Jesus, this is a blast from the past. I tried out my (very) old AL login to see if it still worked, and lo and behold, it did. Saw this thread and had to comment, even though I doubt I'll be sticking around.
I love the original Last of Us. Even today it stands as one of my favourite games of all time. It's an extremely potent example of storytelling in games taking a step forward (this is not to be confused with comparing it to film, which I'll go into later). The characters grew on me immensely, in part due to their heavily flawed and humanising qualities. As a story, I love it, and wouldn't have it told any other way.
So naturally, the second game had me EXTREMELY hyped. I was chomping at the bit to play this, and even took a Friday and Monday annual leave for the privilege. I completed the game after 3 days, and have some... feelings.
For people who just want the short answer up front?
I love it. Not as much as the first, but I still view this as an extremely good game with some flaws that could (and should) have been avoided.
I also feel the review-bombing (and that's flat out what I believe it is in 90% of cases) is unwarranted. Surface level, knee-jerk emotional reactions to plot elements in a game without trying to understand those emotions are a disservice to your appreciation or enjoyment of the game, and to the efforts of the game itself. Tepid, middling, or even (well-explained) poor reviews I get; the game isn't for everyone and some people ARE going to be non-plussed or even frustrated by what's on offer (especially if that's how they felt about the first game) and even frustrated by the game's failings (of which it has a few). However, people unable or unwilling to absorb context or theming or how to break down their feelings are going to have a hard time, even if they're a fan of the original. HOW you absorb media matters, especially when the game obviously wants you to care. Some games are meant to be played with wild abandon and disregard for the story, its themes, or characterisations. TLOU2 is not that kind of game.
Gameplay feels EXTREMELY familiar; when I started I felt I was back in 2013 again, for better or worse. It can feel sluggish, but I absolutely ADORE how the game walks the line between delicious stealth and playground-levels of experimentation with encounters. I am the kind of player who (usually) wants to clear an entire area of enemies without getting caught once; I've often reset games in order to do just that. But TLOU2 is at its best, in my opinion, when you jump deftly between bombastic action-based shooting and stealthy navigation. Firing an arrow at an enemy's head, placing a bomb trap where the body will be checked, and slinking away to another part of the map, setting up with a sniper rifle at the far end of the encounter, and picking people off as your trap explodes is extremely satisfying, especially on Survivor Difficulty (which I recommend playing on; the struggle is part of the experience).
In TLOU1 Survivor mode was more satisfying; no UI and no listening mode really made you think hard about how to proceed, and you felt like a hero when you got through with just a bow. TLOU2 unfortunately doesn't share this joy. It's still great, but something is lost without those restrictions; sometimes taking options AWAY from the player enhances the experience, and this would be an example of that. But I digress; this IS compensated by longer, tougher encounters, but I don't think the trade-off is of equal value.
Narratively, I was floored. I WILL BE ENTERING SPOILER TERRITORY HERE, so steer clear if you still have to play the game (spoiler tags still work, right?):
The pacing of the story is all over the place, and it affected not only my enjoyment of the game, but my sense of empathy and investment with certain characters; this game should have been two games (though I understand why it wasn't).
Game two should have made you play as Abby, and only Abby (a risky move, but one that could have paid off, since Abby is actually interesting), keeping its cards close to its chest, showing that she's mourning the loss of her dad, and seeking revenge against the person who did it, but NOT telling the player that her dad was the surgeon OR that Joel was the one that killed him in the first game; show how she aches, show how she's consumed with hate, show how her friends try to console and guide and protect and be with her, show her interact with them more, build those relationships in your head and in your heart, and show how she behaves much like Ellie did most of our existing version of TLOU2; have her leave a trail of bodies leading to Joel without knowing it's Joel's she's after. Queue the Joel cameo, halfway through the story, in the same way, reveal that her dad's the surgeon from the first game and that Joel's the cause of her pain. THEN have her follow through with killing him, completing her revenge, with Ellie watching as helplessly as she did. Same story, structured differently, with Abby's characterisation contextualised AND internalised by the player. Empathy established, understanding reached.
Continue Abby's Arc where she meets Lev, revealing how her journey to redemption is much like Joel's was (the guardian / dependant relationship being VERY obvious), expressing how her revenge brought her no happiness, but moving on from it and establishing a purposefulness to your life makes it better. Show how she understands after all this time that revenge got her nothing and nowhere, have game two culminate in the boss fight with Ellie, after her friends (that you've now invested in) die, show how she's capable of mercy, and finally, show that she reaches the basement and contacts the fireflies, moments before being kidnapped (save the kidnapping as an opening flashback for the third game). Now, just before the credits roll, show Ellie playing her guitar in Jackson (or on the farm following the boss-fight; both work), months earlier / later, with Tommy asking her if she wants to go through with it (like Joel did in the first trailer for the game). She finishes playing, and uses the quote from the first trailer reveal (I'm going to find... and I'm going to kill... every... last... one of them). The story isn't over, and establishes that this isn't something Ellie is going to just let go; it sets up the third game for Ellie such that she begins her journey where Abby did in game two, allowing players to contextualise how Ellie and Abby are at SEPARATE POINTS of their vengeful journey, and therefore cannot be directly compared.
Now in game three, you play as Ellie. All context up front, all understanding gained, all character relationships given time to grow on you and manifest as important (Dina and Jessie just weren't given time or context to grow on you properly, and Abby's friends ALL died before you got to know them so your investment in them as characters is lost). You play out the flashbacks in chronological order; make them longer, have even more meaningful exposition and narrative, and play them out over sections not dis-similar to the first game's seasons of the year. Play the moments before Joel's death, just like the TLOU2 we got... play through all the rest... get to the boss-fight from the second game halfway through, only it plays out as a cutscene, from which Abby emerges the victor; You lose.
Now you go live your idyllic life on the farm, with perhaps a bit more narrative context provided for how badly Ellie's PTSD torments her. Show her relationship with dina struggling as a result. Show Tommy asking several times (not just once) to go get Abby, and let it escalate so emotions are running high. With this new context, and reconstructed pacing, you're forced to kill characters from the second game after getting to know them properly, and play out Ellie's part of the story (you now track the same path to revenge as Abby), but instead of exacting your final revenge as Ellie, you let her go (like TLOU2 is done now now), showing the player that Ellie has realised earlier in the cycle than Abby did that revenge will bring her nothing, that the bodies she's left behind so far have only served to traumatise and wound her, and that the only way she can know peace is to forgive what had been done.
Now the story is mostly told in chronological order, and the flow of information is smooth and understandable, and your sentiment for supporting characters isn't undermined by seeing them die and in poor context before you're given a chance to invest in them. Boom. Two games, between 15 and 20 hours long, instead of one 30+ hour back and forth with no forward motion or clean flow of information for the player. I'd have preferred that (though I should say that this is in spite of still loving this game all the same, the way it is). It also would have made more money for ND, had it been handled with utmost care.
Still, as I keep saying, I loved the story in spite of its imperfections; have no shame telling you I cried at least 3 times (no bawling, mind, but certainly tears, and certainly SADNESS). It shows Abby's redemption arc following her revenge, and it shows Ellie's starting point, one I imagine being similar to how I'd envisage Abby's being in the beginning (even if we don't really get to see it; we only see the part of her revenge story where she's just about to achieve it; not the mess leading up to it).
It's a theme that permeates the story (revenge and forgiveness), and I think that's great. It just would have been better if the pacing had been given the respect it deserved, and if the game didn't FEEL long or disjointed. I also love that the game addressed Joel's GIGANTIC LIE, and handled it tastefully (though I'd have loved to see more exposure to the lead up and fallout from that, even if what was there was great). Ellie's revenge, to me, came out of not being allowed to be in a place where she had fully forgiven and mended her relationship with Joel; somebody she clearly loved very much. Her sense of forgiveness, in the end, also came from Joel; her desire to forgive him for the selfish shit he had done, forsaking the world, ripping the choice to save the world from her, killing her chance to matter, and finally, leaving the burden of guilt in her lap. These are all complex emotions, across both games, and across all 3 protagonists (Joel, Ellie, Abby), and I think that's really hard to convey tastefully, and I believe that they accomplished what they set out to do, even if there were alternative ways to do it.
However, everything makes sense, lines up, and tracks when you think about all of the the events, collectively, within context, and with a measure of EMPATHY, for more than 5 minutes. I get annoyed with people who get annoyed that they "get the point" before the game does and assume the game is assuming they're thick, because the game is not trying to show the player a teachable moment or say that at all; it's taking you on ANOTHER PERSON'S JOURNEY TO THAT LESSON BECAUSE IT MAKES FOR AN INTERESTING STORY.
Regarding the review bombing and developer / director / actor dialogue with critics / journalists / players, and all the shit coming out of that; I think a common problem with games development and game auters as a whole is that they want to compare themselves (and be compared) with film directors. This is a fallacy, for more than one reason. Firstly, storytelling in movies has had more time in the oven and has been given the respect of being an artform for far longer. It is, without question, in a far more mature place than game storytelling is. That cannot be disputed. It IS commendable that storytelling in games is trying to reach the same level of sophistication, and is getting better every time, but there are things to consider.
Movies are not games, and games are not movies. They will never overlap in ways people (and ESPECIALLY Directors) seem to think they will. Movies are telling you a story; maybe there are some techniques making you complicit in certain emotions that affect you later in the story, but ultimately, you are an observer. Games are making you an active participant in the events of the game with your own sense of agency. Whether you have full control, or control ripped from you, they are powerful differences that only games can accomplish adequately. Movie directors (largely) will not know how to make a compelling game story, because the element of PLAY, and ludonarrative dissonance will ALWAYS be a factor in how people who play games consume a game story vs how they consume a movie story, and game directors will never be able to pace their game stories in the way a movie director can pace a movie, by virtue of the inclusion of interactivity and the things PLAYERS expect about of that. Play will always, always be a factor in PLAYING games.
AND THAT'S OK. Game Auters / Directors ARE plying a different trade that only they can do to the level of effectiveness that they do. There's nothing wrong with that; it IS an amazing feat and they're only doing themselves a disservice and stressing themselves out by trying to compare themselves with a completely different medium and a different set of skills that has to be approached with a different mindset.
So in summary, on that point? The drama, as a whole, annoys me; I'm tired of all of it. Players, directors, actors, critics, journalists. It's all a bit shite (though I appreciate that it's important enough for EVERYBODY to get passionate about).
The Last of Us 2 was beautiful; visually, certainly... and in other, more subtle ways. It wasn't perfect, and it did make me groan here or there. But actually, the imperfection is something I appreciate in some very weird way; it FEELS like it was made by people who give a shit... perhaps sometimes about the wrong things, but they give a shit nonetheless.
I'm glad it exists, and I still love the characters, how things played out, in spite of the game's narrative AND mechanical flaws (some sequences that were used as far back as the first Uncharted game cropped up and I thought to myself "C'mon guys..."),
Ultimately this is a post-apocalyptic tale, that's meant to be grim and sad and depressing and a struggle to enjoy (in the traditional sense), and I can't ever fully place myself in the shoes of the people in a story like this, who behave in ways I presume, perhaps wrongly, that I never would were I in their shoes. I've never had to live this life, in this world, where any sense of loss is magnified and the humanity we define ourselves by is NOW defined under a different rule-set, established long after the social construct of our existing society is dead by a mix of people mourning the life before (the life we currently enjoy) and those who never knew it (and therefore can't fully understand it). The threat to our existence as a race is so much more palpable and in your face than the (real) threats we face today, in real life, and to project my own sense of morality or what I expect of these people/characters seems, somehow, wrong. It's all very interesting, and it takes a lot of skill for a big team to pull this kind of stuff off. They deserve praise for navigating this subject manner, even if it doesn't always seem to land.
This is, of course, ignoring all of the controversy surrounding overtime / crunch / abuse in the studio, which is another conversation (that should be had). I love Naughty Dog, and I love their games, as a customer, but shit like that needs to stop; should go without saying. As somebody who works in the industry, both in places past where I and my health was not valued, and places present where it definitely is, I can tell you it matters when a company's ambition is not weighed competently against the needs of the project or not weighed for any appreciation or concern for your health or what you bring to the table. When you lose the human element of working on a piece of art, the art suffers. It matters; Simple as that.
Anyway, my two cents. I'm sure I have a LOT more to say, but this is already getting kind of long and hard to read, even for myself.
TL:DR (if you can call it that; I tend to go on). I loved it in spite of its issues. People need to actually internalise what they're being shown better before commenting. Equally though, it's not my place to dictate to somebody how to enjoy the game; I just feel they get in their own way of doing so when they don't try to understand how they're feeling and why. If I were to summarise, it's like spending time with an old friend after a long time apart, but that time is spent having difficult, draining, frustrating, uncomfortable conversations about our relationship, that ultimately pay off in the end.
Some videos that talk about TLOU2 (avoid if you don' want spoilers). A lot of the things these guys say mirror my own feelings:
Cosmonaut Variety Hour impressions -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jiq0nR8ndD0
Jim Sterling Impressions. I don't always enjoy listening to this guy but he has a lot of important things to say about the industry, and I tend to agree with him a lot -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJwYO0TZpdY
Jim sterling talking about the controversy surrounding the game -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Wt4Q6AnhLk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xvkx5FPdLsA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujKHlm-6JfY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1H_6OUZ1ZI"Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humour for what he is."
Spoiler: 
