at first but would die for by the end, and that the kid in the first game is gay and the kid in the second game is trans.
(Unrelatedly, I enjoy the variety of religious belief/background going on with with Ellie, Dina, Abby, Lev and Joel. One of those "it just fits" things.)
TLOU2 mechanics and technical discussion
Finally, I want to take a moment to acknowledge what a good game this is from a technical and mechanical standpoint. The dodge button is a game-changer, as is the way combat is differentiated between Ellie and Abby. While they obviously did something similar with Joel and Ellie in the first game, I have to think it's naturally easier to make playing a dude in his fifties feel different from playing a 14 year old girl than it is distinguishing two nineteen year old women who are very good at killing. Ellie is wiry, crafty and persistent with a knife in hand, but can't do melee combat the way Joel in the first game did. Abby has weapons with more kick to them, per the WLFs, and is buff as fuck to the point where the game forces you into multiple melee-only fights.
To me, this seems like obvious preparation for the final fight. There's a funny irony that the Abby PoV boss fight plays out in Ellie's more sneaking style - see the first game's David battle - while the Ellie PoV boss fight plays out in Abby's more straight-up brutal style.
The acting and graphics are so good and feel remarkably naturalistic, especially in the little subconscious movements. I'm not even the kind of person who spends a lot of time thinking about graphics but the quality of it really jumped out at me.
....this was much longer than expected, ha.
walkthegale asked me about my feelings about The Last of Us 2.TL;DR I fricking loved it, my GOTY and best game I've played in the past few years. Ellie's going to be a video game protagonist I care about for a long time. Obviously, this post is full of spoilers!
But first, some first game thoughts
So, when talking about TLOU2, I think it's worth talking about my reaction to the first game, which I played in 2018. I thought it was solid all-around, even as I stumbled through playing an FPS on a console for the first time in a while - I enjoyed the banter between Joel and Ellie, how well it managed to execute a very simple story about a man with very simple priorities, the world-building told through environment and notes, and how that all comes to a head at the end. Looking back, a zombie video game was absolutely the best mechanic for me to buy into loving a story about a grizzled tough guy. I wasn't affected much by the TLOU prologue, but when I reached the end of the TLOU2 prologue, I was absolutely gutted.
'Cause when I'm controlling Joel, trying to get past zombies and hunters, trying to keep Ellie alive, I get just as dang frustrated and irate as he does. Honestly, out of our three playable characters, his priorities are probably the ones I agree with the most. Like, I get it. (I might discuss this later, but I'm way more interested in player control of video game characters as a question of empathy, not complicity.)
And that ending, man. From a more distant standpoint, I would say that the TLOU series isn't interested in questions of judging its character's morality, and is more interested in exploring the consequences of people's connections to each other in an environment of high danger/scarcity/uncertainty. My actual gut-level reaction is that I absolutely am a goner for a character going "this person cannot die, absolutely not", in a way that's almost instinct. That's the way The Hunger Games, Supergirl, and Life Is Strange all grabbed my attention with their starts. Edward Elric of FMA is an overachiever who does this at the beginning and the end of his story for Al.
Joel does it at the end, a righteous rampage of how dare you take her that irrevocably seals a bond between him and Ellie. Unknowingly breaking a different bond, which sets us up for the second game.
TLOU2 Story
I liked TLOU2 way more than the first game. Personally, I like it when sequels have at least a little ambition to them, and get very bored with people whining that they don't reproduce the original's plot. Honestly, that reproduction is often more ~disrespectful~ to the original's characters than letting them actually change and shift. (See: The Star Wars sequels.)
I love how much of TLOU2 is about Ellie's trauma and guilt and her struggling with it, how the game lets her descend into her worst instincts but also lets her climb out of it, and how it does the same thing with Abby, who's further along on the journey. There are many differences between the games, but I think a fascinating one is how much this game is focused on Ellie's generation and people younger than that. They were all born and grew up in a world where the apocalypse had already happened, and it unavoidably marks all of them. The worst thing that ever happened to Joel happened when he was in his thirties. It happened so much earlier for Ellie, Abby, Dina, Lev, Jesse, Yara. Of course that fucks them all up in different ways.
The game doesn't give a fuck about telling the player that revenge is bad, it's way more interested in the trauma and loss surrounding that revenge, about how that revenge has more to do with the fallen father behind you than the enemy in front of you. Hence, I appreciate that this isn't a story were Ellie and Abby ever manage to connect or talk about what happens, because their choices really aren't about each other at all.
I felt in complete alignment with Joel and Ellie's decisions in the first game, and not so much with Ellie's and Abby's in he second game. It gels well with the story the game is telling, because Ellie and Abby are themselves ambivalent about their choices in a way Joel never was.
It is a heavy game, and I couldn't stop thinking about it for at least a week after. With the journal, we're brought so much deeper into Ellie's head than we ever were with Joel. It's harder to forget. And yet, I found many moments very hopeful, even when they don't end the best way. That birthday flashback. That we get to see Ellie and Dina's progression from best friends to romantic partners, and how obvious their history is. That Lev and Yara cut Abby down and then Abby goes back to get them. That Jesse cared so much about his friends and Joel that he trekked out to Seattle on his own. That Joel would take Ellie hating him if it meant she lived. That Ellie tried to keep herself together for the farm life with Dina and JJ as long as she could. That Dina tried to support that. God, even the fact that Ellie gets her maladaptive coping mechanisms (can't talk about Joel or Jesse) from Joel is touching to me, because he made such an effort to be there for her in Jackson.
The ending, too. I have to agree with people who say TLOU is an upward arcing story (Joel and Ellie growing closer) with a bleak ending (Joel's lie), while TLOU2 is a downward arcing story (Ellie's obsession with revenge) with a hopeful ending (Ellie at peace, able to draw Joel, and wearing Dina's bracelet). I dunno, I think I just find a lot of resonance in what feels like the game's core idea: some events are irreversible, but it's never too late for you, yourself, to change. Joel learned that in the first game too.
Uh, I definitely liked Abby and Lev and Yara too, I just have a lot more feelings about Ellie's side, haha. I think the switch was well-done, and the beginning gives you a good sense of how perfunctory Abby is about being part of the WLFs. She doesn't care about them, she cares about her friends and she used to care about killing Joel. I'm fond of the growing friendship between Abby and Lev and Yara, and how fiercely the former two latch on to each other after the fiasco of Seattle. I was very happy with the menu screen change :S
Sometimes jaggedwolf gets annoyed at the discourse
Uhh, feel free to skip this section because it's just me being salty about reviewers' opinions on the game.
I don't get the people claiming this game tries to guilt-trip the player. Like, you the player do not exist in this fictional universe, there is no fourth-wall breakage, playing a character who kills dogs that want to tear her throat out and then playing a different character who is part of the dog-owning faction and thus plays with the dogs is not a condemnation of you. It's called perspective! Do people get this mad reading ASOIAF??
The game is not contradicting itself by being a violent video game that says violence is bad, because the game doesn't think violence is bad. Like, have a list of violence I doubt the game is saying is bad.
Characters are naturally conflicted about certain kinds of violence they committed, not violence in general, because the latter is a baseline for their world. It's not weird that Ellie has more complicated feelings about torturing a dying woman for intel (with the same method that Joel was killed by) or killing an unarmed pregnant woman (when Dina is pregnant) than Mook B who is going to shoot her if she doesn't shoot back first. That's a reasonable difference that doesn't feel like ludonarrative dissonance to me.
Okay the last thing I'm still mad about is the weird Polygon take that because Ellie is a gay woman, her going on a roaring rampage of revenge should necessarily be different from a straight man's revenge story. Like, even moving past the fact that Joel is actually less likely to go revenge-crazy, that essentialist attitude can fuck right off. Ellie's a person who gets angry, we saw that in the first game.
To be fair, Polgyon's articles about this game have been fucking trippy and made me give up on reading any reviews on their site again - the same review somehow thinks Ellie punching the old homophobe at the barn dance would be more morally justifiable than her wanting revenge on Joel's killers. It's a pity, because I remember how much I appreciated their review of Gone Home all those years ago, but either they're less interested in analyzing stories for what they are these days or I value that aspect of reviews more.
ANYWAY, while we're talking about LGBTQ rep, I think Ellie/Dina is very sweet and very centered on as a source of light in Ellie's story without Dina ever feeling unrealistically good or whatever, and Lev is a delight (Cold!). Ellie's the first locked-in LGBTQ protagonist of an AAA game and I'm so glad that milestone got such a good game. A part of me also feels some kind of way about how both TLOU and TLOU2 feature the playable adult character protecting a kid they don't really get at first but would die for by the end, and that the kid in the first game is gay and the kid in the second game is trans.
(Unrelatedly, I enjoy the variety of religious belief/background going on with with Ellie, Dina, Abby, Lev and Joel. One of those "it just fits" things.)
TLOU2 mechanics and technical discussion
Finally, I want to take a moment to acknowledge what a good game this is from a technical and mechanical standpoint. The dodge button is a game-changer, as is the way combat is differentiated between Ellie and Abby. While they obviously did something similar with Joel and Ellie in the first game, I have to think it's naturally easier to make playing a dude in his fifties feel different from playing a 14 year old girl than it is distinguishing two nineteen year old women who are very good at killing. Ellie is wiry, crafty and persistent with a knife in hand, but can't do melee combat the way Joel in the first game did. Abby has weapons with more kick to them, per the WLFs, and is buff as fuck to the point where the game forces you into multiple melee-only fights.
To me, this seems like obvious preparation for the final fight. There's a funny irony that the Abby PoV boss fight plays out in Ellie's more sneaking style - see the first game's David battle - while the Ellie PoV boss fight plays out in Abby's more straight-up brutal style.
The acting and graphics are so good and feel remarkably naturalistic, especially in the little subconscious movements. I'm not even the kind of person who spends a lot of time thinking about graphics but the quality of it really jumped out at me.
....this was much longer than expected, ha.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-18 12:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-18 08:07 am (UTC)