
The Last of Us 2 epitomizes one of gaming’s longest debates - Tomte
https://www.polygon.com/2020/6/26/21304642/the-last-of-us-2-violence
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wpdev_63
Just finished Last of Us 2 and I am pretty disappointed.

The gameplay is tight and it's fun but the story is absolute garbage. Abby and
Ellie are such unlikable protagonists and the political undertone of the story
is overbearing.

You play two characters in the game: 1 is a lesbian who's girlfriend is
carrying a chinese guys baby and she goes out to avenge the death of a guy she
can't seem to forgive.

The other is what looks to be a steroid taking muscle woman that more or less
risks her life for two people she just met while getting her friends all
killed in the process.

The story is pretty bad to say the least. I say this as someone who actually
walked into a store to pick it up on launch day.

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gguevaraa
TLOU2 is really a game that is too far up it's own ass.

Druckmann presents it as some sort of philosophical debate about "muh
violence" when it is really a mish-mash of ideas poorly glued together, a
narrative so garbage it's almost insulting, characters that do complete 180s,
countless plotholes...the list goes on.

This game is nowhere near Spec Ops: The Line or Hotline Miami in terms of the
violence debate. TLOU2 is 'The Last Jedi' of video games and Druckmann is the
Rian Johnson of AAA gaming. Thanks Druckmann (7 years btw).

~~~
thatswrong0
Add some transphobic undertones and you have yourself a summary of the
opinions of /r/thelastofus2, opinions which seem to have been formed not from
playing the game but instead reading the leaks and/or by watching some Twitch
streamer trash the game as they play through it.

And among these general statements, I have yet to see anything specific. What
exactly are the plotholes? How exactly it is a mish-mash? How is the narrative
garbage? How is it like "The Last Jedi"?

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tinalumfoil
I haven't played LOU2 so I'm missing out on something, but there's nothing
this article mentions about its treatment of violence that isnt already in
other games.

For instance, can author really not think of any other game that has a big
shooting component but also has nonviolent story elements (GTA)? Or games
where you shoot things and then later wags a finger at you for shooting those
things (CoD)?

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morsch
He says it's been a trend for ten to twenty years and gives numerous examples
(Bioshock, Uncharted, Spec Ops: The Line, Hotline Miami, ...).

But: "The Last of Us Part 2 is the culmination of this decade of big-budget
games interrogating dissonance." I agree that it doesn't totally succeed in
explaining how or why, though he does try. I suppose it's just a particularly
striking juxtaposition of heartfelt drama and gruesome carnage.

~~~
mercer
I suppose TLoU2 stands out because of it's rather 'serious' story, its
unusually graphic violence (and attempts to humanize the NPC's more), and of
course the blockbuster nature of it.

Furthermore, I've always found the Naughty Dog core gameplay (in Uncharted as
well as TLoU) surprisingly boring and somehow disconnected from the narrative.
Good enough to make it more than just an interactive movie, but only passably
so.

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manfredo
The whole "ludonarrative dissonance" meme is getting real old. Games require
an amount of suspension of disbelief. Why can Ezio run at full sprint and do
insane acrobatics non-stop that would exhaust even most fit human? Because
it'd suck of the primary activity in assassin's Creed games was delayed by a
stamina mechanic. Why can Nathan Drake heal bullet wounds by simply waiting?
Because it's a fast paced action shooter, realistic wound mechanics from ARMA
or Escape from Tarkov would be atrocious. Yeah, this means that characters get
shot and die in cutscenes when they take 5 rounds from an AK in the torso
during gameplay no problem. Similarly Drake kills hordes of enemies in
gameplay without pause, but the death of a named character carries weight.

Pointing out the disparity in reaction between the gameplay and cutscenes is
like complaining that professional wrestling is fake. Understanding the
language of gameplay entails understanding that real world interactions don't
translate into most gameplay formats.

This applies to games like the Last of Us and SpecOps the Line, too. You can
run around in a circle jumping for 10 hours and your companions will do
nothing other than occasionally uttering a like about how you should move on.
In real life they'd think you've gone insane.

I suppose the only exception to this are games with effectively no gameplay
elements (e.g. visual novels and 3d games that play like VNs like life is
strange), and simulation games like silent hunter 3 and DCS (where the whole
point is to make gameplay resemble reality as much as possible).

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bsder
Erm, we _used_ to have types of games where you didn't just shoot everything
in sight.

The games with "blow everything away" outsold them by orders of magnitude.

You can blame the games, but the money paying audience has spoken about what
they want.

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alexandercrohde
I absolutely reject a premise of this article, which I suppose is that
violence in videogames is somehow bad or meaningful. They are best understood
as toys or works of art, and their moral implications are the same moral
implacations of playing with army men, or looking at a painting.

~~~
morsch
That is not the premise of the article.

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alexandercrohde
What are you talking about, that's absolutely a premise.

To quote a huge heading "Should violent video games narratively justify their
obsession with violence?"

My response is that there's nothing to justify. There is no dissonance between
violence and questing. Lopping heads off to get treasure is no more dissonant
than lopping a chicken's head off to make soup.

~~~
morsch
I'd say the article explores the issue without taking a hard stance on it. It
doesn't take the answer as a given; as in a premise.

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big_paps
I never play games because of the story. If i want a good story i will go for
books. If the gameplay and the atmosphere is fine, the game is fine (for me)

~~~
mercer
Some games have amazing stories though, and in some cases it feels like the
experience wouldn't be possible as just a book.

Planescape: Torment is probably the best example I can think of, but there's
many others.

~~~
raun1
Disco Elysium

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mercer
Oh yeah, thanks for the reminder! I've heard amazing things about it but
couldn't play it on my older mac (and considered waiting for the Switch
version).

Now that I have a new macbook though, I might pick it up.

